Scum Report #1:
By Lisa de Moraes, ©2002 The Washington Post Company
        Historian Goodwin on Leave From PBS's 'NewsHour'

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has taken an indefinite leave from PBS's "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," on which she appears as a contributor, after acknowledging in a New York Times article that she failed to sufficiently acknowledge many more passages from other writers in her book on the Kennedys than originally reported.

Goodwin, the subject of news reports in January that said she had "borrowed" passages from other writers with insufficient attribution, was supposed to be part of a panel of historians on last night's broadcast, discussing business scandals in political history; it was part of "NewsHour's" coverage of the ongoing Enron story.
But, according to a well-placed source, the decision was made that she should not participate, after the New York Times, in Saturday's editions, reported Goodwin saying her research assistants had found more uncredited passages copied from others in "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys."
"Doris is on a leave," a spokesman for McNeil/Lehrer Productions said yesterday evening. "We have had a long relationship with Doris and continue to value her strength as a historian and think she makes a great contribution to the program. But until she gets her situation resolved we made a mutual decision that we will take a break."

Instead, last night's panel included presidential historian Michael Beschloss, George Mason University history professor Roger Wilkins, Richard Norton Smith of the Robert Dole Institute and writer Haynes Johnson.
In late January the Weekly Standard said Goodwin "borrowed with insufficient attribution from three earlier works by other authors" in her book, published by Simon & Schuster.

At that time, "NewsHour" covered the story.
Saturday's article did not say exactly how many more passages were involved or from what writers they came.
In that article, Goodwin says that at her request her publisher will destroy its inventory of paperback copies of the book and will issue a new version.
On Sunday, Goodwin told the Associated Press that the uncredited passages reported by the New York Times on Saturday were accidental and that 'the overwhelming number of the 3,500 footnotes and quotations are absolutely correct.""

Update, By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
             Goodwin Won't Judge Pulitzers

NEW YORK (AP) - "Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin backed out of judging the Pulitzer Prizes next month, saying her admission of plagiarism for a best-selling book about the Kennedys has created too much of a distraction."

In December, Ridge told Pennsylvania reporters he expected to be out of the mansion within a month.  "I don't want to wear out my welcome," he said.  Instead, Ridge worked in Washington during the week and continued to spend most weekends at the riverside Georgian mansion in Harrisburg, officials said.  White House officials said Ridge, his wife, Michele, and their two teenagers moved out within the last three weeks."

With the proxy fight growing ever nastier, HP director Walter Hewlett -- a member of the board's compensation committee -- said plans drawn up last fall would bring Carly Fiorina & Michael Capellas a total of $117.4 million over two years.  HP came up with a new two-year contract for Fiorina worth $69.8 million in salary, bonuses and new stock options.  The board also drew up plans to give Capellas -- who would be president and chief operating officer of the new HP -- $47.6 million in salary, bonuses and options over the same period, Hewlett said.

Fiorina's salary is $1 million, and her stock options are essentially worthless at HP's current stock price.  Capellas made $1.6 million in 2001.  Neither executive received a bonus.  Hewlett said the packages were agreed upon and approved by the board, and detailed in a "side letter"  ---   separate to the merger agreement  ---  from HP attorney Larry Sonsini to a Compaq lawyer."

"The suit claims that the AOL Time Warner Inc. subsidiary "unlawfully charged and collected money for this unordered merchandise and shipping and handling charges from subscriber's credit card, debit card and checking accounts.'"

"The suit, filed in U.S. District Court here late Friday, accused the nation's largest online service of shipping products -- including books, stereos and bedsheets -- advertised on its service even when subscribers clicked the "no thanks" button on their computer screens."  AOL denies wrongdoing and says it will vigorously defend itself.

Illinois Awaits Rev. Jesse Jackson's Premier Tax-exempt Organization Tax Form

"The Rev. Jesse Jackson's premier tax-exempt organization has not filed a state tax return for 2000 and is in danger of losing its legal authority to raise money, an official with the Illinois attorney general's office said.

"This is problematic," said Dan Anders, a spokesman for the office, which regulates tax-exempt businesses in Illinois. "The forms were due in June, and over the last eight months, we have sent notices and contacted them by
phone. "They told us a month ago that they would file, but we still don't have the forms. If they can't comply, their registration will be canceled."

The said the Citizenship Education Fund, Mr. Jackson's primary funding vehicle, is eight months delinquent in filing and has never asked for a deadline   extension or explained the delay. "They have not described to us what the problem is," Mr. Anders said. Rainbow/PUSH representatives did not return several calls and e-mail messages.

