TIME Persons-of-the-Year 2002: Three Women whistle-blowers [Archive]

jeffooi

23-12-2002, 07:24 AM

TIME 'Persons-of-the-Year 2002:
These courageous women blew their whistles againsts their bosses at Enron, Worldcom and FBI.
TIME managing editor Jim Kelly says it's time to celebrate three ordinary people that did extraordinary things.

UTUSAN ONLINE
Monday, December 23, 2002

Time names women whistle-blowers as Persons of the Year

<img src="http://www.utusan.com.my/pix/2002/1223/Utusan_Express/Time_Out/to_01_big.jpg" align="left"> THIS picture released Dec 22 by Time Magazine shows Cynthia Cooper of Wordcom (L), Coleen Rowley of the FBI (C) and Sherron Watkins of Enron who have been named Persons of the Year by the magazine. - AFPpix.

NEW YORK - Time Magazine named a trio of women whistle-blowers as its Persons of the Year on Sunday, praising their roles in unearthing malfeasance that eroded public confidence in their institutions.

Two of the women, Sherron Watkins, a vice president at Enron Corp., and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom Inc., uncovered massive accounting fraud at their respective companies, which both went bankrupt.

The third, Coleen Rowley, is an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In May, she wrote a scathing 13-page memo to FBI Director Robert Muller detailing how supervisors at a Minneapolis, Minnesota field office brushed aside her requests to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker'' in the Sept 11th attacks, weeks before the attacks occurred.

"It came down to did we want to recognise a phenomenon that helped correct some of the problems we've had over the last year and celebrate three ordinary people that did extraordinary things,'' said Time managing editor Jim Kelly.

...Watkins, 43, is a former accountant best known for a blunt, prescient 7-page memo to Enron chairman Kenneth Lay in 2001 that uncovered questionable accounting and warned that the company could "implode in a wave of accounting scandals.''

Her letter came to light during a post-mortem inquiry conducted by Congress after the company declared bankruptcy.

Cooper undertook a one-woman crusade inside telecommunications behemoth WorldCom, when she discovered that the company had disguised $3.8 billion in losses through improper accounting.

When the scandal came to light in June after the company declared bankruptcy, jittery investors laid siege to global stock markets.

FBI agent and lawyer Rowley's secret memo was leaked to the press in May. Weeks before Sept 11, Rowley suspected Moussaoui might have ties to radical activities and Osama bin Laden, and she asked supervisors for clearance to search his computer.

Her letter sharply criticised the agency's hidebound culture and its decision-makers, and gave rise to new inquiries over the intelligence-gathering failures of Sept 11. - Reuters

FULL STORY:
http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/content.asp?y=2002&dt=1223&pub=Utusan_Express&sec=Time_Out&pg=to_01.htm

jeffooi

23-12-2002, 07:42 AM

TIME Persons of the Year 2002
Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley and Sherron Watkins
They took huge professional and personal risks to blow the whistle on what went wrong at WorldCom, Enron and the FBI—and in so doing helped remind us what American courage and American values are all about

By Richard Lacayo and Amanda Ripley

<img src="http://i.timeinc.net/time/personoftheyear/2002/images/poyintro_389x281.jpg" ALIGN="LEFT"> THE WHISTLE-BLOWERS: Cynthia Cooper, WorldCom; (left to right), Coleen Rowley, the FBI; and Sherron Watkins, Enron. GREGORY HEISLER FOR TIME

WHO ARE THESE WOMEN?

For starters, they aren't people looking to hog the limelight. All initially tried to keep their criticisms in-house, to speak truth to power but not to Barbara Walters. They became public figures only because their memos were leaked. One reason you still don't know much about them is that none have given an on-the-record media interview until now.

In early December TIME brought all three together in a Minneapolis hotel room. Very quickly it became clear that none of them are rebels in the usual sense. The truest of true believers is more like it, ever faithful to the idea that where they worked was a place that served the wider world in some important way. But sometimes it's the keepers of the flame who feel most compelled to set their imperfect temple to the torch.

When headquarters didn't live up to its mission, they took it to heart. At Enron the company handed out note pads with inspiring quotes. One was from Martin Luther King Jr.: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Watkins saw that quote every day. Didn't anybody else?

What more do they have in common? All three grew up in small towns in the middle of the country, in families that at times lived paycheck to paycheck. In a twist that will delight psychologists, they are all firstborns. More unusually, all three are married but serve as the chief breadwinners in their families. Cooper and Rowley have husbands who are full-time, stay-at-home dads. For every one of them, the decision to confront the higher-ups meant jeopardizing a paycheck their families truly depended on.

...These were ordinary people who did not wait for higher authorities to do what needed to be done. Literature's great statement on unwelcome truth telling is Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People. Something said by one of his characters reminds us of what we admire about our Dynamic Trio. "A community is like a ship," he observes. "Everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm."

When the time came, these women saw the ship in citizenship. And they stepped up to that wheel.

FULL STORY:
http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/2002/poyintro.html