Interview: Cynthia Cooper, Sherron Watkins, Coleen Rowley

On a Saturday morning in December, TIME brought Coleen Rowley of the FBI, Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom and Sherron Watkins of Enron together to talk, for the first time, about their parallel experiences over the past year. The women had never met before, but over breakfast they compared stories and marveled at the similarities: their motivations for exposing the flaws of their institutions, their shock at having their secret actions exposed and then condemned in some quarters, and their enduring love for the ideals of their workplaces. They also discovered they shared much in their personal lives, and they enjoyed cheering one another on. The following is an excerpt of their conversation:

TIME: How do you explain why so many people at your organizations did not do what you did?

WATKINS: I think it’s the value system at the top. [Cooper and Rowley are nodding.] It’s very important that the leaders set the tone. Remember the Tylenol-tampering scare? It threw the company into a tailspin. [But] the chairman of Johnson & Johnson came in, supposedly, and said, “I just looked at our value statement. We have got to do the right thing. We are pulling every bottle of Tylenol off the shelves worldwide.” It cost them $300 million to do, but they set the standard for tamper-resistant products, and in the long run he saved consumer loyalty.

TIME: Do you believe you three have become standard setters?

ROWLEY: That’s the chairman of the board. I am way down the order. All you can do from the lower echelon is try.

TIME: Why didn’t those at the upper echelons try? Or admit their mistakes?

WATKINS: It’s ingrained in human nature to fight and argue. My 3-year-old [Marion] won’t say she’s sorry. She’ll sit in time-out forever.

ROWLEY: It’s even worse in the U.S., with the adversary system and hiring lawyers. No one does anything wrong anymore.

TIME: If the culture comes from the top, how is it that you three didn’t fall prey to it?

COOPER: I think it comes back to values and ethics that you learn through your life. My mother has been a tremendous influence on me: “Never allow yourself to be intimidated; always think about the consequences of your actions.” I think this is a wake-up call for the country. There’s a responsibility for all Americans–teachers, mothers, fathers, college professors, corporate people–to help and make sure the moral and ethical fabric of the country is strong.

ROWLEY: [Stands up and bursts into applause] I don’t care if you’re an FBI agent or a priest or a government official. We are all human, and we are all susceptible to any number of vices and mistakes. All we can do is try to uncover and correct them.

WATKINS: If you just say, “I have this admission or I did this wrong, I am sorry,” human nature is to say, “I understand.”

TIME: Are you known as people who admit when they’re wrong?

ROWLEY: [After a pause] I’m trying to think if I have ever been wrong. [Laughter all around.] I don’t think I am exceptional. I think everyone makes mistakes.

TIME: You’ve all spoken about the importance of role models. Who were yours?

COOPER: I would say Oseola McCarty [the Mississippi laundress who donated a $150,000 scholarship to the University of Southern Mississippi in 1995], Oprah Winfrey, my mother. And Barbara Bush–she’s very comfortable with who she is.

WATKINS: Certainly my mother is still setting the example for me to follow. My parents divorced when I was 14. Divorce wasn’t that common back then, especially in the Lutheran Church. [My mother] said, “I am going up there and kneeling, and I dare them not to give me Communion.”

TIME: And did they?

WATKINS: Yes, they did.

ROWLEY: Right now, I would say that Iranian professor [Hashem Aghajari] who has been sentenced to death [on charges of blasphemy after he gave a speech calling on people not to follow religious leaders blindly]. [But in the past, it was my maternal] grandparents. They didn’t have running water, a bathroom or indoor plumbing until my grandfather was 93. My grandma was orphaned at 11 and went to work to support her brothers and sisters. And my father was orphaned at age 2. He became the town’s postman and walked 14 miles a day delivering the mail. You see somebody who didn’t have opportunities–and I agree that being disadvantaged is very difficult–but what do you do about it? You have to try hard. Even if you can’t win, try hard.

TIME: You are role models to some people. [All of them shake their heads. Rowley crosses her arms; Cooper screws up her face.] Why are you all so uncomfortable with this?

COOPER: We don’t feel like we are heroes. I feel like I did my job.

ROWLEY: One of these days, maybe I will do something to deserve awards, and I have got 40 years to try … The May 21 letter from me? I am repulsed by the idea of thinking that makes me a hero or anything like that…If I jump into an icy river and save a child, and I am lucky enough to get out, then fine. I would hope that I would do that, but maybe not. Maybe I would be a chicken.

TIME: Would any of you go back and change anything you did?

WATKINS: I wouldn’t not do it. [But] what I really failed to grasp was the seriousness of the emperor-has-no-clothes phenomenon. I thought leaders were made in moments of crisis, and I naively thought that I would be handing [Enron chairman] Ken Lay his leadership moment. I honestly thought people would step up. But I said he was naked, and when he turned to the ministers around him, they said they were sure he was clothed.

TIME: What would you have done if you had known?

WATKINS: I would have gone to the board.

TIME: Would it have made a difference?

WATKINS: There’s a slim chance Enron might not have imploded. It’s hard to say. People are much more forgiving than we think. The scary thing is the amount of resistance we met. People I thought were my friends and I thought would support me backed away. They said, “Sherron, you’re on your own on this.”

