Bush and Lay Documents released under FOI act

I was reading From the Desk of Patrick J. Fitzgerald and came across a link

George W. Bush and Kenneth Lay
By Jason Leopold
Snip
The Bush administration knew Enron was on a collision course two months before the high-flying energy company collapsed in a wave of accounting scandals that wiped out $60 billion in shareholder value and left thousands of company employees penniless.

It was August 15, 2001, when Enron lobbyist Pat Shortridge met with then-White House Economic Adviser Robert McNally, one day after Jeff Skilling made a stunning announcement that he was stepping down as president of Enron.

Shortridge confided in McNally that Enron was headed for a financial meltdown - one that could very well cripple the country's energy markets - and urged the White House economic adviser to alert President Bush about the company's financial problems so he could help put together a federal bailout, according to thousands of pages of documents about the meeting released by the government's Enron Task Force.

It certainly made sense for Enron to seek help from the White House. In August of 2001, Ken Lay was still known as "Kenny Boy" to President Bush, a nickname Bush bestowed upon him when the two men were up and comers in the Texas energy and political industries respectively.

When Bush announced his intention to run for president, Enron and its employees gave more than $1 million to Bush's 2000 election campaign, the Republican Party and the Bush Inaugural, and Bush aides used the Enron corporate jet during the post-election fracas in Florida.

Seems old George Bush white house has sort of told another fib.
The White House repeatedly said that Kenneth Lay X-chairman of Enron was just a Bush supporter.
Well below is a group of letters and correspondence between Bush when he was Governor of Texas and Kenny boy, now if George says that the two are not friends well I don't know what a friend is.

These documents have been released in Austin under the Freedom of information act.

Click to enlarge

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No you say, well I have more.


[edit on 2/6/2006 by Sauron]

Not to be flippant, but what is your point? While the letters are friendly, they by no means indicate the two men were/are friends.

[edit on 2-6-2006 by Astronomer70]

No problem, my point is that the White House claimed that Bush and Lay where not friends, and these corespondents and letters prove other wise. Thats all.

Well, I guess our definition of friends is not the same then. Friends invite one another over for dinners, drinks, etc., they talk about personal things between the families, one another's careers, etc. and I don't see any of that in the letters.

Is it proper to start a letter with Dear George if you where to write a letter to the Governor or the President?

[edit on 2/6/2006 by Sauron]

Originally posted by Sauron
Is it proper to start a letter with Dear George if you where to write a letter to the Governor or the President?

It is when the writer is a "Bush supporter." It is certainly resonable that as a supporter (and highly placed corporate executive), he was on a first name basis with GW. My company's V.P. recently sent me a gift basket and a handwritten note thanking me for some hard work. Does that mean we are friends? If so, I can't wait to go borrow her Jaguar.

I won't hold my breath, though.

BTW, what kind of hammer are you holding anyway?

[edit on 2-6-2006 by Hamburglar]

well, I have had the same business lawyer for over ten years and not once has he ever started a letter with Dear John, LOL, and has never said, give his regards to your family.
But if you guys think I'm wrong, well thats okay.

oh yea the hammer, it's a meat tenderizer

Originally posted by Sauron
Is it proper to start a letter with Dear George if you where to write a letter to the Governor or the President?

[edit on 2/6/2006 by Sauron]

Of course it isnt. Neither is calling your Doctor "Harvey"- its offensive because presumably they went to school and spent many years working towards the title.

I agree, that is strange to call the president, George. If someone over you sends something to you, down the ladder, they can call you by name, but when you're sending something up the ladder, it is different. BTW, the PJFitzgerald blog, what is up with that? Do we know who this person is really? I've been curious about that, as I visit the blog every day.

I have a feeling that if GW was walking past me and I said "Hey George!" I would be on the SS chopping block by dawn's first light.

[edit on 6/2/06 by niteboy82]

Originally posted by niteboy82
I agree, that is strange to call the president, George. If someone over you sends something to you, down the ladder, they can call you by name, but when you're sending something up the ladder, it is different.

