Bush Buddy Ken Lay Gets Angry

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From the NYT:

"After waiting 13 weeks to respond to his accusers, Kenneth L. Lay lost his legendary cool on the witness stand Wednesday.

Just minutes into his cross-examination by a prosecutor, John Hueston, Mr. Lay, Enron's founder and former chief executive, testily accused Mr. Hueston of personally preventing him from repaying a company credit line Mr. Lay had used to shore up his personal finances.

"Mr. Hueston, you know you blocked it," Mr. Lay said, his voice booming. "It's a simple answer."

Mr. Lay also struggled Wednesday to restrain his agitation when Mr. Hueston suggested that Mr. Lay had tried to tamper with potential government witnesses.

Before he took the stand, a number of legal experts had predicted that Mr. Lay would use the same folksy charm he employed during his heyday as the public face of Enron to seek to win over the 12 jurors deciding his fate in the criminal fraud trial here. But during his three days so far as a witness, Mr. Lay has found it harder and harder to maintain a kindly grandfatherly image.

Instead, Mr. Lay, 64, has become increasingly agitated, at times reacting impatiently even to his own lawyer, George McCall Secrest Jr., and lashing out at what Mr. Lay portrayed as a cabal of former Enron executives, investors and journalists whom he repeatedly blamed for the company's downfall in late 2001."

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