As critics debate whether President Obama's nominee for the SEC, Mary Jo White, is the right choice, we take a look at some of the past’s most memorable heads of the agency.
February 01, 2013
Harvey Pitt 2001-2003
Harvey Pitt was serving as the 26th chairman of SEC when the Enron scandal broke. Democrats heavily criticized him, arguing that he was too close to the accounting industry and that he subverted efforts to tighten regulation in the wake of the Enron scandal and other cases of corporate malfeasance.
Pitt resigned after attempting to appoint William Hedgcock Webster, a former FBI and CIA director, a board member of a company under SEC investigation, to head a commission overseeing the accounting industry. Pitt was later cleared of any wrongdoing by the U.S. General Accounting Office.