COOPER: [Nods in agreement] It’s a lonely road.

ROWLEY: I am not a good speaker. If you look at the Senate testimony, I think I set a record for uhs. Sometimes I couldn’t even work out what I was trying to say. But I have no regrets on taking action.

WATKINS: [Addressing Rowley] This is the safety of the nation. It needed to be out.

ROWLEY: I don’t think everything is really rosy and peachy now, and I don’t see any concrete changes that are directly attributable to my actions. But it doesn’t mean you can stop trying. And if I end up flipping burgers, come buy some.

TIME: What price have you paid for these actions?

COOPER: I certainly knew it was possible that I would lose my job. I told my husband that I am going to report to the [WorldCom board’s] audit committee what I need to report. I even cleared some things out of my office. But the fear of losing my job was very secondary to the obligation I felt.

WATKINS: I was really shocked when I saw a detailed memo about the pluses and minuses of discharging me. You think, I am doing this for the good of the company. I have got the best interests in mind. You think the company should be on your side.

TIME: Have any of you been thanked? [All three women dissolve into laughter.]

TIME: O.K., what was your lowest moment?

ROWLEY: There’s no doubt that the lowest moment was 9/11. The towers hadn’t fallen yet, and we were trying to finally get permission from headquarters to seek a search warrant [to get into the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was indicted last December as a Sept. 11 co-conspirator]. This agent [said to me], “This is going to be just like the inquiry at Pearl Harbor. We are going to have to tell the truth.”

TIME: All of you shy away from discussing the fact that you’re all women, but it’s something other people notice. Why do you think there’s no connection?

COOPER: I think it could have just as easily been a man. We are all people who are looking to stand up and give our best. I have always been honest and forthright, and it doesn’t matter who it is I’m talking to.

WATKINS: I do think there’s something to being a woman. There’s a little bit of a boys’ club, whether it’s the golf or the sports talk. I am really uncomfortable with making general statements. But men are more reluctant to put their friends in jeopardy. I don’t necessarily want friendships in the workplace. I think most men have no friendships outside the workplace. [Also] society doesn’t ask women what you do for a living. Your ego or self-worth isn’t [as] tied to what you do.

TIME: Did you love your jobs?

ROWLEY: The idea of this law-enforcement group that is able to solve a crime, get the bad guy and ideally even prevent the crime from occurring? Honestly, I would not want to do anything else. All agents join the FBI with that in mind. We are the good guys. The sad thing is, at some point you see the warping of it, the overlegalization of it, the gaming of the criminal-justice system.

WATKINS: It’s also the gaming of corporate America. Enron was a love-hate thing. The opportunities I was afforded and the deals I got to do and the places I got to see–on that end, it was just stupendous. Then there are the times when you say, Why can’t we do it right? Why do we have to be pushing the accounting envelope?

COOPER: I love my job. I have always loved it. There was an entrepreneurial spirit; it was an exciting place to be.

TIME: Are there any specific things you’ve done to help cope with the stress?

WATKINS: I think the ultimate distraction is a darling 3-year-old. You come home, and you almost have to put that away because they’re wanting books read, games played.

COOPER: Just to get home and hug my girls and my husband. We have strong support systems at home with our families.

WATKINS: When Congress leaked my memos and it was all over the news, we would be watching, and Marion [her 3-year-old daughter] was getting so bored with it. My husband said we wanted to watch the news, and she piped up, “Well, how about some Elmo news?”

TIME: Were you aware of one another, reading about one another?

ROWLEY: I’m not usually focused on business, but when their news broke, I read that and saw some encouragement. The same reason I wrote the letter was the reason for WorldCom and Enron. I thought, Oh, gosh, there’s someone doing the right thing.

WATKINS: I think it’s uncanny what similar stories we have.

ROWLEY: [Addressing Watkins] Whenever you talk, I think, Oh, my gosh, great. She’s saying what I think. [Rowley stands up and pounds her fist into her palm as she says this.]

WATKINS: It’s disheartening to see that the FBI has as many problems as corporate America. In this country, we have a vacuum in leadership. We value the wrong people. Warren Buffett is boring, and he doesn’t give too many interviews, but he didn’t invest in tech stocks because he didn’t understand how they made money. He was right. But we value splashy leaders.

COOPER: People who move to the top are typically racehorses, not workhorses. And they’re very charismatic.

WATKINS: And the dark side of charisma is narcissism.

TIME: Let’s talk about the word whistle-blower. Why don’t any of you like it?

ROWLEY: I hate the term whistle-blower.

COOPER: In elementary school, kids are called tattletales. It has a negative connotation.

TIME: What was the reaction to you in the workplace and on the street?

ROWLEY: Even in my [Minneapolis field] office, with quite a bit of support, still a lot of people are looking at me like, What the heck?

COOPER: You’re going to have people who are supportive, and you’re going to have people who take shots. All that is part of it.

WATKINS: In January and February there were hundreds of e-mails, voice-mails, letters from the Enron rank-and-file employees. There was a sense of overwhelming relief because they had thought the top executives would get away with it. People were high-fiving; they were pumped. Now no one recognizes me.

ROWLEY: In Minnesota, people get over these things really fast. It’s over. This fame thing is greatly overrated.