Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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X Lawyers for Enron chiefs wife say they are close to plea deal BY KRISTEN HAYS TIIK ASSOCIATED PRESS HOUSTON - The legal team representing the wife of former Enron Corp. finance chief Andrew Fastow continued Saturday to negotiate a plea deal that would satisfy a federal judge and clear a path for possible cas es against the failed energy gi ant’s top executives. “Yes, we are working,” said Mike DeGeurin, Lea Fastow’s lead attorney. “No, negotiations have not collapsed.” Leslie Caldwell, head of the Justice Department’s Enron Task Force, and Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra didn’t return calls for com ment Saturday. Enron crumbled in December 2001 amid revelations of hidden debt, inflated profits and ac counting tricks. Andrew Fastow was indicted on 98 counts related to his alleged masterminding of myriad part nerships and investment deals that inflated Enron profits and hid debt while enriching himself and others He is the highest-pro file ex-Enron executive charged so far in the Justice Department’s two-year investigation. Lea Fastow, a former assistant treasurer at Enron, is charged with six counts of conspiracy and filing false tax forms for allegedly taking part in some of Fastow’s deals and failing to report in come. A proposed plea bargain pack age for the Fastows hit a serious snag earlier in the week when the judge presiding over Lea Fastow’s case agreed to accept a guilty plea if she offered it, but refused to limit himself to sen tencing her to only five months in prison, as the agreement stip ulated. Lea Fastow’s attorneys missed a Friday deadline to notify U.S. District Judge David Hittner of whether they would accept the plea agreement on his terms. Hittner said trial preparations would continue, with jury selec tion set to begin Feb. 10. Attorneys, however, can still offer a plea agreement for the judge’s consideration any time before the trial or before jurors render a verdict. Sources close to the case said a deal in which Andrew Fastow would go to prison for 10 years and pay at least $20 million is contingent upon ensuring a five month prison term for his wife so their sentences don’t overlap and their young sons, ages 4 and 8, won’t be left without a parent at home. If Andrew Fastow’s plea deal includes cooperation with pros ecutors, he could lead them to cases against Enron’s former top executives — company founder and former chairman Kenneth Lay, and former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling. Neither has been charged, and both maintain their innocence. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt, who presides over Andrew Fastow’s case, said he would con sider a plea deal for him. Deborah DeFforge, one of the Enron workers who lost her job, is among those watching devel opments in the criminal cases. “It was always a game of con quest to all of them,” said DeFforge, now a real estate agent. “Having them return a small por tion of the monies they stole from everyone will probably not pro vide the punishment that should be levied.” j «u //twit 5 w//i./ tc-u/o\ u/r/tuu/, uu; tuu/ ^ » niu u.hujjvjuuiv ▼ i ycu/j ■ 9-11 memorial design faces heavy criticism BY AMY WESTFELDT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK — Even before a winning design was picked for the World Trade Center memorial, complaints had rolled in about the eight finalists. Family groups said none ade quately conveyed the horror of the 2001 terrorist attacks that de stroyed the twin towers and killed nearly 3,000 people. Architects said all eight left them cold. A pub lic poll of 15,000 people drew more negative than positive responses. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the agency in charge of rebuilding the trade cen ter site, and the selection jury it appointed have been trying to strike a delicate balance between artistic independence and re sponding to public concerns. Michael Arad, whose design for a memorial with reflecting pools was picked last Tuesday, has been refining drawings for a revised fi nal design. He is working with Peter Walker, a landscape archi tect. Their final product is expect ed to be unveiled on Wednesday. “It is impossible to please ev eryone,” said historian Kenneth T. Jackson, president of the New York Historical Society. “Everybody can’t weigh in on this.” However, it seems that nearly everyone has. Families of the attack victims have said that the memorial needs to provide better access to the bedrock at the heart of the towers’ foundations and that none of the designs adequately reflected the events of Sept. 11. “If it doesn’t tell us the story, you and I who lived through the event, how is it going to convey the story 100 years from now?” asked Mary Fetchet, whose 24 year-old son was killed. Jury foreman Vartan Gregorian said Arad’s “Reflecting Absence” design, with the pools in the foot prints where the towers stood, ef fectively recalls the attacks. He said it makes “the gaping voids left by the towers’ destruction the pri mary symbol of loss.” A group of rescue workers has insisted that, when victims’ names are listed, the rescuers among the dead be listed together. “We want a firm commitment,” said John Finucane, a retired fire fighter who heads a group called Advocates for a 9-11 Fallen Heroes Memorial. Arad’s design is flexible on vic tims’ names, saying they could be randomly listed or grouped ac cording to their relationships with each other. Some critics complained that Arad contradicted architect Daniel Libeskind’s master plan for the 16-acre site when he changed the positions of cultural buildings surrounding the memorial. Libeskind met with Arad and Walker and said Arad agreed to reconcile his design with the mas ter plan. Other complained that Arad’s scattering of pine trees surround ing the two reflecting pools made the site too barren. Gregorian said the revised de sign will include “teeming groves of trees, traditional affirmations of life and rebirth.” iFREE round-trip PLANE TICKET TO ANYWHERE IN THE U.S. (Offer Ends, MARCH 31, 2004) WHY YOU SHOULD LAND AT UNIVERSITY COMMONS Washer/Dryers in each unit Individual Leases Fully Equipped Kitchen Fuljy Furnished 2 & 4 Bedrooms Apartments Swimming Pool & Hot Tub Lighted Tennis Courts Clubhouse with recreation & weight rooms One Mile from USC Many more Amenities! 