Bill Collins was becoming dangerously erratic. He was literally endangering Enron’s reputation by telling outrageous lies to Enron’s partners such as Microsoft and Sun. One of his bosses described him as the “highest maintenance employee ever”. And his relationship with Scott Yeager was just… it makes me feel sorry for Scott Yeager. Scott brought him on board because he had one pretty good idea, and then he quickly turned into a crazy person. He was alternately angry at Scott and trying to kiss up to him. One of the best exchanges during the Broadband trial was when the amazingly talented attorney Tony Canales had this exchange with Mr. Collins:
Q. Did you, sir, at any point in time describe your relationship to Mr. Yeager as a marriage without sex?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, was that ever a good marriage, by the way?
A. Indeed, it was.
Q. Did the marriage turn sour?
A. At times.
Q. Was the marriage confrontational?
A. Oftentimes.
Q. Were you the cause of the break up of that marriage?
A. I believe there’s two sides to every story.
Q. Yes. Do you agree, sir, that you are the kind of person that — at least you’ve described — have you ever described yourself as a person with a chip on his shoulder?
A. Yes.
Q. What does that mean?
A. It means I struggle emotionally with all kinds of things.
So you can see at the minimum he has no idea how he’s perceived by others.
This gem goes on to emphasize the point. It is a letter from Bill Collins. Backstory: at a meeting, Bill Collins threatened Joe Hirko. The thought of that alone cracks me up. I can just imagine Hirko sitting there in his calm composure and Bill Collins becoming every more insane by the second. Anyway, as a result of the threat, Scott Yeager dismissed him for a week. When he came back to work he had that little note prepared.
To my ear, these words sound so whiney and manipulative and passive-aggressive. He basically seems to be saying that “you’ve forced me to be quiet so please don’t punish me for being quiet, boo hoo.”
His next bullet point actually comes close to demonstrating that he has some perception of what he’s done wrong, but then he fumbles and it becomes pretty standard Bill Collins fare: whiney, manipulative, passive-aggressive:
Obviously he knows there’s something wrong with going over the heads of his managers, but he seems to think that if he is more collaborative, it’s all good. The problem was bigger than that. Bill Collins regularly took credit for other people’s work. He claimed to have invented InterAgent, the brainchild of Rex Shelby, Larry Ciscon, and David Berberian, and the cornerstone for their company, Modulus, which Enron acquired. In other words, Bill Collins wouldn’t know InterAgent if it punched him in the nose. Copypasting from this post about Bill Collins, here are more of his crazy lies:
Collins was impeached numerous times on the stand. But let’s remove that fact. Let’s just agree for a moment to conform to Bill Collins’ world where everything he says is true. These are some of Bill Collins’ claims:
He invented InterAgent.
He was going to start a company with Rex Shelby, David Berberian, Scott Smith, Scott Yeager, and some others (this one has a lot of tangents, so I will refer back to this.)
He was responsible for the idea to attend a trade show in Las Vegas. (This, incidentally might be true. What grates on my nerves about it is that he is bragging about it. He does that a lot. Everything is his idea.)
He was responsible for designing the trade show booth.
He was going to make $100 million “in the next few months”.
He also admits that “I was intolerant of opinions besides my own.” And in one of his many temper tantrums when he wanted to be made Vice President, he threatened Joe Hirko.
The big problem with Bill Collins is that he was a know-it-all and a man who just didn’t think it fair that he wasn’t getting what he deserved. He believed that because he had a journalism degree, he should be put in charge of all the press releases for Enron Communications. He believed that because he had written his stupid little plan, he should be Rex Shelby’s boss. Oh, and he hated Rex Shelby.
The fact that the DOJ manipulated him like a fine Italian puppet is shameful. Though I find his actions at Enron ridiculous, he is in fact a sad figure. He obviously had very real problems and the fact that the DOJ used him to attempt to impeach the Enron defendants speaks to the desperation of the prosecution’s case.
This is what you need to know before we discuss John Bloomer.
(Oh, and Bill never apologized to Joe Hirko for threatening him or anything else.)
