"I guess when you're facing the rest of your life in jail and in your heart you know you're an innocent man, I guess it's too much to bear," said close friend Willie Alexander.

Lay had stayed out of the public eye since a federal jury on May 25 convicted him and former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling of fraud and conspiracy for lying to employees and investors about Enron's financial health.

Lay, who described himself as naturally optimistic, displayed no signs of ill health throughout the grueling four-month trial that started Jan. 30. His lead lawyer, Michael Ramsey, was sidelined for several weeks during the trial because of heart problems.

Kurtzman said the autopsy revealed that Lay had a heart attack in the past.

"It's a very sad ending for the whole Lay family saga. There are very few people of his age and abilities who flew as high or who fell so low," said John Olson, an analyst who angered Lay with his skeptical takes on Enron's often indecipherable financial reports.

Along with fraud and conspiracy charges, Lay also was convicted in a separate federal trial of bank fraud and making false statements to banks. Those charges related to his personal finances.

Lay was scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 23, along with Skilling, who also faces a long prison term.

Skilling, reached by telephone at his home in Houston, told The Associated Press that he was aware of Lay's death.

"No, I don't have any comment," he said quietly. But his lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, described Skilling as "devastated."

"Jeff and Ken worked closely over the years, and Jeff will miss him dearly," Petrocelli said.

Lay led Enron's meteoric rise from a staid natural gas pipeline company formed by a 1985 merger to an energy and trading conglomerate that reached No. 7 on the Fortune 500 in 2000 and claimed $101 billion in annual revenues. Lay traveled in the highest business and political circles, lived an extravagant lifestyle and gave generously - as much as $6.1 million in 2001.

Lay's clout evaporated when Enron spiraled into bankruptcy protection in December 2001. The crash obliterated Enron's more than $60 billion in market value and thousands of jobs, and Lay was pushed out as chairman and CEO in January 2002.

The government launched a widespread fraud investigation that enveloped Enron's finance, trading, broadband and retail energy units. The probe amassed 16 guilty pleas from ex-executives, eight of whom testified against Skilling and Lay during their trial.

Lay and Skilling insisted no fraud occurred at Enron except from a few employees who skimmed money behind their backs. Jurors were unconvinced.

"I loved Enron very much. And I loved Enron's employees very much. I spent half my professional life running Enron. I think we built a great company. We changed energy markets around the world," Lay testified during the trial.

Prosecutors in Lay's trial declined comment Wednesday, both on his death and what may become of their effort to seek $43.5 million from Lay that they say he pocketed as part of the conspiracy. The government is seeking $139.3 million from Skilling.

Lay's death will not affect the government's case against Skilling, who will appeal his convictions, Petrocelli said.

The Pitkin, Colo., Sheriff's Department said officers were called to Lay's house in Old Snowmass, Colo., shortly after 1 a.m. MDT (3 a.m. EDT). He was taken to Aspen Valley Hospital, where he died at 3:11 a.m., said Pat Worcester, executive assistant to the Aspen hospital's chief executive.

Lay's bond allowed him to travel only to Colorado and in the Houston area.

Pastor Steve Wende of Houston's First United Methodist Church, said Lay seemed healthy when he attended services in Houston on Sunday, and even believed God may have had a purpose for him in prison.

"He was very much at peace with his future, he had a perspective on what had happened, he even bore no ill will for the jury or all of the people who might want to say terrible things about him," Wende said.

"Apparently, his heart simply gave out," Wende said.

Before Enron became a scandal-tainted punchline, the company was the single largest contributor to President Bush, who nicknamed Lay "Kenny Boy." Lay said he was closer to the president's father, former President George H.W. Bush. He kept a framed photo of himself with a smiling elder Bush and former First Lady Barbara Bush.

"It was sad to hear the news of the death of someone I considered a friend," the elder Bush said in a statement Wednesday.

But White House press secretary Tony Snow said Wednesday he hadn't discussed Lay's death with the president.

