Congress Starts Probe Into Enron Bankruptcy
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Here in Washington, much of the city focused today on the collapse of the giant emergency concern Enron and the fallout from that. New information surfacing yesterday and then more today about efforts by Enron officials to reach top people in the Bush administration in the days before the company declared bankruptcy. Now we know a Senate subcommittee is serving something like 50 subpoenas as it proceeds toward an investigation, trying to find out who knew what and when. Joining us now from Capitol Hill with more on all this is our own Jonathan Karl -- Jonathan.</s>JONATHAN KARL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Judy, in a sign that life really is getting back to normal here in the nation's capital, the full-blown scandal industrial complex, as it was known during the Clinton years, is back up and running. You mentioned the 51 subpoenas that are going out from the Senate Permanent Select Committee on Investigations. Those 51 subpoenas going out to Enron executives and board members, as well as executives of the Arthur Andersen Consulting firm, which of course did the audits for Enron. What's interesting, Judy, is that one of the people getting a subpoena for documents will be Wendy Gramm, the wife of Senator Phil Gramm, who also served on the board of directors of Enron. But that is not the only action. Also, on the House side, you have the Commerce and Energy Committee, which is also preparing for investigations into Enron. They didn't send out subpoenas today, but they sent out formal requests for personal records, the personal records of executives with the Arthur Andersen Consulting firm, records of the top executives in the Houston office of Arthur Andersen, which is the office that conducted that audit of the Enron corporation. Meanwhile, there is a lot more going on. On the Senate side alone, you have six committee hearings in the works on the Enron issue. The Government Affairs Committee, the full committee will be having a hearing the day the Congress gets back, chaired by Joe Lieberman. Also, there is some subcommittee investigations. The one that sent out those subpoenas will also be having full-blown investigation, hearings some time later in February. Also, Ted Kennedy plans hearings in February with his Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The Commerce Committee having hearings. The Banking Committee planning hearings in February. And the Energy Committee all planning hearings. Meanwhile, over on the House side, you have the Commerce Committee, the Energy and Commerce Committee, preparing for hearings on Enron, and also the Financial Services Committee. Add it all up, eight committees and subcommittees planning to hold hearings on the Enron issue. This clearly will be a major focus of attention here on Capitol Hill when Congress returns at the end of month -- Judy.</s>WOODRUFF: Jonathan, there are already those who are characterizing much of this reaction, though, as just Democrats at payback time, that the Democrats suffered as the Republicans went after them. Now they are coming back. To what extent is this Democratic-driven?</s>KARL: Well, perhaps it's no mistake, Judy, that you have six committee hearings from the Democratically-controlled United States Senate, and only two committee hearings on the Republican House of Representatives. But what is important to point out is that most of these hearing, what -- people -- the staffers that are conducting the investigation are saying they are focusing on is not so much what the White House did and what Republicans did vis-a-vis Enron, but what happened with the corporation itself, what happened with Arthur Andersen, why those documents were destroyed. They are focusing, they insist, not so much on the political angle on this, but on the actual possible criminal angle, looking at the companies themselves not the political implications. But clearly, there is a political context here. And also, interestingly, Judy, a lot of Democrats are worried about this. They know what happened in the Whitewater years with the endless scandal, investigations into Whitewater, scandal investigations that actually ended up hurting Republicans politically and didn't do much damage to Bill Clinton and the Democrats. They are worried that their own party, Democrats, may overplay their hand on this. So Democrats, some of them anyway, will be talking about playing this very cautiously in the months ahead.</s>WOODRUFF: Jon, you say much of this is going after information from Enron itself, from its accountant Arthur Andersen. But to what extent will they be seeking information from the administration?</s>KARL: Well, right now, what you are seeing is requests going to the companies. Remember, those 51 subpoenas going to Enron and Arthur Andersen executives, and also the personal request for documents going to Arthur Andersen. So far nothing much coming from the administration.</s>WOODRUFF: All right. Jon Karl at the Capitol. And now, we want to go quickly to the White House, where John King is with us. John, from the White House perspective, what are they saying about this? And I know you have another story to report about recess appointments.</s>JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: We may not have time to get to it because of the Pentagon briefing. First on Enron. The White House saying it did nothing wrong, the president did nothing wrong, none of the cabinet agencies did anything wrong. The White House, though, has asked the agencies to go back and look and log any contacts with Enron. And today, word of additional contacts. A senior Treasury Department official, Peter Fischer, he is the under secretary for domestic finance. He says through a spokeswomen that he received six to eight phone calls from a top Enron official back in late last year, when Enron was trying to negotiate an extension with its banks of credit due, trying to avoid bankruptcy by getting a new line of credit from its banks. In one of those conversations, Mr. Fischer says he was asked to call the banks. He refused to do so. He took that as a request from Enron that he help the company. He did not do so. The administration says it did nothing wrong, didn't help a company tied very closely to this president. Over to the Pentagon briefing, the Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com