Press Silent As US Army Is Entrusted To Wrongdoer
By Jason Leopold
Secretary of the Army Thomas White is preparing to lead thousands of the nation’s soldiers into war with Iraq and still,
not one journalist has spilled any ink on White’s knowledge of the suspect accounting practices at Enron Energy
Services, the division he ran for several years before being tapped to run the Army.
This is the same man who admitted in sworn testimony before a Senate committee in July that he phoned dozens of his
former colleagues at Enron last year to get information on Enron’s financial condition and whether it would impact the
value of his stock he still held in Enron.
White’s phone conversations with his Enron buddies took place shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York
and Washington, D.C. and while military personnel were being sent to break up the Taliban government in Afghanistan.
White clearly did not have his priorities in order, and it’s now a valid question to ask whether Thomas White is suited
to oversee the Army’s $82 billion budget and one million of the Army’s soldiers who are on active duty.
This is the same man who dozens of former Enron employees say headed up a division at Enron that contributed heavily to
Enron’s collapse. We are now expected to trust that our soldiers will be in good hands as White leads them off to war.
The media, be it out of laziness or because journalists just don’t give a
damn, gave up on pursuing any leads that suggested White took part in the dubious accounting practices that destroyed
Enron, one of the biggest corporate scandals in American history.
The fact that Thomas White, a highly placed executive at Enron, has said publicly that he was unaware of the suspect
accounting practices that took place at the division he ran calls into question his capability of leading the United
States Army, especially at a time when war with Iraq seems inevitable.
I spent one-year investigating Thomas White’s role at Enron. In my conversations with more than 50 former employees at
Enron Energy Services I was told that White was well respected as a person, a likeable guy, but, at best, he knew that
Enron was hiding losses and possibly took part in some of those schemes.
White has not yet explained how Enron Energy Services booked a $1.3 billion profit from a contract the unit signed with
Eli Lilly even though Enron paid the pharmaceutical company $50 million in cash as an incentive to sign the contract and
hid this fact from investors and the public.
White’s signature is on the approval sheets and he earned a hefty bonus from the Eli Lilly deal despite the fact Enron
Energy Services never performed any of the services described in the contract.
I wonder whether the editorial and op-ed columnists for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal who called for
White’s resignation earlier this year will take White to task again.
This time round lives are at stake.
EARLIER RELATED STORIES…
- Jason Leopold's Account Of What Happened To His Story On White - Jason Leopold – Shafted By The New York Times
- The Original Story On White - US Army Secretary Helped Cook Enron's Books
- Reader Responses - Reader Feedback To Jason Leopold’s Story
- Salon's Response & Leopold Reply - Salon.com's Response to Jason Leopold & His Reply