"The president has described Ken Lay as an acquaintance. And many of the president's acquaintances have passed on during his time in office," Snow said.

During the trial Lay had been expected to charm jurors, but instead came across as irritable and combative.

Lay defended his personal spending, including a $200,000 yacht for Linda Lay's birthday party in early 2001, despite $100 million in personal debt. He told jurors it was "difficult to turn off that lifestyle like a spigot."

Lay also defended how he borrowed more than $70 million from Enron in 2001 - even as the company was spiraling - and repaid most of those loans with company stock.

"I wanted very badly to believe what they were saying," juror Wendy Vaughan said after the verdicts were announced. "There were places in the testimony I felt their character was questionable."

Lay was born in Tyrone, Mo. and spent his childhood helping his family make ends meet. His father ran a general store and sold stoves until he became a minister, and Lay delivered newspapers and mowed lawns. He attended the University of Missouri, found his calling in economics, and went to work at Exxon Mobil Corp.'s predecessor, Humble Oil & Refining.

He joined the Navy, served his time at the Pentagon, and then served as undersecretary for the Department of the Interior before he returned to business. He became an executive at Florida Gas, then Transco Energy in Houston, and later became CEO of Houston Natural Gas. In 1985, HNG merged with InterNorth in Omaha, Neb. to form Enron, and Lay became chairman and CEO of the combined company the next year.

Lay is survived by his wife, five children and stepchildren and 12 grandchildren.

By his own account, Lay was still optimistic about his future, at least until he was found guilty in April this year. But four months still remained before Lay was to be sentenced, or the appeal judge had looked at his case and we can be sure that, facing the rest of his life in prison, Lay had a plan.

The articles below make it clear that Lay was not at the top of the heap in defrauding Enron employees and california residents of untold billions of dollars. Everything he did, it seems, was sanctioned by the office of the Vice President. What exactly might have been the nature of Lay's appeal? What new details was he preparing to divulge that would possibly have mitigated the hefty sentence he was facing? If Lay was planning to spill the beans on others involved in the Enron and California energy conspiracy - like the office of the Vice President for example - what measures might have been taken to silence him for good.

Now that Lay is dead, we will probably never know, but still the mainstream media finds it ridiculous that blogs are promoting "crazy conspiracy theories" about the untimely, and fortunate for some, death of Ken Lay, a man who, depsite the official line, may have believed himself to have a long and happy future outside of prison.

One small detail about Lay's death stands out:

Lay suffered his "massive coronary" at just after 1am when the police were called to his home at Old Snowmass, Colorado. He arrived at Aspen Valley Hospital at 3.10am and was prnounced dead at 3.11am, more or less on arrival. The problem is that Old Snowmass is about 30 minutes drive from Aspen Valley Hospital. Surely an ambulance was called immediately on his collapse and when the police arrived shortly after 1am? If so, why did it take two hours to get Lay to hospital when the hospital was a 30 minute drive away?

In the spring of 2001 the severity of the California energy emergency had inspired demands for government action, and Enron had a problem. Officials in California were arguing that federal price caps on wholesale energy sales would prevent profiteering and stabilize wildly fluctuating energy markets, and even some Republicans were saying that caps made sense. But the caps would cost Enron--which had come to dominate energy markets by taking advantage of deregulation--a fortune.

Enron CEO Kenneth Lay knew he needed high-level help. So he arranged to meet with a man who had headed a corporation with extensive business ties to Enron and who had been a prime recipient of Enron's political largesse. Vice President Dick Cheney cleared his calendar for an April 17 private meeting with Lay regarding what aides described as "energy policy matters" and "the energy crisis in California." At the meeting Lay handed Cheney a memo that read in part: "The administration should reject any attempt to re-regulate wholesale power markets by adopting price caps...."

The day after he met with Lay, Cheney gave a rare phone interview to the Los Angeles Times that had one recurrent theme: Price caps were out of the question. Dismissing the strategy as "short-term political relief for the politicians," Cheney bluntly declared, "I don't see that as a possibility."

