SHE WAS ONLY FOLLOWING ORDERS

Meanwhile, Joyce Reibel has run out of time.
The presence of her lawyer must have been cold comfort as she faced her interrogators last October.

Sitting across the table from her were two prosecutors from the United States Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, an FBI agent and a forensic accounting investigator whose specialty is white-collar rip-offs, bookkeeping fraud, embezzlement, document forgery, ledger manipulations and financial theft.

When they finished grilling Joyce Reibel, the government's lawyers told her that her alibi for the coded financial statements didn't wash. They also told her they thought she knew more than she was letting on.

And so Joyce Reibel, the underpaid secretary, was marched into the grand jury room last week like every other witness. Alone.

And the noose around Governor Fife Symington's neck continued to tighten.