The Enron Trap: And how to stay out of it.

Here's a worrisome scenario for the White House as it tries to navigate its way through the Enron mess: Weeks from now, there's still no evidence that anyone in the administration did anything wrong, yet the White House finds itself in a confrontation with Congress over contacts with Enron. Democratic senators demand information, the president refuses to give it up, and subpoenas fly. Legal battles follow, and the White House ultimately loses-all without any credible suggestion of wrongdoing.

It might seem farfetched, and indeed there appears to be great confidence in the White House that it won't happen. But the president's increasingly hard-line stance against releasing information related to Enron could make it a reality.

After initially sending out word that Enron chief Kenneth Lay called treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, commerce secretary Donald Evans, and a few others as the company was going down, the White House now refuses to reveal whether there were any more calls or contacts. Spokesman Ari Fleischer says the president's staff isn't even trying to find out if there were any more calls or contacts. "There is no hint there of any wrongdoing," Fleischer recently told a reporter who asked if the White House was doing an internal review of its dealings with Enron. "If you have any information, any evidence you would like to bring forward about potential wrongdoing, we will do our best to track it down for you. But other than that, I liken it to a fishing expedition." With that, Fleischer not only refused to say more, but also raised the bar for future inquiries. From now on, if anyone can come up with a specific allegation of wrongdoing, the White House will respond. If not, don't expect any information.

All of which, of course, prompts the question of whether there were any more Enron contacts. While it's possible that the calls already made public were the only communications between Enron and the administration, it's also possible-perhaps probable-that there were more. "I think there were a lot of phone calls to a lot of people," says one former Enron insider (who wasn't privy to them). "There's a corporate pattern of Enron as an astute political entrepreneur. If Al Gore had won the election, Enron officials would have been on the phone with whoever could help them." Why wouldn't the same be true with Bush?

The former Enron insider also raises the possibility, so far unnoticed in the press, that there were indirect contacts between Enron and the White House-someone at Enron calling a friend of the administration who then called the White House. A number of people close to the White House have ties to Enron, so there are several possible channels of communication. Fleischer himself seemed to confirm the possibility of more contacts when he said, early in the controversy, "I think it should surprise no one that people in the administration receive phone calls from people who are either in business or in unions. It happens every day."

So far, no one other than reporters and a few House Democrats-most prominently California representative Henry Waxman, who has been waging a one-man war on the White House-has asked for more information. Joe Lieberman and Carl Levin, the two key Democratic investigators in the Senate, have studiously avoided saying they'll ask the White House for anything. "They're being extremely careful, and that's appreciated," says a top GOP Senate aide. "These chairmen are not holding political press conferences and trying to point fingers. They have to preserve their own credibility."

Levin has been particularly judicious-which is a good thing for Republicans, because as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, he is the only man in the Senate with unilateral subpoena power. Although he has had many chances to threaten the White House with a subpoena, he has so far declined to do so. But at the same time, Levin has made clear that he wishes the administration would be more forthcoming. "I think it's better for everybody to kind of lay out whatever connections, contacts, people had or have, and if it's in the past, just simply say it," Levin said on CBS January 20. "People understand that there are going to be contacts and connections with various groups and entities in this country. Just say it, get it over with, get it behind you."

If Levin ever decides to demand Enron information from the White House, he'll probably start with a separate but related subject: Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force. For nearly a year, Cheney has been locked in a dispute with the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, over the names of outsiders the task force consulted while crafting the administration's energy policy. The GAO, acting at Waxman's request, first asked for the information and later, when Cheney refused, threatened to take the vice president to court. Cheney stood his ground, citing what he said would be a chilling effect on future government consultations if the task-force meetings were made public.

Cheney's lawyers say the GAO simply doesn't have the legal authority to force the vice president to give up the material. Each side seems to have a reasonable case, so it's a question that could go either way in court. But if Levin decides to make his own demand for the information, Cheney will most likely be trapped. Unlike the GAO, the Senate unquestionably has the power to subpoena the information, and there appears to be no privilege that Cheney could cite to keep it secret. "To the extent the request would be for identities and information provided by the outside-the-government advisers," says one well- connected Washington lawyer, "it's plainly not within the area of executive privilege." Given that, it's possible that Cheney might find himself winning his point against the GAO, only to be forced to hand over the material to the Senate.

