A Tale of Two Accountants
by Clay Risen

Hollywood is not much for accountants. Try to think of a movie with an accountant as the hero. There's The Apartment, and there's Nick of Time (though both are movies with heroes who just happen to be accountants, not heroes because they are accountants). There really isn't much. To their credit, of course, accountants are rarely the bad guys, either. It's always the butler who did it; the accountant was busy with his calculator.

But in hearing after Congressional hearing on the Enron collapse, it's the accountant who's to blame — David Duncan, Arthur Andersen's lead auditor for Enron, is the accounting giant's scapegoat in the Case of the Disappearing Documents. A few days after he was fired, Duncan appeared before the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee and took the Fifth.

Of course, no one's buying it. As Rep. James Greenwood (R-Penn.) put it at a recent Congressional hearing, "Mr. Duncan, Enron robbed the bank. Andersen provided the getaway car. And they say you were at the wheel." Duncan may have been running the show on the ground, but it's hard to believe that orders didn't come from higher ups, either in Enron, Andersen or both. In any case, it looks like the accounting profession is about to get its due.

Not so fast. Because just as Duncan is helping "accountant" ascend to rival "lawyer" on the public's shit list, David Walker is emerging as Public Servant No. 1. Walker is the comptroller general, the head of the General Accounting Office and the nation's top bean counter. Recently, he requested detailed information from Vice President Cheney concerning the administration's meetings with Enron officials while formulating its new energy policy. Walker and the GAO want to know whether there was any taint of impropriety — after all, the resultant energy policy fits hand in glove with the long-term goals of Enron — and, not surprisingly, Cheney isn't budging. As a result, Walker is planning to take the administration to court, the first time the GAO has ever sued for access to White House information.

Walker's courage and no-nonsense style in confronting the Bush administration make him a standout in a profession not known for its public visibility. In response to Cheney's accusation that the GAO was going outside its mandate, Walker told the New York Times that, simply, "Talk is cheap." Not one to couch a situation in niceties, Walker said of the vice president's privacy claims: "If all you have to do is create a task force, put the vice president in charge, detail people from different agencies paid by the taxpayers, outreach to whomever you want and then you can circumvent Congressional oversight, that's a loophole big enough to drive a truck through."

Nor is Walker a mere opportunist, taking an easy stand to make himself look better. Just last week the GAO released new rules preventing accounting firms from providing most consulting services — rules that have a heavy bearing on the Enron case, but that have been in the works for over a year. Clearly, Walker is deeply committed to accounting propriety, and it is only now that his commitment is getting the visibility it deserves.

Walker may sound like a number-crunching Clint Eastwood to Duncan's Snively Whiplash, but he's hardly the maverick stranger come to clean up the town. Until his appointment as comptroller general in 1998, Walker was a partner and global managing director of Arthur Andersen's human capital services practice and a member of the board of Arthur Andersen financial advisors. Too bad Walker isn't there anymore; when Andersen CEO Joseph Berardino talks about his company's "covenant of trust" with the public, he probably wishes he still had Walker around as a poster boy.

Duncan represents the worst of the accounting stereotypes — the spineless nerd, greedy and yet beholden to his superiors, unwilling to take the responsibility to say what is right and wrong. Walker stands opposite him as the ideal public servant — an expert in his field, using his knowledge to serve the greater good. Duncan used his skills to exploit the fuzzy math that complex accounting makes possible; Walker uses his to provide the clear and precise reporting that his field is supposed to provide.

Walker's current investigation focuses on Enron, but given how invested Andersen was in the failed company, it wouldn't be surprising if his investigation led him to his former employer. Unfortunately, Walker's sense of professional propriety has its flip side — he has already recused himself from anything that would involve him in investigating Andersen.

Of course, the case may never get that far. Many consider any lawsuit to be Supreme Court bound, meaning that whether the public ever gets the whole story on the Cheney-Enron meetings is out of Walker's hands, and in those of historically more unscrupulous characters. Too bad Walker didn't become a lawyer.

E-mail Clay Risen at risenc@yahoo.com.