http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=578&e=8&cid=578&u=/nm/
20021222/ts_nm/people_time_dc
Time Names Whistle-Blowers as Persons of the Year
Sun Dec 22, 6:51 PM ET
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By Javier David
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Magazine named two women who uncovered
massive accounting fraud at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. and a third
who detailed FBI (news - web sites) failures after the Sept. 11 attacks
as its 2002 "Persons of the Year" on Sunday.
Photo
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The magazine praised Sherron Watkins, a vice president at Enron, and
Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom, as well as Coleen Rowley, an agent for the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, for exposing malfeasance that eroded
public confidence in their institutions.
"It came down to did we want to recognize a phenomenon that helped
correct some of the problems we've had over the last year and celebrate
three ordinary people that did extraordinary things," Time managing
editor Jim Kelly said.
In May, Rowley wrote a scathing 13-page memo to FBI Director Robert
Muller detailing how supervisors at a Minneapolis, Minnesota, field
office brushed aside her requests to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui,
the so-called "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, weeks
before they occurred.
Watkins, a former accountant, is best known for a blunt, prescient
7-page memo to Enron chairman Kenneth Lay in 2001 that uncovered
questionable accounting and warned that the company could "implode in a
wave of accounting scandals."
Her letter came to light during an inquiry Congress conducted after the
company declared bankruptcy.
Cooper undertook a one-woman crusade inside telecommunications behemoth
WorldCom, after she discovered that the company had disguised $3.8
billion in losses through improper accounting.
When the scandal came to light in June after that company declared
bankruptcy, jittery investors laid siege to global stock markets.
SELECTIONS APPLAUDED
Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, outgoing chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee (news - web sites) and a leading congressional advocate for
whistle-blower protections, applauded Time's selection.
"Sherron Watkins' example helped us enact the first corporate
whistle-blower protections in history. Cynthia Cooper also showed the
good that can come when courageous whistle-blowers come forward. Coleen
Rowley's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee is leading to
FBI reforms," Leahy said in a statement.
Other people considered by the magazine, which hits stores on Monday,
included President Bush (news - web sites), al Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden (news - web sites), Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites)
and New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer.
Bush was seen by some as the front-runner, especially after he led his
party to a mid-term electoral upset in November that cemented the
Republican majority in Congress.
However, Kelly said, "Some of (Bush's) own goals: the capture of Osama
bin Laden, the unseating of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), the
revival of a sluggish economy, haven't happened yet. There was a sense
of bigger things to come, and it might be wise to see how things played
out."
FBI agent and lawyer Rowley's secret memo was leaked to the press in
May. Weeks before Sept. 11, Rowley suspected Moussaoui might have ties
to radical activities and bin Laden, and she asked supervisors for
clearance to search his computer.
Her letter sharply criticized the agency's hidebound culture and its
decision-makers, and gave rise to new inquiries over the
intelligence-gathering failures of Sept. 11, 2001.
The magazine's 2001 Person of the Year was former New York Mayor
Rudolph Giuliani (news - web sites), for his handling of the Sept. 11
attacks on New York and Washington, which killed 3,000 people.
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