It's something that that "liberal left wing media" seems to have overlooked, and that's a real shame.
Here are just some of the highlights :
This story begins with the California energy crisis, which started in 2000 and continued through the early months of 2001, when electricity prices spiked to their highest levels. Prices went from $12 per megawatt hour in 1998 to $200 in December 2000 to $250 in January 2001, and at times a megawatt cost $1,000.
One event occurred earlier. On July 13, 1998, employees of one of the two power-marketing centers in California watched incredulously as the wholesale price of $1 a megawatt hour spiked to $9,999, stayed at that price for four hours, then dropped to a penny. Someone was testing the system to find the limits of market exploitation. This incident was the earliest indication that the people and the state could become victims of fraud. The Sacramento Bee broke the story three years later, on May 6, 2001.
No one supported the younger Bush quite like Lay. Enron executives contributed more than $2 million to George W. Bush’s political campaigns since 1999, earning Lay an open door to the governor’s office. Lay was also Bush’s number one choice for Treasury Secretary. A study authorized by Rep. Henry Waxman reveals that Enron had 112 known contacts with the Bush administration in 2001. This figure does not include seventy-three disclosed contacts between former Army Secretary Thomas White and his former colleagues at Enron. (Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, recently fired White.)
Significantly, Ken Lay was also a close friend to Dick Cheney who is a former Enron shareholder. It should come to no one’s surprise that given the relationships, Ken Lay was selected to work on the Bush energy transition team under the chairmanship of Cheney. Lay’s easiest assignment? He interviewed potential candidates for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an agency that would oversee his company (and months later lead a slow, long investigation into Enron’s role in the California energy debacle). The President picked Lay’s nominee, Pat Wood, to serve as chairman of the agency.
Ken Lay was a very useful and a very knowledgeable man to have around. He knew, for instance, of the holes in the California power market that could be exploited. He tried to warn officials about the problem in 1994 when Enron testified at a Public Utility Commission hearing. Unfortunately his advice was ignored. Enron then went with the flow. It reversed itself, endorsed the system, and lauded the politicians for setting up what Enron knew was an exploitable and faulty infrastructure.
In April of 2001, Ken Lay handed Dick Cheney a two-page memorandum recommending national energy policy changes. The memo contained Enron’s positions on specific, rather technical issues, which were presented as a “fix” for the California crisis. (Enron brazenly advised the administration not to place price caps on energy, which would be precisely the request California officials made to the President, and which the President and the Vice President would just as brazenly deny until public pressure forced them to capitulate.)
According to a special report prepared for Rep. Henry A. Waxman, over seventeen energy policies recommended by Enron made their way into the official White House National Energy Policy report.
Congress awoke from its somnambulism, having become alarmed at Enron’s close association with the Bush administration. Congressional committees asked****Cheney for the names of those who advised him and the reports he relied upon in drafting the nation’s energy policy. Cheney bluntly and adamantly refused to reveal those facts. After months of standoff, the General Accounting Office (GAO) filed a suit against the Vice President in an effort to obtain the requested information. The White House then developed a fascinating legal strategy that helped them triumph over the legislative branch.
Defense attorneys from the civil division of the Justice Department should have been assigned to the case. However, in an unprecedented move, the Bush administration required the services of the nation’s number-one-gun, Theodore Olson, the Solicitor General, who normally only makes appearances before the Supreme Court. Olson, his Assistant Solicitor General, and a handpicked group of Justice Department lawyers formed a special “trial defense task force” to defend the Vice President. This act telegraphed to the court, press, and public that this was no ordinary case. The move paid off, a federal judge found for Mr. Cheney and the GAO declined to file an appeal. That, more or less, marked the end of the story.
On October 6, 2002, a newspaper in the UK published a little known article about Mr. Cheney’s advisers. According to Neil Mackay, an award-winning journalist, writing for Scotland’s Sunday Herald,Dick Cheney commissioned an energy report from ex-Secretary of State, James Baker III. The time of this “commission” is not reported, but since the members of the appointed task force held three videoconferences and teleconferences in December, January, and February 2000-2001, Cheney therefore logically contacted Baker some time prior to the December 2000 meeting—during the presidential transition period.
