Shortly after Horton's death (1989), a grand jury in Atlanta was prepared to indict Southern Company's Georgia unit for the spareparts accounting manipulations. But, invoking a rarely used procedure under the federal racketeering statute, Bush Sr.'s Justice Department overruled local prosecutors to quash the request for indictment. The reason? Keeping hidden accounts in secret files and booking costs into the wrong accounts may be a bit unusual, and may have cost the public a bundle, but it was approved at each step by that upstanding auditing firm, Arthur Andersen.
The signal from the Bush administration was clear enough: Hire Andersen, knead your account books like cookie dough, and get a "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

Jake's death and the failure to indict Southern and Andersen in 1989 marked the radical turning point, albeit unseen at the time, in the way corporate America would do business-or, as it turned out, fail to do business.

These so-called reforms didn't come cheap. The electric utility industry showered pols with $18.9 million in the last presidential campaign spree, though for every dollar Gore wheedled from the power players, Bush took seven.

Seventy-four days passed between the Novak column on Plame that pointed to someone outing a member of the CIA and the announcement of an official investigation. Only one day passed between Paul O'Neill's appearance on 60 Minutes and the announcement of an official investigation into documents O'Neill gave to Suskind. Has anyone noticed that no one has denied the claims made by O'Neill in the Suskind book? No?


Newt Gingrich?s address before the Hoover Board of Overseers was titled, ?National Security Initiative, the Transformation of National Security,? and was an attempt to describe a new kind of military that called for a new kind of military education. He advised dropping the ?concept of exit strategies,? which he said was a ?fetish that grew out of the Vietnam War.? As for Saddam Hussein, Gingrich said, ?We need to immediately replace him.?
Pulling his words out carefully, Gingrich revealed a stunning use of psychological intimidation and warfare. He elevated coercive verbal bullying to weaponry status. He said, ?You cannot change Saudi Arabia as much as we need to change Saudi Arabia until you have an Iraq which is an American ally. And you need an Iraq that?s an American ally [because] it has a larger oil reserve than Saudi Arabia does.?

When John DiIulio, a high-level Bush administration official, left his job at the White House, he sent a letter to Ron Suskind at Esquire, describing his experiences working in the administration. DiIulio gave the world an insider?s view into the secret center of power. ?There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus.?
DiIulio wrote, ?The Clinton administration drowned in policy intellectuals and teemed with knowledgeable people interested in making government work.? DiIulio said simply that intellectual work wasn?t ?Bush?s style.?
In ?eight months,? DiIulio continued, ?I heard many, many staff discussions, but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues.?