Transcripts For CSPAN2 Booknotes 20131109

About to do, because of his psychological state, that were going to upend their case and ultimately put them in the position of having to go all over the world trying totrying to put it back together again. Cspan because this is part two, lets go overof our discussion, lets go over quickly the basics. Guest ok. Cspan Mark Whitacre worked where . Guest Mark Whitacre worked for the Archer Daniels midland company, which. Cspan based where . Guest . Which is based in decatur, illinois. For those who know it, itsits usually known for its supermarket to the world advertisements, which you see on, you know, meet the press and this week and otherother news shows that are heavily watched in washington. Cspan whats the time frame of the book . Guest the time frame of the book is, basically, 1992 through this year, through 2well, through 2000. Cspan and we know of names like Brian Mulroney, bob strauss, john block, ross johnson and others who were on the board of adm. Who runs it today . Guest Allen Andreas runs it, whoswhos not quite as wellknown a figure as his uncle, who ran it throughout most of the events described in this book, which is Dwayne Andreas, who is just aaa fellow who ishas been around many years; has had an enormous impact on the political scene, very controversial figure and, you know, has turned up in quite a number ofof events that have taken place, from watergate down to this event. Cspan and the end product of all this . What happened at the end . Who went to jail . How much money was involved in the fines . Guest well, the interesting thing is that, ultimately, everybody goes to jail. Soso iiyou know, asas complex as the story is, this is athis is an fbi Success Story in the end, mick andreas, who is the vice chairman and thethe heirapparent, son of Dwayne Andreas, goes to jail. Terry wilson, the head of one of the biggest divisions, goes to jail. Mark whitacre, thethe informant in this case, goes to jail for a few different crimes, along with a group of other executives caught up in pricefixing, which actually wasnt one of the things that adm was doing. This goes back to theto the dominoes; that adm named somebody, who named somebody. And ultimately there have been Something Like half a dozen folks who have gone to jail, far more who have paid criminal fines. As for corporations, thisi mean, this is the biggest whitecollar conspiracy ever broken up by the government, i mean, ultbyby almost any measure. Ultimately, the governments collected some 2 billion in fines, and its still going. Cspan you are from dallas; been with the New York Times for 16 years; went to swathmore college. Whats your beat at the New York Times . Guest i have the greatest job in journalism. My beat is very undefined. Im an Investigative Reporter and senior writer. I dont have a topic im supposed to be working on. I dont have aan area that is mine, and im not allowed to go outside of it. Basically, im allowed to sort of roam free and find areas that are worth exploring heavily. So ill go from antitrust to securities fraud to health care toto medical research and learning something every step of the way. Itheretheres not a story i pick up that i actually know anything about when i start. Cspan how long did it take you to write the book . Guest i started it inwell, ii began working on the topic itself when i was at the times in 1995. I decided to write a book and did a contract sometime in 1998 and wasthethe hardest portion of the book actually wasnt the writing of it. The reporting waswas difficult. But far more than anything else, more than anything ive ever done, the hardest part of it was structuring the book because i made a decision early on that i wantedi wanted to play a game i wanted readers to be almost in the same position the fbi was and then, later, in the same position i was of not knowing whats real and what isnt. To do that, i had to convince readers of a version of reality, which, in fact, is fictitious, and doing that again and again and agultimately, i do it five times, you know, with the fifth version being, this is the ultimate truth. but to do that, i had to figure out things like, where do you start the story . wheres a point in the story where the fiction and reality dont cross so heavily that its obvious theres a problem . That took a number of months actually, literally, diagraming it, figuring out thethethe flow of eacheach narrative and finding where you could no longer crossyou could no longer ignore the crossover. I mean, for instance, theres a point where adm comes in and says, Mark Whitacre, your cooperating witness, stole 2 1 2 million from our company. well, thats clearly going to be a crossover point because thats something thatthat is a surprise, is a shock. And so that was the kind of thing i was looking tototo start at a point where i could, basically, keep the oranges up in the air as long as possible and let people realize how difficult it is sometimes to divine the truth. Cspan you open in your prologue, june 27th, 1995, just to get some sense of the way you write in the beginning, the country club of decatur loomed ahead, and Brian Shepard slowed the pace of his 1994 dodge dynasty. Beside him in the passenger seat, bob herndon sat in silence, gazing at