Lynn Brewer

Last updated

Lynn Brewer, known as Eddie Lynn Morgan before her marriage, is the author of the book Confessions of an Enron Executive: A Whistleblower's Story. [1] She is also the founder of the Integrity Institute which provides analytical research and education in the area of "structural integrity," and she speaks at conferences or similar events for honorarium of $13,500 or more. [2]

Contents

Career at Enron

In 1998, Brewer was hired as a senior specialist at Enron. Her job at Enron was to head up a team that examined natural gas and power contracts, and write brief summaries for managers. Brewer was a regular speaker at universities, where she lectured students on the importance of ethics in business. She provided the keynote address at the Sarbanes-Oxley conference hosted by the New York Stock Exchange in 2003. Brewer co-authored an article in Business Strategy Review with noted management expert Oren Harari on leadership. [3]

Dispute about whistleblower claim

A USA Today article by Greg Farrell, based on interviews with two dozen former colleagues, found that her claim to be a former Enron Executive and as the first whistleblower at Enron could not be substantiated. Her former colleagues described her claim as exaggerated. [3] Former Enron employees claimed that she mainly did clerical work at Enron, and lost her job after failing to complete an assignment to teach a workshop in London. According to USA Today, Brewer took advantage of her similarity to a real whistle-blower at Enron, Sherron Watkins. Brewer said that "...we'd hope that all the time we're confused with her (Sherron Watkins)." [4]

In her defense, Brewer claimed that she headed up a contract briefing team, she controlled more than $1 million in salaries and overall budget, therefore, she considered herself an executive. [3] Brewer stated that she was out speaking publicly about Enron well before Watkins was ever on the cover of Time magazine. [3]

Lynn Brewer told Puget Sound Business Journal she would ask USA Today for an apology for the 12 October 2007 article that questioned her claim to be an Enron whistle-blower, and that otherwise she would take her complaint to the Washington News Council, an organization that handles media disputes. [5]

Books published

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enron</span> Defunct American energy company

Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 as a merger between Lay's Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 20,600 staff and was a major electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper company, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion during 2000. Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years.

A whistleblower is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whistleblowers can use a variety of internal or external channels to communicate information or allegations. Over 83% of whistleblowers report internally to a supervisor, human resources, compliance, or a neutral third party within the company, hoping that the company will address and correct the issues. A whistleblower can also bring allegations to light by communicating with external entities, such as the media, government, or law enforcement. Whistleblowing can occur in either the private sector or the public sector.

John Clifford "Cliff" Baxter was an Enron Corporation executive who resigned in May 2001 before committing suicide the following year. Prior to his death he had agreed to testify before Congress in the Enron scandal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesselyn Radack</span> American attorney

Jesselyn Radack is an American national security and human rights attorney known for her defense of whistleblowers, journalists, and hacktivists. She graduated from Brown University and Yale Law School and began her career as an Honors Program attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Sherron Watkins is an American former Vice President of Corporate Development at the Enron Corporation. Watkins was called to testify before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate at the beginning of 2002, primarily about her warnings to Enron's then-CEO Kenneth Lay about accounting irregularities in the financial statements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coleen Rowley</span> American FBI agent and whistleblower

Coleen Rowley is an American former FBI special agent and whistleblower, and was a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) candidate for Congress in Minnesota's 2nd congressional district, one of eight congressional districts in Minnesota in 2006. She lost the general election to Republican incumbent John Kline. Rowley is well known for testifying as to concerns regarding the FBI ignoring information of a suspected terrorist during 9/11, which led to a two-year investigation by the Department of Justice.