"Things happen, and filings can be delayed for 30 to 60 days, but no matter how you cut it, eight months is well beyond the normal time," said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity. "An organization doing exceptionally well doesn't miss filings and jeopardize its entire way to survive. It makes you wonder if there is some kind of crisis." Any tax-exempt organization is obligated by both law and community duty to disclose its finances promptly, said Ed Davis, director of state organizations for Common Cause.

Mr. Jackson, who earns around $500,000 annually, repeatedly has accused his detractors of political motivations. "We are in danger because of the rightwing," Mr. Jackson told a crowd in Atlanta at November's State of the Black World Conference. "The right wing has seized government. ... Watch out in coming days of the right-wing media, the FBI, the IRS, targeting our leadership.""
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            Clinton Charges Were Possible

Washington (AP) - "President Clinton could have been indicted and probably would have been convicted in the scandal involving former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Independent Counsel Robert Ray contended Wednesday in his final report.

Writing his last chapter on the affair that damaged the former president's second term, Ray said Clinton lied in January 1998 testimony denying a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. Clinton also "impeded the due administration of justice" by drawing presidential secretary Betty Currie into his false account, Ray added.

"The independent counsel concluded that sufficient evidence existed to prosecute and that such evidence would 'probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction,''' said the report, quoting from Justice Department guidelines for bringing criminal cases. Just before Clinton left office early last year, his lawyers made an arrangement with Ray that spared him from criminal charges in the Lewinsky affair. In addition to admitting that he "knowingly gave evasive and misleading answers" about his sexual relationship, the president surrendered his law license for five years.

Ray said "the independent counsel's judgment that sufficient evidence existed to prosecute President Clinton was confirmed by President Clinton's admissions'' on his last full day in office "and by evidence showing that he engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice."
The report focused on two events: Clinton's testimony in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit and his interaction with Currie, the presidential secretary he summoned to the White House for a meeting the day after that testimony.

Ray's report disclosed one new piece of evidence against the ex-president that came from Clinton's own lawyer, Robert Bennett. In affidavits submitted to prosecutors with Clinton's authorization a year and a half ago, Bennett recalled that during a break in Clinton's testimony in the Jones lawsuit, the president examined Lewinsky's false affidavit which said she hadn't had a sexual relationship with Clinton. Clinton consented to placing the affidavit "on the record at the deposition," one of Bennett's affidavits stated.

When Clinton's testimony resumed, the president's lawyer told the judge that Lewinsky's affidavit established "there is absolutely no sex of any kind" between Clinton and Lewinsky. Clinton later told a federal grand jury that he "was not paying a great deal of attention'' to Bennett's exchange with the judge."
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       House reform panel says ex-president encouraged his brother.

By Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

"With President Clinton's encouragement, his half-brother, Roger, collected hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby on behalf of as many as 13 people seeking presidential pardons and other favors, a key congressional panel has found. This characterization goes far beyond what Roger Clinton has acknowledged about his activities in seeking presidential pardons and suggests that he was much more deeply involved than previously known.

The new revelations about the Clinton brothers are contained in the final report by the House Government Reform Committee, which for the last year has been investigating the pardon scandals. The report was obtained by The New York Times. The probe concluded that the former president and his administration repeatedly failed to properly check the backgrounds of people seeking pardons and sentence commutations. It also said the Clinton White House permitted a culture that provided easy opportunities for relatives and close associates of the president to make money on the side by lobbying for clemency and other presidential favors for convicted felons.

The Clinton team was besieged by requests for pardons and other favors. Some of those requests bypassed the normal Justice Department review system and instead went directly to the Oval Office, often at the urging of those who had the president's ear.

"Bill Clinton made some very bad decisions when he gave away pardons," said one official close to the committee's investigation. "His administration very seldom did real background checks on many of those seeking pardon."

Roger Clinton could not be reached for comment. Bill Clinton has denied that
pardons were for sale."
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Mr. Leonard P. Spacek

Where The Pain of Arthur Andersen Is Personal

Chicago, Founding Families, By David Barboza, The New York Times

"The possible collapse of Arthur Andersen, one of the nation's oldest accounting firms, would be the end of a brand that long stood for integrity in accounting and would be a devastating blow to the firm's thousands of partners around the world. But no one feels the disappointment, and perhaps the humiliation of the unfolding Enron debacle, more than the two families that helped shape the early legacy of the accounting firm, which was first known as Andersen, DeLany & Company.

Three generations of the relatives of the original Arthur Andersen, the man who founded the accounting firm here in 1913, worked at the company, but they played little role in the management or governance after Mr. Andersen died in 1947. Today, the founder's grandson, Arthur Edward Andersen III, 65, lives quietly in Barrington, Ill., about 35 miles northwest of downtown Chicago. He has little to say other than "we have to wait for the facts."