the club through the winda windshield. Herndon checked his watch again, although he already knew the time 6 pm, right on schedule. how do you know that . How do you know all that happened just exactly the way it did . Guest without talking about any specific. Cspan yeah. Guest . Event, the way the book was done was first thing you dowell, in any narrative nonfiction, what you do is you go back and you look at those items that dont rely on memory documents prepared at the time, diaries, expense statements. I mean, i cant tell you how happy i am when i find somebodys, you know, receipt from something because that usually has the time and the date printed on it. Cspan where do you get it . Guest anywhere you can. Cspan i mean, wherewhere is the mmost of the information that you got for this book . Is there onei mean, is it at the fbi building, or is it in springfield . Guest itsthere isthere is no one place. There are. Cspan was anybody trying to do this the same time you were . Guest there was another person who was working on a book about the case. He was focusing much more on the trial and did a lot ofdid a lot of presentation of the trial. So we didnt, you knowand i do virtually nothing on the trial, so we really didnt cross paths very much. Cspan now Mark Whitacre came from where . Guest Mark Whitacre waswas raised in ohio. He went togot his doctorate at cornell, a doctorate inin nutritionnutritional biochemistry and was one of these, you know, eager, buildingupthepath fellow who could just seemingly do no wrong, aaa kind of guy who you wanted, you know, things to work out for. And he got a job at ralston purina; from there, took a job at a German Company called degussa, which is a chemical company. Cspan how old is he in this time period . Guest hes in his 20s, early 30s. And, ultimately, hes mmeeting with adm to negotiate a deal with degussa. Theyre impressed with what they see, and they hire him to run their largest, newest division, their most complex division, thethethe bioproducts division, which is going to be the one making, you know, the bacteriarelated products. Cspan at what age again . Guest he is around 30, 32 at that point. Cspan how big a part of the company is he in. Guest ultimateultimately, its going to be, in and of itself, virtually a 1 billion company. I mean, itsitsitsit is theits intended to be the fastestgrowing element of the company because, if you think about it, what does adm do for a living . Well, they take corn and they crush it, and they pull stuff out. Well, you know, all you need is a lot of capital, and you can do that. You need to have, you know, whatwhat they like to callwhat businessmen like to call a valueadded business, where youre bringing something more to the table. And they looked at bioproducts as the way to do that, and they put in charge of it this extremely young, extremely aggressive, extremely eager executive, Mark Whitacre. Cspan now today how old would he be . Guest he is 44, i believe. Cspan and i know youve visited him at the prison because you talk about it in your book. Guest yes. Cspan what prison is he in . Guest he is at the edgefield correctional facility in edgefield, south carolina. Cspan whats he like down there . Guest itsits interesting. I mean, ive seen whitacre over the last five years, and virtually every year i would have in my mind aa viewpoint of his psychological state. I mean, the fall of 1996, he was a wreck; he didnt know he was a wreck, but i knew that he wasyou know, imim not a psychiatrist, so i cant sayi canti cant give a diagnosis to it, but i knew that he was out of control; that the decisions he was making were not the decisions of a rational human being and thatand that there was something wrong with him. Cspan how many times did he try to commit suicide . Guest twice, both afterafter these events started unfolding. Its in. Cspan why didnt he succeed . Guest well, one time he didnt succeed because he was found by a gardener, a fellow who worked for him. Cspan rusty williams . Guest rusty williams, who was a guy who had worked at the whitacre estate forfor a couple years and had come to work early toto, basically, arrange for a car to be picked up by adm. And when he shows up, he notices theres something funny about the garage; its locked. He hears something. He throws open the garage door, andand whitacres in there with the car motor running. The second time there arethethe officials who witness it areare questioned whether it was a real suicide attempt, but the second time it was whitacre had attachedagain, attached hoses to the tailpipe of a car, put it in the car and turned on the gaturned on the motor. Cspan whos ginger . Guest ginger whitacre is his wifeis Mark Whitacres wife. Cspan whats she like . Guest ginger whitacre is what she seems to be. I mean, its hard to describe it any other way. She is aa midwestern woman, who was raised to believe in all those things that americans hold dear, and shbelieves inin till death do us part as a commitment and has stood by her husband for these many years. Cspan what role did she play in this whole story . Guest iits interesting in a way, and inand in a way thatthat, im sure, is very troubling for her. She kind of set everything in motion because Mark Whitacre was telling her, on the day that