Cheney's prognosis was flawed; within days, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission agreed to price caps and the markets calmed down. But Cheney was undeterred in his drive to deliver for Enron. The Houston-based firm enjoyed a level of vice-presidential attention during the Bush/Cheney team's first year that included explicit support of Enron's choices for key regulatory positions, intervention in the affairs of a foreign government and the structuring of an energy policy task force to allow Enron and other corporations to effectively set policy. Indeed, so close was the Cheney-Enron relationship that it is entirely reasonable to ask whether ethical and legal lines were crossed. That possibility offers the most realistic explanation for Cheney's refusal to disclose details of his Enron contacts to Congress. "Cheney says he is refusing to provide information to the Congress as a matter of principle. He told the Today show that he wants to 'protect the ability of the President and the Vice President to get unvarnished information advice from any source we want,'" notes former White House counsel John Dean. "That sounds all too familiar to me. I worked for Richard Nixon."

Less than ten days after he became Vice President--promising that a Bush/Cheney Administration would "restore decency and integrity to the Oval Office"--Cheney took charge of the Administration's energy policy task force, the National Energy Policy Development Group. No initiative interested Enron more, and Cheney welcomed the company's active participation in its deliberations. Cheney was hardly a stranger to the company. He had chaired Halliburton, a Texas-based oil services and construction conglomerate whose subsidiary, Brown & Root, helped build Houston's Enron Field, and his return to politics--after he selected himself to be Bush's running mate--benefited from Enron-linked contributions that paid for the Bush/Cheney campaign, the Florida recount fight fund and the inauguration. Cheney and his aides met at least six times with Lay and other Enron officials while preparing the group's report, which is the basis for the Administration's energy policy proposals. Additionally, Cheney's staff met with an Enron-sponsored lobbying organization, the "Clean Power Group."


Cheney claims this access gave Enron no advantage. "The fact is Enron didn't get any special deals," he declared when questioned in January. Yet an Enron memo discovered after that interview suggests the corporation shaped substantial portions of the task force's recommendations. When Cheney and Lay met in April 2001, Lay handed Cheney a three-page "wish list" of corporate recommendations. Representative Henry Waxman, the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, ordered an analysis of the memo against the final report of the task force; it shows that the group adopted all or significant portions of the recommendations in seven of eight policy areas. Seventeen policies sought by Enron or that clearly benefit the company--including proposals to extend federal control of transmission lines, use federal eminent-domain authority to override state decisions on transmission-line siting, expedite permitting for new energy facilities and limit the use of price controls--were included. Noting that "there is no company in the country that stood to gain as much from the White House plan as Enron," Waxman wrote Cheney, "the recent revelations regarding the extent of Enron's contacts with the White House energy task force have only underscored the need for full public disclosure."

Under the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972, task forces like Cheney's must conduct public meetings, must allow interested parties to attend and must keep publicly available records. But arguing "executive privilege," Cheney, his aides and Cabinet departments have refused requests for records, despite legal challenges from the General Accounting Office and private groups. One lawsuit has freed up Energy Department documents that begin to hint at the extent of the influence that energy corporations exercised over Administration policies.

Cheney also provided other official services to Enron. Copies of e-mails obtained by the New York Daily News indicate that Cheney aided an attempt by Enron to force the Maharashtra State Electricity Board in India to pay it at least $2.3 billion in connection with a failed $2.9 billion effort to develop a power plant. A June 28, 2001, e-mail from a National Security Council aide read, "Good news is that the veep mentioned Enron in his meeting with [Indian Congress Party leader] Sonia Gandhi yesterday." In an October 3, 2001, discussion with India's foreign minister, Cheney raised the issue again. And when Cheney's energy task force was finalizing its report in August, a draft document was altered to include a provision recommending that the US Secretaries of State and Energy work with India to help that country maximize its domestic oil and gas production. "The energy plan does not discuss this recommendation or explain why maximizing oil and gas production in India should be a US national energy priority," Waxman wrote in a letter to Cheney. Instead, Waxman argued, the provision "benefited Enron by formally enlisting two Cabinet secretaries in Enron's conflict with the Indian government."

