PERISCOPE

Talk about your fun jobs. Imagine being an Arthur Andersen partner trying to persuade accounting clients to stick with an outfit that used to be your typical boring Big Five firm but is now known for Enron, document shredding and a partner's taking the Fifth at televised congressional hearings. And then there's the news. Last week three of Andersen's most prestigious auditing clients--Merck, Delta Air Lines and Freddie Mac--told the company to take a hike. Andersen paid more than $200 million to settle claims against it by an Arizona charity, and it's running around trying to settle its Enronitis problems for $1 billion or so. Rumors of shredding-related criminal indictments and plea bargains are rampant.

So what do you say to Andersen clients to try to stop them from joining the ever-longer list of ex-clients? As luck would have it, NEWSWEEK knows: we've gotten a copy of a presentation that Andersen is currently making to corporate boards. We didn't see the show--we're not that wired--but the presentation is revealing.

The fortysomething-page package, with highly confidential printed on each page, claims that news accounts have exaggerated Andersen's role in Enron's collapse. (You knew what those newsies are like.) Andersen blames Enron officials, Enron's board of directors, investment banks, credit-rating agencies and the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the best "mistakes were made" tradition, Andersen says, "We will acknowledge errors in judgment and have done so." Not exactly the same as "we're sorry" or "we screwed up, but we promise not to do it again." But maybe those wouldn't look good in PowerPoint.

Andersen invokes the weather defense: "This is our 100-year flood--an extraordinary and unusual set of events." And the "everyone else sucks" defense. Andersen says it had a 21 percent market share of Big Five accounting clients but accounted for only 15 percent of the financial restatements from 1997 through 2000. The Enron restatement was in 2001. Maybe it and Andersen's other recent disaster, Global Crossing, will be in the updated versions.

The real question about Andersen these days is whether it will survive in anything like its current form. It's all well and good to hire the sainted Paul Volcker to be a public symbol of rectitude, but how do you deal with the drain of customers, partners and bright young talent? Not to mention the financial hits? The last page of the Andersen package, which purports to address the perception that "Andersen will not survive," says: "What we know for a fact is that we are a strong and financially healthy firm and that we intend to learn from this experience and be better for it." Not exactly Churchillian. Then again, what do you expect from accountants?

ANDREA YATES

Examining a Spiritual Leader's Influence

Was Andrea Yates's "spiritual leader" partly responsible for her delusional thinking? As testimony comes to a close in her trial, evangelist Michael Woroniecki's influence over the mother accused of murdering her five children has become an issue. A day after Yates, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, drowned the children in the family bathtub, she told a jail psychiatrist that her bad mothering had made the kids "not righteous," and, as a result, they would "perish in the fires of hell." If she killed them while they were young, God would show mercy on their souls.

Where did these thoughts stem from? Yates's attorney, George Parnham, has put into evidence a copy of Woroniecki's newsletter The Perilous Times, sent to Yates and her husband, Rusty. In it a poem laments the disobedient kids of the "Modern Mother Worldly" and ends with the question, "What becomes of the children of such a Jezebel?" Houston psychiatrist Lucy Puryear told the jury that literature is "what her delusions are built around."

In a letter to NEWSWEEK, Woroniecki, 48, denies negatively influencing Yates, and points at Rusty. "Knock, knock... Hello... earth to Rusty... your wife and children are in desperate need of your love," he writes. "I warned him over and over again that his life was headed for tragedy." Rusty, who declined to comment, first met Woroniecki while he was a student at Auburn University. Woroniecki was preaching on campus. Rusty introduced the preacher to Andrea, and in 1998 the Yateses bought a Greyhound bus from Woroniecki, who had lived in it with his wife and their six children as they toured the nation.

During a 1994 protest at Brigham Young University, Woroniecki called the school's women "contemporary witches." He told them sarcastically, "Go and be a 20th-century career woman and forget about your families." One of his pamphlets proclaimed, "As man was created to dominate, God reveals that woman was created to be his helpmeet." Though Andrea quit her job to stay home with the kids, Woroniecki says he never urged her to do this. "Although she was an excellent nurse, she never wanted to pursue a career," he wrote NEWSWEEK.

Rusty told the jury that he agreed with Woroniecki's support for home-schooling and living the "simple life" in a bus--two decisions the Yateses copied but which Puryear says caused significant stress for the passive Andrea. Forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz agreed, and said these factors led to her two previous suicide attempts. "She couldn't say to people, 'I can't stand this'."

For his part, Woroniecki writes that he and his wife were "a very compassionate and caring couple who did all we could to love them... After all we did for this family, it is preposterous for us to be cast into such a terrible image."

