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CONGRESS ACTION: January 20, 2002 ================= TEAPOT DOME AND NUCLEAR MISSILES: Leftists are beside themselves with glee. The source of their happiness is the potential for the collapse of Enron to provide them, finally, with a means to "get" President Bush. "Another Whitewater" claimed CNN. "Firm's Saga Could Dog Bush In Election Year" the Washington Post hopefully opined. Democrat Congressman Waxman attacked Bush because he "did nothing to try to protect innocent employees and shareholders who ultimately lost their life savings". Imagine the firestorm of criticism, and the general market tumult, if the President of the United States had given public advice to sell Enron's stock. If Enron had any chance of recovering, the resulting rush of sellers and shorts would have destroyed it. And if Bush had intervened, democrat Senator Biden made it clear that it would be "of gigantic consequences" politically, it would "be devastating". Salon Magazine concluded that Enron's collapse proved the failure of deregulation and free markets. Arianna Huffington, who used to pretend to be a conservative but who can now be reliably counted on to attack conservatives on any (or no) excuse, huffed about "Enron conservatives" and hysterically claimed that "This is Teapot Dome, the sequel", a factually ridiculous comparison. The Boston Globe revealed what they obviously see as a dark conspiracy: "Bush, aides knew of Enron troubles", because Enron's chief called Treasury Secretary O'Neill and Commerce Secretary Evans and asked for help. But it would be hard for even the most rabid Bush hater to credibly claim that any help was forthcoming, in light of the fact that Enron filed for bankruptcy a mere six weeks later. As for meetings between Enron executives and politicians (from both parties), about which there are vague insinuations of something wrong, that's called representative government, and in this country all constituents -- not just environmental extremists and pro-democrat corporations -- may meet with their elected representatives to present their views on public issues. One might think that responsible politicians and media types would be more interested in finding out how this happened so as to prevent a similar debacle in the future, in order to protect employees and provide more timely and reliable information to investors. And that, in fact, is what President Bush has energized his administration to do. But not the leftists, who couldn't care a whit about troubled employees or bamboozled investors (recall that democrats and leftists didn't care beans about laid-off employees or impoverished shareholders when the Clinton administration tried to destroy gun makers, tobacco companies, and Microsoft). Leftists are slobbering all over themselves with the idea that now they think they have a real scandal -- as opposed to all the phony scandals they have been trying to concoct since Bush won the election -- with which to beat Bush over the head through the next election. And a juicy tale it is -- campaign contributions, frantic calls to government officials, apparent corporate fraud, shredded documents, impoverished employees. The situation seems made to order for the left. Enron was in the energy business, that evil despoiler of the environment, as were Bush and Cheney. (The only thing that would have made it more fun for democrats is if Enron had sold firearms or tobacco.) But here the facts get sticky for the left -- Enron strongly favored the Kyoto Treaty, Al Gore was the chief proponent of Kyoto, and according to the Washington Post (hardly a venue friendly to Bush), senior Enron executives spent election night in Gore's Nashville headquarters. Will Gore be subpoenaed by Joe Lieberman's Senate investigation to find out what the Gore-Enron relationship was? According to the National Legal and Policy Center, Lieberman and the New Democrat Network he founded also received contributions from Enron (and from Citigroup, a major Enron creditor, and from accountant Arthur Anderson), so will Joe Lieberman recuse himself, as the NLPC formally requested? His answer thus far is a firm "No". That "appearance of impropriety" standard so beloved by the left during the Reagan and Bush (senior) terms, which was relegated to oblivion during the Clinton years, has now been revived by the left, but apparently it only applies to republicans, not to Joe Lieberman. And the final bonus for democrats is that Enron contributed to Bush campaigns (lets not muddy the picture with the fact that democrats also got Enron contributions). Leftists and the media think they have everything they need to convince the public that something nefarious was afoot. But scandal mongering has its risks. Lanny Davis, scandal spin consultant to the Clinton administration, warned: "I don't think there's any shred of evidence that the White House has any connection to what went wrong with Enron. Democrats should not go down the road of focusing on innuendo." Perhaps Davis fears that the contributions Enron made to democrats -- and what democrats may have done for Enron, about which more information is piling up every day -- will come back to haunt them. Andrew Sullivan also threw cold water on the ardor of the attack-dog left: "With Whitewater, the worst possibility was that it was a petty, sweetheart deal. It was easy to see that, even if this were true, it wasn't that big a deal. Surely, from what we know now, it's even less of a deal with Enron. I haven't seen any argument yet that takes us beyond the line that many in the Bush administration were close to Enron, that Enron helped bankroll Bush's campaigns, and that therefore there is some sort of guilt by association." But leftists never let little things like evidence, facts, or rational thinking get in the way of their agenda of demonization. And assigning guilt by association is just fine with them. Interestingly, on the same day that Enron became a cause celebre for leftists, another bit of corporate shenanigans also made the news, but that piece of news was lost in the feeding frenzy over Enron. Since that other item involved Bill Clinton, it was easy for the media to pretend that it never happened. What the media virtually ignored was the final denouement of the Loral Space and Communications Corporation case. And the consequences of the Loral matter are far more deadly, and go far beyond ill-treated employees and hoodwinked investors. On