With the notable exception of Waxman, the Enron-Cheney connection so far has received troublingly limited attention from Congressional Democrats. Senator Joseph Lieberman announced that a committee he heads would issue more than two dozen subpoenas that could cast light on Enron-White House contacts, but Lieberman's determination to maintain a "bipartisan" approach has so far limited the scope of the inquiry. Democratic leaders moreover appear reluctant to invite charges that they are repaying the GOP for eight years of investigations of the Clinton Administration.

Cheney's refusal to cooperate with investigators--which presidential historian Stanley Kutler refers to as part of a broad "assault on the legal and Constitutional order" by the Bush Administration--forms the most powerful argument for the appointment of a special counsel. Congress allowed the Independent Counsel Law to expire in 1999, ceding to the Attorney General the right to make such appointments. Current Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself after it was learned that he had taken campaign contributions from Enron, but his aides are free to make the call. John Conyers Jr., the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote the Justice Department in January to argue, "The Enron case represents one of the largest corporate frauds in the nation's history, and the potential for conflicts of interest is so sweeping that it necessitates an outside counsel to insure public confidence." So far, however, Conyers's call has been little noted beyond the ranks of serious reformers like Representative Bob Filner, whose "sense of Congress" call for a special counsel has drawn only eight co-sponsors.

Conyers and Filner have recognized reality. Neither the Justice Department nor Congress appear to be prepared to conduct the sort of investigation that is required to expose the full extent of the Bush Administration's service to Enron. That investigation would have to be broad, since the connections with Enron are not limited to Cheney's office. From Army Secretary Thomas White, a former Enron executive, to Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, formerly on Enron's advisory council, Enron's tentacles have reached throughout the Bush White House, shaping tax, trade, energy and environmental policy. All such connections are worthy of legal and Congressional scrutiny. But make no mistake, the place to begin is at Dick Cheney's door. If there is any realistic hope of exposing the extent to which Enron's machinations corrupted US policy at home and abroad, then the Office of the Vice President is not only a good place to start, it is the essential beginning point.

Baxter's body was discovered inside his Mercedes Benz, which was parked in a turnaround on a street near his home. Officials in Sugar Land moved swiftly to label Baxter's death a suicide. Local Justice of the Peace Jim Richard initially declared that Baxter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and no further inquiry was required. But within hours he reversed himself, citing the intense public interest in the death, and ordered an autopsy.

Harris County Medical Examiner Joye Carter conducted the autopsy and found the cause of death to be suicide by a "penetrating gunshot to the head." The weapon was a .38 caliber revolver which was found in Baxter's car, next to his body.

Neither the perfunctory official probe nor the media coverage has addressed the obvious suspicions aroused by the death of a critically important witness in the investigation into the criminal activities at Enron, the biggest corporate fraud in American history. Baxter quit as vice chairman of the company last May, after reportedly come into conflict with other top executives over the phony accounting gimmicks used to plunder billions of dollars.

The most disturbing account of Baxter's last days comes from a former business associate who spoke to the New York Times but was not identified by the newspaper. This person spoke with the former Enron vice chairman two days before his death and congratulated him "for being named among those people who complained about Enron."

According to the Times account, the unnamed associate added that Baxter "was talking about perhaps needing a bodyguard, though I'm not sure where that idea came from."

That a man only two days away from suicide would be considering hiring a bodyguard defies belief. But neither the Times nor any other media outlet has raised the possibility that Baxter felt his life to be in danger because of what he knew and could divulge about the internal affairs of Enron. Men have been killed for much less.

