Some e-mail responders tout the company's history and tradition of excellence. Others volunteer that they're Andersen employees -- and say they're looking to get out.

Several large Andersen clients, such as Marriott International Inc., say they remain committed to Andersen. But many others won't say, and the cities of Seattle and Chicago are reconsidering their longtime links to the firm, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The firm's admission that it destroyed subpoenaed documents from its audit of failed energy trader Enron Corp. is just the latest serious blow for the 89-year-old firm, founded by Arthur Andersen in 1913, which has prided itself for decades on its stolid, Midwestern sense of propriety and diligent, rigid accounting standards.

University of Chicago accounting professor Roman L. Weil puts the company's odds of survival at only "50-50." He said the company could end up being harshly disciplined by the Securities and Exchange Commission; could be merged into another firm, perhaps one of the other Big Five accounting firms; or could go bankrupt if scandal-averse clients turn tail and sever their ties to the firm.

"Their future is at risk, and there are many factors for that," said Arthur Bowman, editor of Atlanta-based Bowman's Accounting Reports. "The most obvious is financial. Defending the company will be expensive, even if they don't pay out a dime. There will be many, many lawsuits."

"Arthur is rolling in his grave as we speak," Bowman said. "This company, with its great history, its great legacy. People would have said it was the most arrogant firm in the business, but they wouldn't say that today."

Andersen is one of the the Washington region's largest corporate contributors to charities. Last year, it gave more than $1 million to local charities, and it permitted its employees to spend many hours engaged in volunteer work for nonprofit organizations.

Andersen employees here, in Texas and around the country have been devastated by the company's internal problems, Bowman said. The firm's partners, who have been earning on average about $500,000 a year, are expected to soon be asked to help foot the bill for the company's defense. They are facing difficult choices about whether to stay or leave.

Andersen announced yesterday that it would dismiss the lead partner on the Enron account and place three others on administrative leave. It also said it is putting new management in charge of the Houston office, where the auditing and accounting work for the now-bankrupt energy firm was headquartered.

Andersen said it would also take action against anyone found to have purposefully deleted Enron-related e-mails or letters, as congressional investigators have alleged occurred. The firm said it is continuing to investigate the matter, and other employees found to have been involved will also be fired.

"Based on our actions today, it should be perfectly clear that Andersen will not tolerate unethical behavior, gross errors in judgment or willful violation of our policies," said Joseph F. Berardino, Andersen's managing partner and chief executive.

Arthur Andersen had prospered through the 1990s, enjoying double-digit income growth annually through the 1990s. Its revenue rose from $3 billion in 1992 to $9.3 billion in 2001, fueled by the firm's entry into new lines of business outside of its auditing. It now has 85,000 employees worldwide.

One source of income growth came from outsourcing. The firm took over the internal accounting functions within many companies, including Enron, allowing those firms to focus on their businesses and reduce their payrolls and expenses. It was an especially easy transition if Andersen was also already handling the firms' auditing work.

Also, about a decade ago, the firm's accounting arm began offering consulting services, including management advice and information technology assistance, to some longtime clients -- a practice that later had dire consequences on the management level as the firm's consulting wing vehemently protested the incursion into its home turf.

With that, the baby boomers who headed the firm's consulting and accounting divisions, Jim Wadia and George Shaheen, began a divisive ground war among themselves, in a dispute so extended that some observers at the time likened it to Vietnam. The consulting arm took the matter to an international arbitrator to decide how best to split the two groups apart, resulting in a prolonged bout of negative publicity about the leadership turmoil -- an unattractive prospect for organizations that sold themselves on the basis of their management expertise.

"It was pretty ugly," Bowman recalled. "They hated each other. It affected their every breathing moment they were consumed by it."

The arbitrator partitioned the two firms into separate entities in July 2000. The accounting arm, which had hoped to receive a multibillion-dollar windfall from the consulting arm for the value of the brand name, was disappointed to receive far less. Andersen Consulting dubbed itself Accenture, and Arthur Andersen, the accounting arm, now often drops the "Arthur."

Wadia resigned and then went to an international law firm called Linklaters in October 2001; Shaheen went to Webvan, an online grocery that has since failed. Other prominent executives left soon afterward.

Last year, Andersen was forced to pay $110 million to settle a lawsuit brought by shareholders in the Sunbeam Corp. appliance company alleging that the accounting firm signed off on a company audit that included fictitious profits. On Monday, former Sunbeam chief executive Albert J. Dunlap, nicknamed "Chainsaw Al" for his job-cutting enthusiasm, agreed to pay $15 million to settle a similar lawsuit by shareholders.

Andersen similarly agreed to pay part of a $220 million class-action settlement and a $7 million SEC fine in a case in which another of its clients, Waste Management Inc., overstated its income by more than $1 billion.

Andersen now finds itself in the position that it often warned its clients against risking. In a 1999 report, Andersen executives Andrew Flaig and Gloria Chang told the firm's hospitality industry clients that they needed to be wary of financial reporting fraud, or what Flaig and Chang called "cooking the books."

The executives warned that "widespread publicity involving disclosure of financial statement fraud is clear evidence of how damaging this is to a company."

They said that the resulting costs could include "precipitous drops in market value, . . . multiple shareholder lawsuits and damages material to the entities' financial statements, damaged employee morale and retention and extensive amounts of time diverted."

In the report, they urged their clients to be wary of these warning signs: "Inadequate leadership at the top, weak internal controls, autocratic senior management, collusion among accounting employees and aggressive accounting policies."

-- by Kirstin Downey Grimsley