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CIA says finds no Enron records for India, China

The US Central Intelligence Agency said it had found no record of any effort by the agency last year in India or China on behalf of the collapsed Enron Corp., which has filed the biggest bankruptcy in US history.

In a reply received on Friday to a January 23 Freedom of Information Act request by Reuters, the spy agency also said it had turned up no analysis by its Directorate of Intelligence on the impact of the energy trader's implosion late last year.

"No records responsive to your request were located," despite a "thorough and diligent" search of those in existence as of February 4, Information and Privacy Coordinator Kathryn Dyer said.

Dyer said the agency, accused in the past of using intelligence information and agents to try to help US companies overseas, had determined that the queries about any CIA involvement in India or China on behalf of Enron last year warranted Reuters' request for expedited processing under the Freedom of Information Act.

Last year, top Bush administration officials including Vice President Dick Cheney pressed Indian authorities to salvage a major Enron energy project in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, government documents released Jan. 23 showed.

The White House said the inter-agency effort, led by National Security Council staff, was justified because the $2.9-billion Dabhol power project was financed in part through the US government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export-Import Bank.

Officials would not say whether the CIA played any part in the inter-agency effort to help resolve problems with the Dabhol plant, the single largest foreign investment in India to date.

In 1996, the Export-Import Bank also provided a total of $10 million in loans to support Enron's investment in a wind turbine project in China.

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