the fbi was coming to talk to him about thisthis supposed phone call from japan, from this fellow fujiwara, who was going tosaying that they werehe wouldhe would take 10 million to reveal who from japan was sabotaging the adm plant. Mark told ginger about this; that the fbi was coming to talk to him about it. He did not reveal that he had made up the whole story of the phone call from japan. He was very nervous, very tense, as i think any of us would be if we were about to lie to a federal agent. And she knew somethingin the course of those discussions, she learned that there was Something Else going on at adm. She learned that there was pricefixing going on at adm, and she told her husband, you have to tell the truth. and mark was very uncertain, saying, you dont understand. You know, adm is far more powerful than the fbi. and, ultimately, she told him, if you dont tell them, i will. and that night the agent, who ended up being thethe first case agent on this, a fellow by the name of Brian Shepard, came out to the whitacre house to put a tape recorder on their phone to capture any other calls that came from this japanese executive; again, the calls were fictitious. And as hesas shepards heading out the door, ginger says quietly toto her husband, are you going to tell him, or am i . and, literally, when he wont answer, starts to push past him to go outside. And mark cuts her off and calls out, you know, brian, can we talk for a minute . and they go out, and they sit down in shepards car for many hours, and whitacre reveals this unbelievable story of criminal activity going on inside of adm. Cspan whos Brian Shepard . Guest hes thethe special agent in charge of this case, ultimately code named harvest king. He was the case agent in decatur, illinois. At that point, he was the sole agent in decatur, illinois. He remains in decatur to this day. And he was, you knowwell, hesheshes the reluctant hero. I mean, hes a fellow whowho really didnt want this case; didnt feel comfortable, you know, living in a company town investigating the company; really thought that there wereother people should be brought in. And the fbi said, no. You know, whitacre has opened up to you. You know, youre the guy to handle it. You know these people. You know this town better than anybody, and we will be there backing you up every step of the way. well, in truth, they really werent. And, ultimately, this is a case that was largely put together by just three, sometimes just two, case agents one from champagne, who retired before it was all over; and another, bob herndon, who was assigned to the case six months after it began and followed it through to the end. Cspan what role did bob herndon play . Guest bob herndoni mean, everybody sort of fell intointo character. I mean, shepard became sort of the whitacrethe whitacre guy. He was the fellow who was most involved in dealing with whitacre; all of them were on one level of another, but theresits not like shepard. You know, herndon never spoke toto whitacre, butbut shepard had the longest relationship with him. So, you know, there would be times when whitacre would call the fbi office, and he would alwaysalmost always ask for Brian Shepard. Bob herndon became the tapes guy, for lack of a better term. He was a fellow who had a fairly good background in undercover investigations using tapes. Hehe understood the complexities of the documentation for this kind of case and sat down and decided, you know, wewe have hundreds of tapes coming in. We need some method of understanding them, and began doing the summaries of the tapes. So he became the best versed on what was in wwhich tape and how it interrelated to other tapes. But, ultimately, you knowandand then there was joe weatherall, who was thethethe third agent, sort of thethe gentle giant of the team, who played a very Critical Role in terms of getting whitacre to confess to a couple of his most significant lies. Thethethe ones thatthatthat weatherall, in particular, dealt with were getting whitacre to confess that the phone call from japan, that the fujiwara phone call, was, in fact, completely fictitious. And so each one of these agents played their roles, but itit wasnt locked in stone. It was all very interchangeable i mean, thered be times when they would go to hawaii, and it was toto tape some of these meetings, and it was shand it was herndon and weatherall who were handlingwho were handling whitacre. Or it would be to go to irvine, california, and it would shepard and weatherall whod be handling the taping. And so, you know, itit pretty much mixed up a lot, but thatthose were their basic outlines of their assignment. Cspan when was it the most complicated when it came to the wires on mr. Whitacre and the tapingthe videotaping of the meetings . Guest the videotaping was always the most difficult. You know, most days whitacre would go into the office, and he would have, you know, just right in here a littlea little tape recorder. And, you know, you couldive got a phone in here. You can pretty much carry something without it being noticed. And he would clip the microphone to the inside pocket. Nobody wouldnobody would know the better. That caused problems because, you know, if you go like this, youyouve ruined the sound. And so they branched out. They gave him aa notebook folder, which had a tiny, white toggle switch on it that when you tyou know, when you slit it, aa micro cassette recorder hidden behind a plastic map would start recording. They gave him a briefcase recorder, which, again, you know, he had his little method of, you know, touching the latches. And the recorder, which was hidden in a false top, would start recording. They sewed recorders into his suit, with the wires trailing down into hisintointo his pocket. They strapped recorders onto his back. Now, again, this was not at all times, but it wasfor the particularly important meetings, they would make sure he was double, tripletaped because the last thing they would want to do is have, you know, a really important meeting that didnt gothat didnt get recorded. Then when they would have meetings in the United States, where the fbi had authority, they would attempt to tape themthose are pictures from some of the tapes. They would move thesethese lamps that hadyou know, smoke green lamps that had hidden inside them thethe video camera, which would record everything that was going on. Cspan whos meeting in these rooms . Guest in that meeting, thats the meeting in irvine, california. The two executives on the leftlet me see, which picture are we looking at . The two executives on the left are fromare fromare the sare Senior Executives from a Company Called ajinomoto, which is a japanese competitor of adm in the business of making lysine. The fellow, basically, in the center on the right side is mick andreas, who iswho is leading this meeting. Cspan whos now in jail. Guest who is now in jail. And the fellow to his immediate right is Mark Whitacre. I think you can see his briefcasewhitacres briefcase in that picture. Whitacre has multiple recorders there. Cspan right up at theon the edge there by his elbow . Guest right. And itsthat recorder is taping. He has a recorder on his body that is taping. The video is taping. But as you can imagine, thats a really difficult thing to set up. I mean, you cant just grab any room and say, well, well tape here, because the fbi has to be nearby to operate the camera; they operate it by, you know, microwaves. There was a room they had in hawaii at one point whereit was just a cavernous room, and the next room was separated just by a sliding screen. Well, you know, it didnt take much imagination to think somebody might open the sliding screen and see a bunch of agents sitting over there with headphones on watching a monitor. So they had to make a lastminute adjustment. I mean, thatsone of the things thats sort of interesting aboutabout the book, about the informant, isis howhow difficult it is to do something that seems, on its face, to be so simple. Well, you just, you know, stick a camera there andand you tape these guys, but it doesnt work that way. Its an enormous amount ofof planning, enormous amount ofof problems, things that can go wrong. And its funny. Cspan you k. Guest . In this story, whenever theres something that can go wrong, it usually does. Cspan and you keep talking about the fact that, in order to get the foreigners to commit an antitrust violation, you had to get them in the United States. Guest yes. That was a very big problem. Cspan and did they videotape any meetings overseas . Guest they did not because theythey couldnt get the authority. The fbi cannot walkgo to tokyo andand turn on a recorder, a video recorder or an audio recorder. They need the authorization of the Japanese National police. They were allowed to reaudio record using whitacres fbi recorder one time in tokyo. The second time, thethethe japanese changed their position, and they said. Cspan because they were protecting the companies . Guest imtherethere was never any explanation given why they may have grown uncomfortable because whatwhat they did is say, you cant use an fbi recorder, but your witness can use hiswhat they called his businessmans recorder. So they ended up getting the tape, but it wasit had to be off of aoff of a recorder that whitacre himself purchased. Cspan all along, what is Mark Whitacre trying to do, and who is giving him instructions . Guest well, the first questions a lot harder than the second. Whitacre is trying to do a lot of things. In the context of the fbi investigation, whitacre is trying to capture the crime. Youyou cant just have people discussing, gee, wouldnt it be nice to fix prices . Gee, wouldnt it be nice if we were able to reach an agreement where we do this. the crime is the agreement. Theres noththereyou know, conspiracy to commit an antitrust violation is reallyyou know, i dont think ive sever seen such a charge. And so they wanted the agreement on tape, and they drilled into whitacres head, you know, get the agreement, get the agreement, get the agreement. they also drilled into his head getting people to repeat things that they had already said that hadnt been taped, and o a lot of the conversation becomes whitacre talking about, well, ou remember that time when we were in vancouver, and we agreedand what was the number we agreed on . andand itit wasitsits very interesting to watch his evolution as a cooperating witness because he becomes amazing. I mean, he isevery agent whos ever reviewed this has said hes one of the best cooperating witnesses, just in terms of the evidence hes producing and how hes handling it, that theyve ever seen. And, i mean, one of the interesting thingswe were talking about getting the japanese to the United States so that the fbi could tape. You know, ultimately, they decided the way to do that wasand, again, it sounds laughableto lure them with the prospect of aof a golf game, a golf game on a really nice golf course. And it becomes whitacres job to do this rather farfetched thing; you know, get people to commit a crime in a country where the enforcement isnt particularly strict by saying, hey, well play golf. and in the course of that conversation, the first of those conversations, whitacre not only gets the fellow to confess, well, the reason i dont want to come is because the antitrust laws are so strict, which, you know, is a very important piece of evidence. Cspan help. Guest . But he ultimately dangles the golf game. Cspan help with this andmick andreas, who was the vice chairman of the company and was sent to jail for three years or whateverMark Whitacrehe wouldnt be in jail if Mark Whitacre hadnt done this, and Mark Whitacre gets 10 1 2 years andand a fine of 11 million and is in jail in south carolina. How did that happen; that Mark Whitacre got far more in this in the way of penalties than mick andreas or terry wilson . Guest itits a complex question on some levels. On some levels its very simple the simple answer to it is Mark Whitacre committed other crimes while he was working for the fbi, whitacre was simultaneously embezzling millions of dollars, 9 million, from adm, and laundering it into swiss and Cayman Islands and Hong Kong Bank accounts. So when you stand back and look at it, say , well, he committed other crimes, hehe gets another sentence. that, in turn, caused a waiver of his cooperation agreement. He committed crimes he wasnt supposed to. So they also prosecuted him on pricefixing charges, which is aa very uncomfortable outcome. Now the problem with this case, ultimately, was that it wasnt treated like a normal criminal case. Cooperating witnesses go bad all the time, you know. This is not unusual. Thethein fact, thethe us attorney from chicago, who was directly involved in this case, scott lassar, at the very time theyre finding out whitacre has gone bad, in Law Enforcement terms, had another case, using another cooperating witness whod been working for the fbi, and it had just emerged that he had committed crimes while working for the fbi. Same thing. Usually what is done, is the people running the case go in and cut a deal. They cut a deal where they say, ok, youve committed crimes, youve been doing this cooperation, we will cut a deal we will take into account your cooperation, but now is the time to do it. well, what happened here was the Justice Department in washington justtheres no other way to describe it than to say, was so surprised that a cooperating witness would engage in criminal activity that they activity that they created what, from everyone ive spoken to, soundsis an unprecedented situation where the cooperating witness is being investigated by completely different people than he was working with. You dont have the ability to say, look, we have a longterm relationship. Why dont you just tell the truth . and so ultimately, whitacre, who by then, anybody would understand, is not mentally balancedi mean, the man had, you knowwashad, very soon afterafter his role in thein the money smoney scam came out, was attempting suicide. Whitacre just spins completely out control, and you know, most smart criminals know when to lay their hand down and say, ok, lets cut a deal. whitacre somehow or other became convinced that he could force the government to back down. And theres no doubt in my mind that is a sign of his mental illness, and in the end, he never takes a deal, and itswhats so funny is, itsthe thing that make him soso odd at the end, the thing that make him so rethat mathe things that make him so reckless at the end, that lead to his 101 2year sentence, are the same things that made him reckless enough to become a cooperating witness in the first place. So the outcome in this, you know, the disparity between whitacres sentence and mick andreas sentence, while on one level its understandable, on another level, ii really view it as aas a Law Enforcement failure. I mean, they have a cooperating witness who brought in one of the biggest whitecollar cases, or the biggest whitecase, ultimately, in history, who got absolutely no credit for it. Cspan how many times did Mark Whitacre lie . Guest countless. Cspan did he lie to you . Guest yes, many times. Cspan did he lie near the end . I mean, diddid he lie to you when you saw him the last time you were in. Guest yes. Cspan . At the prison . Guest yes, he did. Cspan whatd you say to him . When was this . When was the last time you saw him . Guest last time i saw him was in thei think, february, march, april 2000, and that was a pointby that point, whitacrewhitacre had told a story priorwoonce his money scam was known, whitacre had told a story that was very believable, given the context of Everything Else that was being heard about adm. The story was that he hadnt stolen the money, but adm had provided it to its executives as an underthetable bonus