PARDONS

Secret E-Mail

A stack of private e-mails has given fresh impetus to the Justice Department investigation into former president Bill Clinton's last-minute pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich. The messages were withheld on the ground of attorney-client privilege, but a judge recently ordered them turned over, ruling they were about political lobbying, not legal matters. Since then there's been a flurry of grand-jury subpoenas to Rich's lawyers. In one e-mail, Rich lawyer Jack Quinn asks an associate about an alleged conversation between Rich's ex-wife, Denise Rich, and the president about the pardon. "Is this the moment to say that he asked DR for pol support? Or might DR have said something stupid like that when they spoke. God knows, I hope not." A forthcoming House committee report obtained by NEWSWEEK says the e-mail raises "a real question as to whether President Clinton asked Denise Rich for political or financial support in the midst of their discussions about the Rich pardon." A Quinn spokesman says the "he" refers to the then New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, not Clinton. New evidence also shows that Denise Rich gave the Clintons $7,373 in furniture for their new Chappaqua, N.Y., home on Dec. 1, 2000--just five days before she wrote Clinton pleading for the pardon. Rich's lawyer says the gift had "no connection" to the pardon request. Other e-mails raise questions about Quinn's denials that he would bill Rich, or accept further fees, for his work on the pardon. "Not that I'm concerned, but did Marc decide to renew the retainer?" Quinn wrote another Rich lawyer after the pardon was granted. A Quinn spokesman says Quinn signed a new retainer with Rich--to cover new legal matters. Rich is also paying Quinn's legal fees in the probe.

ART

Light From Ground Zero

Ever since September 11, the vibrations from Ground Zero and vicinity have been a wrenching mix of heroism and horror, hope and despair. Now, with a rapturous collaborative work of public art called "Tribute in Light," something purely uplifting will emanate from a vacant lot just north of the site of the terrorist attacks. Two shafts of light will soar into the sky, each night for 34 days, in memoriam to the victims of 9-11 and, very secondarily, to the skyline icons that were the World Trade Center towers themselves. At the base of each 50-foot-square tower of light are 44 science-fiction-like 7,000-watt light bulbs called "space cannons." The juice for the project is supplied by the still-working generators in the evacuated Embassy Suites hotel. Its estimated $500,000 cost is being underwritten by a variety of corporate and private donations.

Inspiration for the work of art came simultaneously from three sources initially unaware of each another. Architect Richard Nash Gould saw the towers collapse and, that night, called a friend at the Municipal Art Society with the idea of restoring the light that used to come from the buildings. Julian Laverdiere and Paul Myoda were already working on a collaborative light-beam "sculpture." When The New York Times Magazine wanted a cover image for a Ground Zero renewal story, its editors were directed to the two artists, who supplied an image of some ghostly spires of light rising above Manhattan. Laverdiere says the rescue lamps and dust from the debris made a "ghastly halo," and that "Paul wanted to rein in the chaos of light, and sculpt it into something signifying hope." Meanwhile, in Greenwich Village, architects Gustavo Bonevardi and John Bennett--who specialize in digital-video re-creations of architecture for museum exhibitions--had an almost identical idea, but with a more practical, less spiritual edge. They called their vision "PRISM: Project to Restore Immediately the Skyline of Manhattan." Public-art groups Creative Time and the MAS brought everybody together with lighting designer Paul Marantz and started the usually arduous approval process.

Something about the undeniable virtue of the project must have clicked with the bureaucrats: only six months after the awfulness, Mayor Mike Bloomberg oversees the flip of the switch this week. (Since low cloud cover could diffuse the light and disorient pilots flying in the vicinity, the FAA will evaluate the weather daily and decide whether to turn the bulbs on or not. The Audubon Society will monitor bird-migration patterns and suggest turnoffs if birds get disoriented.) Architect Bennett says that "Tribute" just might be "the brightest light on earth, visible from space." And very visible in a lot of hearts around Gotham.

TABOO TOPIC

The German Titanic

It was the worst tragedy in maritime history, six times more deadly than the Titanic. When the German cruise ship Wilhelm Gustloff was hit by torpedoes fired from a Soviet submarine in the final winter of World War II, more than 10,000 people--mostly women, children and old people fleeing the final Red Army push into Nazi Germany--were packed aboard. The disaster, survived by only 1,200, was rarely mentioned for more than half a century. Since most Germans feared they would be accused of equating their losses with the horrors they inflicted on others, only the nationalist right spoke freely about what happened to the 13 million Germans brutally driven out of their homelands at the end of the war. Now Germany's Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass has resurrected the memory of the dead with his novel "Crab Walk," published last month (and due out in English next year). His willingness to break the taboo against writing about what happened as WWII ended has had an electrifying effect: critics from left and right are praising his work.

The long silence about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff and other tragedies of that period was probably unavoidable--and necessary. By owning up to their country's role as the perpetrator of monstrous crimes, Germans have managed to win acceptance abroad, marginalize the neo-Nazis at home and make peace with their neighbors. But as Grass has shown, even the most politically correct Germans believe they've now earned the right to discuss the full historical record. Not to equate Germany's suffering with that of its victims, but simply to acknowledge a terrible tragedy.

