Democracy Now! January 24, 2002

Program Title:
Democracy Now! January 24, 2002
Series Title:
PRA Archive #: 
PZ0450.084
Description: 

Today, The Day After The Enron Chairman And CEO Resigns, Congressional Hearings Begin On The Enron Scandal, The Largest Corporate Bankruptcy In U.S. History ; Vietnam Inc. Part II: A Photo-Journey Through The Villages, Fields, And Alleys Of A Devastated Nation: Today we continue our conversation with Vietnam War photographer, Philip Jones Griffiths. Amy Goodman, Host

Today, The Day After The Enron Chairman And CEO Resigns, Congressional Hearings Begin On The Enron Scandal, The Largest Corporate Bankruptcy In U.S. History Hearings begin today on the collapse of Enron Corporation, one of the largest bankruptcies in the history of U.S. business. In the latest stunning twist of the Enron drama, Ken Lay, former darling of the energy industry, resigned as chairman and chief executive to the corporation yesterday. Lay's resignation comes after a string of recent revelations have raised questions about the conduct of top Enron executives, including Lay himself. Disclosures by Congressional investigators have shown that Lay helped create and oversee some of the financial arrangements that helped lead to Enron's collapse. Scores of people who worked at Arthur Andersen's Houston office were involved in the destruction of documents related to the Enron Corporation, according to the chairman of one of the Congressional subcommittees that will begin hearings on Enron's collapse. On Tuesday FBI agents moved into Enron's headquarters to investigate charges of widespread shredding of corporate documents. The company's auditing firm, Arthur Andersen, had already been caught destroying critical files, but this was the first sign that Enron had organized a similar operation. Representative James Greenwood, head of the House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee, revealed today that that up to 80 people had received orders to destroy papers, calling into question Andersen's attempts to blame rogue employees for the episode. Document destruction at both companies will be a key focus of today's Capitol Hill hearings. It is believed that each was shredding evidence well into last week, long after government investigations had begun. BRIEF HISTORY: In 2001, Enron, a 15 year-old energy-trading corporation, was ranked number seven of the Fortune 500. But in December 2001, Enron laid off 4,000 employees and became the largest company ever filing for bankruptcy. Many employees lost 70 to 90 percent of their retirement savings as they were forced to hold their shares while Enron's value plummeted to pennies per share. When criticism began to surface about its accounting practices, Enron management ordered its law firm to run a limited investigation, not to include "second-guessing," which resulted in an October report finding no wrong doing at Enron or Arthur Andersen, auditor and management advisory services firm. Andersen stood by its reports until shortly before Enron failed, when Enron decided that four years of earnings had to be restated and $600 million - or 20% -- of reported profits had to be erased. Andersen shredded thousands of paper and email documents pertaining to Enron audits. GUESTS: ' ANDREW WHEAT, Research Director, Texans for Public Justice ' ABHAY MEHTA, author of Power Play: A Study of the Enron Project Abhay Mehta trained as a Molecular Biologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University. He returned to India in 1993, and became interested in the economics of the Enron-Dhabol Power project. He wrote Power Play about the entire project. ' THERESA AMATO, President, Citizenworks Theresa Amato was the national campaign manager for the Nader 2000 presidential campaign on the Green Party ticket and is the founder and former executive director (1993-2000) of the Citizen Advocacy Center in Illinois. CONTACT: www.citizenworks.org ' BILL ALLISON, CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY Vietnam Inc. Part II: A Photo-Journey Through The Villages, Fields, And Alleys Of A Devastated Nation Today we continue our conversation with Vietnam War photographer, Philip Jones Griffiths. America's long nightmare in Vietnam worsened considerably in 1966 with the arrival in Saigon of a garrulous and cantankerous Welshman by the name of Philip Jones Griffiths. Perhaps more than any other photographer covering the war, Griffiths showed Americans what the war was doing to the people of Vietnam. His thesis, articulated in an angry book called Vietnam Inc., was that the war was destroying a society from which America could usefully learn, that everything happening in Vietnam was being done against the will of the people, that 2,000 years of tradition were being replaced by an alien materialistic democracy. Vietnam Inc. was one of the most powerful photographic testaments to emerge from the war; it shattered many of the myths about Vietnam and had a devastating affect on the American perception of what was happening in that faraway country. It was what Griffiths wished. To me, there is no point in pressing the shutter unless you are making some caustic comment on the incongruities of life. That is what photography is all about. It is the only reason for doing it. But instead of just quoting his words, we can hear from the man himself. I am sitting next to Philip Jones Griffiths in our firehouse studio. GUEST: ' PHILIP JONES GRIFFITHS, photographer and author, Vietnam Inc. Since his first trip to Southeast Asia three decades ago, Philip Jones Griffiths has returned numerous times. A new edition of Vietnam Inc. was published in September 2001 with a forward by Noam Chomsky. Chomsky was profoundly affected by the book when it was originally published. CONTACT: pjgriff@nyc.rr.com

Date Recorded on: 
January 24, 2002
Date Broadcast on: 
January 24, 2002
Item duration: 
59 min.
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Distributor: 
WPFW; Amy Goodman, host. January 24, 2002
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