Baxter was named in a memorandum submitted by Enron Vice President Sheron Watkins last August to Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay. Watkins warned Lay that dubious off-the-books transactions with private partnerships set up by top Enron officials might cause the company to "collapse in a welter of accounting scandals." She cited Baxter's opposition to one of these partnerships, set up by then-CEO Jeffrey Skilling, writing, "Cliff Baxter complained mightily to Skilling and all who would listen about the inappropriateness of our transactions with LJM."

Baxter received a subpoena from the Senate Government Affairs Subcommittee on Permanent Oversight and Investigation, along with 48 other people linked to Enron and Andersen. Investigators from the House Energy and Commerce Committee had told Baxter's lawyer that they wished to interview him, but had not yet issued a subpoena.

Representative James C. Greenwood, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the committee's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, said, "It seemed to us that he was a pretty highly placed insider at Enron who had understood exactly what was wrong there."

Both Enron and its accountant and business adviser, Andersen, have been engaged in massive, illegal shredding of documents and deletion of computer files. Billions of dollars are at stake in the collapse. The highest levels of the Bush administration are implicated in the corruption of the financial and political system that Enron exemplified.

Under such conditions, the sudden death of a crucial witness inevitably raises the suspicion that it is not just pieces of paper and computer data that are being destroyed to protect the corporate and political gangsters at the top, but human lives as well.

Given the organized shredding operation, a systematic effort to destroy incriminating documents, Baxter's evidence would be all the more critical, since he could testify, from the perspective of the highest levels of the company, what information Enron and Andersen were so afraid of. How can one not assume that Baxter, too, was "shredded" to prevent him from taking the witness stand?

A potential whistle-blower dies less than two weeks after his name first comes to public attention. What message does that send to others who might be considering testifying against Enron? And on top of that, the local police immediately declare his death a suicide. If there was foul play, those responsible have carried it out with impunity.

It is, of course, possible that Baxter actually took his own life. But no confidence can be placed in such a finding without a thorough investigation, and no such investigation can be expected from the local authorities in Houston, a metropolitan area where Enron was by far the most influential corporate power. (As one indication of its dominance, all the federal prosecutors in the US Attorney's office in Houston have had to recuse themselves from the Enron investigation because of financial or family ties to Enron.)

The circumstances of Baxter's life cast doubt on the verdict of suicide. He is not known to have been suffering from depression or any other mental health problem. He was a multimillionaire, having netted $30 million from the sale of his stock in the company before and after his departure from Enron last May. His family life was apparently happy, and he leaves a wife and two children, a 16-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter.

Far from being the target of media vilification, Baxter's name had been linked to the Enron affair in a way that was largely favorable. His first appearance in the coverage of Enron came when the Watkins memo was made public, presenting him as an opponent of corporate fraud.

Friends and business associates interviewed by the press expressed shock and surprise at his reported suicide, although there were conflicting accounts of his state of mind after the bankruptcy of Enron.

An executive of Portland Gas & Electric, a subsidiary which Enron acquired in a takeover organized by Baxter, told the New York Times: "My impression of Cliff Baxter was that this was an enormously confident guy who came up here to get the thing done, and he did. The image I had of him at the time is totally at odds with the tragedy today. I mean, he was self assured, he was very friendly. This was practically the last person in the world you'd ever expect to commit suicide."

It's another symptom of the media's long-term memory disorder. Suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder, they can only focus on the thing in front of them -- and even then not for very long before moving on to the next shiny bauble (Tony Snow called Bush "impotent"! Natalie Holloway's still missing -- and still getting airtime on Larry King).

So instead of reminding us of all the reasons why Enron was even more of a political scandal than a business scandal, the media narrative has turned the case into a simple he said/he said story pitting "folksy" Ken Lay against repentant Raptor boy, Andy Fastow.



We hear about Lay's "folksy preacher style," "country charm," and efforts to portray himself as "a pious family man with humble origins" and Fastow as "a liar and a crook". But not about the millions Lay and Enron donated to Bush and the GOP or the secret meetings Lay had with Cheney regarding energy policy (more on these in a bit).



