Capitol Hill braces for the Enron battle royale amidst the opening of Congressional hearings. Congress has 11 committees and subcommittees probing elements of Enron’s failure. Tim Wheeler, Editor of the People’s Weekly World newspaper gives us this interview on his coverage from Capitol Hill.

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EXCERPTS FROM THE INTERVIEW

It’s very clear that [George W. Bush] had to know a lot about this [Enron scandal] because his relations with Enron are very long standing. In fact, they had a mutually beneficial relationship that actually goes back to the founding of Enron in 1985. It predates George W. Bush’s entrance into politics because Enron had relations with the father, George Bush.

Once [George W.] Bush got into office as Texas governor, he did the bidding of Enron, and helped facilitate the rise to power of Enron as an unregulated energy trading group. And officials from the old man, Bush’s administration-which was James A. Baker, the former secretary of state, Robert Mosbacher, the former Commerce secretary-left the Bush Sr. administration and moved right into Enron and became executives of Enron.

I think in many ways this is the most explosive [scandal in Washington] in terms of its impact on the people. It’s a deep and widespread impact. First of all, just the Enron workers who were ruined by this, in terms of losing their jobs and also totally losing their 401K accounts. But also the widespread investment by pension funds all over the country in Enron stock. So many, many pension funds around the country have been hard hit by this collapse of Enron.

I think definitely [the Enron collapse is] systemic [rather than a fluke]. The whole policy of government deregulation really got a huge boost when Reagan came into office and it was to facilitate the operation of these corporations in the dark-to remove any kind of federal or government oversight and to hide the operations of these corporations from the view of the public. It was not in any way a unique situation. There are many Enrons out there.

There is a determined cover-up going on right now. They are determined to protect Bush. We’re seeing that in every venue. It remains to be seen what the impact of it will be. But I do think the people are learning a lot from this.

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