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Dean Pagani, Rowland's chief of staff and spokesman, last year described that meeting as "nothing more than introductory," a "get-to-know-you type of meeting" whose conversation was limited to Enron's general business affairs and its relationship with Danbury-based FuelCell Energy Inc. Pagani said the meeting did not include discussion of any particular Enron-CRRA project.
But the Enron internal messages exchanged by the Enron officials at the Rowland meeting and other Enron employees show that the meeting had been preceded by nine months of private talks between Enron representatives and top Rowland administration officials, including Peter N. Ellef, then Rowland's co-chief of staff and chairman of the CRRA.
The messages assert that Rowland then became directly involved in Enron's plan to develop and operate an elaborate "fuel-cell farm" in Connecticut, which was spelled out in a memorandum of understanding with the trash agency that was signed soon after the meeting in the governor's office.
The facility was to be built for the CRRA with as much as $206 million in public money, nearly as much as the $220 million the trash agency lost in the deal with Enron that the agency called an "energy-sales swap" but that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal later characterized as an illegal loan.
Rowland insisted last year that neither the fuel-cell farm nor the "energy-sales swap" came up during his December 2000 meeting with the Enron officials.
"It had nothing to do with me," he told the Hartford Courant when asked in February 2002 how neither pending deal could be talked about with the Enron representatives. "I suspect that they probably went to talk to (CRRA) board members, and I'm sure they talked to the CRRA officials about it."
"Have I been involved in CRRA issues in the last eight years? No," Rowland said.
Pagani, after listening Monday to a brief description of the Enron e-mails, repeated the governor's protest.
"It doesn't change anything,'' he said. "With regard to the CRRA/Enron deal, I think the record has shown pretty clearly that it was not a deal that involved the governor. This was a quasi-public agency that acted on its own, the deal was done in public, and there was no need for him to be involved.
"With regard to the fuel-cell project, the governor has throughout his administration been supportive of fuel-cell technology,'' Pagani added. "He's given speeches about it, so if Enron came before him and said they were interested in developing it in Connecticut, I'm sure that, generally speaking, he would have been supportive at that time.
"Again, all of this was before it was revealed that Enron was the company it turned out to be. Enron had a very good reputation in the business community, and there would be no reason not to talk to representatives from Enron or other businesses in Connecticut.''
The bottom line, Pagani said, is that Rowland was "absolutely" not involved in either deal.
Rowland thought key to project
The e-mails, however, say that from the beginning, Enron considered the governor as key to the fuel-cell project, which it viewed as the precursor to the larger and more profitable transaction with the CRRA, the "energy-sales swap." The e-mails say that:
* An Enron vice president, Steven Montovano, successfully maneuvered to "get in front" of the governor regularly to promote the fuel-cell and "monetization" deals, according to a May 2001 communication.
* The company offered a "success payment" in connection with the fuel-cell deal to a Rowland friend and fund-raiser, Anthony W. Ravosa Jr. of Glastonbury, whom it had asked to arrange the meeting in the governor's office.
* After Enron's former chairman and chief executive officer, Kenneth Lay, socialized with Rowland at a Republican Governors Association meeting in Denver in March 2001, a detailed summary of the fuel-cell deal was ordered for Linda Robertson, the company's top lobbyist in Washington. The document, prepared in August, was titled "Rowland Overview."
* Six weeks later, another Enron "government affairs" staffer prepared what she called a "briefing paper" for Lay on Enron/CRRA dealings prior to a conference call with Rowland. The call occurred the next day and lasted an hour, according to several e-mail messages.
* Enron's lobbyists repeatedly reassured colleagues that Rowland himself was supporting the fuel-cell plan, and, after a setback, cited an encouraging conversation with the second-highest-ranking Republican in the state House of Representatives, Rep. Lawrence F. Cafero Jr. of Norwalk, according to a Sept. 18, 2001, document.
* Enron invested $5 million in FuelCell Energy, which the Rowland administration had favored with a $4 million state economic-development loan and a $1.25 million contract at the University of Connecticut. The company was to manufacture the fuel cells for the CRRA-owned "farm" at a Torrington facility Rowland had dedicated months earlier. The governor also was a friend of FuelCell's top executive, whom Rowland had singled out for thanks when signing legislation streamlining the state's siting process for fuel-cell installations.
The prospective Enron/CRRA fuel-cell deal, which was to involve no outlay of capital by Enron but guarantee the company a management fee of as much as $9.6 million in addition to any other money earned from the project, was derailed after Enron's spectacular collapse two years ago.
Enron's filing for bankruptcy protection on Dec. 2, 2001, enveloped the CRRA in a scandal from which it has yet to recover, either financially or politically. Blumenthal is leading state government's effort to recover the $220 million lost in the "energy-sales swap," and a state grand jury is investigating the deal.
The fuel-cell project has drawn far less scrutiny, even though the former president of the CRRA, Robert Wright, has said he first met with Enron officials in March 2000 to talk about "both a possible fuel-cell transaction and a possible role for Enron in the energy-contract buydown."
Similarly, the memorandum of understanding approved by the agency shows it intended to use part of the proceeds from the $220 million electricity-sales swap to pay Enron to provide equity for the fuel-cell "farm."
