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"Well, pretty soon, it gets to the point where they've stated these enormous profits, but only a tiny trickle of cash is coming in the door. So they go out and start borrowing massive amounts of money from all these banks. And when the bankers look at Enron's books, they think the company is doing a fantastic job. And not only that, their stock keeps rising. One of the ways Enron was able to fool the analysts was to keep rigging their numbers every quarter, so that it appeared they kept ascending very, very steadily. Which, of course, was a lie.

"The funny thing is, if you look at the commercials Enron used to produce, at the end they always used the same phrase: 'Ask why.' It's almost like the clue the master criminal is always leaving the detective, as a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Enron was practically daring everybody and anybody to 'ask why.' Or 'ask how.' Like, how does Enron make its money?"

Some rank-and-file Enron employees began to see through the smoke and mirrors long before Bethany McLean raised the indelicate question in a February 21, 2001, Fortune magazine article: "How exactly does Enron make its money?" (Gibney shows Skilling petulantly dismissing the article as Fortune's reaction to a more Enron-friendly piece in Business Week.) But most other Enronites remained true believers almost to the very end. Perhaps the most jaw-dropping moment in Enron occurs when Lay, eager to rally support for beleaguered CFO Jeff Fastow, reads written questions from the audience at a company gathering. The first query: "Are you on crack?"

"It's an amazing moment," Gibney said. "I mean, on the same day that Ken Lay is giving that speech, [the staff at accounting firm] Arthur Andersen was shredding over a ton of Enron documents just a few blocks away…When they asked if Lay was on crack, it was like they really were saying, 'What kind of fantasyland are you living in? We're going bankrupt, we're being investigated by the SEC, The Wall Street Journal is writing about us.' "

And yet Lay did read the question. He could have wadded it up and tossed it aside without comment. But he read it. And then he laughed. "It is bizarre, isn't it?" said Gibney. "The degree of self-deception at that company was just extraordinary."

If the videos invite us to giggle at hubris, the audiotapes plunge us into the heart of darkness. While we watch brush fires raging throughout California, we hear predatory Enron traders bragging about their plans to game the deregulated energy market by manufacturing a state energy crisis through selectively shutting down power plants.

"When you hear them chuckling about California going up in flames, it's hard to believe your ears. It's like hearing economic terrorists in action. I'm willing to bet that, in their private lives off the job, they're very decent people, they're very good with their kids, they give to charities, they do a lot of community work. But inside that company, they were economic terrorists."

Here and elsewhere in Enron, Gibney suggests that for an unconscionably long period, Enron remained unfettered by federal oversight agencies because of an under-the-table agreement between President George W. Bush and the man he nicknamed "Kenny Boy." Enron points to a meeting Lay had with Arnold Schwarzenegger before Ah-nold announced plans to run against Democratic governor Gray Davis in a 2003 recall election. Coincidence? Gibney doesn't think so.

Of course, that incendiary speculation is why many commentators are likely to attack Enron. To those critics, Gibney offers a preemptive response: Look at the evidence and draw your own conclusions.

"I don't think there was a meeting where people got together and said, 'Look, we're going to do this, this and this, and Schwarzenegger's going to become governor,' " Gibney said. "But it's clear that Schwarzenegger was invited to that meeting with Lay for a reason. They knew about his political aspirations. And they knew that was important for him to use this whole battle over deregulation to beat up Gray Davis. And ultimately, that's what happened -- with the help of our president. The beautiful thing about what Bush did is, he did nothing. And as Gray Davis says, 'He did it very well.'

"I know that the Drudge Report is going to say -- and there already are other people saying -- that this is an Oliver Stone-like conspiracy theory. But it's not a conspiracy theory. It's a series of facts presented in close proximity to each other, that would lead you to the possibility that such things can happen. Because exactly what they wanted to happen happened. There was a Democratic governor of the largest state -- the seventh-largest economy in the world -- who was a presidential contender, who was suddenly blamed for an energy crisis that Enron caused because [Davis] was suddenly becoming an opponent of deregulation. And the very person Lay met with suddenly becomes governor of California.

"Ask why."