"Today's verdict is wrong... The reality here is that this verdict represents only a technical conviction."

Arthur Andersen issued this statement on June 15, 2002, six months after Enron filed for bankruptcy. The firm had just been found guilty of destroying evidence -- thousands of pages of Enron-related material that had been shredded at the prodding of David Duncan and Nancy Temple.

As a firm, Andersen was finished even before the trial, decimated by client defections once it became clear that this time the Justice Department was not going to look the other way. From the beginning through the bitter end, Andersen took the position that virtually everyone involved in the Enron scandal to one degree or another would embrace. Andersen claimed it was a victim -- A victim of an unjust, politically motivated prosecution and a victim of Enron itself.

Andersen's reaction was typical of Enron employees and Wall Street also. In the aftermath of one of the largest corporate scandals in American history, almost nobody was willing to admit they did anything wrong.

Andersen's conviction was later overturned because the judge's instructions were technically flawed -- although they see the reversal as vindicating them, it did not. It was a technicality. Either way, Arthur Andersen has  been destroyed, Enron has destroyed themselves, and the rest of us are left to "ask why."