Not so in my organization. Or more correctly, with certain people in my organization. I can (and do) call that V.P. by her first name all the time. That is the kind of culture that she wants to foster in her unit. The CEO, however, I always address as "sir."

Remember that we are dealing with the George "King of Nicknames" Bush here. And remember that your experiences are not everyone's experiences. I have been fortunate to experience different mentalities to addressing "superiors," so it is not difficult for me to imagine a corporate executive addressing the Gov. or Pres. by his first name.

It is all about relationships. Here is a good example. Do you honestly (all jokes aside) believe that Maria Shriver calls her husband, "Mr. Governor"? Do you think Dick Cheney (outside of meetings) calls GW, "Mr. President"? Do you think GW (outside of press conferences and public appearances and such) calls Tony Blair, "Mr. Prime Minister"?

Of course not. Why? Because they have a relationship that has established a different set of protocol for addressing each other. That doesn't mean they are friends (they may well be). Just as I am not "friends" with my boss's boss's boss (the V.P.). And yet, I still call her by her first name in all correspondence and when I pass her in the hallway.

I don't think it unreasonable to conclude that Lay, a supporter, who probably has been to hob-nobbing, fundraisers and dinners, would be on a first name basis with GW.

And as for the meat tenderizer, Sauron, are you suggesting you want to nail me?

Hamburglar,

I see your point. I worked for a company for years and the president was "Pat" to me-
I guess its tradition, when it comes to some professions.

Did White House staff holding Enron stock get tipped off?. Did Enron staff get Government jobs in return for banking/backing Bush?.

Connect the Enron Dots to Bush

The Enron Story Everyone Is Missing: The Bush-Ken Lay Connection
By Robert Scheer

Snip

The Bush administration has a long and intimate relationship with Enron, whose much-discredited chairman, Kenneth L. Lay, was a primary financial backer of George W. Bush’s rise to the presidency.
~~
Other questions: Was there any conflict of interest in the roles played by key Bush aides? Political advisor Karl Rove owned as much as $250,000 in Enron stock. And economic advisor Larry Lindsay and Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick went straight from Enron’s payroll to their federal jobs.

There are other Enron alum in the administration, including Army Secretary Thomas White Jr., who, as an Enron executive, held stock and options totaling $50 million to $100 million.

We have a right to know whether the Enron alums in the administration were tipped off in time to bail out with profit the way Lay and the other Enron top execs did, while their workers and stockholders--and eventually U.S. taxpayers--are being left holding the suddenly empty bag.

Hamburglar, just j/k with you, I would never knowingly hurt anyone.

So the Whitehouse boy first said Lay was just a supporter now that he is dead and in Hell. The Whitehouse boy is saying he was a close family friend. The funny thing is the Whitehouse boy thinks lay would go to heaven, hell I've got a sure bet on getting into heaven if Lay can do it.

Bush Says Lay Was 'A Good Guy'

President Bush said Thursday he hopes Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay's "heart was right with the Lord" when he died before he could be sentenced on fraud and conspiracy charges.
~~
Bush called Lay, who was a friend of the Bush family and a large donor to the president's campaign, "a good guy."
~~
Lay faced life in prison after his convictions May 25 that ended a blockbuster trial stemming from one of the biggest business debacles in U.S. history.

[edit on 7/7/2006 by Sauron]

The President thinks that a man that caused thousands to lose their jobs and pensions is a "good guy". hummmmm.... interesting....

My opinion is that Enron's demise is linked to a conflict within the National Energy Policy Development Group, the highly secretive and still censored energy task force meetings from January til May 2001 which were to shape the Bush administration's energy strategy[1]. For an administration composed of oil executives, guided by military contractors and civilian intelligence agencies, this energy strategy -- from the war on terror to the annexation of overseas oil and gas fields -- probably was the base for the Bush administration's ensueing, and rather extensive, foreign policy.

Under the frame of these task force meetings, Vice-President Cheney met at least six times with Enron executives. The last time was on April 17th 2001, and the administration issued its (official) report exactly one month later.

The trouble started shortly after for Enron -- following these meetings. Named most innovative company in America by Fortune Magazine in February 2001, and highly lucrative up until April 2001, is it a coincidence that the corporation's demise, with bankruptcy declared in December 2001, was to follow so abruptly after the closure of the energy task force meetings?

