Andersen Lawyer Silent 138 Times

Nancy Temple, a lawyer for accounting firm Andersen being quizzed about her role in the shredding of Enron Corp. documents, cited her 5th Amendment right to keep silent 138 times Friday.

Temple was deposed by lawyers who had filed a class-action suit against Andersen, which approved Enron’s financial statements. In an unusual move, a federal judge in Houston permitted Temple and eight other Andersen employees to be questioned much earlier than such a case would normally allow.

“We were just trying to find out if someone would tell us who ordered the destruction, who knew about it, precisely what the process was and what documents were destroyed,” said Trey Davis, a spokesman for the University of California Board of Regents, the lead plaintiff in the class action.

Lawyers in the case said they had anticipated Temple’s refusal to answer all substantive questions. She is a key figure in the case because she sent an e-mail from Andersen’s Chicago headquarters to the Enron team in the Houston office Oct. 12, reminding them of the accountant’s policy on document destruction. Only essential material should be saved, Temple wrote.

“It’s pretty clear from the context and the wording of her e-mail that she has considerable [legal] exposure,” said Eli Gottesdiener, a Washington lawyer representing Enron employees who lost money in their retirement accounts.

“Her taking the Fifth is a mixed blessing for us,” Gottesdiener said. “A judge or jury can draw what’s called an ‘adverse inference’ from someone taking the Fifth. On the other hand, we didn’t get to hear what she had to say.”

Temple’s lawyer, Mark Hansen, said in a statement after the deposition that his client “has done nothing wrong.”

Lawyers in the case are privately speculating that Temple is likely to become a witness in the Justice Department’s criminal case against Andersen on a charge of obstruction of justice.

“The pressure on the Justice Department to get a conviction now, to come up with a good case, is enormous,” said one attorney, who did not want his name used. “They need to rope in the Chicago office,” to show that the document destruction was not merely an isolated action by a few auditors but an organized attempt at a cover-up.