More Enron executives indicted - World

HOUSTON -- Houston dailies announced on May 2 that federal prosecutors launched indictments today against 11 former Enron executives, including charges that the once-vaunted success of the company's high-speed Internet business was largely an illusion. This brings the number to 18 people charged with Enron-crimes.

The Enron story many people believed was blown off U.S. papers by what many consider "the wag the dog" Iraq war which showed the close connection of the oil lobby to the Bush administration--George Bush Sr. of the Carlyle group, George W. Bush Jr of Harken, Condoleeza Rice of Chevron-Texaco, Donald Rumsfeld of Occidental, Dick Cheney of Haliburton and Gale Norton of BP Amoco.

The charges paint a lurid picture of lying by pumping up company profits with bogus sales of assets, lying about the state of the company's technology and making themselves fabulously wealthy while encouraging employees to invest in a sinking ship.

There were many people at Enron and other institutions "who were responsible for reducing the seventh-largest corporation in America to rubble," said Federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, of the Justice Department's Enron task force, described the latest charged executives as part of the gang "who were responsible for reducing the seventh-largest corporation in America to rubble."

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