Every story must have its hero as well as its villain, and this week it was the turn of Enron's whistleblower, Sherron Watkins, to tell Congress who were the guilty men.

It was easy to find Committee Room 2322 in the drab Rayburn office building - just follow the mass of television crews who were milling outside its entrance two hours before the hearing began.

Dressed modestly in light blue, Ms Watkins strode nervously into the room to the glare of lights and flashbulbs and took her seat.

There was a slight sigh in the crowd, among the hundreds of members of the public who had queued to see the "Enron miss", when she finally made her appearance, delayed after another hearing over-ran.

Then the fun began, as each Congressman brought his own prop or metaphor to describe the situation.

One even produced a copy of the children's book, "The Emperor's New Clothes", which he read aloud, to emphasise the deception and self-delusion at the company.

Ms Watkins was not slow to blame former Enron boss Jeffrey Skilling and chief finance officer Andrew Fastow as the villains of the piece, who deliberately sought by false accounting to inflate Enron's profits and conceal its losses.

Fear factor

Nor was she slow to describe the atmosphere of intimidation she felt at Enron.

She said she feared that if she brought her worries to her boss - Mr Fastow - it would mean immediate job termination.

And she said that after she took her complaints to the head of Enron, Ken Lay, Mr Fastow tried to seize her computer as well as get her fired.

Ms Watkins even began to fear for her personal safety, and took copies of her documents which she hid in a safe box.

She described Mr Skilling and Mr Fastow as highly intimidating, very smart individuals, and said that the knowledge of how Enron's accounts were being distorted was widespread in her department.

Gaining in courage as the four-hour hearing progressed, Ms Watkins said of Mr Skilling's denials that he authorised the suspect deals, 'if it doesn't make sense, don't believe it.'

Corporate loyalist

And she criticised the 'gargantuan' sums of money - up to $2m - that were paid to certain key executives as the crisis broke to keep them from leaving for 90 days, saying she was 'outraged' and 'appalled.'

But Ms Watkins was much kinder to the head of Enron, Ken Lay, who met her in August after she wrote an anonymous letter about her worries.

She said he took her concerns seriously and promised to investigate - but did not appear to understand the problem even after she showed him a 'smoking gun'.

Passing through the crowd, committee aides distributed copies of the memo which she said she showed to Mr Lay, outlining the fact that Enron was using its own stock to cover its losses.

Ms Watkins explained why she did not bring her concerns to outside agencies like the SEC, which regulates financial disclosure rules.

She said that she did not want to hasten Enron's demise, and she wanted to give the company time to fix the problem before putting the jobs of her 20,000 co-workers at risk.

And she refused to be drawn on broad legislative change, insisting that Enron had broken existing accounting practices and everyone had colluded with it.

Support

Her most emotional moment came when she was asked about the suicide of Cliff Baxter, the former Enron executive who was critical of the deals. Her voice shaking, she said she did not want to discuss his death.

As the hearings ended, the committee chairman, Congressman Billy Tauzin, called her an example to America who had shown the real meaning of corporate loyalty.

In an impromptu press conference, he claimed that 'we now have a clear understanding of who was to blame' for the scandal, and implied that her boss, Mr Skilling, had not told the committee "the whole truth."

As Ms Watkins, looking almost uncomfortable with her newly elevated status, left the hearings, shielded by her lawyer from the cameras and questions, she was already entering her new role.

No longer an Enron executive, she had crossed the line into celebrity and symbolism as the person who had shown there was still integrity left in corporate America.

But the glare of publicity, even favourable publicity, could prove even harder to bear than the burden of being 'out on a limb' at Enron for so many months.