Irwin Stelzer, contributing editor for the Weekly Standard and a columnist for the Sunday Times of London.

To date, Stelzer still has not disclosed to readers how much he was paid to serve on an Enron advisory board that he helped organize. In a Weekly Standard piece about Enron last November, Stelzer defended the company by stressing there was "no indication that the mistakes were other than honest ones, or that investors were deliberately kept in the dark or misled about the company's finances."

In that piece, Stelzer told readers about serving on the advisory board, but not that he was paid tens of thousands of dollars. This came after years of writing favorably about Enron without giving readers a hint of his financial ties to the company.

Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard.

Not much better than Stelzer's situation. Kristol collected $100,000 for serving two years on the same lightweight Enron advisory board while editing a weekly magazine that routinely covered energy and deregulation, policies Enron was actively trying to shape. It wasn't until Stelzer's column last November that readers were told about Kristol's Enron involvement. Just how much Kristol pocketed was revealed only later, by other publications. If there's an ethics crime for Sullivan to prosecute, it's the Weekly Standard's nonexistent conflict-of-interest guidelines.

Last week, the New York Times reported that Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition, was given a plum, $10,000-per-month consulting gig at Enron at the request of Bush strategist Karl Rove. The clear implication being that the Bush camp was trying to win over Reed as an ally by using Enron's payroll. Was a similar strategy at work with Kristol? Kristol was not known as a Bush booster -- he backed Sen. John McCain in the Republican primary. Could the board membership have been designed as a way to quietly lead him to the Bush camp? Only Enron execs know the answer to that question.

Peggy Noonan, columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

The conservative opinion maker outed herself last Friday; in a column critical of Enron and its culture of wealth, she informed her readers that she'd once done speechwriting for the failed Houston energy company. Like almost everyone else involved, however, Noonan had trouble coming right out and telling readers how much she pocketed. Instead, she wrote that "if memory serves," she earned between $25,000 and $50,000 for her work. But even those numbers were hard to come by -- readers had to calculate on their own the number of hours she worked (between "100 to 200 hours"), and multiply that by the rate she charged ($250) in order to get the final eye-popping invoice.

Noonan then admitted the speech she wrote for Enron wasn't very good and that only portions of it were even used. Yet going by her high-end estimate of 200 hours billed, Noonan spent five weeks straight, working 40-hour work weeks, to deliver contributions that, she conceded, "weren't helpful."

After initially criticizing Noonan, Sullivan reversed course, writing that he'd been "a little harsh" on her and that Noonan had been "had" and "used" by the energy giant. Some at Enron might quibble with that assessment.

Lawrence Kudlow, cohost of CNBC's "America Now" and an editor for National Review Online.

Kudlow earned $50,000 for a year's consulting and two speaking fees. In his National Review column on Monday, Kudlow claimed he had been "completely forthcoming with respect to my brief consulting role with Enron and the fees I received for this consulting."

Not quite. Kudlow didn't reveal his generous fees until Sullivan began his Enron pundit watch. And that was after Kudlow had already written about the company without letting readers in on his Enron finances.

When Kudlow finally did come clean, he explained he had been "attracted by the personable Kenneth Lay." Not Lay's checkbook, mind you, his personality. That was odd, because in his previous column Kudlow undressed the "characters" at Enron (presumably including Lay) who had "no moral fiber, no character, no courage and no corporate responsibility."

Also worth noting is that it took Kudlow several months to even address Enron's Page 1 debacle. That seems like an odd oversight for somebody with the title of "financial economics editor." Did the Enron money help keep Kudlow quiet?

Paul Krugman, columnist for the New York Times.

This whole game of gotcha began when the New York Times, deep in a recent Enron news story, reported that Krugman had once received $50,000 to serve on Enron's now famous advisory board. Months earlier Krugman himself had informed readers about his Enron work but conveniently left out the five-figure number. Same was true when he wrote a puffy Enron piece for Fortune magazine in 1999; the advisory board was mentioned, handsome paychecks were not. (Today, Krugman is among Enron's harshest critics.)

Sullivan's probably correct in his surmise that the numbers were originally left out because most Times readers, and even Fortune's white-collar readers, would probably be stunned to read about that kind of pay for two days' work.

But Krugman, who cut his Enron ties when he joined the Times in order to comply with the newspaper's strict conflict-of-interest policy, flagged his association well before Enron cratered, which is more than any of the other pundits can say.

Recent Stories