Several Enron e-mails also make the link. One message, which describes an internal company investigation of allegations by a fired employee who is said to have "closed" the fuel-cell deal, notes that she said it "was not a big deal, but nonetheless it was a deal and a precursor to a larger opportunity" in Connecticut, according to a document dated Oct. 23, 2001.
Ellef, the former CRRA chairman, has said that he was introduced to Enron officials in the summer of 2000 by lobbyist Michael J. Martone, a close friend of and former senior aide to the governor who also was political director of Rowland's 1998 re-election campaign. Martone's employer, the Hartford law firm Murtha Cullina, was paid nearly $300,000 to lobby for Enron.
Regularly "in front of" governor
The e-mails say it was another Rowland associate, Ravosa, who not only set up the December 2000 meeting between the governor and Enron officials in the governor's office, but also arranged other meetings between Rowland and an Enron official and drove a company representative to prospective sites for the fuel-cell farm in New Britain and Waterbury.
Ravosa, a former Republican congressional candidate from Springfield, is a consultant with ties to the energy business. He held a campaign fund-raiser at his home for Rowland 10 months after the Enron meeting in the governor's office. The fund-raiser generated $50,000 in contributions.
"Tony Ravosa is a contact of mine who has had me in front of Governor Rowland on a regular basis, which led to the Connecticut sites," Montovano, the Enron vice president and lobbyist who attended the Ravosa-arranged meeting with the governor, wrote to a colleague in a document dated May 3, 2001.
Meanwhile, the Enron representative Ravosa had accompanied on the tour of fuel-cell farm sites, Rick Whitaker, sent a message thanking Ravosa "for spending so much time with me the last several days," noting that "the support from the local municipalities and the governor which you described is encouraging" and suggesting that Ravosa would be in line for "a success payment to you upon deal closure, to reimburse you for bringing these sites to us." The computer record of the communication is also dated May 3, 2001.
Rowland, who was vice chairman of the Republican Governors Association early in 2001, was at a "business forum/reception" with several other governors that March that also was attended by Lay, according to another e-mail message. "The entire discussion centered around energy," wrote an Enron official who accompanied the corporation's chairman.
The "Rowland Overview" summary was prepared that summer for Linda Robertson, a former Clinton administration official who had become Enron's chief Washington lobbyist. The document does not indicate to whom it may have been sent or whether it simply remained in her computer file.
A few weeks later Montovano wrote the managing director of government affairs at Enron, Richard Shapiro, that he had been talking to the deputy House minority leader, Cafero, whom he described as "a close personal friend" of Rowland.
"Initial feedback from Cafero is still positive," he advised, adding, "Don't panic yet."
Montovano was responding to a message from Daniel Allegretti, who as Enron's general counsel in New England also attended the meeting in Rowland's office the year before.
Allegretti had written Montovano citing the state Department of Public Utility Control's preliminary decision on the fuel-cell project, which in mid-September had rejected plans to use money from a special surtax on utility customers to pay for it.
Allegretti said the decision was "not unexpected," adding that DPUC Chairman Donald W. Downes "has been very supportive, along with Governor Rowland," according to the Sept. 17, 2001, communication.
Rowland, Lay conference call
A message scheduling the Oct. 12 conference call with Rowland is in the e-mail file of Enron's president, Lay, who apparently had directed a deputy to prepare him for the conversation.
The day before the call, Enron government affairs specialist Susan M. Landwehr sent a message asking her colleagues for help in preparing a "briefing paper" for Lay "to use in an upcoming discussion" with Rowland.
Landwehr wrote that she wanted an outline of the company's deal with the CRRA to make sure that "Ken has good information on all the business that Enron is doing in Connecticut."
"Am I also correct that we are in the running to do more business with them?" she added.
Pagani said Monday that he could find no record of Rowland having met "regularly" with Montovano and that it is "not the governor's job to pick sites for projects or make those types of decisions.''
He added that while he didn't want to "question anybody's motivation,'' there had been occasions "when someone has misrepresented a conversation he had with the governor's staff.''
"Anybody could have run into the governor at a meeting or at the Capitol and tried to get their point across, but that doesn't mean that the governor then followed up and took some action based on that conversation,'' the spokesman said.
Similarly, Pagani said the there was no record on the governor's schedule of any conference call involving Lay or any other Enron official on either Oct. 11, when he said Rowland was in Washington, D.C., or on Oct. 12, when Rowland had returned to Hartford.
Pagani confirmed that Rowland was at the Denver RGA reception also attended by Lay, but said "there is no indication that they spoke about anything.''
He also said he had no explanation for the "Rowland Overview" document subsequently prepared for Enron's top lobbyist in Washington.
Finally, Pagani said, the governor did not know that Enron had offered a "success payment" to his friend and fund-raiser, Ravosa.
Federal Election Commission records show that Enron contributed $80,000 to the Republican Governors Association within days of the announcement that Rowland would lead the RGA, which he did from October 2001 to November 2002.
Enron made a $20,000 contribution to the RGA three days before Rowland became chairman, while he was still vice chairman. The company contributed $60,000 more 11 days after Rowland took charge.
About two months later, the RGA fully refunded the political "soft money" from Enron and one of its subsidiaries, after the energy-trading conglomerate had been forced to file for bankruptcy protection.
