The guy to blame for Enron's fall, or just the fall guy?

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WASHINGTON — Andy Fastow's rabbi is dumbfounded. He doesn't recognize the guy he has been reading about since Enron collapsed — a caricature of a prickly, greedy financial genius who cooked Enron books to inflate profits and hide losses, enriching himself in the process.

"He's just never been a dominating type of individual," said Shaul Osadchey, rabbi of Congregation Or Ami in Houston. "He's very unassuming and quiet — not at all pushy. You'd never even know what he did for a living."

Fastow has emerged at the center of the financial debacle that sent Enron into the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, largely due to his complex off-the-books partnerships, now the subject of numerous federal investigations.

Today, the public will see on national television this faceless numbers cruncher — the former chief financial officer of the nation's once-largest energy-trading company — when he is hauled before Congress to testify. But they probably won't hear much. Fastow, 40, is expected to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination after committee members yesterday denied a request by attorneys that he be excused from testifying because it could harm his reputation and serve no "investigative objective."

Andrew Fastow has wrapped himself inside a cocoon of lawyers and handlers and mostly has refused to cooperate with investigators. Family and friends also have shut down, and even his spokesman is circumspect.

But from interviews with community activists, Enron employees and his rabbi comes a contradictory picture of a hard-charging, ambitious finance executive who barely made an impression among movers and shakers in his town.

The father of two sons, 6 and 3, Fastow has been described as someone who didn't relish the ritzy Houston social scene, preferring to coach his sons' sports teams, or play tennis or the trombone. While Fastow was active in civic and charitable causes, and a patron of modern art, few in the community knew him well.

"He was a very low-profile guy," said Ed Wulfe, a Houston shopping-center developer who spearheaded the city's new Holocaust Museum. Wulfe said Fastow helped with fund raising, "but he certainly didn't play a major role."

"I wouldn't know him if he walked into the room right now," said Robert Eury, president of Central Houston, a nonprofit development group.

While former Enron officials Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were the public faces of the company, Fastow was the wizard behind the screen. The heart of the issue is whether Fastow was a renegade executive using the company as a personal piggy bank or a subordinate acting with the approval of the company's board and its leadership, as his spokesman has maintained.

In a scathing report made public Saturday, a special committee of Enron's board of directors blamed the company's fall on massive management failures, particularly Fastow's partnerships. Fastow made $30 million from a few of the partnerships, which he ran with the permission of Enron's board.

The executives who once lauded him now are pointedly distancing themselves. Former Enron chairman Lay "blames Andy for the fall of the company," a friend said. "He feels duped."

And former CEO Skilling, who hired Fastow and approved the partnerships along with the board, has said he had no idea that Fastow took so much money from the deals. "The truth is, Jeff didn't know Andy that well," a Skilling source said. "They never socialized."

And whatever his co-workers thought of Fastow when he was flying high, some pull no punches on his way down.

"He was boorish, and the larger the meeting, the more boorish he would get," a current Enron executive said. "He would set his sights on not the brightest bulb in the box and go after him if he sensed a vulnerability."

The executive recalled a situation when the company was trying to negotiate a deal in Pennsylvania and Fastow didn't agree with the person leading the negotiation. "He just went after the guy," the executive said. "In meeting after meeting, he would bombard the guy with technical questions that he couldn't answer — nor would be expected to answer. It was cruel."

Fastow was born in Washington, D.C., and lived in Arlington, Va., and New Providence, N.J. Fastow, the middle of three sons, had an interest in finance as a young boy, closely following the stock market, one old friend said. He also was president of his high school's student council, a spokesman said.

Fastow graduated from Tufts University in 1983, a joint economics and Chinese major. "He thought Asia was the new economic frontier," a classmate said.

At Tufts he met and eventually married Lea Weingarten, the daughter of a prominent Houston real-estate and grocery-store magnate. The couple earned MBAs from Northwestern University. Fastow launched his career at the Continental Bank in Chicago and moved to Enron in 1990.

Fastow and Skilling reportedly came up with the innovative financing scheme that moved debts and assets off the books and into the partnerships Fastow named for his family, his neighborhood and even Star Wars characters.

Fastow does not appear to live flamboyantly, although he and his wife last year bought a small house in Galveston and in 1998 purchased 68 acres in Vermont. They are building an 11,500-square-foot home in River Oaks, one of Houston's fanciest neighborhoods.

Now a virtual recluse in his home, Fastow has fallen far. In 1999, when he was Enron's 37-year-old chief financial officer, CFO Magazine gave him an award for excellence. Skilling praised Fastow in the article.

"We needed someone to rethink the entire financing structure at Enron, from soup to nuts," said Skilling, then the company's president and chief operating officer. "We didn't want someone stuck in the past, since the industry of yesterday is no longer. Andy ... deserves every accolade tossed his way."

Other Enron developments:

• Like Fastow, Skilling is to appear today before a congressional committee. Unlike Fastow, a spokeswoman said yesterday, Skilling will not invoke the Fifth Amendment, even though his immunity is not guaranteed.

• The deal to revive Enron's flagship energy-trading operation under the control of a Swiss bank is expected to be completed this week. Former Enron traders will be allowed to start trading again soon afterward.

• Enron officials withheld several crucial financial documents from auditors at Andersen for four years, misleading the accounting firm into approving inaccurate financial reports, according to an internal Andersen memo acquired by the Los Angeles Times.

• Senior Enron attorney Jordan Mintz raised red flags more than a year ago about the company's approval of deals with partnerships managed by insiders, new documents show. He has told House investigators he was rebuffed.

• As governor of Texas in 1995, George W. Bush appointed at least two officials recommended to him by then-Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, according to documents released by current Gov. Rick Perry under Texas' open-records law. The officials were Pat Wood, a backer of utility deregulation, appointed to the state Public Utility Commission; and Frank Maresh, promoted to chairman of the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy.

• Labor Secretary Elaine Chao yesterday strongly defended President Bush's proposals to revamp 401(k) retirement-plan laws in testimony before Congress, but Democrats said the proposals don't do enough to safeguard workers' assets, while business groups said companies could be deterred from providing plans altogether.

Information from The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times is included in this report.