800 Alexander Rd.i 939-0444 Office Hours*Mon-Fri: 9-6■ Sat: 10-4■ Sun: closed www.Universitycommons.com Documents show Bush envoy supported Iraq loan program BY KEN GUGGENHEIM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — Now assigned the task of reducing Iraq’s debt, presidential envoy James A. Baker III once gave crucial sup port for continuing a billion-dol lar loan program to Saddam Hussein’s government that ac counts for most of the money Iraq still owes the United States. As secretary of state in 1989, Baker urged the Agriculture Department to offer $1 billion in loan guarantees for Iraq to buy U.S. farm products after Iraq said it would reject a smaller deal. “Documents indicate he inter vened personally to make sure that Iraq continued to receive hieh levels of funding ” said Jnvee Battle, Middle East analyst for the National Security Archives, a for eign policy research center with a vast collection of declassified documents from the era. Only half the guarantees were provided before the program was suspended amid allegations of im proprieties and deterioration of re lations with Iraq in the months be fore the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The guarantees were an impor tant part of the first President Bush’s effort to improve relations with Iraq in hopes of boosting commercial ties and gaining lever age with a powerful and strategi cally important nation. U.S. officials were well aware at the time that Saddam had used chemical weapons against Iran and Iraqi Kurds. Iraq also was be lieved to have biological and nu clear weapons programs and to be harboring terrorists — reasons the current Bush administration has used to justify toppling the Iraqi leader. But in 1989. Baker and other of ficials hoped incentives might change Saddam. “That turned out to be unsuc cessful, but I don’t think it was necessarily a bad approach to try,” said John H. Kelly, who led the State Department’s Near Eastern Affairs bureau under Baker. After invading Kuwait, Iraq de faulted on its debt to the United States. The debt has grown to more than $4 billion. That in cludes $1.9 billion in principal and $1.1 billion in interest on Agriculture Department-guaran teed loans. me iraq loss was certainly a shock to the system because of the magnitude,” Clayton Yeutter, agriculture secretary at the time, said in an interview. He said the Iraq experience taught officials to be careful about guaranteeing too much debt for a single nation. The U.S. debt is a small part of Iraq’s overall $120 billion debt. Baker is now traveling the world as Bush’s envoy, seeking relief for Iraq. The United States began pro viding loan guarantees to Iraq in the 1980s. Iraq was at war with Iran and the United States want ed to prevent advances by Iran’s clerical government. When the first President Bush took office in 1989, the Iraq-Iran war was over and Iraq was not a U.S. priority, Baker wrote in his 1995 memoirs, “The Politics of Diplomacy.” To the extent it was considered, however, there were reasons to seek better relations. Iraq was a major oil supplier. It . was the ninth largest customer of U S. agricultural goods, with most purchases backed by U.S. loan guarantees. U.S. companies were competing with foreign rivals for postwar business opportunities. Iraq was then the most powerful Arab country, and the United States hoped it might help Middle East peace efforts. Some U.S. officials and mem bers of Congress opposed attempts to improve relations, given Iraq’s record of human rights violations. The State Department’s human rights bureau described Iraq’s record as abysmal, and its direc tor, Richard Schifter, argued against any assistance. ' But some U.S. officials saw signs of change. Iraq appeared willing to discuss chemical weapons and human rights issues. Also, Iraq agreed in March 1989 to pay $27 million to the families of 37 sailors killed by a 1987 Iraqi mis sile attack bn the USS Stark. Bush spelled out his policy in a national security directive from Oct. 2,1989: “The United States government should propose eco nomic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its behavior and to increase our influence with Iraq.” The policy left open the pos sibility of punitive measures if in centives failed. “We were under no illusions about Saddam’s brutality toward his own people or his capacity for escalating tensions with his neigh bors,” Baker wrote. “We fully rec ognized at the time that it was en tirely possible any carrots we of fered him would fail to produce the desired result.” Baker tried to improve rela tions. In March 1989, he assured an Iraqi diplomat that he would take a personal interest in Iraq’s request for expanded loan guar antees from the Export-Import Bank. Later, when Congress barred Iraq from participating in bank programs, the State Department drafted a waiver to override the sanctions. Bush signed the waiver in January 1990. The big issue, however, was the agricultural loan guarantees, which provide producers and lenders with assurances that loans will be repaid. By 1989, Iraq had been receiv ing about $1 billion a year in guar antees. The Agriculture Department proposed reducing that to $400 million for 1990, with the possibility of more money lat er. Officials were concerned about Iraq’s creditworthiness, corrup tion in the Iraq loan program and a brewing scandal involving unau thorized loans to Iraq by the Atlanta branch of Italy’s Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. Initially Yours coiumBifl LUGGAGE 803.765.9010 tin Ixidy Street, Columbia, SC29204 New shipments coming January 23^!