Washington — The House subcommittee on oversight and investigations has scheduled a hearing into the destruction of thousands of Enron-related documents for Thursday.
The tentative witness list includes fired Arthur Andersen auditor David Duncan, legal department attorney Nancy Temple and chief executive Joseph Berardino or another top-ranking Andersen official in his place.
It was uncertain whether Duncan would appear voluntarily.
"We have made it clear that we'll be prepared to subpoena any reluctant witnesses," said Ken Johnson, spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, of which the subcommittee is a part.
Johnson would say only that "a number of people have approached the committee about immunity, but we have not offered it to anyone nor have we seriously considered it up to this point."
"We're very interested in finding out where Andersen is in its internal investigation" of the Enron affair, "and we want to examine administrative and disciplinary actions taken in the wake of the disclosure that documents were destroyed," Johnson said.
Temple, an Andersen lawyer in Chicago, e-mailed a copy of the firm's document-destruction policy to the Houston office where Duncan and other accountants worked on the Enron account.
Appearing Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Berardino defended Temple's sending the e-mail, saying "Nancy just told people to use their judgment. She did not instruct them to do anything, to my knowledge."
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