But even when focusing on the present, the media seem to be having memory lapses.



Thus, the New York Times tells us that Lay testified that he is "very, very anxious and trying to do all that I can to get the truth out" but doesn't point out that Lay has helped keep that truth from coming out for over four years by invoking his Fifth Amendment rights back in 2002 in order to avoid questions from congressional and Securities and Exchange Commission questions.




And, of course, Lay is having his own memory problems. He told jurors that if he had only retired when he originally planned, "I wouldn't be sitting here" -- as if that $20 million signing bonus he got for staying on had nothing to do with his decision.



A witness stand highpoint was hearing Lay echo the prior testimony of his partner-in-crime-Jeffrey Skilling -- as both men painted themselves as "optimistic." As if being a glass-half-full kind of guy excused the despicable deception Lay engaged in, urging his employees to invest more and more of their hard earned money in Enron stock even though he knew the company was in deep trouble -- and that he and Skilling had already cashed in stock worth $162 million ($100 mil for Lay, $62 mil for Skilling). I wonder if the 20,000 Enron employees who saw their retirement nest eggs cracked and turned sunny side down appreciated Lay's optimism.




But, as I said, the Enron scandal was about so much more than mere corporate greed -- and that's the context we're not getting. What made Enron so significant was what it revealed about the corruption of our political system -- about the unseemly link between big money donations and the influence those donations buy. And Bush and Cheney are standing smack dab in the middle of this neglected aspect of the story.



So, as a reminder, here's what we must not forget:



Lay didn't become "Kenny Boy" and an intimate FOG (Friend of George) because of his folksy charm. Enron and its executives doled out $2.4 million to federal candidates and parties in the 2000 election -- including $113,000 to the Bush/Cheney campaign. Lay and his wife also gave $100,000 to Bush's 2000 inaugural fund (Skilling chipped in $100,000 of his own), and another $5,000 each to the Bush-Cheney 2000 Recount Fund to help assure there'd be an inauguration. What's more, Lay even gave W's folks a ride to their son's 2000 inauguration on an Enron plane.




It was money well spent, buying Lay and his company what Rep. Henry Waxman has called "extensive access" to the epicenter of American political power. Access and influence.



For instance, in the early days of the Bush administration, while Enron was still flying very high, Lay and his company were given unprecedented input on the makeup of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the agency charged with regulating Enron's core business. Lay was allowed to personally put the screws to FERC chair Curtis Hebert in an effort to change his views on electricity deregulation. Hebert resisted, and was soon replaced by Pat Wood, Lay's handpicked choice.



Representatives of Enron also had at least six meetings with Cheney and his staff as part of the VP's secretive Energy Task Force., the last of which occurred just six days before the company revealed it had vastly overstated its earnings, signaling the beginning of the end for the energy giant. These meetings included at least one between Cheney and Lay.

It was at this meeting that Lay handed Cheney a memo that gave the administration its marching orders on how to handle the 2000-2001 California energy crisis -- a crisis that we now know was largely rigged by Enron and other energy companies. The crisis cost the state an estimated $45 billion.



Lay's memo called on the administration to "reject any attempt to re-regulate wholesale power markets by adopting price caps." Just a few weeks after literally getting the memo from Lay, Cheney said of price caps: "We think that's a mistake." Bush followed suit, announcing: "I oppose price caps". This cozy relationship allowed Enron traders to rip off the people of California with impunity.




Who (other than the reporters covering the Lay trial, that is) can forget those tapes where Enron traders joked about cashing in on the crisis they manipulated? Both "folksy" Ken Lay and his cover-providing pals in the White House bear responsibility for the California debacle.



So as Ken Lay continues to plead his case on the stand deep in the heart of Texas, never forget that this scandal is not just about the crooks who cooked the books at Enron, it's about how the White House gave the crooks a prominent seat at the policy table.



Whatever the outcome of Lay's trial, when it comes to being key players in the culture of corruption, Bush and Cheney are guilty as charged.