Upon his death, in 1947, the Rev. Duncan Littlefair described Arthur Edward Andersen this way: "Those principles upon which his business was built, and with which it is synonymous, must be preserved. His name must never be associated with any program or action that is not the highest and the best. I am sure he would rather the doors be closed then that it should continue to exist on principles other than those which he established.""
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The woman who was editor of the Harvard Business Review recently resigned and admitted that she had an affair with Jack Welch after interviewing him regarding his long career at General Electric.

Exhibiting its best-we-can-do business judgement, the Harvard Business Review said that her name will remain on its masthead and she has been invited back to fill an editor-at-large position.

In mid-March Jack Welch's wife filed for divorce and is reaching for half of his estimated $600 million worth.

     Please select the recipient(s) of this Scum Award(s):

They sound like too many other crooks and criminals these days who prefer to label themselves victims.

Waste Management Ex-Executives Inflated Profits, SEC Says
Bloomberg News Service, By Neil Roland

Washington -- Waste Management Inc. founder Dean Buntrock and five other former senior executives inflated the trash hauler's profits by $1.7 billion to meet earnings targets, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged.

"Our complaint describes one of the most egregious accounting frauds we have seen," SEC Associate Enforcement Director Thomas Newkirk said in a news release.

The company's auditor, Arthur Andersen LLP, aided the defendants' fraud, the SEC alleged. The accounting firm agreed to pay a $7 million fine last June in connection with the fraud.

The civil-fraud complaint accuses Buntrock, who also was chairman and chief executive of Houston-based Waste Management; Phillip B. Rooney, who was chief executive, president and chief operating officer; James E. Koenig, chief financial officer; Thomas C. Hau, controller and chief accounting officer; Herbert Getz, general counsel; and Bruce Tobecksen, a vice president.

Waste Management shareholders lost more than $6 billion on the market value of their investments, the SEC contended.

The SEC's lawsuit, filed in Chicago federal court, alleged the defendants manipulated results from 1992 to 1997 and sought to conceal their scheme."
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By James Cox, USA TODAY

"Three corporations are accused of profiting from slavery in the first of an anticipated barrage of lawsuits by African-Americans seeking compensation for abuses suffered by their ancestors.

The lawsuit, a draft of which was obtained by USA TODAY, names insurer Aetna, railroad CSX and financial services firm FleetBoston as defendants.

The complaint, to be filed Tuesday in federal District Court in New York, asks for unspecified damages, restitution for unpaid slave labor and a share of corporate profits derived from slavery.

The case comes amid growing interest in the issue of slavery reparations among lawyers, historians, activists and state and local governments.

The plaintiff is Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a New York legal researcher and activist who has documented links between modern-day corporations and slavery. Her lawsuit asks the court to bring the case to a jury on behalf of all African-Americans who can claim slaves as forebears — the majority of the nation's 36.4 million blacks. It reserves the right to add up to 100 more corporate defendants.

The lawsuit says Aetna, CSX and Fleet were "unjustly enriched" by "a system that enslaved, tortured, starved and exploited human beings."

It argues that African-Americans are still suffering the effects of 2-1/2 centuries of enslavement followed by more than a century of institutionalized racism. The complaint blames slavery for present-day disparities between blacks and whites in income, education, literacy, health, life expectancy and crime.

Separately, Paellmann's lawyers are sending letters to 13 other companies, as well as trade groups representing the tobacco and shipping industries. The letters warn the companies they will be sued unless they fund a historical commission examining slavery and give money to an "interim humanitarian fund" to improve health, education and child development among blacks.

Aetna has acknowledged issuing life insurance policies on an undetermined number of slaves, naming their owners as beneficiaries. Fleet's earliest predecessor bank was founded by John Brown, a notorious Rhode Island slave trader. CSX owns early rail lines built by slaves.

USA TODAY, in articles Feb. 21, named the three companies and more than 20 others as having owned, rented or insured slaves, or profited in other ways from the pre-1865 slave economy.

CSX spokeswoman Kathy Burns says there is "no legal basis" for the lawsuit. "It is an unfortunate misuse of the legal system to attempt to address issues well over a century old at the expense of today's workers and stockholders." Aetna, in a statement, says it already expressed "deep regret" for issuing slave policies. "Over the past 20 years, Aetna has invested more than $34 million in the African-American community. We are proud of our record of diversity and have nothing to hide."

Fleet declined comment."
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AP News wire

"Lawsuits charging that three companies profited from the slave trade are just the beginning of a larger legal effort to seek reparations for American blacks who are descendants of slaves.

More than a dozen of the nation's most prominent black attorneys and scholars expect to file suit against the U.S. government later this year, said Randall Robinson, co-chairman of the Reparations Coordinating Committee.

"The centerpiece of the campaign will unfold in the fall," said Robinson, whose book The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, argues for reparations.  "We're talking about the responsibility of the government that participates in a crime against humanity.""
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