http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/11/news/companies/enron_fortune/ As a Top Enron Exec Pleads Guilty, Journalist Robert Bryce Discusses the Death of Enron and the Firm's Close Ties to President BushIt remains unclear how the upcoming trial will affect President Bush - who was closely linked to the Texas-based firm. The family of Enron founder Ken Lay was one of President Bush's biggest financial backers. It donated about $140,000 to Bush's political campaigns in Texas and for the White House. The president personally nicknamed Ken Lay "Kenny Boy." Overall Enron employees gave Bush some $600,000 in political donations. According to the Center for Public Integrity this made Enron Bush's top career donor - a distinction the company maintained until last year. Shortly after Bush took office in 2001, Vice President Cheney reportedly met with Enron officials while he was developing the administration's energy policies. - Robert Bryce, investigative reporter based in Austin, Texas. He has been covering U.S. energy issues since 1989 and is the author of two books: "Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron" and "Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America"s Superstate."
AMY GOODMAN: That was Ken Lay's attorney, Michael Ramsey. It remains unclear how the upcoming trial will affect President Bush, who was closely linked to the Texas-based firm. The family of Enron founder Ken Lay was one of President Bush's biggest financial backers, donating about $140,000 to Bush's political campaigns in Texas and for the White House. The President personally nicknamed Ken Lay “Kenny Boy.” Overall, Enron employees gave Bush some $600,000 in political donations. According to the Center for Public Integrity, this made Enron Bush’s top career donor, a distinction the company maintained until last year. Shortly after Bush took office in 2001, Vice President Cheney reportedly met with Enron officials while he was developing the administration's energy policies.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you now put it in the context of the rise of the Bushes in Texas? In your book, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America’s Superstate, you really paint a picture of how they are all intertwined.
ROBERT BRYCE: Well, sure. One of the reasons I wrote Cronies was simply because it was, as I finished my book on Enron, I thought, well, what made Enron so powerful, and it was that it was an energy company. I mean, this was the premiere, most famous, most powerful energy company in Houston, which, of course, is the center of the global energy business. So, the rise of Enron was a reflection of the go-go style in Houston and, of course, the Bushes were in Texas largely because of the energy business. George Bush, Sr., of course, was in the oil business, as was George W. Bush.
And recall that Enron had a hand in many of the Bushes' efforts to get into public office. Ken Lay was one of the first donors to George H.W. Bush's campaign when he made his first run for president. When George W. Bush ran for governor, one of his first stops was at Enron, and he convinced Rich Kinder who was, at that time, Enron’s president to be his finance chair in Harris County, where Houston is located. So, Enron and the Bushes have -- I think it’s safe to say that no other company in America had closer ties to the Bushes when George W. Bush decided to run for president in the 2000 campaign and, in fact, the overall numbers for George W. Bush's campaign in 2000 from Enron, the total contributions to both his personal campaign and to the Republican National Committee, was well over a million dollars, and that money bought Enron then, in the first Bush administration, unprecedented access.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/29/151216