In reality, top executives rarely get charged with crimes; not a single indictment has yet been brought in the Enron affair, and even "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap, a serial book-cooker, faces only a civil suit.

THE THREE TIMES A CHARM AWARD - To federal prosecutors who won a conviction of Walter A. Forbes, left, the former chief executive and head book-cooker of the Cendant Corporation, on the third try.

The recent cases of Michael Kopper, the Enron book-cooker, and John Walker Lindh, the Taliban fellow-traveler, both ended with a practice that, according to Stephen Schulhofer, an N.Y.U. law professor, is wrongly considered almost "inevitable" by most players in the justice system: a plea bargain.