Interesting guy, this James Baker III....
- He says the government shouldn't overreact to corporate scandals.
- He's the Senior Counsel for The Carlyle Group, a company that invests pension funds in defense and telecommunications companies around the world. The Carlyle Group is the nation's 10th largest defense contractor, with extensive ties to Enron, Global Crossing, Arthur Andersen, the Saudi Royal Family, and the Bin Ladens.
-He's defending the Saudi's against a trillion-dollar lawsuit brought forth by the September 11 families.
- He led the campaigns of the last four Republican presidents.
- Now he's been chosen as Bush's personal envoy in charge of restructuring Iraq's $132 billion in debt.
- Through his law firm, Baker & Botts, he is also working to assist American oil companies in the Caspian Region. This work right now involves a pipeline to be built through Afghanistan, a pipeline that Texas oil companies were negotiating with the Taliban to build before 9-11.
- He's a busy guy, and he's all over the place.
Office of Intelligence Policy and Review
Counsel for Intelligence Policy: James A. Baker
The Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, under the direction of the Counsel for Intelligence Policy, is responsible for advising the Attorney General on all matters relating to the national security activities of the United States. The Office prepares and files all applications for electronic surveillance and physical search under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, assists Government agencies by providing legal advice on matters of national security law and policy, and represents the Department of Justice on variety of interagency committees such as the National Counterintelligence Policy Board. The Office also comments on and coordinates other agencies' views regarding proposed legislation affecting intelligence matters.
The Office serves as adviser to the Attorney General and various client agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Defense and State Departments, concerning questions of law, regulation, and guidelines as well as the legality of domestic and overseas intelligence operations.
http://www.usdoj.gov/oipr/
- The judge who decided not to freeze the assests of Enron executives in January later recused herself from the case because she was a former employee of Baker & Botts, because of her ties to George Bush and the fact that she had been an Enron stockholder.
- Baker & Botts was Enron's counsel when they merged with Enron Power and Pipeline in 1997.
- Robert W. Jordan, another founding member, is now the Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
- Baker & Botts is currently defending the CEO of Rite-Aid, indicted for conspiracy and fraud.
- Two of Baker and Botts's specialties are Corporate Crisis and White Collar Criminal Defense
source all : http://www.hereinreality.com/baker.html
Mr. Baker is presently a senior partner in the law firm of Baker Botts and Senior Counselor to The Carlyle Group, a merchant banking firm in Washington, DC. He is Honorary Chairman of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and serves on the board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. From 1997 to 2004, Mr. Baker served as the Personal Envoy of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to seek a political solution to the conflict over Western Sahara. In 2003, Mr. Baker was appointed Special Presidential Envoy for President George W. Bush on the issue of Iraqi debt.
(From Baker's own website, btw.... )
http://bakerinstitute.org/Persons/H-Chair.htm
Wait a tick....this guy (with all his right wing connections actually worked with KOFI ANNAN...that CROOK ...that "oil for food scandal guy ? "....someone get Fox News NOW !!! )
Back to our story...
James Baker was uniquely situated to fulfill Cheney’s commission, for among the many hats he wears, he is legal counsel to the Carlyle Group, one of the nation’s largest defense investment firms whose board consists of former high level government officials, including George Bush senior. Baker was also the “hired gun” for George W. Bush’s campaign in Florida, along with Karl Rove. But among the hats he wears, none is more valuable than his ability to become invisible and leave no fingerprints behind. James Baker courts the press and is hailed a statesman; he also serves as the honorary chairman of the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, a think tank that was involved in aiding the George W. Bush presidential transition teams.
Equally intriguing is the fact that Baker has ties with both the Bushes and Ken Lay. Years earlier, in 1993, after Baker stepped down from his stint as Secretary of State, he and Robert A. Mosbacher—Bush senior’s commerce secretary—signed a joint consulting and investing agreement with Enron. The two men began a lucrative career making joint global investments with Enron on natural gas projects. Baker Botts LLC, James Baker’s law firm, flourished in its specialty of international oil and gas counseling.
