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'Enron had ties to Clinton Govt.'

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington AUG. 19. At a time when the United States President, George W. Bush, his Vice-President, Dick Cheney, and the Republican administration as a whole, is being hammered for its special ties to the now bankrupt Enron Corporation, the Time magazine is reporting that the story has a different dimension as well.

The cosy relationship of the Enron Corporation and its Chairman, Kenneth Lay, with Washington did not start with Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. Rather, the Houston-based energy firm had "much closer ties'' with the Clinton administration regulators than was generally known. According to the Time, long before members of the Cheney Task Force on Energy met officials of the Enron Corporation, the Clinton administration's energy team was doing just about the same thing.

In 1995, the Clinton administration was drafting a plan to help facilitate cash flow and credit for energy producers and went to Enron for help. Later, the Clinton administration's Deputy Energy Secretary, Bill White, wrote to an Enron official saying the staff had been directed to rework the proposal factoring in "the specific comments and suggestions made by you''. Clinton administration officials also made efforts to help Enron get overseas business. In fact, to persuade Enron's senior vice-president to go on the mission to Pakistan, Mr. White wrote, "I have strong personal relationships with the existing Government''.

The Clinton administration-Enron association was not a one-way street. Enron, according to the report, in 1995 made a donation to a charity for an unknown sum in the name of the Energy Secretary, Hazel O'Leary; and in 1996, when Bill Clinton, ran for re-election, Enron made its largest single contribution ever of $100,000 to the Democratic Party.

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