Whistleblowers

THE MINE is all about whistleblowers, people who have a conscience and when push comes to shove, are not afraid to act. These are people like Jeffrey Wigand and Erin Brokovich, and others not made famous by a movie.  People like the workers on the Deep Horizon Oil platform that exploded April 20, 2010. Those workers complained that alarms systems that may have detected the impending explosion were disabled throughout the rig because managers were tired of "false alarms".  And people like the employees at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine, who claimed that methane sensors were disabled, again by management, to stop the "false alarms".  The resulting methane explosion killed 29 mine workers men with families. But whistleblowers can also be mothers, teachers, and healthcare workers who see things they know are wrong, or maybe they just have a gut instinct. Something doesn't feel right.  Don't discount the value of whistleblowers.

Dr. Jeffrey Wigand
Brown and Williamson Tobacco

Dr. Jeffrey Wigand is the man who blew the whistle on the tobacco industry. His story was made famous by the movie The Insider.

In the early 1990’s, Dr. Wigand was a Vice President at Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, lived with his family in an 8,300 square-foot mansion in one of Lousville, Kentucky’s wealthiest neighborhoods, drove a company-provided Mercedes, and earned well over $300,00 a year. By the end of his battle with his employer and the industry, he was divorced, living alone in a small apartment and making $30,000 a year. But his work with federal regulators ultimately cost the tobacco industry over $245 billion.

The Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, then the third largest American tobacco company, hired Wigand in 1989 as Vice President of Research and Development. With a Ph.D. in biochemistry, he was a top scientist for the company and his purpose was to help develop a “safer” cigarette. However the company (B&W) soon abandoned that effort. In his work, Wigand found that B&W had extensive internal, secret documentation proving that nicotine was addictive. He also discovered that B&W was manipulating the levels of nicotine in cigarettes to more rapidly addict smokers, and that the company also added ingredients to tobacco. These included ammonia, which heightened nicotine’s effect and accelerated addition, and coumarin, which was added to enhance flavor. Wigand soon learned from a National Toxicology Program study that coumarin is similar to rat poison and had been shown in tests to cause various cancers in lab rats and mice. Wigand lobbied the President of B&W, Thomas Sandefur, to remove the toxic coumarin, but Sandefur refused, claiming that removing coumarin would hurt sales.

These circumstances put Wigand at odds with the company. Due largely to his continued lobbying for safer cigarettes and his insistence that coumarin be removed, B&W fired Wigand in March of 1993. He received a severance package and continued medical insurance for his family (one of his children suffered serious illness that required expensive, daily treatment) only after he signed a confidentiality agreement.

A few months after firing Wigand, B&W cutoff Wigand’s severance pay and his family’s medical insurance coverage. They filed a lawsuit against Wigand, contending that he violated his confidentiality agreement by discussing the details of his severance package. B&W later reinstated his pay and benefits only after Wigand signed a much stricter, lifelong confidentiality agreement.

By this time, Wigand’s story had attracted attention in Washington D.C. The Food and Drug Administration began building a case against the tobacco industry and asked Wigand to act as an advisor to the FDA in its investigations. Wigand agreed, but also notified B&W. Wigand’s decision did not violate his agreement with B&W, but he felt it proper to tell them. Soon afterward, he received multiple anonymous telephone threats against his family, specifically against his young daughters. Out of fear for his family, he began carrying a handgun.

In 1994, executives from the seven largest American tobacco companies, including B&W’s now CEO Thomas Sandefur, testified before Congress that based on their tests, they believed that nicotine was not addictive. Although this incensed Wigand, he remained quiet, complying with his agreement with the company.

In June of 1994, the New York Times printed several articles based on a raft of secret B&W documents provided by Merrell Williams, a paralegal. Williams worked for a law firm that B&W had hired, and the documents revealed some thirty years of testing and knowledge B&W executives and scientists had that its products were addictive and caused various lethal diseases. The documents also revealed extensive efforts B&W made to hide this information from the public and the FDA. The importance of these actions by Merrell Williams cannot be overstated.

Also in June, Wigand went to work for American Broadcasting Company (ABC) as an advisor, as ABC sought to defend itself against a $10 billion dollar lawsuit the Philip Morris Company had filed against ABC. The suit was brought after ABC ran a story that claimed Philip Morris manipulated nicotine levels in its Marlboro cigarettes and other brands. The suit itself, meant to intimidate ABC and the media in general, ultimately had little merit and was soon settled out of court. ABC stood by it’s story that cigarette companies were increasing nicotine levels, but issued a limited apology for stating that cigarette companies were using large quantities of nicotine from outside suppliers.