How the Enron company failed to recover from the rather classic corporate hickups from which it suffered, is asking the technical question of how a corporation could be professionally framed by an administration, the intelligence agencies obeying its orders and the legal powers that it undoubtedly controls. "How did it fail and how did it fail so quickly?" asked Kenneth Lay during his trial about Enron, further calling the bankruptcy a more ‘complex’ story, and maintaining (just as did his colleague Jeffrey Skilling), that Enron executives had no motive for conspiring against their shareholders. A credible argument, given the succesfulness of the company, and considering the psychological character of its directors. Indeed, Kenneth Lay, contrary to the belief of the gullible people, is not your typical corporate gangster. Rather a highly succesful businessman whose character failed to bestow the needed respect by the highest administrators in the White House, possibly by George Herbert Walker Bush himself.

Indeed, how did Enron fall so quickly? Any corporation is fragile to inside executives like Sherron Watkins or Andrew Fastow selling out on their bosses. Maybe they did so to obtain personal gains, or because of their loyalty to external third partners (linked to the administration?). Many of the rumors around Enron's books, this much is clear, were based on nothing more than gossip. Artificially triggered by internal disclosure of the corporation's financial policies -- causing investors and shareholders to grow increasingly skeptical about the companies' future -- Enron's bankruptcy was a forced affair, initially causing the Justice Department to have an interest in the Enron rumours only reluctanly. The Enron executives never got a chance to a fair trial: several legal experts agree on the overcriminalization of the Enron indictment [2], and it indeed appears that the prosecutors succeeded in nailing the defendants to the wall for a long time, regardless of the legal justification to do so [3].


Ken Lay may have been a Bush financer, but that doesn't mean both families are real friends (is there such a thing as friendship in those circles anyway?). Another argument is that when Bush declares something to the press, he generally means exactly the opposite. The publicly declared 'friendship' between his father George Herbert Walker Bush and Kenneth Lay, ultimately, could well be a ploy rather than reality. Indeed, if Lay really was a Bush crony -- as he is traditionally portrayed to be because of Enron’s donations to the Bush campaign -- there's no chance his supposed friends in the administration would have let this corporation go down. Indeed, if Enron would have been a loyal partner in the Energy Task Force, especially with such risk of exposure to their own agenda, the trifle problems surrounding Enron would have been effectively covered up instead of blown wide open.

On the other hand, one could imagine what would happen if Enron failed to agree with the 2001 Energy Group meeting’s proposals, while having first hand information about their content and their implications for the covert policy the Bush administration is so notorious for. It is to be suspected that if a highly placed man like Kenneth Lay wasn't loyal enough to Bush’s global agenda, he and his unloyal colleagues would get relentlessly persecuted, overdramatically punished, and even find themselves in a life-threatening situation. Enron's story of fast judicial destruction, Clifford Baxter's strange suicide, and Kenneth Lay's sudden massive heart attack bear the hallmarks of what has happened to many other people who failed to agree with the White House’s policies, or were too well informed about its decisions.

[1]NRDC's Review of the Bush Administration's Energy Task Force
[2]Overcriminalization?
[3]Heaviest charges don't involve Enron

Kenneth Lay himself declared that he was targeted because of political reasons: "It's ugly when there is the appearance of political influence on criminal prosecutions—and, of course, even uglier when the reality exists. The legal case against me, standing alone, is a flimsy, hollow shell and reeks of politics."

Link to Mr. Lay's Op-Ed

Originally posted by dgtempe

Originally posted by Sauron
Is it proper to start a letter with Dear George if you where to write a letter to the Governor or the President?

[edit on 2/6/2006 by Sauron]

Of course it isnt. Neither is calling your Doctor "Harvey"-

Actually, I do call one of my doctors by his first name. We don't socialize, but are quite informal and comfortable with one another.

Not all doctors/professionals you deal with IRL demand or want the professional barrier of using their title.
So, now, I don't find "Dear George" odd, especially coming from a salesman!!!