January 9, Loral announced it had agreed to pay a $14 million fine to settle the investigation into whether it had, as alleged in a Pentagon report, transferred highly sensitive technical information to the PRC (People's Republic of China -- the communist Chinese). In 1999, the House Select Committee on Intelligence issued a report titled "U.S. National Security and Military / Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China" (the Cox Committee Report), which found: "The rocket guidance system on which Loral and Hughes provided advice in 1996 is judged by the Select Committee to be among the systems capable of being adapted for use as the guidance system for future PRC road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles. ." "In 1996, Loral and Hughes showed the PRC how to improve the design and reliability of the guidance system used in the PRC's newest Long March rocket. Loral's and Hughes' advice may also be useful for design and improved reliability of elements of future PRC ballistic missiles." "The technology transferred by Loral and Hughes thus has the potential, if used by the PRC, to increase the reliability of future PRC ballistic missiles." According to the Cox Committee Report, the fact that China now has, or soon will have, nuclear missiles pointed at American cities is thanks in no small part to the actions of Loral, in which Bill Clinton also played a role: ".pursuant to procedures approved by President Clinton in April 1996, the Commerce Department shares responsibility with the State Department and the Defense Department for classification requests.". Prior to that, license applications for the transfer of sensitive technology to foreign countries were handled by the State Department, the Defense Department, the Energy Department, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Clinton also signed a waiver (a "national interest" determination) allowing "the launch of a U.S.-manufactured commercial communications satellite on a PRC rocket ", signed "despite an ongoing Department of Justice criminal investigation of Loral's alleged earlier unauthorized transfer of missile guidance technology to the PRC." The New York Times wrote, "A federal grand jury is investigating whether two U.S. companies illegally gave China space expertise that significantly advanced Beijing's ballistic missile program.But.the criminal inquiry was dealt a serious blow.when President Clinton quietly approved the export to China of similar know-how by one of the companies under investigation." A few days later the Times lamented, "the time has not yet arrived to share American missile guidance secrets with Beijing. Unhappily, that seems to have happened two years ago. .the White House has all but endorsed the possible security breach." The Wall Street Journal quoted a Pentagon report which found that as a result of the technology transfer under investigation -- the "possible security breach" "all but endorsed" by Clinton -- the "United States national security has been harmed." So, to summarize the situations of two companies, Enron and Loral; and of two presidents, Bush and Clinton: Enron's Chief Executive contributed money to both democrats and republicans, including candidate Bush. According to the Washington Post, 45% of Enron's soft money in the 2000 election went to democrats and their party organizations; and the Center for Responsive Politics found that since 1989, six of the top ten House recipients were democrats. Loral's Chief Executive contributed enormous sums of money over the years to Bill Clinton and democrats, but insignificant amounts to republicans. Investors Business Daily called Loral's Chief Executive the largest contributor to democrats before the 1998 election, and those contributions continued through the 2000 election. Enron is accused, at most, of fraud. Employees and stockholders were impoverished. Loral was accused of, and paid a fine to settle charges of, transferring sensitive technology to China. The net result of the Enron case are smaller bank accounts. The net result of the Loral case are more accurate Chinese nuclear missiles pointed at America. Nobody has even alleged that Bush or anyone in his administration did anything at all to facilitate Enron's apparently erroneous financial filings. In fact, those filings took place during the Clinton administration and under the auspices of the Clinton SEC, so Enron may yet be another jewel in Bill Clinton's legacy crown. When Enron was pleading for help from the Bush administration to avoid collapse, they were turned down. In contrast, even the pro-Clinton New York Times admitted that Clinton facilitated Loral's China trade. What about the differing presidential actions? Bush ordered the Justice Department to form a criminal task force to investigate Enron, and the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are conducting their own investigations. In contrast, Clinton's Attorney General Reno squashed campaign contribution investigations, swept aside recommendations from FBI Director Freeh to appoint an Independent Counsel, ignored her own task force head, Charles LaBella, when he also recommended the appointment of an Independent Counsel to investigate, and even undermined -- "dealt a serious blow" to, in the words of the New York Times -- the criminal investigation of Loral. There is no dispute that Enron is a financial debacle of epic proportions. But any dispassionate analysis shows it to be just that, and not a political scandal or a campaign contributions scandal requiring the enactment of unconstitutional campaign finance reform legislation in a fit of hysteria. Those who try to exploit the situation for partisan advantage, who try to shift the focus for political motives, risk missing (and thus repairing) the real causes of this failure, and thereby risk encouraging another similar debacle in the future. FOR MORE INFORMATION. ======================== Cox Committee Report (China missiles and Loral): http://www.house.gov/coxreport/cont/gncont.html Center for Responsive Politics (Enron contributions): http://www.opensecrets.org/alerts/v6/enron_cong.asp Media Research Center Reality Check (Tyson and Enron coverage): http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/reality/2002/pdf/fax0116.pdf ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mr. Kim Weissman [EMAIL PROTECTED] *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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