By that time, Wigand’s story was circulating in the media and in August of 1994, he reluctantly agreed to give an interview to the news program 60 Minutes. His trepidation was fueled by the direct anonymous telephone threats. However, after giving a lengthy and damning interview to 60 Minutes (a CBS program), CBS attorneys panicked and advised that the company not air Wigand’s interview. CBS was getting pressure from B&W and cited “tortious interference” a term referring to Wigand’s confidentiality agreement with B&W. More importantly, Andrew Tisch, the son of CBS Chairman Laurence Tisch, was also the Chairman of Lorillard Tobacco Company. Pressure to abandon Wigand and drop the 60 Minutes interview came from the deep inside CBS, and in November of 1994, CBS killed the Wigand interview.

At the same time, the Justice Department was investigating the tobacco industry and several states had launched lawsuits against the industry to recover decades-long state Medicare costs and future damages caused by tobacco use. Wigand provided a detailed court deposition in Mississippi’s suit and in it, he revealed that Thomas Sandefur lied under oath when he testified before Congress that he believed nicotine was not addictive. Wigand also revealed that B&W worked continuously to cover-up decades of internal research and documentation that proved they knew the dangers of tobacco. The deposition was sealed by the court.

Unwilling to back down, B&W launched an aggressive smear campaign against Wigand. They hired public relations expert John Scanlon, who was, not coincidentally, a close personal friend of 60 Minutes Executive Producer Don Hewitt. Scanlon pummeled Hewitt with aledged misdeeds by Wigand. Reporters in Louisville, Kentucky, home to both B&W and Wigand, were fed numerous lies of Wigand’s personal life. And chillingly, during this time Wigand discovered a 38 caliber bullet in his mailbox.

Not intimated by B&W, the Wall Street Journal ran an article in January of 1996 about Wigand’s story. The article included information leaked from his deposition in the Mississippi case.

In early 1996, B&W issued a 500-page smear document that aledged endless misdeeds by Wigand, ranging from filing false damaged luggage claims to shoplifting to lying about his home address. They worked to plant damaging stories against Wigand in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications. But the effort by B&W backfired. The Wall Street Journal examined the “evidence” against Wigand and found most of the claims baseless. The paper described B&W’s smear document as “chilling insight into how much a company can find out about a former employee and the lengths it may go to discredit a critic.”

By this time, B&W had cut off all benefits to Wigand and his family. He took a job as a science teacher at a Louisville, Kentucky high school at a salary of $30,000, a tenth of his former pay. The Mercedes, the vacations and the golf club memberships were gone. His wife filed for a divorce and he took up residence in a small apartment, alone. He soon built a reputation as an excellent teacher, even winning the national Sally Mae First Class Teach of the Year Award, but his students, his colleagues, and his family were stunned when a Louisville television station broadcast several false accusations planted by B&W: wife beater, shoplifter, among other claims. The assault on Wigand’s private and professional life was intense.

In February of 1996, with so much information now public and retribution from B&W unlikely, CBS finally ran its interview of Wigand on 60 Minutes. Shortly afterward, the offices of Wigand’s attorneys were burglarized. Then in May, 1996 Vanity Fair magazine ran a detailed article on the Wigand’s story titled “The Man Who Knew Too Much”.

Over the course of 1997 and 1998, with abundant evidence from Wigand’s testimony, from B&W’s secret internal documents and from other sources, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, and Minnesota each settled their lawsuits with the tobacco industry for a total of $39 billion. The tide had turned. By the end of 1998, the remaining 46 states settled their lawsuits against the industry in a single multi-state agreement for a total of $206 billion, bringing the settlements total to a record $245 billion. This was a watershed event in the government’s battle against Big Tobacco and Wigand’s information was pivotal to its outcome. Wigand was vindicated. And as a condition of the settlement, the lawsuit B&W had against Wigand was dropped.

In November of 1999, the movie The Insider was released, starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe.

After the 1998 settlement Dr. Wigand went to form the non-profit organization SMOKE-FREE KIDS, which seeks to educate children of all ages, of the hazards of tobacco use. SMOKE-FREE KIDS also provides scientific and technical input to governmental organizations developing policies or regulating tobacco products and creating smoke-free environments. For his ongoing work against the scourges of tobacco, Dr. Wigand has received many prestigious awards and honors from several organizations, universities, cities, American states, and even countries.

As a side note, roughly 450,000 Americans still die every single year from the use of tobacco products.

Next up: Erin Brokovich.

Copyright © Daniel Cobb