Eichenwald ’ s career now took two paths, as an author and as a Times reporter.

The articles were honored in 1996 with a George Polk Award for excellence in journalism, the first of two that Eichenwald would be awarded.

An article in the magazine Content cited the work by Eichenwald, Gottlieb and two other reporters as the year ’ s best public service journalism.

An Eichenwald article about terrorism that had been championed by Impoco was killed by editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman, leading to a significant dispute between the two editors.

In his 2000 book, The Informant, Kurt Eichenwald, a former New York Times reporter, portrays Whitacre as a complex figure: while working for the FBI as one of the best and most effective undercover cooperating witnesses the U. S. government ever had, Whitacre was simultaneously committing a US $ 9 million white-collar crime.

Eichenwald writes that Whitacre lied and became delusional in a failed attempt to save himself, making the FBI investigation much more difficult.

While still a business book, The Informant was much more of a non-fiction police procedural than any of Eichenwald ’ s other work, depicting the inner workings of the FBI in detail.

* October 27, 2009 ABC Radio National interview with Mark Whitacre and Kurt Eichenwald

According to Eichenwald, preceding the investigation Whitacre was scammed by a group in Nigeria in an advance fee fraud, and suggests that Whitacre's losses in the scam may have been the initial reason behind his embezzlement activity at ADM.

Eichenwald referred to Whitacre's sentence as " excessive and a law enforcement failure " because Whitacre never received credit for his substantial cooperation in assisting the government with the massive price-fixing case.

Eichenwald's account of Whitacre has been called into question by the syndicated columnist Alan Guebert, following the disclosure in August 2007 that Eichenwald paid his sources on another story.

Eichenwald and Kolata both were honored as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for their work.

In August 2007, court documents connected to a child pornography case brought against a former associate of Berry's revealed that Eichenwald had made additional payments in June 2005 via Paypal, totaling at least $ 1, 100 ; some of those payments were made using pseudonyms.

Eichenwald publicly stated that he, his wife, and his minister were working together to rescue what they feared was a child in danger, and that all of the actions they took in June, 2005 were not done in his role as a journalist.

* Two-part Booknotes interview with Kurt Eichenwald on The Informant, February 4, 2001, and February 11, 2001.

Eichenwald had been employed by the Times since 1986 and primarily covered Wall Street and corporate topics such as insider trading, accounting scandals, and takeovers, but also wrote about a range of issues including terrorism, the Bill Clinton pardons controversy, Federal health care policy, and sexual predators on the Internet.

Eichenwald ’ s arrival on Wall Street coincided with the explosion of white collar criminal investigations, and his coverage of finance soon began to resemble the crime beat.

During those years in the mid-to-late 90s, Eichenwald also reported on a number of smaller issues.

Beginning in 1995, Eichenwald also reported on the unfolding price-fixing scandal at Archer Daniels Midland.

The following year, Eichenwald, working with another Times reporter, Michael Moss, reported on the scandals involving the last-minute pardons issued by the Clinton Administration in its final hours.

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Eichenwald reported on the financial structure of al Qaeda, tracing the variety of funding mechanisms it used for its operations.

With the explosion of corporate scandals in 2002 – Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, Tyco and others – Eichenwald returned to his familiar territory, reporting on the unfolding scandals and becoming a television fixture on such programs as Charlie Rose and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in explaining the meaning of the latest developments.

Eichenwald, along with several other Times reporters, was selected as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for his work on the corporate scandals.

Eichenwald ultimately wrote a series of articles about Berry and his activities ; the first appeared in The New York Times on December 19, 2005.

After several months of tension between them, Lipman fired Impoco in August 2007 ; Eichenwald resigned on the same day.

* Two-part Booknotes interview with Eichenwald on The Informant, February 4, 2001, and February 11, 2001.

While that story was never his primary project, Eichenwald used it as the basis of his second bestselling book, The Informant, published in 2000.

In 2000, Eichenwald traveled to England to write about a case involving a mass murdering doctor in a small British town.

Eichenwald returned to The Times later in 1986 as a news clerk for the national desk in New York, participating in the paper ’ s writing program for aspiring reporters.

In 1998, Eichenwald was named to the Times ’ senior reporter program.

In the book, Eichenwald portrayed the Prudential scandal as being about more than just a single bad investment firm.

Upon his return from his book tour for Conspiracy of Fools, Eichenwald cast about for new story ideas, becoming interested in an international credit card fraud investigation that led to his becoming involved in the affairs of Justin Berry, a then-18-year-old who was selling pornographic images and videos of himself both as a minor and as an adult, creating and selling pornography involving other minors and adults, and engaging in prostitution.

Eichenwald denied lying about the additional payments, claiming that he has no recollection of having made them.

Eichenwald is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1995 and 1998, for articles about the dialysis industry and fraud at the nation's largest hospital company, Columbia / HCA Healthcare Corporation.

In a 1987 article about his illness for The New York Times Magazine, Eichenwald wrote: “ I have had hundreds of various types of seizures.

Like Eichenwald, Lieber concludes that Whitacre's lengthy prison sentence was excessive and unjust when one takes into account Whitacre's cooperation in the much larger price-fixing case.

Eichenwald concludes that Whitacre's sentence was unjust because of his mental instability at the time.

Prominent among these is Conspiracy of Fools ( 2005 ) by Kurt Eichenwald which essentially features Fastow as the book's antagonist.

* Kurt Eichenwald, 1979.

Conspiracy of Fools is a book by Kurt Eichenwald detailing the Enron scandal.

Kurt Alexander Eichenwald ( born June 28, 1961 ), is a contributing editor with Vanity Fair and a New York Times bestselling author of four books, one of which, The Informant, was made into The Informant !, a motion picture.

After college, in 1983, Eichenwald worked as an intern with The Washington Monthly, and later that same year joined the speechwriting staff of a presidential candidate.

When Mr. Smith began writing his book The Power Game, Eichenwald became his research assistant, leaving in 1986 to become associate editor at The National Journal in Washington.

By 1988, Eichenwald had been named the Times ’ Wall Street reporter.

In 1992, Eichenwald ’ s role at The Times split.

The book was celebrated in reviews, with frequent comparisons to the bestseller Barbarians at the Gate, and became Eichenwald ’ s first national bestseller.