This is the story of Rebecca Smith and John R. Emshwiller, the two reporters who led the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Enron and uncovered the unorthodox partnerships at the heart of the scandal through skill, luck, and relentless determination.

It all started in August 2001when Emshwiller was assigned to write a supposedly simple article on the unexpected resignation of Enron CEO Jeff Skilling. During his research, Emshwiller uncovered a buried reference to an off-balance-sheet partnership called LJM. Little did he know, this was the start of a fast and furious ride through the remarkable downfall of a once highly-prized company.

Written in an intense, fast paced narrative style, 24 Days tells the gripping story of the colossal collapse of what would become the world’s most notorious corporation. The reader follows along as Smith and Emshwiller continue to uncover new partnerships and self-dealing among the highest levels of Enron’s management. As they publish articles detailing their findings in the Journal, Wall Street and individual investors have a crisis of confidence and start selling Enron stock at unprecedented levels of volume. In the end - 24 short days later - Enron had completely collapsed, erasing 16 years of growth and losing $19 billion in market value while watching the stock drop from $33.84 to $8.41. Not only was the company destroyed, but investors and retired employees were completely wiped out-all the while Enron executives were collecting millions of dollars.

Climaxing with this 24-day period, this book shows the reporter’s-eye view of a David-and-Goliath battle between journalists and a giant corporation. Each day a new story uncovered another fact; each day the company issued denials. And when the investigative stories reached critical mass and momentum, the stock market cast its final vote of no confidence. In the tradition of Indecent Exposure and Barbarians at the Gate, two other gripping narratives that began as a series of Wall Street Journal stories and ended up as books that defined an era, 24 Days brings the importance of great investigative journalism to life.

Some days, the newspaper gods refuse to smile. The keyboard won't cough up coherent sentences. A crucial source doesn't call back. The wall clock, warning of approaching deadlines, seems to be running a time zone too fast. Within minutes of getting that call on the morning of August 14, 2001, Jonathan Friedland, The Wall Street Journal's Los Angeles bureau chief, suspected it was going to be one of those days.

The caller was Mark Palmer, the public relations chief for Enron Corp., the Houston-based energy giant that the Journal covered out of its Los Angeles office. Normally, Palmer's call would have gone to the paper's national energy reporter, Rebecca Smith, or her de facto backup on the beat, John Emshwiller. But Smith was on vacation and Emshwiller was out of town on a story.

The PR man got right to the point. "Jeff Skilling, our CEO, is resigning," Palmer said. "Ken Lay is going to step up and assume the president and CEO duties."

You're kidding me, Friedland replied. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"No," said Palmer. "There'll be a press release in about an hour." There would also be a conference call with Lay and Skilling for the press and stock analysts at about 12:30 P.M. Los Angeles time.

"Why's Skilling quitting?" asked Friedland, still trying to absorb the news. He knew that Skilling had been Enron's golden boy for more than a decade and had just gotten the chief executive's job a few months earlier. It was unthinkable that he would quit so abruptly.

"Purely personal reasons," said Palmer. "The board didn't ask him to resign, nor did Ken Lay. It's got nothing to do with Enron or its future. He'll elaborate on the call." With that, Palmer said a hurried good-bye.

Friedland sat back in his chair in his cluttered corner office, his face furrowed in concentration. After more than twenty years as a journalist, the last ten with the Journal, he'd handled many big, unexpected announcements from companies, but this was Enron, one of America's premier companies, talked about in the same breath as General Electric and Microsoft and IBM. In a decade and a half, it had transformed itself from a sleepy natural gas pipeline company to a trading colossus with products ranging from gas and electricity to space on the information superhighway and insurance against inclement weather. In 2000, Enron's revenues had topped $100 billion, earning it seventh place on Fortune magazine's widely followed list of five hundred largest companies. Revenues for 2001 were on course to hit nearly $200 billion, an astonishing growth rate for a company of that size.

Enron's management team — headed by its chairman, Kenneth Lay, who had been chief executive for fifteen years before Skilling took the helm — was one of the best. Skilling was only in his late forties. Everybody expected him to be running Enron for years. Instead, he'd barely gotten the seat warm.

And what was this about "purely personal reasons"? Enron's explanation sounded implausible. In Friedland's experience, almost nothing was more important to a corporate chief than staying at the top once he'd gotten there. Maybe Skilling has some fatal disease he doesn't want to talk about, Friedland thought. Or, the bureau chief wondered with a pang of professional worry, is something going on inside of Enron that we should know about and don't?

Even as Friedland mulled over the mystery, he knew he wasn't the person to solve it. Silently he cursed the rotten timing of the announcement. Why did Smith have to be on vacation this week? Ironically, his energy reporter had been trying to schedule time off for most of the summer, but work had been too hectic. Working out of...

Rebecca Smith is a national energy reporter in the Los Angeles bureau of the Wall Street Journal. She won the Gerald Loeb Award in 1996 and 2001.

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