Former Enron chief makes a very unconvincing victim

Kenneth Lay, depicted a few years ago as the wunderkind behind the growth of Enron from a regional energy company to one of the most powerful and presumably successful companies in the nation, would now have us believe he was really Sgt. Schultz from "Hogan's Heroes."
"I know nothing," might as well have been Lay's catch phrase in the days leading up to his indictment. In interviews with major media he painted himself as just as much a victim of Enron's collapse as the thousands of employees who lost their jobs and pensions and the tens of thousands of investors who lost millions of dollars.
The indictments, however, allege that Lay, former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, and the company's former top accountant Richard Causey, were among principal operators of a wide-ranging scheme to deceive the public, shareholders, government regulators and others.
Prosecutors says Skilling spearheaded the scheme until he abruptly quit in mid-August 2001, less than four months before Enron imploded. Lay resumed as CEO upon Skilling's departure and "took over leadership of the conspiracy," the indictment said.
After being arraigned, Lay spoke at a news conference, saying he rejects "any notion that I engaged in any wrongful or criminal activity." He said he and his family grieve "over the loss of the company, my failure to be able to save it."
Detachment defense
There may have come a time when Lay became so detached from the operations of the company, so much a corporate frontman schmoozing with politicians and attending charity galas that he no longer had a handle on everything the company was doing. Maybe that happened, but it seems unlikely.
From time to time, you'd have to think, Lay would have to look at his company's phenomenal growth, at its ability to gobble up other utilities, to expand into areas where no energy company had gone before and ask himself, "How are we doing all this?"
As the rest of the world now knows, Enron was doing what it was doing by establishing a complicated network of shell subsidiaries that bought and sold from each other in ways that created assets that weren't worth the paper they were printed on.
If Lay didn't know that at the time, shame on him. He was at least guilty of being a far less effective manager than his billing, his lifestyle and his demeanor would have suggested. But, arguably, he was not yet part of a criminal conspiracy.
Joining the crowd
At some point, however, that changed. In the weeks and months leading up to the collapse, Lay became acutely aware that Enron was a house of cards, ready to collapse. Yet he continued to mislead banks, security analysts, regulators and the public about the truth behind Enron's imminent collapse. Lay, who had become a multimillionaire off Enron's fraudulent practices, became as much a liar as any of the other company officers that he blames for the company's downfall.
In a familiar refrain heard from American executives and politicians when something goes wrong, Lay claims that he "takes responsibility" for Enron's collapse, but then adds, "that does not mean I know everything that went on at Enron." Meaning he doesn't think he committed any crime or that he should face any punishment.
"Taking responsibility" without being willing to accept the consequences isn't taking responsibility at all.
Lay should be given time to contemplate that from the solitude of a federal jail cell.