Since Baker walked in their circles, when he set out to select an energy team to advise the White House, he filled it with leaders of the oil, gas, and power industries. Three appointees stand out: Kenneth Lay from Enron, who was working on the Bush Energy Transition team under Dick Cheney at the time; Chuck Watson, the then Chairman and CEO of Houston’s Dynegy Inc., and Dynegy’s General Counsel and Secretary, Kenneth Randolf. Both firms were deeply involved in illegally manipulating the California energy market at the time and eventually faced criminal investigations.
Sometimes a mystery is hidden in a loaded detail that most of us would rather skip over. A case in point is this: the Baker task force report shows a forty-one member task force, but the press release gives fifty-one as the number. This of course, could be just a typo. But when we look at the structure as revealed in the report, it shows the Baker energy task force team was divided into three separate groups. First came the names of the forty-one-all-star task force. Secondly, came the names of nine observers. And thirdly, there was an unknown number forming a group of “reviewers” whose identities were not disclosed, but who collectively had “broad academic, economic, and energy expertise.” According to the acknowledgements these “individuals reviewed drafts of the report at various stages and participated in the Task Force meetings.” Perhaps the most telling admission is that the final version was “greatly enhanced” by this shadowy group.
The Baker energy task force produced a report titled, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century, dated April 2001. There is no mistaking the fact that reasonable, detailed and important expert advice is meted out to the new president. However, this amazing 107-page report strikes a drumbeat for action that grabs the reader as it propels a picture of a naked, energy-scarce nation, subject to energy shortages and price fluctuations, across its pages. Contrasting the state of what is, against what should be, and mercifully making powerful recommendations that will “save our economy,” it offers warnings such as: a sharp rise “in oil prices preceded every American recession since the late 1940s.”
A haunting familiarity exists between the Baker energy report and another policy paper that could negatively impact the Bush administration. The style of the two reports is similar, particularly in discussions on national security; their task force methodologies are essentially the same; they share the repeated use of a relatively rare term; they share similarly constructed phrases; they both name Iraq as an adversary and they both attack problems in the same manner. There is a possibility that one writer served on both task forces.
A little background is necessary: In June of 1997 a group of former republican administration officials launched The Project for the New American Century, a think tank offering research and analysis on a “revolution” in modern military methods and military objectives. Like the energy task force, the passionate neo-conservative authors endowed their Principles with hard-hitting force, calling for the necessity of “preserving and extending an international order friendly” to America’s “security, prosperity and principles.” The founders wrote: “The history of the 20th Century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge and to meet threats before they become dire.” In fact, on pages 51 and 67 of the institution’s intellectual centerpiece, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, the authors lament that the process of transforming the military would most likely be a long one, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” (How unfortunate for Americans, they got their needed event on September 11, 2001.)
The signers to the “principles” read like a who’s who of the Bush administration plus a chorus line of supporters: Dick Cheney, I. Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Elliott Abrams, plus world famous: William Bennett, Jeb Bush, and Dan Quayle, among others.
On May 16, 2001,Dick Cheney officially handed the National Energy Policy (national report) to George W. Bush. Ostensibly the cabinet members that formed the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) were its authors. But a careful study and comparison of the national report with the Baker report reveals the Baker report provided the skeleton framework upon which the national energy policy was hung. However, the skeleton was broken up into unrelated parts: the skull in the middle, the thigh bone on top.
When it was all unraveled, almost every major policy action in the Baker report was incorporated into the national report. The tedious process of comparing the two reports with each other occasionally revealed a subtlety. For example, the Baker report says, “The U.S. must have a strategic energy policy based on energy security.” The national report subtly changes this to: “The NEPD Group recommends that the President make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy.” This foreign policy change led to the discovery that an important topic is missing from the national report.
Although every other oil producing country was discussed in the national energy text, two countries were glaringly omitted from even a mention: Iraq and Iran. There’s an explanation for the omissions: First, in reading the Baker report one is struck by the strategic military information provided, which would be odd and inappropriate in a report on energy. Secondly, the Baker report is divided into two sections: the first part focuses on strategic steps the new administration should take immediately. The second part focuses on long-range energy policy. “Taking care of Iraq” is listed as an immediate step in the Baker report. The national report, however, focuses solely on long-range policy.
