- guardian.co.uk, Sunday February 17 2002 01.11 GMT
After the biggest bankruptcy in American commercial history come the book deals.
Just when it seemed as if Enron executives were the only people who had made big money out of financial chicanery, the journalist credited with asking the first sceptical questions about the energy company's dealings has signed a seven-figure book deal to write her version of the scandal.
Bethany McLean, 31, a reporter with Fortune magazine, has been paid a $1.4 million (£1m) advance by Penguin Books in New York for her account of the scandal, which has dominated front pages around the world for the last month but which she broke with an article in Fortune last March.
Headlined 'Is Enron Over-priced?', McLean's piece revealed glaring gaps in the company's financial records and posed a question that the company's ex-employees and stockholders are only now in a position to answer: just how did Enron make its money? At the time, her story attracted little attention outside the Enron boardroom.
Before it was even published, the company's former chief executive, Jeffrey Skilling, accused her of being unethical and of not doing her research properly. Three Enron executives turned up at the magazine's offices in an unsuccessful attempt to get her sacked. Kenneth Lay, Enron's former chairman, called the magazine's editor to complain that McLean had based her work on information from a source who stood to benefit if the company's share price fell.
A lack of further information about the company's dealings - 'we didn't have the goods,' said Fortune's managing editor, Rik Kirkland - meant the magazine did not follow up the story. But as the scandal developed at the end of last year, McLean soon became a regular on the cable TV news circuit.
The $1.4m advance, believed to be one of the biggest paid for a non-fiction book about a financial scandal, will be shared with two Fortune magazine editors, who will co-author the book with McLean.
Adrian Zackheim, the publisher at Penguin Books' Portfolio imprint, which bought the title, compared the Enron scandal to Watergate. 'Like Watergate, the Enron collapse will beget a compelling journalistic narrative that breaks through the chatter and defines the story,' said Zackheim. 'There may well be books in the future from Enron participants... but this is unquestionably the big breakthrough book, the book we most wanted to publish.'
In a separate deal, Doubleday Books in New York has paid $500,000 for a book by Texas-based writer Mimi Schwartz, who is believed to be writing her version of the scandal with the help of former Enron executive-turned-whistleblower Sherron Watkins, the corporation's vice president for corporate development.
Watkins appeared before a Congressional committee earlier this week to accuse two leading company officials - one of them Skilling - of duping the board over details of business partnerships set up to hide the company's parlous financial state. Watkins told the committee that Skilling was 'highly intimidating' and had sought to get her sacked.
It is thought that there are at least four other book proposals circulating around New York publishers.
