Amid the WSJ’s John Emshwiller’s report on the Skilling appeal we read:
If the Skilling conviction is overturned, "all the guilty pleas obtained will be forgotten and the final grade of the Enron Task Force will likely be failure," says Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, referring to the Justice Department team that investigated Enron's 2001 collapse. . . . . The Enron Task Force was often described as the biggest criminal investigation ever done of a single corporation. It gained more than a dozen guilty pleas from former Enron officials including Mr. Fastow. But its record in court, the ultimate test of the strength of its cases, has been weak.
Of course none of this is new. These developments have been much better covered by Tom Kirkendall, e.g., here and here. I've been following along behind. The Economist was the first main stream source to pick up the story.
But it’s news that lead Enron reporter Emshwiller is finally coming around. In fact, Emshwiller even echoes a line taken by Tom K in noting that “some have argued that the collapse stemmed from miscalculations and misfortunes, not crimes. Mr. Skilling testified to that effect before Congress in 2002.” See Tom’s post on Enron as the forerunner of Bear – the quick collapse of a trust-based business – exactly what Skilling said years ago. The Economist later worked this angle.
So we’re seeing the mainstream media following rather than leading the blogs. This is not so surprising given the biases and conflicts that can infect any news source. In this case, as Tom K discussed long ago, Emshwiller had a particularly large investment in Enron's being a massive fraud -- the Gerald Loeb award for covering Enron, followed by a best-seller on Enron. Emshwiller had almost as much of his career invested in Enron as David Duncan had. That's why we need blogs.
So after years of prodding by, among others, Skilling’s lawyers and Tom Kirkendall, it looks like the story is finally starting to change. The language quoted above from Emshwiller’s story sounds a bit like ground-preparation. Watch for the hounds of the press to turn full on against the Enron prosecutors if Skilling gets a new trial or reversal for prosecutorial misconduct. It's not going to be about losing one case. It's going to be about the basic flaws in the Task Force, which was determined to get Lay and Skilling at all costs. Maybe Emshwiller already has a sequel in the works.
But as with Spitzer’s questionable conduct as prosecutor and governor, it’s too bad the press didn't catch on sooner.
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