Christine Hall, CNSNews.com
Friday, Aug. 9, 2002

Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., also took a rhetorical swipe at Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., former vice presidential nominee and possible 2004 presidential candidate, for his reticence in forcing Rubin's testimony before the Senate this fall.

Foley fired off a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt on Thursday urging the SEC to launch its own investigation into Rubin's November 2001 call to Treasury Department official Pete Fisher.

According to a Treasury Department spokesperson, the purpose of Rubin's call was to gain Fisher's help in convincing Wall Street credit-reporting agencies to forestall plans to downgrade Enron's credit rating.

Conflict of Interest

Rubin's present employer, Citigroup, was an Enron creditor and thus had an interest in preventing Enron's collapse. Rubin has served as chairman of Citigroup's executive committee for the past three years.

Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, has said he plans to hold hearings this fall to examine the relationship between Enron and government officials, but has expressed little interest in questioning former Clinton administration officials.

"There is ... evidence that a bunch of other people at Enron called people like Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, Secretary of Commerce Don Evans and others in the White House," Lieberman told radio talk show host Don Imus on Aug. 2.

But Lieberman didn't mention Rubin's call and, when asked about it, said, "If we have any reason to believe it will be constructive to call any of these people – Rubin, [Enron Chairman and CEO] Ken Lay, Evans, anybody else – we'll do it."

That didn't sit well with Foley. "If Joe Lieberman won't do his job, I'll do it for him," he said. "He has a responsibility to subpoena Rubin, and he's ignoring that responsibility."

Foley cited "possible wrongdoing" on the part of Citigroup and Rubin as justification for getting Rubin's explanation of events.

"I can only hope he's not doing this to protect his single biggest campaign contributor before possibly running for the presidency," said Foley. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Citigroup has given nearly $60,000 for campaign-related expenses to Lieberman over the past five years.

Leslie Phillips, a spokesperson for Lieberman, said the senator harbored the same level of concern about Enron's contacts with government officials as he does Rubin's.

A spokesman for retiring Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., the ranking member of the Senate Government Reform Committee, said that Thompson was not pressuring Lieberman to pursue Rubin.

But Edward H. Fleischman, a former SEC commissioner and current New York University law school professor, said Rubin didn't do anything wrong by making a phone call.

Just Another Citizen

"I always thought that whoever was on the calling end was perfectly, appropriately exercising his or her rights as a ... citizen, businessman or investor," said Fleischman. "Anybody on the outside can call a government official, and it's up to the government official to say that's not a matter that I even want to talk to you about.

"We, as a public, tend to look askance at anybody trying to interfere with ... the processes of government," he observed, but "at the same time, we are very jealous of our privilege to lobby.

"If you were to say to me that Mr. Rubin had some kind of obligation to the Treasury Department because his past service still continued," that would be a different matter, Fleischman said.

Still, said Fleischman, the lawyer and Republican in him understands the desire to keep the name of a Democrat and former Clinton official in the news.

"I'm a lawyer, right? I'm a hired gun," he quipped. "If you want me to try to figure out some way, since I'm a Republican, too, in which you can put Mr. Rubin on the hot seat, that's a different question."

Copyright CNSNews.com

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

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