“Until last month, lying to your own company’s lawyers was not a crime. Now it is. Defense lawyers and civil libertarians are expressing alarm at the government’s aggressive use of obstruction of justice laws in its investigation of accounting improprieties at Computer Associates, the giant software company.” Among sources of the pressure to cut a deal with prosecutors rather than fight: in March Jamie Olis, a mid-level executive at natural gas firm Dynegy, was found guilty of accounting fraud in a scheme to please Wall Street by hyping earnings and sentenced to 24 years in prison. The guy would have been a lot better off to have gunned down someone on the street instead, or even tried to grow psychedelic mushrooms (see Dec. 6). (Alex Berenson, “Case Expands Type of Lies Prosecutors Will Pursue”, New York Times, May 17)(& letter to the editor, Jun. 22).
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