Todays Enron profile in

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Today’s Enron profile in the New York Times is of one-time Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, who testifies tomorrow on Capitol Hill. The title of the piece is “Darth Vader. Machiavelli. Skilling Set Intense Pace.” But reading the piece you get a pretty clear sense that the author’s working title was “Jeff Skilling: Big Jerk.”

Here’s one of the key passages …

Mr. Skilling tried to incubate a culture of risk-taking at Enron that sometimes even went beyond the boundaries he set. At a worldwide meeting of the corporation’s vice presidents in 2000, he singled out Louise Kitchen for praise. Ms. Kitchen had started the company’s Internet-based trading operation, Enron Online, even though Mr. Skilling had repeatedly refused to allow her to do so. Instead, she pulled the new network together in secret, using funds allocated for other purposes.

A former vice president who attended that meeting was aghast: “The moral of this story is, `You can break the rules, you can cheat, you can lie, but as long as you make money, it’s all right.’ ”

And you wonder why they got into trouble.

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