When the Task Force fingered the record number of 114 co-conspirators in their legacy case against former Enron chairman Ken Lay, former CEO Jeff Skilling and former chief accountant Richard Causey, the Task Force effectively ensured that most defense witnesses would be chilled from testifying during the upcoming trial out of fear that their testimony would result in a retributive Task Force indictment. Moreover, when a targeted witness (Lawrence Ciscon) decided to testify on behalf of the defendants anyway during the recent Enron Broadband trial, the Task Force threatened him in an attempt to induce him not to testify. Rumors have been circulating in Houston for months of similar incidents involving other defense witnesses in regard to Enron-related trials, but the threatened witnesses are relunctant to describe such threats on the record out of fear of Task Force reprisal.
However, the lengths to which the Enron Task Force will go to suppress testimony in Enron-related cases reached truly absurd levels this past week when the Task Force filed this motion in the main Enron securities fraud class action attempting to postpone the testimony of the one witness who may talked more about Enron publicly than any other person — Sherron Watkins.

You remember Ms. Watkins. She is the former mid-level Enron accountant who parleyed this warning memo to Mr. Lay into a lucrative talk-pundit career of waxing eloquent on all things Enron. She testified to a fawning Congressional committee, co-authored an Enron book, was one of the primary Enron employees interviewed during the Enron movie, and then made a few bucks on the rubber-chicken circuit as a whistleblower talking about the need for corporate reforms after Enron. The fact that Ms. Watkins was not a whistleblower (she never alerted anyone on the outside about alleged Enron improprieties) and that her memo to Mr. Lay characterized Enron’s problems as primarily a public relations issue has gotten lost in the Enron milieu. Meanwhile, whereever there is a camera and a light, Ms. Watkins continues to be willing to pontificate about Enron.
Inasmuch as Ms. Watkins is mentioned 35 times in the plaintiffs’ complaint in the Enron securities fraud class action, it is reasonable for the defendants to find out what she has to say under oath. However, Ms. Watkins is apparently also going to be a key prosecution witness in the upcoming criminal trial against Messrs. Lay, Skilling and Causey, so the Task Force in its motion suggests that Ms. Watkins’ deposition testimony in the civil case would provide some kind of “unfair” advantage to the three former Enron executives in preparing to defend their freedom. As Mr. Lay’s response points out, the Task Force’s request to muzzle Ms. Watkins is without any meaningful basis, particularly given the fact that any tactical advantage that the Task Force may lose as a result of her tesimony in the civil case is miniscule because everyone knows about Ms. Watkins’ views on Enron, anyway. In short, reasons Mr. Lay’s lawyers, what’s the big deal with a deposition of Sherron Watkins?
Well, the issue is not about Ms. Watkins’ testimony. The real issue here is that the Justice Department and the Enron Task Force does not want the true story of Enron to be told in the Lay-Skilling-Causey criminal trial, just as it did not want the true story told during either the Enron-related Nigerian Barge trial or the Enron Broadband trial. As a result, the “Justice” Department is not about “justice” at all. Rather it is about fulfilling pre-conceived political notions of alleged wrongdoing regardless of whether those notions comport with the truth. To those of you who prefer to see that Messrs. Lay, Skilling and Causey be convicted of Enron-related crimes, please answer the following question — Is this really the way in which you want that goal accomplished?