One of the most striking facts about the national report is that it makes 110 references to California’s energy crisis, which was ninety-nine more than the Baker report makes. Clearly, someone in the White House needed an impressive energy crisis to tout. How unfortunate that the crisis cited was fraudulently induced. Like the Baker report, the national report states, “The California experience demonstrates the crippling effect that electricity shortages and black outs can have on a state or region.” Warnings abound: “America in the year 2001 faces the most serious energy shortage since the oil embargoes of the 1970s.” The 110 repetitions of the word “California” linked with words like “energy crisis,” and “energy shortages and price spikes,” could turn the national energy report into an ad man’s prized primer.
Notwithstanding its importance as an example of what could happen to other states, the author of a passage (at page 5-12) of the national report suddenly yields to an impulse to relate what really happened in California. In doing so, he completely contradicts at least 105 references to California throughout the report. The significance of this contradictory entry into the National Energy Policy must not be underestimated.
In the process of reversing the carefully construed “California experience,” the author’s grasp exceeds his knowledge in that his understanding of the events in California go beyond what he should have reasonably known at the time of its writing
In a letter to the Vice President dated January 25, 2002, Rep. Henry Waxman outlined the information he gathered on how the National Energy Policy was written: passages not included in the draft of the national report, appear to have been added to the plan during the final revisions made under the direction of the White House. The White House energy plan was first drafted, Waxman says, by a “workgroup composed of staff from various agencies led by the Executive Director, Andrew Lundquist,” of Dick Cheny’s staff. Each chapter, according to Waxman, “was drafted by one of the participating agencies,” and those copies “were then circulated among all of the workgroup members.” The workgroup then met to discuss each agency’s comments before submitting the drafts to the White House.
Waxman wrote, “Any further changes in the plan were made under the direction of the White House. No subsequent versions of the White House energy plan were circulated to the interagency workgroup.” Assuming this description of the process applied to all the chapters of the national report, it appears the White House had the final word and made the final insertions and changes to the report.
In trying to answer the question, “Who done it?” our Sherlock Holmes people will have to look at the top levels of the White House and the Bush administration, and ask, “Who had sufficient knowledge of electricity markets in California and other states to have written the incriminating statements?”
What Mr. DiIulio may not have known is what the Yurica Report discovered: the policy papers were written for this administration—and not by this administration. The National Energy Policy like the Baker report drills into the reader’s mind that devastating “California-like” crises can and will be repeated unless the administration and congress choose to take prescribed steps to regain control over energy supply-lines. Control or insurance is spelled out as w-a-r against Iraq. Something intervened, however, that made energy crises unnecessary as a justification tool for war. That something was another Pearl Harbor on September 11, 2001.
This story ends as it began: with unrequited lies, deception and fraud. Three sentences inserted into the National Energy Policy report reveal: 1) the White House knew the California crisis was man-made; 2) knew the power companies were manipulating the market in California; 3) and knew these facts at the time the people of California were being fleeced by the scam; 4) yet the Bush White House did nothing to stop the fraud.
A special prosecutor should be appointed by Congress to investigate this whole matter as well as what Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney knew and when they knew it.
"When Governor Bush—now President Bush—decided to run for the governor's spot, [there was] a little difficult situation—I 'd worked very closely with Ann Richards also, the four years she was governor. But I was very close to George W. and had a lot of respect for him, had watched him over the years, particularly with reference to dealing with his father when his father was in the White House and some of the things he did to work for his father, and so did support him."
—Interview with Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay for Frontline's 2001 documentary, "Blackout: What Caused the Power Crisis in California? And Who's Profiting?"
"In distancing himself from Enron, President Bush said that CEO Kenneth Lay 'was a supporter' of Democrat Ann Richards in his first race for Texas governor in 1994.
"But records and interviews with people involved in the Richards campaign show that he was a far bigger Bush supporter.
http://www.slate.com/id/2060884/
In addition to being one of the single largest financial backers of George W. Bush's political career, Ken Lay can count himself among the president's closest friends. Letters written while Bush was governor of Texas and obtained by Mother Jones reveal that the Enron Corp. chairman regularly wrote Bush and called upon the governor for favors. Lay recommended appointments to state boards and asked Bush to meet with visiting dignitaries from countries with whom Enron was hoping to do business. In fact, the relationship between the men dates back to the first Bush administration, when George W. used his family name to promote Enron ventures in Argentina.
