Enron Corp. - University of California | Office of The President

about compliance were widely understood within Andersen to be a directive to destroy any
incriminating documents at Andersen.
965. Andersen's worldwide headquarter's swung into action. After Temple "reminded"
them about complying with Andersen's document retention policy, senior auditors in Chicago began
deleting old e-mail related to Enron by the second week of 10/01. When certain Andersen partners
told Temple that they wanted to retain their e-mail to support their work on Enron, Temple insisted
they delete it. These deleted documents included e-mails relating to Carl Bass's disagreement with
Enron's accounting during the Class Period. According to The New York Times on 3/18/02,
Andersen Houston began destroying documents related to its Enron work:
In Houston on Oct. 10, Michael C. Odom, Andersen's practice director there,
stood in a conference room to remind his accountants about the importance of
destroying documents. According to an investigation by Andersen's lawyers, Mr.
Odom explained that in past lawsuits, Andersen had been forced to produce
documents that should not have been retained.
''If documents are destroyed and litigation is filed the next day, that's great,''
Mr. Odom told the crowd. ''We've followed our own policy, and whatever there was
that might have been of interest to somebody is gone and irretrievable.''
The message had its effect. Andersen personnel headed back to their desks,
and some employees began deleting an unusually large number of e-mail messages,
computer records show. The government said in its indictment that the document
destruction that day had been the first attempt to obstruct justice.
966. On 10/16/01, after a meeting with high level partners in Chicago, Andersen's lawyer,
Temple, sent an e-mail message to the Enron team suggesting changes to memoranda that Temple,
Stewart and other top Andersen officials were drafting to "add back" Carl Bass's previously omitted
criticisms to earlier memos, in an attempt to give the impression that Andersen had been more
critical of Enron's accounting that it really had been. Temple even instructed partners to delete her
name and any references to her from draft accounting memoranda to conceal the fact that Andersen
in-house lawyers were actually crafting what would be held out as work performed and conclusions
- 613 -