So far, the White House has avoided sending a clear signal that it will cooperate with any requests from Capitol Hill. "I think that depends entirely on something that is just part conjecture and speculation," Fleischer said recently. Fleischer also delivered what appeared to be a veiled threat against Democrats, suggesting it would not be a good idea for them to begin an investigation of a popular president. "If Washington goes down the usual path of partisan fishing expeditions, I think they're going to lose the support of the public," he said. "The public wants to know that people here in this town are focused on the wrongdoing where the wrongdoing occurs, and not engaging in wasteful fishing expeditions."

That's not just a bluff. Democrats know there are significant political hazards in pursuing a White House/Enron investigation. Any probe of the administration's dealings with Enron would likely turn what is now an investigation of a corporate scandal into open partisan warfare-with Democrats nearly as vulnerable as Republicans. Although it's true that Enron gave about three-quarters of its contributions to Republicans during the period from 1989 to 2001 (according to the Center for Responsive Politics), it's also true that the company funneled a lot of money to Democrats on the Hill. In the House, six of the top ten recipients of Enron money are Democrats. In the Senate, there are five Democrats in the Enron top 20-including majority leader Tom Daschle.

In some cases, liberal Democrats took a lot more Enron money than conservative Republicans. For example, Texas representative Sheila Jackson Lee accepted nearly seven times as much money ($38,000) as House majority leader Dick Armey ($5,550). New York senator Charles Schumer received more than ten times as much ($21,933) as minority leader Trent Lott ($2,000). Liberal stalwarts Ted Kennedy, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Tom Harkin also took Enron cash. Even Lieberman pocketed $2,000.

With figures like that, Democrats know they can't try to demonize every politician who took Enron money. "There's a little bit of oil in everybody's hair on this," says one Democratic strategist who wishes the whole controversy would go away. "It's not a clean hit." Even more perilous for Democrats is the probability that, should they open an investigation of White House/Enron contacts, they will find it hard to limit the probe to the Bush White House. "There were a lot more dealings with Clinton than with Bush," says the former Enron insider. "It's going to rebound more against Democrats than Republicans."

There's a lot of evidence to support that assertion. Enron executives accompanied Clinton Commerce Department officials on trade missions that resulted in lucrative deals for Enron. Bill Clinton himself pushed an Enron project in India, as did his top aide Mack McLarty (who later went on Enron's payroll). Enron worked closely with Clinton and Vice President Gore on the Kyoto global-warming treaty, which was an Enron favorite because it would have imposed burdensome regulations on the company's competitors. During all this time, Enron made big contributions to the Democratic National Committee. If today's Democrats try to suggest that contacts between the White House and Enron are a bad thing, they will make the Clinton administration look very bad indeed.

On the other hand, maybe Democrats won't worry too much about that. Bill Clinton is gone, disgraced by a host of other scandals ranging from sex-with-interns to his mishandling of the threat posed by international terrorism. For Democrats, the damage from learning that he was too cozy with Enron might be outweighed by the benefit of suggesting an equivalence between the clean-hands Bush White House and the scandal-ridden Clinton White House.

But that's not a decision that has to be made immediately. For now, Senate Democrats can concentrate on the phony accounting and other misbehavior inside Enron, which would be a major scandal even if the company had never made a single political contribution. At the very least, Democrats might reap some benefit from the growing perception that one of President Bush's major supporters is a crook. What opposition party wouldn't want that?

And while they investigate Enron, Democrats can keep asking questions about White House contacts with Enron. If it turns out there were more than first revealed-even if they simply provide additional evidence that the White House did nothing to intervene in behalf of the failing company-Democrats will be able to ask the obvious follow-up: What else is the White House keeping secret? That's the danger of the president's stand-your-ground, tell-them-nothing strategy. You always look like you're hiding something.