In the wake of former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling being sentenced to more than two decades in prison earlier this week, former Dow Jones Newswire reporter Jason Leopold recounts how he was able to obtain an interview with the disgraced corporate leader right after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection. (I won’t get into issues about Leopold and his reporting on non-Skilling stories, but you can read about those here if the name doesn’t ring a bell.)
“I aggressively pursued Skilling’s spokesman in Houston, Denis Calabrese, for two months before he convinced Skilling to grant me an exclusive interview. I took the red-eye to Washington, DC, on Wednesday, December 20, 2001, and met Skilling at his attorney’s office. Calabrese had said I wasn’t allowed to use a tape recorder during the interview because the government might try to subpoena any tapes as evidence. Before I walked into the conference room to meet Skilling, one of the attorneys gave me a binder filled with newspaper clippings praising Skilling and his work. She said I should use it as background information. I never did.
“Bruce Hiler, Skilling’s attorney – who, ironically, used to work for the Securities and Exchange Commission prosecuting people like Skilling – led me into the conference room to meet the infamous ex-CEO. I had no idea Skilling was so short. He was about five seven, and balding. How could such a short man have run such a big company, I wondered. When I shook Skilling’s hand, it was limp. This was a man who had a reputation for abrasive treatment of journalists and analysts who had questioned Enron’s financial claims.
“‘You got 40 minutes,’ said Hiler, who sat in on the interview. I took a yellow legal pad from my knapsack and fired away.”
Read more here.
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you know what? people forget the kind of work Jason Leopold did on Enron, Halliburton, prewar Iraq intel and a lot of other things. I think it's high time people stop picking on this kid. he wrote something about Rove and it didn't pan out? OK. Next. Anyone recall Sy Hersh's misses? How about Woodward's? What is the deal with the left that they are so eager to throw their own under a bus.
And another thing, Leopold writes about the behind the scenes work on Enron in his book News Junkie. Well worth reading if you want to know what goes into reporting a story. Not as easy as you may think.
I've had it with haters who pummel this guy