<i>Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room</i> 2005 American film

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a 2005 American documentary film based on the best-selling 2003 book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, who are credited as writers of the film alongside the director, Alex Gibney. It examines the 2001 collapse of the Enron Corporation, which resulted in criminal trials for several of the company's top executives during the ensuing Enron scandal, and contains a section about the involvement of Enron traders in the 2000-01 California electricity crisis. Archival footage is used alongside new interviews with McLean and Elkind, several former Enron executives and employees, stock analysts, reporters, and former Governor of California Gray Davis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bunny Greenhouse</span>

Bunnatine (Bunny) H. Greenhouse is a former chief contracting officer Senior Executive Service of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. On June 27, 2005, she testified to a Congressional panel, alleging specific instances of waste, fraud, and other abuses and irregularities by Halliburton with regard to its operations in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. She described one of the Halliburton contracts as "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career".

Cynthia Cooper is an American accountant who formerly served as the Vice President of Internal Audit at WorldCom. In 2002, Cooper and her team of auditors worked together in secret and often at night to investigate and unearth $3.8 billion in fraud at WorldCom which, at that time, was the largest corporate fraud in U.S. history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jordan Mintz</span>

Jordan H. Mintz was the former Managing Director for Corporate Tax at Enron and a whistleblower during the Enron scandal.

<i>The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron</i> 2003 American film

The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron is an American television movie aired by CBS in January 2003, which was based on the book Anatomy of Greed by Brian Cruver. The film, which stars Brian Dennehy, Christian Kane and Mike Farrell, and was directed by Penelope Spheeris, was a ratings hit for the network.

The Whistle blower Week is the name given to a series of events in Washington, D.C. meant to raise awareness about whistle blowing. There were two whistle blower weeks which took place in Washington in two different years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enron scandal</span> 2001 accounting scandal of American energy company Enron

The Enron scandal was an accounting scandal involving Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas. Upon being publicized in October 2001, the company declared bankruptcy and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen – then one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world – was effectively dissolved. In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in U.S. history at that time, Enron was cited as the biggest audit failure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas A. Drake</span> Former NSA senior executive, military veteran, and whistleblower (born 1957)

Thomas Andrews Drake is a former senior executive of the National Security Agency (NSA), a decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, and a whistleblower. In 2010, the government alleged that Drake mishandled documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. Drake's defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project. He is the 2011 recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathryn Ruemmler</span> American lawyer

Kathryn "Kathy" Ruemmler is an attorney who formerly served as Principal Deputy White House Counsel and then White House Counsel to President Barack Obama. Previously a partner at Latham and Watkins co-chairing its white-collar defense group, Ruemmler joined Goldman Sachs in 2020 as a Partner and Global Head of Regulatory Affairs. In 2021, she was promoted to Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel.

Philip Harlan Hilder is an American criminal defense lawyer and founder of the Houston law firm Hilder & Associates, P.C.

National Whistleblower Appreciation Day is an annual recognition of whistleblowers whose actions have protected the American people from fraud or malfeasance. Each year since 2013, both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives have passed resolutions designating July 30 as National Whistleblower Appreciation Day. The 2021 Senate and House resolutions designating July 30 as National Whistleblower Appreciation Day were passed in July, with Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) leading the Senate resolution effort and Representatives Jackie Speier (D-CA), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), and Kathleen Rice (D-NY) leading the passage of the House resolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frances Haugen</span> American engineer and whistleblower

Frances Haugen is an American data engineer and scientist, product manager, and whistleblower. She disclosed tens of thousands of Facebook's internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and The Wall Street Journal in 2021.

References

  1. Brewer, Lynn; Hansen, Matthew Scott (4 October 2004). Confessions of an Enron Executive: A Whistleblower's Story. AuthorHouse. ISBN   1418485365.
  2. "Lynn Brewer Honorarium" (PDF). lynnbrewer.info. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 September 2009.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Farrell, Greg (12 October 2007). "The Enron whistle-blower who wasn't". USA Today. pp. B1–B2.
  4. Farrell, Greg (12 October 2007). "Watkins' fame helped Brewer get attention". USA Today. pp. B2.
  5. Lang Jones, Jeanne (29 October 2007). "Enron Author Says She'll Ask Paper to Apologize". Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle).