The Insider - Articles

EW DAILY, "CIGARETTE BURNS"

    Al Pacino responds to Mike Wallace's wrath. The ''Insider'' star says the ''60 Minutes'' anchor has no reason to be hot about the reality-based movie.  by Liane Bonin

    When the team behind CBS' ''60 Minutes'' discovered that Al Pacino's new movie ''The Insider'' takes a warts-and- all look at the show's behind-the-scenes battle to air a 1995 segment about a tobacco-company whistle-blower, they began grousing to the media. Correspondent Mike Wallace, for example, offered his critique of the movie's blend of fact and fiction even before he had seen a frame of celluloid, claiming he had been ''used in a dishonest way'' by the filmmakers. Wait, isn't that what scam artists say whenever ''60 Minutes'' does one of its hidden-camera exposés? 
    Pacino -- who plays ''60 Minutes'' producer Lowell Bergman -- admits he sees "a certain amount of irony" in the situation. But he also feels Wallace's pain. "I know he has concerns, which I think is natural and which I sympathize with," says the 59-year-old actor. "Whether it's an interview that's written about you or a performance that you do on screen, you're sensitive to yourself, and there's a reluctance to see [the finished product] for whatever it's worth." Still, Pacino believes the star reporter may change his tune after he watches the movie. "I hope his reaction will be positive," Pacino says. "Whatever he does in the picture, there is redemption in the end, and this is drama, something that's heightened. But I don't want to be presumptuous in saying he came off okay to me, since I'm not him."
    Pacino, who has never been interviewed by Wallace, dismisses the complaint that the film will mar the reporter's legacy: "He's done such great things, and that's what he'll be remembered for." Despite the conflict, what Pacino remembers Wallace for has nothing to do with "60 Minutes" or the tobacco brouhaha. "The first time I ever saw him, I was a kid in New York and I was passing Rockefeller Plaza, and he was in a window there doing something on radio," says Pacino. "I remember looking at him, and he waved at me. And I thought, nice guy, huh?" Maybe if he knew Pacino would grow up to make "The Insider," Wallace would have used a different hand gesture.

THE NEW YORK TIMES, "HOW A WRITER WENT FROM
PRINCETONE TO MAKING A FARCE ABOUT BAY OF PIGS"

    (thanks curiouscat for this article)

    Sunday March 18 05:00 AM EST, By DOUGLAS McGRATH [article excerpt]
    The same casting agent boldly cast me [Douglas McGrath] again in "The Insider," as a private detective investigating Russell Crowe's past. I had two scenes: one in which I interview his wife, seeking to dig up dirt on him, and another much later, where I appear at his school.
    All my lines were on my first day. On my second day, I simply had to walk straight past Russell Crowe as he spoke on a pay phone. Meanwhile, Michael Mann, the director, would be upstairs with Al Pacino, simultaneously shooting the other end of the call. Because it was a highly emotional scene — for them — Michael said we would not rehearse it. "Just walk straight past Russell Crowe," he said as he went upstairs.
    I waited in a small room for my cue. I could not have been more relaxed. They'd flown me out first class, put me up at the Four Seasons, sent a car for me. "I've come a long way from the old tutoring days," I thought. The young man at the door, wearing the headset that let him know where Russell Crowe was in the monologue, gave me a five-fingered countdown and then dropped his arm like a flag. Out the door I came.
    Right away, there was a little problem. When I had been told to walk straight past Russell Crowe, the hall was empty and he was as visible as the Statue of Liberty. Now, the hall was swarming with extras playing high school students. How could I walk straight past Russell Crowe if I couldn't see him?
    My heart began beating hyperactively, as if there were a child in front of me with math homework. Soon enough, though, I spotted him. He was about 20 yards away, and I bore down on him. Then there was another hitch. I saw that if I were to walk straight past him, I would collide with the sound man holding the boom, the microphone suspended from a long rod. He was standing next to the camera directly in my path. But ever quick on the McGrath toes, I thought: "No problemo. I'll just veer past Russell Crowe." And sure enough, smooth as butter, I made a subtle swing to the left and strode out of the scene.
    From a few floors away, Michael yelled, "Cut!" Then he yelled, "Cut, cut, cut!"
    Utterly relaxed, I crossed my arms and rocked on my heels. "Somebody must have botched a line!" I thought. But when Michael came around the landing, he inexplicably headed straight for me. I looked behind me to see who was in for it. My body temperature dropped when I saw that no one was behind me.
    And then he said my name in a tone that made me understand how he'd made Daniel Day-Lewis run so quickly in "The Last of the Mohicans."
    "Doug!"
    But why is he saying my name? How could this be my fault? I didn't have any lines. All I had to do was walk . . .
    "Doug! Didn't I say walk straight past Russell Crowe?"
    It was that. The walking straight past Russell Crowe thing. I quickly looked around. The whole room was staring at me. No one was moving. I had everyone's attention in just the opposite of the way I wanted. My throat started pulsating, like something on a log on the Animal Channel.
    "But," I said in a voice so high that I flinched to hear it. "But I couldn't go straight past him because as soon as I got next to him, I realized I was going to hit the man holding the, uh— — "
    It was at this moment that a calamity occurred that will hover over my face on my deathbed like a phantom. I forgot the word for "boom." I am a director. There are only a few things on the set that I know with any confidence: the camera, the boom and my chair. But in my panic, with everyone staring at me, most particularly Russell Crowe, who was holding the phone so angrily I thought it would shatter, the word just left my head. Still I had to finish my sentence so I said, "I couldn't because I thought I was going to hit the man with the mike pole!" The mike pole? Everyone winced and exchanged pitying looks.
    Finally, Michael broke the agonized silence. "Let's do it again," he said patiently. "You walk straight past Russell Crowe, but this time we'll move the man" — he smiled kindly — "with the mike pole."
    As I waited for my cue in that little room, my heart was pounding as if I were going to give Hamlet's soliloquy.
    When I came out the door my face bore a look of berserk determination. If my grandmother had been on the floor reaching for her medicine, I would have stepped on her if it meant not walking straight past Russell Crowe.
    Just as I went past him, I heard Michael yell cut. I nearly fainted. Everyone froze. Russell glared at me. I heard Michael's feet slapping down the stairs as he made his way toward me — and then passed me and spoke to Russell. Apparently, he'd blown one of his lines.
    I looked at Russell with a certain satisfaction. "Not so easy, is it there, big guy?" I thought smugly.

FRONTLINE, LOWELL BERGMAN INTERVIEW

"There's a major difference between 'All The President's Men' and 'The Insider,'" Lowell Bergman has said of the comparison between the 1976 film on Watergate and Hollywood's new version of the events depicted in FRONTLINE'S report, "Smoke in the Eye." "In 'All the President's Men,' the editors and reporters are heroes. That's not the case here."

What is the case, Bergman believes, is that "60 Minutes," one of America's most venerated news programs, made an epic mistake in not airing an exclusive interview with tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand until the substance of Wigand's claims had already been made public by others. Bergman speaks of his "astonishment" and "disillusion," but he stops short of branding it a "betrayal." The same cannot be said of "60 Minutes" correspondent Mike Wallace and executive producer Don Hewitt, who have not hesitated to use the word--and others less kind--when asked about Bergman's own decision to go public with his version of the matter.

For months leading up to the November 5, 1999 release of Hollywood's "The Insider" (in which Bergman is portrayed by Al Pacino), Wallace and Hewitt railed against Bergman as a self-promoting traitor to the news division who began work on his "Hollywood revenge" even before leaving "60 Minutes." They called the film an inaccurate record of events and an unfair characterization of their respective positions on the decision not to air the Wigand interview. In an early review, Frank Rich of the New York Times agreed that "'The Insider' fudges chronology and makes Mr. Pacino's Bergman into a superman that even the real-life prototype finds a bit 'too neat.'" But, Rich continued, as Hollywood history lessons go, "It is no more fictionalized than was 'All the President's Men,' or, for that matter, 'Schindler's List.'" On this last point, Bergman, who was interviewed for FRONTLINE's "Smoke in the Eye" (April, 1996) and co-produced FRONTLINE'S "Inside the Tobacco Deal" (May, 1998), largely agreed: "It's not a documentary," he told Time magazine. "It's more of a historical novel."

At the start of a week when the storm over the CBS/Wigand decision once more swirled intensely and the national press largely fixed on the personalities--who was talking to whom; charges and countercharges--FRONTLINE spoke with Bergman. He began by saying how the release of the movie has brought him back into contact with Jeffrey Wigand, who now lives and works in an apartment on the outskirts of Charleston, South Carolina, running "Smoke Free Kids," a foundation he formed to teach children about the dangers of tobacco. Bergman then told FRONTLINE what he feels "Smoke in the Eye" was all about.

Given the numerous television and print stories, and Hollywood's soon-to-be released "Insider," is there anything under-reported about the CBS/Wigand decision?

The original "60 Minutes" story was stopped in mid-stride. It wasn't done. We were still reporting it. Now, that was extremely important to me in terms of the meaning of what was going on. And it's not explained in the movie. That's a little too complicated, I guess, for Hollywood. I tried to keep pushing, but it didn't get in. From a journalism point of view, it's extremely important because, in the cases of ABC/Philip Morris or other related matters, it's usually a question of the story gets on the air and then there's a lawsuit or something happens and that results in whatever is going on. In this case, it was really pre-censorship. This was self-censorship.  There was no lawsuit pending from Brown and Williamson. As far as we knew, there was no communication from Brown and Williamson to CBS about the matter.

Is this what you meant back in mid-November, 1995 when you said to the New York Times that "the rules got changed in the middle" of reporting this story?

Yeah, the rules got changed in the sense that. . . Let's put it this way: There was no rule that said that if someone had a confidentiality agreement you shouldn't try to get them to talk. The rule was that, if what they have to say is newsworthy, then it's fine. And, in fact, the general counsel [Ellen Kaden] said, when asked, Well what does this mean about FBI agents who have confidentiality agreements? Is it illegal for them to talk to us about 6E material, or potentially illegal, if they talk to us about investigative information? Or a CIA guy? Or anybody like that. And her response is, "That's fine, you can do that." So there's no question that it was fair game to use confidential information from the government. But the new rule was: Don't use confidential information if it comes from the inner-workings of a Fortune 500 company, where the source has signed a confidentiality agreement. And don't try to get the person to talk, because that will be seen as "tortious interference" with their contract.

Were you familiar with the concept of "tortious interference"?

The meeting I went to at Black Rock [on September 6, 1995] was the first time anybody ever mentioned the words tortious interference to me. It was explained in more detail at a subsequent meeting with the general counsel.

Today, is "tortious interference" on your mind when reporting a story?

No, no. At the time, I wrote a memo about a week after the final decision came down to kill the story. The memo said, So is this the new rule: that no one in the newsroom is supposed to gather information when somebody has a confidentiality agreement, particularly with a large corporation? And I never really got a formal answer to the question other than, "Oh no no, this is one case. This is a special case." How do you know if it's a special case or not? The reality is that, with the exception of an article in the Wall Street Journal no publication, either legal journal or anything else I've seen has ever taken the notion seriously. In fact, there have been a series of law journal articles that said this was ridiculous. . . It was explained at one point that, in fact, if Wigand had told us information that was untrue -- let's say he fabricated everything he said on camera--there would have been no tortious interference. So the truer the story the greater the damages. I think I said in "Smoke in the Eye," this was a psychedelic experience, you know?

Were you disappointed with the network lawyers?

The problem isn't so much the conduct of the lawyers coming up with warnings or new concepts. The question is what is management's reaction to that? . . . So at the end of the process, when the general counsel delivered her final opinion [not to air the Wigand interview], which was October 2nd of 1995 -- at that point, we had no indication from an executive at CBS that this was the decision. And I called [Eric Ober], the then President of CBS News, the next morning and I said, You never said anything at the meetings. What's the position of the company on this? That's when he said to me, "The corporation would not risk its assets on this story."

How well did Ober and the lawyers know what Wigand had to say?

Initially, when the word came that we had to go meet with the general counsel, I prepared a script that was very rough-- sound bites with sort of rough narration in between--of what the Wigand interview that we had already done might look like as a piece. That was for the meeting on the 12th of September. Then, after that, towards the end of September, as we were awaiting this so-called second opinion from an outside counsel, which we all assumed was going to just confirm what the general counsel said, I prepared a rough assembly on videotape and showed that to Hewitt, Ober, and Wallace. So they knew what we were killing. I didn't want any ambiguities here about what was in the works.

How was the rough cut received?

Hewitt jumped up and down and said, "Pulitzer Prize." In fact, he was prescient: When the Wall Street Journal ran some of the material on its front page, they got the Pulitzer Prize. But they didn't run it until the middle of October, at which point Wigand was free to talk to whomever he wanted to.

The Wall Street Journal piece ran on October 18, 1995--

In that same issue--in the back pages--was a report based on an SEC filing by CBS News Inc. that indicated that Ellen Kaden, the general counsel, was going to get some portion of $8.7 million on the completion of the [CBS merger with Westinghouse]. And then an examination of the actual document revealed that the president of the News Division was to get $1.2 million in stock options that he would have to cash in. . . When you have an attorney giving you advice, it would be nice to know what their financial relationship is to the advice.

Was the merger money necessarily a sinister influence on the Wigand decision?

No, Larry Tisch says he wasn't involved at all. But I'm not an idiot either. In court, there's a difference between hard evidence and circumstantial evidence. There is no hard evidence that the money involved in the merger, in some way or another, made people come up with the idea of tortious interference as a way to stop this story. On the other hand, there is a whole series of circumstances which, I think (a) should have been reported by "60 Minutes" in that November [12th of 1995] broadcast, which is, How much money were people going to make? I mean, in the SEC filing the actual chapter is called "Persons who will profit from this merger" and it lists Kaden and Ober. Now we don't know what other people had--if they weren't corporate officers of some kind, then they don't have to report it. So Hewitt's an employee, for instance, so you don't have to report what he might make. But, it was clearly a lot of money at stake at this time.

The subject of the merger was brought up at my very first meeting at Black Rock. . . We didn't know at the time that Brown and Williamson Tobacco was in the midst of selling $35 million worth of cigarette brands to Lorillard Tobacco, a wholly-owned, privately-owned subsidiary of Loews Corporation owned by the Tisch family. . . But we did know that Jeffrey Wigand was to be interviewed by the Department of Justice as part of a criminal investigation of potential perjury on the part of the seven tobacco CEO's. One of those CEO's was Andrew Tisch, president of Lorillard. . . In the news business, the best way to deal with those kinds of conflicts is to lay them all out on the table.

And that wasn't done.

That wasn't done. And, specifically, what wasn't done was the Monday before the censored version of the story ran, information about the financial interactions here was in the studio introduction of the original piece. And, after a meeting on Monday, it was agreed, apparently by Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt and Eric Ober--after a heated meeting that I was in--that they were going to take it all out.

Was there a moment when you felt a first sense of betrayal, if that's the word for it?

I wouldn't call it betrayal. I would say that it was astonishment on my part. After the September 12th meeting, I thought I had an understanding with Mike Wallace in that meeting that I would be sort of the fact person and he would get up, if you will, and jump up on the table--which he's good at. He's been doing it a lot in the press recently. And he didn't do it. He raised a question about the merger and that was it. And then she [Kaden] denied it and then we went on. And Hewitt didn't jump on the table. . . Here's some guys who are--and Cronkite says this in "Smoke in the Eye"--here's some guys who are in their seventies, have had the most successful careers in the television news business in the history of the United States, they're multi- multi-millionaires. They like to get on TV and say they'll do any story that comes along they think is true. They think the story is true, they think the story is worthwhile, and they're just not doing anything. They're sort of saying, "Oh, we'll wait for the next opinion." Well, it was clear the next opinion was going to be, "Forget it."

Hewitt's now saying that he would have had to have been part of an armed guerrilla group taking over the CBS transmitters to get the piece on the air over the objections of the general counsel and the executives.

That's malarkey. These guys, all they had to do--it may not have been successful, but, to satisfy me, at least--I expected them to raise some hell and maybe threaten to go public. . . From the beginning, Mike made it clear that [he wasn't going to resign over this] and that meant from the beginning that we had no bargaining chip. . . The story did not run here in the end until it was all published basically in the Wall Street Journal. There was never any risk taken. They decided to go with a censored version because they knew that the story was coming out one way or another. "So, let's get ahead of the curve and talk about how we've been censored by the general, you know, the corporation." I told them I wasn't interested in that kind of story. They said, "Okay, Phil Scheffler," meaning the senior producer, "will write the script." He tried. He failed. They came back to me and said, "Okay are you going to do it?" At that point, Wigand was tied up with Scruggs and it looked like he might be testifying. So, I thought, we might actually be able to run the story if he testified. That didn't happen and, on top of that, they pulled out all references to financial, if you will, remuneration for people involved in the decision-making process. That was the last straw for me.

But you didn't resign.

No. My calculation, at the time, became: I could resign, as some of my friends in print suggested, quietly, and walk out the door and forget about the whole thing. I contemplated resigning and going on the front steps and holding a press conference. But the problem there was that Wigand was still my confidential source, if you will. So I could not reveal his name and, by doing something like that, I would probably just get him in more trouble, and not be able to help him. So my compromise position was that I'm going to stick around here as long as I can and use their system to get this story out one way or another. In the back of my mind, in terms of my self-interest, you have to understand that, having been in the business for twenty years, that I know that the producer is expendable, that, if they're going to blame anything on anybody, it's going to be the producer. The correspondent is never wrong. Mike Wallace is making that absolutely clear now, publicly.

Now, Wallace says, basically, it was a "48-hour mistake" that he corrected on his own without the "tutelage" of Lowell Bergman.

If that's what he wants is a 48-hour mistake, then so be it. But it is a mistake. The mistake is not to fight the company when it's doing something that potentially is destroying not just privileges that you use to make a living, but also when the company is cutting somebody loose for the wrong reasons.

While Wallace was having his 48 hours, what were you doing?

Number one, for me, at this moment, is that I had been involved in a process over a year and a half of trying to convince [Wigand] that he should tell his story in public, face on camera, not be a confidential source; that he should get out there because a) the story needed to be told and b) that the story would be more effective to tell it without any anonymity; that he should count on us, at least, for a joint defense in a libel proceeding; and that, by airing the story, once we had vetted it for truth, that that would provide [Wigand] with a certain degree of insulation or protection. He wouldn't be an easy target, an anonymous leaker somewhere that they can go after. And, to my surprise, I'm ordered [by CBS counsel] not to have anymore contact with him. At one point, I was ordered out of his house by the legal department. I was told not to do anything that might indicate to Brown and Williamson that we even knew him or were checking out any of the information that he may have imparted to us. I was not to do anything to help him. So that was a personal crisis for me that I don't think was shared by anybody else. No one else had had that sort of real personal contact with the guy or his family.

Do you still have a relationship with Jeffrey Wigand?

I would probably not be in touch with Wigand today if all of this hadn't happened. There's plenty of people I've dealt with on a single story who I'm friendly with, but I don't have reason to interact with them. But this thing has become a five-year saga.

And now the saga continues with the "Insider" about to be released.

[Wigand and I are] in synch, I think, at this point about the movie. . . As I read ["The Insider"], it's basically about censorship. . . The fact is that network television news is censored, mostly self-censored. And the networks won't do a story about it. That's how bad it is. They'll deny it, when they know it's true.

You say "self-censorship" and not regular old censorship.

I'm not sure that it's new. It's always difficult with any publication or broadcaster to take on a subject or an institution that is as big as you are, or bigger, that has some commercial link, especially, to your organization. It's always difficult. . . What has been adjudicated and established in the wake of Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement is the ability of the press to basically write or broadcast almost anything about the government. There's very few restrictions in that way. It's not true when we're talking about private power, especially major Fortune 500 corporations, or people worth more than, say, a billion dollars.

What a thing to say. You can take down the President of the United States--

But don't screw with General Electric.

TIME MAGAZINE

"Truth & Consequences The Insider poses tough questions about credibility and integrity, both on the screen and off"
NOVEMBER 1, 1999 VOL. 154 NO. 18, BY RICHARD LACAYO

Here's how art imitates life. It's the spring of last year, and Mike Wallace--immemorial TV journalist, much honored anchor of 60 Minutes--is on the phone to film director Michael Mann. Mann is making a movie about one of the less exalted episodes in Wallace's career, the time four years ago when 60 Minutes suppressed its story on Jeffrey Wigand, a tobacco-industry whistle blower. Mann's film moves on two tracks. One is the anguished dealings between Wigand and Lowell Bergman, a 60 Minutes producer who is leash holder and hand holder for the tormented Wigand. The other is the no less anguished dealings between Bergman and his friend and mentor Wallace, who (at least onscreen) ultimately caves when the corporate powers want the story killed.

Wallace had persuaded Mann to let him see an early version of the screenplay. Now he has called to ask for factual corrections and other changes in scenes that make him look vainglorious or blind to journalistic ethics. "His language is very acute," recalls Mann. "Stunningly funny and smart and ironic. He gave this long speech. I told him I'd have to use it in the film!" Which Mann did. It became an onscreen outburst that Wallace delivers sarcastically to Bergman, his once devoted younger colleague: "Oh, how fortunate I am to have Lowell Bergman's moral tutelage to point me down the shining path, to show me the way!"

So there you go. How art imitates life is bumptiously, changing it around so that the story tells better. What's so upsetting to Wallace is that as he sees it, Mann has changed not just the details of the Wigand story but also the crux of it, making Wallace one of the heavies in a drama about nothing less than integrity--who has it, who lacks it, who's willing to pay the price for it.

Mann's film, The Insider, which opens around the country next week, is also a drama about credibility. So the movie asks if Bergman can trust the insular and somber Wigand, who says that Brown & Williamson, the tobacco company where he once worked as chief of research, knowingly added cancer-causing chemicals to its products. Can Wigand trust Bergman, who keeps pushing him to go public with his story, though it cost him his severance pay, his peace of mind and his marriage? Can Bergman trust Wallace? And can anybody trust 60 Minutes, the most lustrous of TV newsmagazines, if it runs when Big Tobacco huffs and puffs at its door?

As it happens, the debate that has blown up around The Insider is also about credibility. Although neither Wallace nor 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt has been allowed to see the film in advance of its release, the two argue that it merely reflects the point of view of Bergman, played by Al Pacino, who now works as a free-lance documentary producer and who was a consultant on the film. Wallace insists that throughout the whole fight, he and Bergman "were two peas in a pod, stood shoulder to shoulder" in their determination to air the interview. But the film sums up Wallace's final position in a single devastating moment, after Hewitt nixes the Wigand piece, when Wallace looks at Bergman and says briskly, "I'm with Don on this."

Two weeks ago, Hewitt also came out swinging. The Insider is being released by Touchstone Pictures, a division of the Walt Disney Co., which also owns the ABC-tv network. Talking to the Washington Post, Hewitt pointedly recalled that Disney was charged with squashing a segment of ABC's 20/20 that probed allegations of pedophilia at, ahem, Disney World. In the interim, however, Hewitt appears to have decided that controversy just sells tickets, so he's sounding cooler. He swears he's not upset by the movie. "I'm not. I'm really not."

Mann says the film is faithful to the truth in its large outlines, although, he admits, some scenes and dialogue were invented. "The big, broad truths of this are all public record," he says. "In that sense the film is basically accurate." Pacino says that even his Bergman character is not quite Bergman: "He was a composite of three or four people in Michael's and [co-screenwriter] Eric Roth's mind, including aspects of themselves." But none of that appeases the folks at CBS. CBS News president Andrew Heyward complains that "because of the distortion of the filmmakers' dramatic license, we now have a person [Wallace] who has done nothing but the best for broadcast journalism who's being hurt."

Alarm bells went off for Wallace as soon as he saw that early version of the script. It opened with a scene in which Bergman is doing advance work for an interview with leaders of the terrorist Hizballah in Lebanon. During a meeting with one of the group's leaders, Bergman's cell phone rings, and it's Wallace in New York City wanting to make sure that the hotel in Beirut has Jacuzzis. Never mind that it wasn't Bergman who was the advanceman; all sides agree that Wallace never made such a call to the producer who was there, and it has been cut from the film.

Part of the problem is that The Insider tells a complicated story involving true insiders, people who confer in closed-door corporate meetings. Wigand had signed a confidentiality agreement with B&W promising never to discuss company matters in public. CBS News execs were warned by lawyers for CBS Inc. that the segment could bring on a multibillion-dollar lawsuit by the cigarette maker. The movie makes top management out to be concerned that any such lawsuit might derail the profitable sale of CBS to Westinghouse Electric, a deal that was at that time near completion and promised to earn CBS executives millions individually in stock options. 60 Minutes eventually did run its interview with Wigand on Feb. 4, 1996, but only after his claims had become public record in a lawsuit against the tobacco companies and only after the show had been embarrassed by reports about its in-house struggle.

It was during all this that Mann, who had met Bergman two years earlier and had been discussing story ideas with him, realized that the embattled producer was himself at the center of a terrific story. Bergman, he recalls, "would say stuff like, 'You'll never guess in a million years what Don Hewitt said to me today.'" Eventually Mann acquired the rights to a piece about Wigand by Marie Brenner that appeared in Vanity Fair in May 1996.

Screenwriter Roth (Forrest Gump) says that at first he thought it might be no more than a TV movie. "Then I found it was character driven as much as story driven, exploring the unlikely nature of two men who wouldn't normally have been friendly." He spoke frequently with Bergman, but his contacts with Wigand were limited by the same confidentiality agreement that had complicated matters for 60 Minutes.

All the same, Wigand, who now runs a one-man antismoking foundation, Smoke Free Kids, is happy with the film. He got Roth and Mann to obscure details about his children and to avoid showing any of the characters smoking cigarettes; but Roth says Wigand didn't try to intervene at all in the way he was depicted. "When Jeffrey read the portrayal, warts and all, he didn't ask us to change anything." That includes an invented scene in which Wigand appears to be on the brink of suicide. Wigand says he "never got that despondent" but is "very comfortable with the way Michael Mann and Eric Roth created the same mood, the same menace, the same atmosphere."

Bergman is pleased with the film too. "It's not a documentary," he says. "It's more of a historical novel." But he's angry with his former colleagues at CBS, who are claiming that he was negotiating with Mann to make a film about the Wigand blowup even while it was going on. "It was apparent to anybody in the editing room," says Wallace, "that he was frequently on the telephone [to Mann] with a play-by-play while he was producing the piece for us." Bergman insists he didn't start thinking about making the story into a film until after Wallace told him he was about to be fired by Hewitt for having brought Wigand--then the subject of a false smear campaign--to the show in the first place.

In the end, as audience members we're all outsiders on this story, at least about whether Wallace betrayed Bergman, to say nothing of his own ideals. Much of what we may ultimately believe could be based on what we intuit from the performances. Because Pacino plays him, Bergman is guaranteed a certain moral passion. (Think Hurricane Andrew as Carl Bernstein.) Meanwhile, Christopher Plummer plays Wallace as a man possessing not only a worldliness that might incline him to compromise with his corporate bosses but also an ample self-regard that would keep him mindful of his reputation--and one whose careful intelligence could well point him in either direction.

For now, Hewitt is professing comfort at the thought that movies don't last at the multiplex forever. 60 Minutes, he says, "has been around for, like, 30 years. A movie, if it's lucky, is around for maybe a week." Or is it? There's already talk of possible Oscar nominations for Russell Crowe, Pacino or Plummer. That would keep the film alive well into next year. And then there's the video release. All that could mean a long stretch ahead for 60 Minutes. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick...

ANDY ROONEY ESSAY (NANDO TIMES)

    (November 13, 1999 4:00 a.m. EST)
    - I'm pretty upset today. I just saw "The Insider," the movie about "60 Minutes." The story, as concocted in Hollywood, is that "60 Minutes" caved in to pressure in 1995 from CBS executives and didn't broadcast a story about a former tobacco company executive, Jeffrey Wigand. Wigand wanted to blow the whistle on his company because he said they concealed evidence that nicotine in cigarettes was addictive.
    There are a lot of bad guys in the movie and I'm sore because I'm not one of them. I'm not even in it. Not even in a bit part at the end for three minutes.
    Christopher Plummer plays Mike Wallace and he's good. Plummer looks more like Mike Wallace than Mike does, and I don't see how Mike can complain about the movie just because he's shown in an unfavorable light. After all, the actor who's supposed to be him is younger and better-looking than Mike.
    That's what I was hoping for if I'd been in it. Someone handsome playing me. Robert Redford's free, as far as I've heard. Of course, Redford may be getting a little old to play me. Robin Williams could do it but he hams it up too much all the time. Warren Beatty couldn't do it if he's running for president. Dustin Hoffman's good, but it would be very difficult for even a good makeup man to make his face look like mine.
    If I'd been in it, I would have given my permission for them to call the movie, "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney."
    One of the villains in the movie is my boss and the producer of "60 Minutes," Don Hewitt. He hates the movie and he looks so bad that I loved it. He was really evil on screen but nowhere near as bad as in real life. To give you some idea of what Hewitt is capable of, he's always cutting eight or 10 seconds out of my pieces for "60 Minutes." Did they show him doing any of this to me in the movie? They did not.
    Al Pacino plays the part of CBS producer Lowell Bergman, the producer, and he acts up a storm trying for another Oscar. He's convincing if you don't know Lowell Bergman, because Lowell is soft-spoken and Al Pacino is hard-spoken.
    Lowell sold his story to the studio and, naturally, he's the hero. Lowell was a friend of mine. He's interesting, easy to like and he's a good producer but the thing he likes to do best is connive. You must know people like that. Lowell is happiest when he's conniving and he connives and connives in this movie, as he did in real life.
    A lot of things in the movie don't ring true, of course. Just for example, the actors use more four-letter words than I hear around the "60 Minutes" office. Using the F word is a way producers have of picking up a movie that's slowing down and this one slows to a halt in a couple of places while the director is busy being so (expletive deleted) arty.
    What makes me mad is, I did a piece at the time, complaining about not running the tobacco story, and it didn't get on the air either. I didn't quit. I didn't connive. I didn't even tell the newspapers about it. I was a total wimp and yet I get off scot-free in the movie by not being in it. Robert Redford probably would have won an Oscar and I'd have been invited to go to Hollywood for the awards. I could have watched all the starlets in their low-cut tops and high-cut bottoms.
    When they presented the Oscar to Bob - I imagine I'd have been calling Redford "Bob" by then - he probably would have told the whole world about the one person without whose help he never could have won; "ANDY ROONEY!!! PLEASE GIVE ANDY A BIG HAND!!!"
    Unfortunately, none of this is to be and the movie is already being called a flop because people aren't going to see it. I enjoyed some of it, but I have a suggestion for the director, Michael Mann. Next time you make a movie, hire the villain, Don Hewitt, to help you.
    He's a great editor. He could have made your movie half as long and twice as good.
   (C) 1999 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

    Over a piece of broiled fish and a cup of coffee, Michael Mann is talking about a smudge on Jeffrey Wigand's eyeglasses. The smudge, visible in a key scene in "The Insider" between Wigand and the wife he is losing, is of course deliberate—there are rarely accidents in the movies of this brilliant perfectionist. "The smudge helps me feel the awkwardness of the man. My heart goes out to him," explains Mann, 56, in a voice that's never shed the accent of his Chicago boyhood. "I was reacting against the airbrushed perfection of characters we see all the time in the media. Jeffrey and Lowell [Bergman] are so complex and edgy." More than the saga of the tobacco wars, it was the characters of the whistle-blower Wigand and the TV journalist Bergman that drew Mann to the project. "I felt a strong identity with them, they were so human and flawed."
    Mann does exhaustive research at the beginning of a project (he can still detail the sociology of Iroquois families, which he explored for the 1992 "The Last of the Mohicans"), and he meticulously helps prepare his actors. For his 1995 cop thriller "Heat," there were intense interrogations before the cameras ever rolled; for "The Insider," he had Russell Crowe, who plays Wigand the scientist, do chemistry experiments. Mann samples music early in the creative process, and uses still photographs to explore the look he wants. But though he put Don Johnson in a pink T shirt and painted South Beach in pastels for TV's "Miami Vice," he insists he doesn't just impose a style. "It's a struggle finding the language for each film," Mann says. "It's also the most exciting part, and admittedly, I do it intensely." Among the future projects to which he'll turn his laser eye: a movie about Howard Hughes to star Leonardo DiCaprio.

MY SAN ANTONIO.COM

    Heroism at forefront of `Insider', By LOUIS B. PARKS, Houston Chronicle, Published: 11/5/99
  
   The Insider starts out looking like a poke in the eye of the tobacco industry, but throws its real punches at modern journalism, particularly ratings- and advertiser-driven TV news.
    Directed with restrained intensity by Michael Mann and featuring a top-drawer cast, this based-on-fact story is a dead-serious, smart and troubling movie in which the real villain is big and broad: the corrupting influence of money and power on society and its values.
    At the same time, it's an unglamorized drama of the unintentional heroism of two ordinary men who take desperate stands and stay with them, each for different reasons.
    A perfect powerhouse vehicle for Al Pacino and Russell Crowe, The Insider jumps straight into the middle of the best-actor Oscar sweepstakes. Both respond with finely honed performances.
    Crowe, an Australian best known here as the tough cop in love with Kim Basinger in L.A. Confidential, plays scientist Jeffrey Wigand. Wigand heads up the research department at the Brown & Williamson tobacco company. He's fired, apparently for not being a team player, which leaves him and his high-living family in financial straits. No health organization wants to hire someone who has worked for Tobacco.
    When Wigand is contacted by 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Pacino) about explaining some tobacco-industry papers, his former employers think he plans to tell some of the dirt he knows about their company. They haul Wigand into his old office and make thinly veiled threats.
    That's like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Wigand gets scared and angry and decides that the best offense is a good defense. He'll get them before they get him by spilling everything he knows about tobacco-industry lies for 60 Minutes.
    The story shifts when CBS, for financial reasons, decides Wigand's interview is too hot to handle. That's when Bergman goes to the mat, even fighting Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) and risking his career to protect his source and the story.
   What eventually happens was fairly big news at the time (late 1995). Even if you remember, it makes for tense and dramatic storytelling.
    As you would expect from director Mann (Miami Vice, The Last of the Mohicans, Heat) the style is intense and sharp-edged. But here, unlike some other films (where it was appropriate), Mann has played down the glamour, visual extremes and melodrama, keeping this movie realistic. The style is not documentary, but heightened docudrama.
    Mann does have the annoying habit of excessive close-ups, a dramatic effect often used on TV that neither he nor his actors require.
    This is a complex story, hard to encapsulate. In their wonderfully structured, tension-building script, Mann and co-writer Eric Roth (The Horse Whisperer) have made both the events and their ramifications clear without oversimplifying.
    They have avoided preaching and finger-pointing, letting us draw our own conclusions. The movie has a point of view but the touch is subtle, so we do not feel manipulated, even though we are.
    Pacino is excellent as Bergman, who never gives up on his obligation to protect Wigand and his story.
    The acting is good from top to bottom. The seldom-seen Plummer is especially fine as Mike Wallace, portrayed as a man caught between company loyalty and pragmatism, and his long-held journalistic ethics. In a small role, Bruce McGill has a nifty scene as a crusading lawyer.
    But this is Crowe's film. Playing a man who is 53 (Crowe is actually 35) and portly, he's hardly recognizable as the cool young cop from L.A. Confidential. He gives a beautiful, restrained portrait of Wigand as a barely contained volcano and a deeply conflicted and flawed personality. We can feel every complex emotion he goes through.
    A solid, thought-provoking and exciting film.

BLOWING HOT AND COLD

Sunday, October 31, 1999, By AMY LONGSDORF,  The Record

    A film about two very different men becoming unlikely allies, "The Insider" is perfectly cast with two very different actors.
    Russell Crowe, 35, is all explosive energy. An assertive Aussie, he's as known for his barroom brawls as he is for his breakthrough roles in "Romper Stomper" as a vicious skinhead and in "L.A. Confidential" as a hot-tempered policeman.
    On the other hand, Al Pacino, 59, is the sovereign of the slow-burn. The very private actor can pump up the volume when he needs to, as he did for his Oscar-winning turn in "Scent of a Woman." But Pacino's signature characters -- think Michael Corleone in "The Godfather" and Frank Serpico in "Serpico" -- play their cards close to the vest.
    "Al's a regular flower child," confirms Crowe during a recent interview in Century City, Calif. "He's so relaxed, and so comfortable with himself. The things that you see between 'action' and 'cut,' that's acting. Al's one relaxed bloke."
    For his part, Pacino ranks Crowe among the best actors he's worked with. "I was stunned by Russell," says Pacino, in a separate interview. "It was interesting working with him, because we also didn't know each other at all. And I think instinctively, we thought that would be an asset for these two characters."
    The actors' differing personalities mingled well in "The Insider," opening Friday. In the fact-based film, Crowe plays Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, a tobacco-industry whistle-blower who stands to lose his wife, his family, and his reputation when he agrees to reveal cigarette-company secrets on "60 Minutes."
    Days before the interview is set to air, the segment's producer Lowell Bergman (Pacino) and on-air correspondent Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) are forced to drop the story when CBS brass become fearful of a lawsuit from Big Tobacco.
    The movie covers a lot of ground. It's the first inside look at brand-name journalism since "All the President's Men." It's about why some men rise to the occasion and become heroes and others do not. And it's the most exhaustive deconstruction of a moral dilemma since "Quiz Show."
    But as far as co-screenwriter Eric Roth ("Forrest Gump") is concerned, the heart of the movie remains the relationship between Wigand and Bergman. "The whole thing really turns on the unlikely friendship between these two guys," says Roth. "It's like a bad buddy movie in a way."
"The Insider" might be driven by its characters, but it's the controversy which is stirring up interest in the movie. Mike Wallace, star correspondent of "60 Minutes," recently told The Washington Post that he's saddened and depressed by the film, labeling it "a betrayal."
    Wallace and "60 Minutes" executive producer Don Hewitt are clearly ticked off by the idea of a movie re-examining an embarrassing episode in their show's otherwise laudable history. Isn't it ironic, says Pacino, that the "60 Minutes" muckrakers are so nervous about the cameras being turned on them.
    "The thing is that the movie is a mosaic, and [Wallace and Hewitt] are just one part of that mosaic," muses Pacino. "But all they see is that one little corner. But there's a lot of other things going on in the movie."
    Still, as someone who has been scrutinized by the media for more than 30 years, Pacino feels a twinge of sympathy for what Wallace is going through. "He's concerned about his legacy, that this [incident] will be remembered as his legacy," says the actor. "But I don't believe it will be because he's done such great things. He comes off OK in the movie, as far as I'm concerned. I think he's totally redeemed at the end, and he seems almost heroic."
    "The Insider" isn't the first time Pacino has played a crusader. In 1973's "Serpico," he was a real-life cop named Frank Serpico who blew the lid off departmental corruption.
    "I really like to play characters like Lowell Bergman and Frank Serpico," notes Pacino. "I remember I once asked Serpico why he did it, why he made such a fuss? I said, 'Frank, why didn't you just not take the payoffs and continue being the cop you wanted to be?' He said, 'Well, if I did that, who would I be when I listened to Beethoven?' That just came out of him. He had integrity, I guess."
    That said, it was important to Pacino and Michael Mann ("Last of the Mohicans," "Heat") that Bergman be as flawed and well-rounded as Wigand and Wallace. "I think that's the surprise of the picture, that we managed to avoid that kind of self-righteous hero type of stuff," notes Pacino. "I thought we sort of opened up the idea of what happens to people when they are put into these extreme situations. So it's not about winners and losers, by any
means."
    Pacino's next movie -- Oliver Stone's "Any Given Sunday," due on Christmas Day -- is all about winners and losers. In the movie, which co-stars Dennis Quaid, Cameron Diaz, and Jamie Foxx, the actor plays a bullying NFL coach who comes to realize he's past his prime.
    "It's fun to play guys who are nothing like you," says Pacino. "If you're playing a guy like Scarface, for instance, and somebody says, 'I'm gonna cut your head off with a chain saw,' you get to go, 'Screw you, buddy!' Who would say that? So you get different opportunities with different kinds of characters."
    Crowe has made a career out of playing vastly different kinds of characters. A former child star who gave up acting for nearly 15 years, the New Zealand-born, Australia-reared actor has found the one-two punch. He followed his career-launching turn as a racist skinhead in "Romper Stomper" (1992) with a role as a sweet-natured gay plumber in "The Sum of Us (1994). In 1995, he played both a kind-hearted preacher in "The Quick and the Dead" and a cybervillian in "Virtuosity."
    If you only know Crowe from his ferociously glamorous turn in "L.A. Confidential," you'll be shocked by his appearance in "The Insider." The actor gained 30 pounds and dyed and thinned his hair to play the fiftysomething Wigand. By the time the cameras rolled, Crowe was nearly unrecognizable.
    "I've got a photograph of myself, actually, at Jerry Bruckheimer's house, on the night of the Kentucky Derby," recalls the actor. "I met Sylvester Stallone for the first time that night. He was really enthusiastic about meeting me because he enjoyed 'L.A. Confidential.' And he kind of turned around, saw me, and you could just see it in his face: 'Who the hell is that?
    "'That's not that guy.'"
    For his next role, Crowe will switch yet gears again to play a bloodthirsty he-man in "Gladiator," the big-budget action film from Ridley Scott. "See, that's all part of the plan," says Crowe, who once worked as a waiter, a bartender, a bingo-number caller, and a rock band's lead singer. "If I was going go to that extreme with Jeffrey Wigand, then I really needed something physical afterwards."
    There were those in Hollywood who expected the Crowe-Mann combo to be combustible. Mann is a demanding director and Crowe is a reported bad boy who has been known to abandon interviews if he gets bored, engage in fisticuffs with fellow actors, and, on at least one occasion, pull a small pistol on a set stylist.
    "Before 'The Insider,' I got all these phone calls, all these messages going, 'Hey dude, I'm buying a Kevlar vest! I'm getting a crash helmet, brother! You [and Mann] are gonna explode!,'" says Crowe with a laugh. "But it was the exact opposite of that experience. It's when somebody doesn't know what they're doing, when the captain of the ship has no idea where he wants to go, that's when my job becomes difficult. Michael Mann is insane. He is a megalomaniac. He drove me crazy. And I loved it."
    As far as Mann is concerned, Crowe was the only actor for the job. "When Russell [auditioned], I was able to sense for the first time the inner annihilation of Jeffrey Wigand."
    Mann is just as complimentary about Pacino, whom he calls "a great artist." Pacino "is devoid of fear of embarrassment," says the filmmaker. "He is out there. He takes chances. He walks the high wire."

60 MINUTES SEGMENT WITH WIGAND

----------------------------------------------------------------- 04/FEB/96 CBS 60 MINUTES Part I Participants:

* Mike Wallace, CBS 60 Minutes correspondent

* Dr. Jeffrey S. Wigand, Former B&W executive

* Gordon Smith, Brown and Williamson attorney

* Mike Moore, Attorney General of Mississippi

* Thomas Sandefur, former President/CEO B&W

* Merrell Williams, former paralegal for B&W law firm [shown only on camera]

* Dr. Stanton Glantz, Professor of Medicine, University of California Medical Center, San Francisco

* Kendrick Wells, assistant general counsel, formerly staff attorney, B&W [shown only on camera]

* Lucretia Wigand, wife of Dr. Jeffrey Wigand

* Two daughters of Dr. & Mrs. Wigand [only seen at distance on camera]

[Introduction]

Wallace: [voiceover showing footage of Dr. Wigand in "60 Minutes" frame] Which is true?

[voiceover showing footage of Gordon Smith in "60 Minutes" frame] What the tobacco men at Brown & Williamson say about their former research director, Dr. Jeffrey Wigand ...

Smith: His life has been a pattern of lies.

Wallace: [voiceover showing footage of Mike Moore in "60 Minutes" frame]: or what the Attorney-General of Mississippi says about him?

Moore: The information that Jeffrey has, I think is the most important information that has ever come out against the tobacco industry.

Wallace: [voiceover showing footage of Dr. Wigand in "60 Minutes" frame] Tonight, Jeffrey Wigand, the scientist whose insistence on defying his former employer has led him to tell what he believes to be the truth about cigarettes.

What is it that he believes to be the truth about cigarettes? And what is it that Brown & Williamson believes to be the truth about him?

[Beginning of segment]

Wallace: [in studio] A story we set out to report six months ago has now turned into two stories: how cigarettes can destroy peoples' lives and how one cigarette company is trying to destroy the reputation of a man who refused to keep quiet about what he says he learned when he worked for them. The company is Brown & Williamson, America's third largest tobacco company.

[speaking in front of backdrop showing picture of Dr. Wigand surrounded by cigarette packs and title of segment: Jeffrey Wigand Ph.D. Produced by Lowell Bergman]:

The man they set out to destroy is Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, their former three-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year director of research. They employed prestigious law firms to sue him, a high-powered investigation firm to probe every nook and cranny of his life. And they hired a big-time public relations consultant to help them plant damaging stories about him in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and others. But the Journal reported the story for what they thought it was: "scant evidence" was just one of their comments.

CBS management wouldn't let us broadcast our original story and our interview with Jeffrey Wigand because they were worried about the possibility of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against us for tortious interference, that is, interfering with Wigand's confidentiality agreement with Brown & Williamson.

But now, things have changed. Last week, the Wall Street Journal got hold of and published a confidential deposition Wigand gave in a Mississippi case, a November deposition that repeated many of the charges he made to us last August.

And while a lawsuit is still a possibility, not putting Jeffrey Wigand's story on "60 Minutes" no longer is.

Scene: Dr. Wigand; video of Brown & Williamson Tower building, Louisville, KY; cigarettes and loose tobacco on conveyer belt; Dr. Wigand; Brown & Williamson Tower building, Louisville, KY; cigarettes in cigarette machine and loose tobacco on conveyer belt; footage of tobacco company executives swearing oath to tell truth before House Subcommittee on Health & Environment, April 1994

Wallace: What Dr. Wigand told us in that original interview was that his former colleagues, executives of Brown & Williamson Tobacco, knew all along that their tobacco products, their cigarettes and pipe tobacco, contained additives that increased the danger of disease. And further, that they had long known that the nicotine in tobacco is an addictive drug, despite their public statements to the contrary, like the testimony before Congress of Dr. Wigand's former boss, B&W's Chief Executive Officer Thomas Sandefur.

Sandefur: [testifying before House Subcommittee on Health & Environment, April 1994] I believe that nicotine is not addictive.

Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] I believe he perjured himself because I watched those testimonies very carefully.

Wallace: All of us did. There was the whole line of people, the whole line of CEOs up there all swearing that ...

Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] Part of the reason I'm here is I felt that their representation clearly, at least within Brown & Williamson's representation, clearly misstated what they commonly knew as language within the company. That we're a nicotine delivery business.

Wallace: And that's what cigarettes are for?

Wigand: Most certainly. It's a delivery device for nicotine.

Wallace: A delivery device for nicotine? Put it in your mouth, light it up, and you're gonna get your fix?

Wigand: You'll get your fix.

Wallace: [in CBS office] Dr. Wigand says that Brown & Williamson manipulates and adjusts that nicotine fix, not by artificially adding nicotine, but by enhancing the effect of the nicotine through reuse of chemical additives like ammonia, whose process is known in the tobacco industry as "impact boosting."

Wigand: While not spiking nicotine. They clearly manipulate it.

Wallace: The process is described in Brown & Williamson's leaf blender's manual and in other B&W documents.

Wigand: There's extensive use of this technology which is called ammonia chemistry that allows for nicotine to be more rapidly absorbed in the lung and therefore

affect the brain and central nervous system.

Scene: file drawer full of numbered folders; computer screen showing Brown & Williamson documents on World Wide Web; Merrell Williams walking down street; Dr. Stanton Glantz in his office; JAMA July 19, 1995 issue on Dr. Glantz's desk

Wallace: And then there are these documents, thousands of pages of confidential scientific reports and legal memoranda from B&W's secret files, which experts say support Dr. Wigand's claim that Brown & Williamson's executives had had strong reason to believe all along that nicotine is addictive and that their tobacco products cause cancer and other diseases.

Most of these documents had been locked away in B&W's lawyers' confidential files in Louisville, Kentucky until this man, the paralegal in that law office, Merrell Williams, walked off with them.

The documents found their way to Dr. Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. It was Dr. Glantz and a team of scientists from the university who wrote about the documents this past summer in a series of articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Wallace: [to Glantz in Dr. Glantz's office] What is the story that the documents told you?

Glantz: They told me that thirty years ago, Brown & Williamson and British American Tobacco, its parent, knew nicotine was an addictive drug and they knew smoking caused cancer and other diseases.

Wallace: [voiceover video showing Dr. Glantz looking through some documents] And Dr. Glantz says these documents reveal how Brown & Williamson was keeping that knowledge from the public.

Glantz: And they also developed very sophisticated legal strategies to keep this information away from the public, to keep this information away from public health authorities.

Wallace: Dr. Wigand said that a cigarette is basically a nicotine delivery instrument. That's what it's really all about.

Glantz: Yes, absolutely. And in the documents they say that over and over and over again.

Wallace: [voiceover footage of smokers smoking cigarettes] And finding a way to deliver that nicotine to the smoker's brain without exposing smokers to disease-causing pollutants like tar that come with tobacco smoke is one reason, says Dr. Wigand, that he was hired by B&W on January 1st, 1989.

Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] They were looking to reduce the hazards within cigarettes, reduce the carcinogenic components or the list of the carcinogens that were within the tobacco products.

Wallace: They talked about carcinogens too?

Wigand: They talked about carcinogens.

Wallace: They talked about cancer and heart disease and emphysema and all of those things and they were going to work toward making a safer cigarette?

You must have been very excited.

Wigand: I was enthusiastic and energetic in terms of pursuing that.

Wallace: [voiceover video showing Dr. Wigand perusing books on shelves at home] Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, with a doctorate in biochemistry, had spent nearly twenty years of working in the health-care and biotechnology industries. He says his goal at B&W was to make a cigarette that would be less likely to cause disease.

Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] People will continue to smoke no matter what, no matter what kind of regulations. If you can provide for those who are smoking, who need to smoke, something that produces less risk for them. I thought I was going to be making a difference.

Wallace: [voiceover] Brown & Williamson made Jeff Wigand Vice-President for R&D, paying him more than three hundred thousand dollars a year in salary and perks.

Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] And I was very inquisitive when I came on. Have you ever done any nicotine studies? Have you done any pharmacology studies? Have you done any biological studies? Have you looked at the effect of nicotine on the central nervous system? And always, generally categorically "No, we don't do that kind of work."

Wallace: [voiceover showing Brown & Williamson Tower, Louisville, KY] But according to thousands of pages, from B&W and its parent British American Tobacco's confidential files, the company had, in fact, done exactly those kinds of studies.

[voiceover showing Dr. Wigand at computer] Dr. Wigand says he did not suspect there was anything wrong until he attended a meeting of scientists who worked for British American Tobacco companies from around the world. Dr. Wigand says that his colleagues talked about working together to develop a safer, a less hazardous cigarette, a cigarette less likely to cause disease. But when it came time to write up their ideas, to create a documentary record of their discussion, B&W's lawyers intervened.

Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] The minutes that came in, they were roughly about eighteen pages long. I knew what was in the content. They were rewritten by Kendrick Wells. They were ...

Wallace: Who is he?

Wigand: Kendrick Wells was one of the staff attorneys at B&W.

Wallace: And he rewrote the minutes of the meeting?

Wigand: He rewrote the minutes of the meeting. He edited out the discussions on uh safer cigarette and basically toned the meeting down ...

Wallace: You're saying that one of the staff attorneys for B&W here in the United States whose name was ...

Wigand: Kendrick Wells.

Wallace: An attorney, rewrote the minutes of this research meeting with all of the research heads of BAT Industries?

Wigand: That's correct.

Wallace: in order to sanitize it, in effect?

Wigand: Sanitize it as well as reduce any type of exposure associated with discussing a safer cigarette. When you say you're going to have a safer cigarette, that now takes everything else that you have available and say it is unsafe. And that, from a product liability point of view, gave the lawyers great concern.

Wallace: [voiceover footage showing Kendrick Wells walking down street] Kendrick Wells, the lawyer Dr. Wigand says deleted materials from the minutes of the scientific meeting is now the assistant general counsel of B&W.

Why would B&W lawyers like Kendrick Wells be so concerned?

According to B&W's own confidential files, any evidence, any documents that show any B&W tobacco products like Kools or Viceroys might be unsafe, those documents would have to be produced in court as part of any lawsuit filed by a smoker or his surviving family.

And according to the lawyers, those documents could be disastrous for B&W.

[to Wigand in office interview] For the lawyers to hold ...

Wigand: The lawyers intervene and then they purge documents. And every time there was a reference to the word "less hazardous" or "safer."

Wallace: [voiceover showing Dr. Wigand sitting at his desk] But Dr. Wigand says the lawyers' interference, their editing and review of his reports, did not stop him.

Wigand: I started asking more probing questions and I started digging deeper and deeper. As I dug deeper and deeper, I started getting a bodyguard.

Wallace: What do you mean, bodyguard?

Wigand: I went to a meeting. I now was now accompanied by a lawyer. My bodyguard was Kendrick Wells.

Wallace: [voiceover showing Dr. Wigand sitting at his desk; photo of Thomas Sandefur holding hand on forehead] Frustrated by the lawyer's intervention and presence at major scientific meetings, Dr. Wigand says he took his complaints to Thomas Sandefur, then the president of B&W.

Wallace: [to Wigand] What did he say to you?

Wigand: I don't want to hear any more discussion about a safer cigarette.

Wallace: [voiceover photo of Thomas Sandefur at hearing table with outstretched arm] And he says Thomas Sandefur went on to tell him ...

Wigand: "We pursue a safer cigarette, it would put us under extreme exposure with every other product. I don't want to hear about it anymore."

Wallace: All the people who were dying from cigarettes?

Wigand: Essentially, yes.

Wallace: Cancer?

Wigand: Cancer.

Wallace: Heart disease, things of that nature?

Wigand: Emphysema.

Wallace: [voiceover showing a smiling Thomas Sandefur at hearing, April 1994] Lawyers representing B&W and Thomas Sandefur have said that all this as well as other accounts of conversations with Thomas Sandefur are absolutely false.

[voiceover showing Dr. Wigand in office interview with Wallace] We asked Dr. Wigand what his reaction was to what he says was Sandefur's decision to abandon the safer cigarette.

Wigand: I said I got angry.

Wallace: He was your boss.

Wigand: I bit my tongue. I had just transitioned from another, one company to another. Uh, I was paid well and was comfortable. And for me to do any precipitous would put my family at risk.

Wallace: You were happy to take down the three hundred thousand bucks a year?

Wigand: I essentially, yeah, took the money. I did my job.

Wallace: [in his own CBS office] So Dr. Wigand abandoned his idea of trying to develop a new and safer cigarette. He turned his attention to investigating the additives, the flavorings, the other compounds in B&W tobacco products. Many, like glycerol, which is used to keep the tobacco in cigarettes moist, are normally harmless. But when glycerol is burned in a cigarette, its chemistry changes.

Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] Glycerol, when it's burnt, forms a, a very specific substance called acrolein.

Wallace: According to the American Council on Science and Health, "acrolein, or 'acroli-en' is extremely irritating and has been shown to interfere with the normal clearing of the lungs. Recent research shows that acrolein acts like a carcinogen, though not yet classified as such."

[voiceover footage showing young people smoking] And Dr. Wigand says that B&W continues to add glycerol to their products.

But it was another additive that Dr. Wigand says led to the end of his career at B&W.

Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] The straw that broke the camel's back for me and really put me in trouble with Sandefur was a compound called coumarin.

Wallace: [voiceover video showing young woman smoking; documents on which clearly written "% COUMARIN"] Coumarin is a flavoring that provides a sweet taste to tobacco products but is known to cause tumors in the livers of mice. It was removed from B&W cigarettes, but according to these documents, B&W continued to use it in its Sir Walter Raleigh aromatic pipe tobacco until at least 1992.

Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] And when I came on board B&W, they had tried to tran, transition from coumarin to another similar flavor that would give the same taste. And it was unsuccessful.

Wallace: [voiceover] Dr. Wigand says the news about coumarin and cancer got worse.

This report, by independent researchers, part of a national toxic safety program, presented evidence that coumarin is a carcinogen that causes various cancers.

Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] I wanted it out immediately. And I was told that it would affect sales and I was to mind my own business. And then I constructed a memo to Mr. Sandefur indicating that I could not in conscience continue with coumarin in a product that we now know, have documentation that is lung-specific carcinogen.

Wallace: Really? You sent the document forward to Sandefur?

Wigand: I sent the document forward to Sandefur. I was told that we would continue working on a substitute and we weren't going to remove it because it would impact sales and that, that was his decision.

Wallace: In other words, what you're charging Sandefur with and Brown & Williamson with is ignoring health considerations consciously?

Wigand: Most certainly.

Wallace: [voiceover video showing Dr. Wigand at his office desk] After his confrontations over coumarin, Dr. Wigand says he was not surprised when on March the 24th, 1993, Thomas Sandefur, newly promoted to Chief Executive Officer, CEO of B&W, had him fired.

[to Wigand in office interview] And the reason for firing that he gave you?

Wigand: Uh, Poor communication skills, uh, just not cuttin' it, poor performance.

Wallace: [voiceover video showing Dr. Wigand, his wife and two daughters saying grace before meal at home] When Dr. Wigand, who has a wife and two young daughters, was fired by Brown & Williamson Tobacco, his contract provided severance pay and critical health benefits for his family, critical because one of his children requires expensive daily health-care.

[voiceover showing video of Mrs. Wigand serving dinner] Several months after he was fired, B&W decided to sue their former head of R&D and they cut off his severance and those vital health benefits.

Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] They said I violated my confidentiality agreement by discussing my severance package.

Wallace: [voiceover video showing Jeffrey and Lucretia Wigand walking together] Lucretia Wigand says that the firing and B&W's suspension of benefits was devastating.

Lucretia Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] We almost lost our family as a unit. Jeff and I almost separated.

Wallace: Why?

Lucretia Wigand: Because he was under so much stress and so much pressure that it was something we needed help dealing with. We went to counseling and we worked through it.

Wallace: And this was, you think, started, triggered by the business with B&W.

Lucretia Wigand: Yes, I know it was.

Wallace: [voiceover video showing Jeffrey and Lucretia Wigand at home in kitchen; "Dear Jeff" confidentiality agreement] B&W settled that lawsuit we mentioned and reinstated those critical health benefits, only after Dr. Wigand agreed to sign a new, stricter, lifelong confidentiality agreement.

[in CBS office] Nonetheless, word of Dr. Wigand's battles with Brown & Williamson attracted attention in Washington, where in the Spring of 1994, a Democratic Congress and the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, were investigating the tobacco industry. Dr. Wigand was contacted by their investigators. And after notifying Brown & Williamson, he talked with those investigators.

Shortly afterwards, he was stunned by a couple of anonymous telephone calls.

Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] In April 1994, on two separate occasions, I had life threats on my kids.

Wallace: What?

Wigand: We had life threats on my kids.

Wallace: [showing Dr. Wigand referring to his diary] Dr. Wigand told us he doesn't know where they came from, but that, understandably, they frightened him.

He described the threats by referring to his diary.

Wigand: [reading from his diary] A male voice that was on the phone that said: "Don't mess with tobacco anymore. How are your kids?"

And then on April 28th, around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, relatively the same voice, says: "Leave tobacco alone or else you'll find your kids hurt. They're pretty girls now."

So I got scared. I started carrying a gun.

Wallace: Really?

Wigand: Yeah, started carrying a handgun.

Lucretia Wigand: [in office interview with Wallace] Someone called and threatened to, to kill him and to hurt the family if he messed with the tobacco industry.

Wallace: [in studio with segment backdrop depicting Dr. Wigand] That was last August. Now, in February, Lucretia Wigand has filed for divorce, citing spousal abuse, just one of the accusations Brown & Williamson is using in their full-throated campaign to discredit Jeffrey Wigand.

That report when we return.

Wallace: [in studio] Today, three years after he was fired by Brown and Williamson, Dr. Jeffrey Wigand is the star witness in a U.S. Justice Department criminal investigation into the tobacco industry, which includes the question of whether B&W's former CEO lied to the U.S. Congress when he said that he believed that nicotine was not addictive. But Dr. Wigand is paying a heavy price for his decision to testify as well as for breaking his confidentiality agreement by talking to us. His family life has been shattered. His reputation has been tarnished because of B&W's massive campaign designed to silence him and to discredit this former research chief turned whistle-blower.

[to Wigand] They're trying to do what they can to paint you as irresponsible, a liar.

Wigand: Well, I think the word they've used Mike is, "The Master of Deceit."

Wallace: You wish you hadn't come forward? You wish you hadn't blown the whistle?

Wigand: [hesitating] There are times I wish I hadn't done it. But there are times that I feel compelled to do it. Uh, if, if you asked me if I would do it again or if it, do I think it's worth it. Yeah. I think it's worth it. Uh, I think in the end people will see the truth.

Wallace: [in studio] Well these three men have seen the same truth as Wigand. They are the state Attorneys' General of Florida, Minnesota and Mississippi where Dr. Wigand is testifying in a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against the tobacco industry. Mike Moore is Attorney General of Mississippi.

Moore: Uh, Jeffrey's testimony is gonna be devastating, Mike, to the tobacco industry. Uh, so devastating that I fear for his life. Uh, I think, uh ...

Wallace: You serious?

Moore: I'm, I'm very serious. Uh, the information that Jeffrey has, I think, is the most important information that has ever come out against the tobacco industry. Uh, this industry, in my opinion, is an industry who has perpetrated the biggest fraud on the American public in history. Uh, they have lied to the American public for years and years. They have killed millions and millions of people and made a profit on it. So, uh, I hope that they won't continue to lie and try to destroy Jeffrey like they destroyed the other lives of people all over this country.

Wallace: [in studio] The campaign to destroy Dr. Jeffrey Wigand began over two months ago in the midst of a media frenzy over our failure to broadcast our August interview with him. Brown and Williamson sued Dr. Wigand for talking to us despite his confidentiality agreement and they got a court order in Kentucky to try to silence him from speaking out further.

[against scene of wall with sign, "The Investigative Group, Inc."] Then investigators hired by B&W fanned out across the country looking for anything they could use to discredit the whistle-blower.

Wigand: They been going around to my family, my friends, digging up and digging here and digging there.

Wallace: [in studio] Then their lawyers, and B&W has a half dozen major firms working on the Jeff Wigand case. Their lawyers compiled the results of their nationwide dragnet into a summary that alleges that in recent years Dr. Wigand plead guilty to everything from wife-beating to shoplifting. Beyond that they charged him with a multitude of sins from fudging his resume to making a false claim three years ago for ninety-five dollars and twenty cents for dry cleaning.

[against scene of John Scanlon walking down a New York street] Then Brown and Williamson retained John Scanlon to get their story to the media.

Scanlon is a fixture of the New York media scene who has close personal relationships with print and television reporters and producers as well as editors and publishers. We asked him to sit down and discuss the charges he has been circulating to me and other reporters but he declined. But Scanlon did make this statement to a CBS News camera crew.

Scanlon: He's running ... from cross-examination. His victims have decided to respond and present evidence that he's, in fact, a habitual liar.

Wigand: [in studio interview] The smear campaign that's been very systematic, very organized, very well-done.

[in classroom to students] My background is, I have a PH.D. in biochemistry.

Wallace: [in studio] Today Dr. Wigand is a 30,000 dollar a year science teacher at a Louisville Kentucky public high school. And his students, his faculty colleagues, and his family were stunned last month when a Louisville television station broadcast some of Brown and Williamson's accusations.

Local News Anchor: [broadcasting local news] Court records show Wigand was charged with theft by unlawful taking and shoplifting.

Wallace: [in studio] Then the Brown and Williamson 500-page dossier on Wigand was given to the Wall Street Journal, who investigated the charges. And last Thursday in this front page story, the journal reported, quote, A close look at the file and independent research by this newspaper into its key claims indicates that many of the serious allegations against Dr. Wigand are backed by scanty or contradictory evidence. And they continued, quote,Some of the charges, including that he pleaded guilty to shoplifting are demonstrably untrue. We put that Journal statement to Gordon Smith, an attorney designated by Brown and Williamson to talk to us.

[to Gordon Smith] The Wall Street Journal went through all of that material. It says that, what the dossier that you put together, scant evidence ...

Smith: Mr. Wallace, that is dead wrong. There's not scant evidence. The Wall Street Journal did not, did not go over the scores, literally scores of untruths told by Jeffrey Wigand that we showed to them.

Wallace: [voiceover] And Gordon Smith went on at some length to say that Wigand's life quote, is a pattern of lies.

[to Smith] I don't understand, frankly, Mr. Smith. I really don't understand. Brown and Williamson must be in a panic if they're going after this man as hard as you are.

Smith: You're wrong. There are no material inaccuracies in that book. None whatsoever.

Wallace: [voiceover] But not included in that dossier were Brown and Williamson's own personnel records which showed that Wigand had received good performance appraisals for the first three years from B&W. In his fourth year, however, those appraisals turned sour. But despite that, even after he was fired he received this letter from Brown and Williamson's personnel director.

[reading letter to Smith] To whom it may concern. Dr. Jeffrey Wigand was instrumental in the development of new products as well as the major impetus behind a significant upgrade in our R&D technical capabilities both in terms of people and equipment. During his tenure at Brown and Williamson, Dr. Wigand demonstrated a high level of technical knowledge and expertise.

[Referring to stationary on Smith's desk] At this is on your own stationary. Your own man saying that about him.

Smith: Mike, Brown and Williamson refused to be a reference for Jeff Wigand after he left. This letter was negotiated with his attorney and it was the only statement Brown and Williamson would ever make about him because Brown and Williamson did not want to be a reference for Jeff Wigand.

Wallace: [voiceover] And Mr. Smith had this to say about our relationship with Jeffrey Wigand.

Smith: You're being led along by a guy who's not believable. You're getting half the story. You, you, and you've got, you've got a, a vested interest in making this man credible.

Wallace: Why do we have a ...

Smith: CBS has an interest, paid this guy twelve thousand dollars.

Wallace: For what?

Smith: I believe for consulting.

Wallace: Now, wait just a moment. Let's get this straight. Paid him twelve thousand dollars for what?

Smith: To consult on a story on CBS.

Wallace: [in studio] For the record, as we explained to Mr. Smith, 60 Minutes did, in fact, hire Dr. Wigand two years ago to act as our expert consultant to analyze nearly a thousand pages of technical documents leaked to us not from Brown and Williamson but from inside Philip Morris - another tobacco company. At that time Dr. Wigand told us he would not talk with us about Brown and Williamson and he did not until over a year later.

Wigand: I felt an obligation to tell the truth. Uh, there were things I saw. There were things I learned. There were things I observed that I felt that needed to be told. The focus continues to be on what I would call systematic and aggressive tactics to undermine my credibility and my, some of my personal life. Uh ...

Wallace: But you expected that, didn't you?

Wigand: Well, I didn't expect, to the extent that it's happened, okay? Its, its disrupted not only my life. Uh, I'm in divorce proceedings now.

Wallace: [voiceover in studio with three Attorneys General] These three state Attorneys General say that no matter B&W accusations are, they remain convinced that what Wigand has to say about the tobacco industry in general and Brown and Williamson in particular is thoroughly credible. They are suing the tobacco industry for the billions of dollars in state Medicaid costs their states have paid to treat people who have become ill from smoking.

Minnesota Attorney General Hubert Humphrey the third.

Humphrey: We want to see the full truth come out. We want the deception, fraud and the violations of our state laws stopped. And we want people that are making the money on this product to bear the full cost of the health care uh, burden that is there.

Wallace: [voiceover] Bob Butterworth is the Attorney General of Florida.

Butterworth: The issue has been deceit.

Wallace: Deceit?

Butterworth: Pure and simply - deceit. The cigarette companies made a decision that they would withhold valuable information from the American public, information that the consumer would need to make a[n] intelligent decision as to whether or not they wish to smoke or not to smoke.

Wallace: [voiceover] Again Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore.

Moore: I'm used to dealing with, with cocaine dealers uh, and crack dealers and I have never seen damage done like the tobacco company has done. Uh, there's no comparison. Cocaine kills 10, 15 thousand people a year in this country. Tobacco kills 425 thousand people a year.

Smith: [in Smith's office] Mike, its absurd to suggest that tobacco is any way like cocaine in terms of addiction. Its absolutely absurd to suggest that. Brown and Williamson makes a lawful product. They sell it and make it in a lawful way.

Wallace: Well then why do 425 thousand people die every year according to all medical and scientific evaluations, die of smoking cigarettes? Why?

Smith: Mike, fifty million people choose to use tobacco and smoke.

Wallace: So, on a cost benefit ratio, its only 425 thousand people who die out of the fifty million.

Smith: No, Mike.

Wallace: That's, that's a small fraction. Is that the point you're making?

Smith: No, Mike. Not at all. People choose to smoke. People choose to stop smoking. I think you used to smoke and you chose to stop smoking.

Wallace: That's right.

Smith: Its their choice. Its a lawful product. Its marketed and manufactured lawfully.

Wallace: [in studio] B&W has questioned Dr. Wigand's character. But he says that's just a smoke screen and he has some questions for Brown and Williamson.

Wigand: Why aren't they deal with the issue of whether they can develop a safer cigarette? Why aren't they deal with the issue of using, knowingly using uh, additives that are known to be carcinogenic in order not to influence sales. Why don't we deal with that issue?

Wallace: [in studio] Brown and Williamson did answer some of Dr. Jeffrey Wigand's question[s] for us.

They told us they have removed coumarin - that's carcinogenic flavoring from their Sir Walter Raleigh aromatic pipe tobacco. But they insist it never posed a health risk to smokers.

B&W lawyer Kendrick Wells declined to talk to us, but he did deny, in testimony last week, Dr. Wigand's charge that he had altered the minutes of that scientific meeting.

And B&W says the truth will come out in the end when they get a chance to cross examine Dr. Wigand under oath. And they insist we, CBS, cannot report on this story objectively since we are indemnifying Dr. Wigand in B&W's lawsuit against him.

Two month's ago CBS agreed to do that after a leak resulted in the disclosure of Dr. Wigand's identity before he was prepared to go public. Though still unaware of where that leak had come from, CBS decided to take financial responsibility for the impact that leak had on Dr. Wigand because it exposed him to a lawsuit by Brown and Williamson.

A footnote.

"The Courier-Journal Indictments soon in B&W probe Smuggling plot, bribes alleged in court papers"

This banner headline, yesterday in the Louisville Courier Journal - B&W's hometown newspaper, about charges their employees had engaged in smuggling and bribes in Louisiana. In that story the U.S. attorney in New Orleans says, "Look for some indictments in the very near future."

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