At the height of the energy crisis, he addressed The Chronicle editorial board where he explained, with a smug smile, why California deserved its precipitous decline.

Much of what he said about the sale of energy went over my head. Now I know why. I only launder clothes, not money. So I quietly passed the time fantasizing about what kind of comeuppance he deserved.

That said, I'd like to point out that the ultimate scandal is that no one will ever fully grasp the extent of Enron's corrupting influence over government officials and policies.

First, employees at Arthur Andersen destroyed crucial accounting records. Then, although congressional investigations had begun, Enron employees shredded even more documents.

The Bush administration, moreover, clearly intends to distance itself from the Enron scandal. Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, still won't reveal who attended his secret energy policy task force meetings.

The corruption is widespread. While building its financial empire, Enron showered campaign contributions on hundreds of elected officials, Democrat and Republican alike. Critics who now regard our government as a wholly owned subsidiary of Enron aren't completely daft. Nor are they wrong to doubt Congress' political will to do little more than grandstand and march Enron and Andersen executives in and out of committee hearings.

So is the Rise and Fall of the Enron Empire likely to remain a secret? Quite probably. In the name of national security, the Bush administration has stripped us of our right to scrutinize the public records that could unravel this sordid story.

First, the administration scuttled the Freedom of Information Act. On Oct. 12, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memo to all federal agencies urging them to resist new FOIA requests. When investigative journalists and watchdog groups request public records that might implicate government officials, they may discover that their applications are indefinitely stonewalled.

Then the administration tried to overturn the Presidential Records Act, which allows public access to all presidential papers. On Nov. 1, 2001, President Bush issued an executive order that gave himself the power to seal all presidential records since 1980. Although historians and journalists are fighting Bush's order in federal court, it may take years before the judiciary strikes down this executive violation of congressional legislation.

Ever since the Watergate scandal, the Freedom of Information and Presidential Records acts have allowed us to hold our government accountable. Even though classified documents are never released to the public, the Bush administration is now using the war on terrorism as a pretext for preventing disclosure of all public records.

Fast forward to the year 2025, when historians and journalists will still be struggling to document and analyze the Enron scandal. Even now, we know that they will have to rely on whatever documents have survived shredding or will have escaped the clutches of the Bush administration.

Enron's secrets are safe. Future researchers will never gain access to the whole truth. And neither will we.

Ruth Rosen is a Chronicle editorial writer.

©2002 San Francisco Chronicle

###