Word: lay
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This was how hard Watkins had fallen for Enron. Here she was, almost six months to the day since she first warned chairman Kenneth Lay of "an elaborate accounting hoax." Her boss had long ago confiscated her hard drive, and she had been demoted 33 floors from her mahogany executive suite to a "skanky office" with a rickety metal desk and a pile of make-work projects. The atmosphere had grown so ominous that she had called office security for advice on self-defense. But still, Watkins simply could not fathom that this company, the one she had tried...
...making it sound as simple and intelligible as long division. She was relaxed enough to give the Representatives a taste of her piercing Texas wit. But her square jaw clenched whenever she spoke about her feelings for the company. She firmly indicted several top executives, yet she insisted that Lay was a "man of integrity." And she spoke almost wistfully of Enron's "electric" atmosphere, of people "energized to change the world." It was Valentine's Day, and she was still very much in love...
...same time, Watkins is the most self-critical of the three. She regrets "naively [thinking] that I would be handing Ken Lay his leadership moment," regrets not taking her concerns to a higher authority. To get by, she has cloaked herself in her family and church. "Her faith," says William Vanderbloemen, her pastor at Houston's First Presbyterian, "was sharpened." But so, markedly, was her despair. "There were some very bleak moments throughout when you're just so disappointed with human nature, with the power of greed and the power of denial, trying to rationalize that you've done nothing...
What the public would perhaps most like to see is Enron's top executives do some jail time. So far, only one of them, former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow, is facing criminal charges, for conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering (he denies wrongdoing). Ex-chairman Ken Lay is expected to be charged with insider trading before long. But lengthy prison sentences for white-collar crimes are rare...
...dial-up, the meeting proved relatively uneventful. Lay seemed composed but genuinely concerned and said he would have attorneys look into the questionable deals. Though Watkins counseled against it, Lay suggested--and eventually selected--Enron's law firm, Vinson & Elkins, to conduct the inquiry. Nevertheless, Watkins left feeling buoyed. "I felt, 'Oh, good, now he knows,'" she says. "There was a feeling that I had done the hardest thing in my life, but I had carried the torch and dropped it off." For the first time that week, she slept through the night. In late September, even after netting...