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Anti-spam software company creates site where public can view Enron emails
(Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Feb. 5--Prosecutors in the Enron fraud trial this week promised jurors they'd get to see some juicy e-mails as part of their inside peek into the fallen energy trader.
So can you, thanks to www.enronemail.com, a new Web site devoted to the frequently titillating treasure trove of a half-million messages sent during Enron's heyday and then right before it crashed into bankruptcy in 2001.
From booty call "contracts" to Linda Lay's comments on Enron founder and hubby Kenneth Lay, it's all there for your perusal.
The Massachusetts anti-spam software company that created the site, InBoxer, has even been so kind as to group the Enron e-mails into searchable categories such as "objectionable" and "marked confidential" to help viewers skip past the boring (recipes, driving directions) and get right to the R-rated.
Office workers will find the familiar chain-joke e-mails, as well as some work humor that doesn't seem as funny today: "This week is not good. I have too large a pile of documents to shred."
InBoxer set up the site to drum up interest in a new product it is launching this month that allows companies to monitor outbound e-mails for potentially litigious material. And as InBoxer Chief Executive Roger Matus notes, what better advertisement than Enron?
"I can't believe some of the things Enron employees put in their e-mail messages," Matus said. "I tried to find the most outrageous e-mail, but couldn't pick one."
The computer geeks at InBoxer have their timing down as far as marketing goes.
The government's massive fraud trial of Lay and former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling opened with great fanfare in Houston on Monday. Internal company e-mails, as well as audiotapes and video, are sure to make the exhibit list.
Enron's e-mails were first made public over the Internet in 2003, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released them after its Enron investigation. But, like many government Web sites, Matus said, "It wasn't very easy to use."
Matus said the Enron database, which displays former employee names and e-mail addresses, is a lesson that things can always come back to haunt you, sometimes in court.
To access the e-mails, first you'll have to create a login ID, and swear those prying eyes are age 18 or older. Also, Apple users may experience some difficulties with the Web site.
Of the 516,000 Enron messages posted on the site, 28 percent are unrelated to Enron business, and 14 percent were deemed potentially offensive, Matus said.
If e-mails aren't enough, there's always Enrontapes.com, a cache of recorded telephone conversations between Enron energy traders during California's electricity crisis in 2000 and 2001. Remember Grandma Millie and where they wanted to jam their megawatts?
The audio clips were posted on the site by a public utilities district in Washington state that is fighting Enron over a power contract.
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