After Bush's election, his friendship with Lay led to widespread speculation that the Enron chairman would be tapped to head the Department of Energy. Instead, Lay has served as Bush's key advisor on energy policy.
Although Enron holds particular influence in the fledgling Bush administration, it is accustomed to wielding clout on Capitol Hill. In 1992, Enron hired former Secretary of State James Baker to hustle contracts for the company in Kuwait,
Lay signed on early as a Bush Pioneer, committing to raise at least $100,000 for the campaign. Enron reportedly put its corporate jets at the disposal of the Bush campaign eight times last year, and Lay and his company also kicked in $300,000 to underwrite Bush's inauguration.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/mojo_400/76_lay.html
April 7, 2004
Four years ago this Wednesday, George W. Bush was taking time out from the campaign trail against Al Gore to travel to Houston to take in a game.
Where was he? Enron Field.
His host was Ken Lay.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0407-11.htm
It seems that Bush liked being around Lay a lot more when he was breathing....
He didn't show up at his old friends funeral, and neither did Cheney...I guess they were too busy.
His father, and James Baker, did though...
HOUSTON (AP) - Former president George Bush and his wife, Barbara, were among the mourners Wednesday at the funeral of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay.
Lay's funeral drew some of the high-profile guests who were close to him before he was convicted in May of fraud and conspiracy for lying to investors and the public about the energy company's financial health before it collapsed in 2001.
Among the other mourners at the downtown Houston church Lay attended for 12 years were former secretary of state James Baker...
Maybe they sent flowers instead...
"He did have a strong faith in God and I know he's in heaven, and I'm glad he's not in a position anymore to be whipped by his enemy." The Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson went further, comparing Lay with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus Christ, saying his name would eventually be cleared: "He was taken out of the world right at the right time. History has a way of vindicating people who have been wronged."
http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/025441.html
What was Lay’s role in the sudden replacement of Curtis Hebert Jr. as Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman? As the New York Times reported, Hebert “had barely settled into his new job this year when he had an unsettling telephone conversation with Kenneth L. Lay, [in which Lay] prodded him to back ... a faster pace in opening up access to the electricity transmission grid to companies like Enron.” Lay admits making the call but in an unctuous defense of his influence peddling said, “The final decision on [Hebert’s job] was going to be the president’s, certainly not ours.” Soon after, Hebert was replaced by Texan Pat Wood, who was favored by Lay.
Other questions: Was there any conflict of interest in the roles played by key Bush aides? Political advisor Karl Rove owned as much as $250,000 in Enron stock. And economic advisor Larry Lindsay and Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick went straight from Enron’s payroll to their federal jobs.
There are other Enron alum in the administration, including Army Secretary Thomas White Jr., who, as an Enron executive, held stock and options totaling $50 million to $100 million.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060526_enron_bush_lay/
At today’s press briefing, Press Secretary Tony Snow was asked about the death of Ken Lay, the convicted former Enron CEO whom President Bush nicknamed “Kenny Boy.”
First, Snow dodged the question, asking the reporter: “I don’t know, what do you think would be the appropriate thing to say?” Later, he played down the relationship between the two, refusing to let Bush be described as a “friend” of Lay’s. “[T]he President has described Ken Lay as an acquaintance, and many of the President’s acquaintances have passed on during his time in office,” he said.
Q: What has been the President’s reaction to the death of Ken Lay?
SNOW: I really have not talked to him about it. I will give you my own personal reaction, which is that when somebody dies, you leave behind those that grieve, and I think that they deserve our compassion. But — I don’t know, what do you think would be the appropriate thing to say?
Q: I do not know. I don’t know him. The President was his friend, not me.
SNOW: No, the President has described Ken Lay as an acquaintance, and many of the President’s acquaintances have passed on during his time in office. Again, I think that it is sort of an interesting question but not answerable by me.
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/05/snow-lay/
I wonder why a guy that directly worked with you, wrote letters to you, was one of your biggest supporters, invited you to his new stadium, and lent you his private jet is just an...acquaintance.