STARLETS

Summertime: The Last Phoenix Takes Flight

The Phoenix family is the gift that keeps on giving. Now Summer Phoenix, the younger sister of actors Joaquin, Rain and the late River, comes into her own. This month the 24-year-old appears in three films: "Esther Kahn," Showtime's "The Believer" and MTV's "Wasted." NEWSWEEK's Marc Peyser caught up with the last of the line.

"Wasted" is about heroin deaths at a high school. Did River's overdose have anything to do with your decision to be in the film?

Honestly, I didn't even think about it. I could see how people would wonder about that, but this movie was so much more about, one, working with friends and, number two, about a problem that's really apparent and that has no prejudice and sees no status or color. It's become an epidemic. And it's sad for the people that are, you know, the parents of these children and the friends of these kids that are left behind wondering.

So it would be wrong to think that this has become a cause for you.

That would be very wrong. I'm not taking up any causes.

What was your childhood like?

I did every '80s sitcom, like "Growing Pains." I did a lot of pilots that were spinoffs of "Family Ties." I did a spinoff when Nick had his own show. I played his niece.

Were you in school?

No, I was in school for part of it. I graduated elementary school and then went down to Central America, and I traveled and I worked in a restaurant and I--

How old were you?

Well, I went when I was 12, and when I was 13 or 14 my sister and I started a vegan restaurant in Costa Rica. Yeah, we were crazy. I was sous-chef and prep, and my sister was head chef. I took my GED when I was 14.

Were there times when you wanted to have a normal name like Susan?

Yeah. When we played house when we were kids, [my sister] Liberty and I were always like Stacy and Tiffany--those were our names. When you're a kid, you don't recognize the beauty in difference and being unique and special. Yeah, we were odd and different, but everybody sort of wanted to know why, and what made us that way and could they have some of my blue corn chips.

Have the names become appropriate? Are you bright and happy?

No, my parents really should have named me Winter.

COLLEGE HOOPS

Let's Dance

In the sweet science of NCAA bracketology, everybody has a system. Some people always pick the higher seed. Some imagine a fight between the two mascots and go with the winner. Some just pencil in their alma mater straight to the Final Four. (Memo to Winthrop grads: do not do this.) There is another way: raise your college-hoops IQ. Jason Williams (Duke) and Drew Gooden (Kansas) might lead their teams to the title, but these six unsung stars might lead you into the money.

Dan Dickau, Gonzaga Mop-headed mad bomber (20.9 points per game) looks like fourth Brady son but shoots much better than Greg.

Emeka Okafor, Connecticut Six-foot-9 pogo stick can take over games with shot blocking; freshman swatted eight or more six times this season.

Dwyane Wade, Marquette Supersoph turns ball over too much but leads team in points, rebounds and assists (just ahead of Rog and Rerun).

Trevor Huffman, Kent State Hit 51 percent of threes in last seven games. (Tip: always pick MAC conference teams in first round. They can really play.)

Erwin Dudley, Alabama Tireless rebounder, clutch scorer in the paint. Top player in nation's toughest conference (SEC).

Hollis Price, Oklahoma Hot and cold with perimeter shot, but flawless floor general: just 1.7 turnovers per game, fantastic for a point guard.

GOLF

Straight Shots

Your short game needs work? Here's a fast fix. Wilson's new Staff True golf ball is arriving in stores with the audacious claim that it rolls straighter than other balls. According to Wilson, the golf-ball-making process creates tiny variances in the centering of the ball's rubber core. If the core, which is heavier than the covering material, is off center, the imbalance can make a 10-foot putt on a perfectly flat surface drift toward the heavy side--enough to miss the hole entirely. In tests with a robotic putting machine, the company found the problem in up to 25 percent of golf balls of all makes. The True ball equalizes the density of the ball's solid core and cover materials: no heavy side, no veering. "We have not found a way to put the core perfectly in the middle," says Wilson's Luke Reese. "We just made it irrelevant." Now you'll never have to ask, "Was it the ball?"

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

Six months after terrorist attacks, soldiers still fighting, bin Laden still at large, U.S resolve still strong. Toughest question of all: where do we go from here?

 

 C.W.


Bush = Protectionist George sells out free-trade
 principles on steel for swing-state votes.


Shaoron - World: Too tough on PLO. Israel: Not tough
 enough. CW: It's hopeless. 


Gray Davis + Calif. Dem. Gov. monkey-wrenches GOP
 primary. Simon says: You're a shoo-in. 


Condit - Crushed in Calif. re-elect bid. Next: Boxes
 O.J. on Fox?


Welch - Neutron Jack (married) love-bombs Harvard
 Biz Review editor (who loses job). Smooth.


Windshield - Note to Fort Worth driver: When you hit-
Lady and-run, leave victim behind, please.