Reply #13: Enron VP tells Congress she feared for her life - But media remains silent on Baxter ''suicide''

[Octafish]

It's like a flashback to a less-sad time.

Enron VP tells Congress she feared for her life
But media remains silent on Baxter "suicide"

By Patrick Martin
22 February 2002
World Socialist Web Site

EXCERPT...

But this attempt to whitewash Lay is contradicted by Watkins’ overall testimony, which describes a company in which many top-level employees were aware of and troubled by the deals Fastow effectively contracted with himself. He was both Enron CFO and principal organizer of the private partnerships. Watkins said she feared that speaking out about these transactions would be a “job-terminating move,” and only sent her memo to Lay after Skilling abruptly quit the company and a shake-up was clearly in the works.

At an earlier session of the House committee, Enron board member William Powers, dean of the University of Texas Law School, revealed that Baxter had given “a couple of hours” of interviews to the investigative committee set up by the board in the aftermath of the financial collapse. Powers refused to turn over notes or recordings of those interviews without permission from Enron.

Watkins’ account is quite different from the version told by Skilling under oath at a congressional hearing a week earlier, in which he described himself as only vaguely aware of the financial operations carried out by Fastow. Watkins said of Skilling, “He is a very much intense, hands-on manager. He was involved in Mr. Fastow’s endeavors. I find it very hard to believe that he was not fully aware of transactions with Mr. Fastow’s partnerships.”

While she refused to discuss Baxter’s death, claiming to be overcome by emotion, Watkins’ description of Baxter implicitly refutes Skilling’s portrait of a despairing man. Skilling, who described Baxter as “my closest friend,” said he had a long discussion with him only a week before his death, in which the former vice chairman was visibly distraught and felt his reputation had been ruined by the Enron collapse.

Baxter’s Houston lawyer, J.C. Nickens, who spoke with him frequently in the weeks before his death, has denied that Baxter was troubled either by the prospect of testifying before Congress or the danger of being held criminally liable in the Enron collapse. Baxter, according to his lawyer, feared neither eventuality because of his record of having criticized the practices that destroyed the company’s financial standing.

In a press interview February 9, Nickens described Baxter as agitated over harassment. “Cliff expressed to me his belief that people were going through his mail, that they were going through his garbage, that people were showing up at his home late at night, and making phone calls that were unwelcome.”

Nickens was not clear as to the source of this harassment—whether the press, prosecutors, or other Enron executives. But he did say that he had no sense that Baxter would take his own life. In the hours before Baxter’s death, Nickens had begun negotiating with congressional investigators on the conditions under which his client would appear in Washington to testify about the Enron collapse.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/feb2002/enro-f22.shtml

Thank you for the kind words, mod mom. You caring means the world to me.