scheme, and, you know, there werethere were things out there that made this look possible. Cspan how would it work . Guest it would work that you would get an executive who would be caught up in some criminal enterprise, say, pricefixing. You dont want to give them a reward for, you knowheyyou know, go to the board, hey, can you give him some money . Hes been really fixing prices well. instead youyou would give them this underthetable bonus to offshore corporayou know, to an offshore corporation they founded, the money ultimately going to ato a swiss or caymans bank account. Now this, as bizarre as it sounded, alsoit could not be dismissed. Ityou know, youyou had a companyyou know, there were stories coming out of the company that ultimately proved to be true, that they were looking at hiring prostitutes forto engage in corporate espionage. I mean, you cant delineate truth and fiction in this story by what makes sense. And so the underthetable bonus plan was a story that the fbi pursued, that a lot of reporters pursued. There are to this day people who firmly believe it is true, and ultimately, when i reviewed all of the bank records, when i reviewed all of the records that emerged from thefrom these multiple investigations, spoke to as many people as i could, there were a lot of problems that emerged. The biggest of the problems was that so much of the money ultimatelyeven if it went to other executives that whitacre named as being involved in the scheme, later ended up in whitacres bank account. It wasyou know, they were more cutouts than anything else. Cspan does he have any money left . Guest i dont think so. Cspan where does his wife live . Guest she lives in south carolina. Cspan how do they afford to live . Guest she is working. She went back to school and got her teaching degree. Cspan how many kids to they have . Guest they have three children, only one of whom is still of school age. Cspan and shes sticking with him through all this. Guest absolutely. Cspan was he sane when you saw him . Guest thats the interesting thing. He washe was morehe continued telling his stories. I presented him with the evidence ofthat he was lying. He would throw things back in my facefor example, Dwayne Andreas had said something to the Washington Post a few years back, that some people took as evidence, that he knew of the embezzlements, you know, three before it was revealed, and once you know the full scope of the story, you understand the fujiwara story, what hes saying makes more sense. Whitacre finally, as i sort of stacked piece on pieceit was when he said, this individual syou know, told me that he knew about it, i had that individuals grand jury testimony, and i said, well, mark, you know, ive read the grand jury testimony, and he clearly supports you. But what he says really happened was something different. he then said, fine. The only other person ive told this to is my wife, but ill tell you. and he proceeded to admit that the underthetable bonus scheme was a lie. Now the interesting thing of all thisi mean, iive never had such an interesting relationship with an individual who im covering, because ultimately, whitacres breakthrough at that point in telling the truth, he seems to have found enormously relieving. Hesi mean, if you think about it, living lies for five years is veryor eight years, actuallyis very difficult, and now the ability to tell the truth, he seemsinin a controlled environment, he seems far more balanced, farfar more like just a normal guy than he ever did before. Cspan he even lied on his resume abouthe didnt have a masters degree, and he didnt get a. Guest wellithere wasthere was something that went out from adm to Milliken University when whitacre was named to the board there, and on it, it said he had aa degree from ai forget which school. It was a Chicago Business school, and i think it wasi think it wasi think it was northwestern, and he didnt. He had a business degree from a mailorderyou know, correspondencecorrespondence school. Cspan theres a lot of little stories in there, as you well know. Nigeria comes into this. Guest yes. Cspan i remember those schemes. Never had it pitched to me, but i mean, everybodys gotten one in the mail. Whatshow did nigeria play a role in this . Guest well, nigeriathe sorti mean, sort of do the prologue first. My favorite part of this whole story is that if you think about it, if it wasnt for a bunch of nigerian con men sitting off inin lagos faxing letters, hoping to find a gulliblethis multibillion dollar pricefixing scam never would have been uncovered. What happened was, nigerians sent out this letterits a very famous scamwhere theythey pretend to be people in the nigerian government, particularly in the oil ministry, and they say, we have done a series of bogus foreign contracts, and have stashed tens of millions of dollars, 65 million, 75 million, in accounts in nigeria. But now we need to pay them out, and to do this we need an overseas bank account. If youll give us your overseas bank account, and letterhead, we will share the proceeds with you and give you 50 percent, or whatever. Most people get this and see it for what it is, which is a con, because if you start heading down this path, if you say, wow, im really excited, the first thing they tell you is, gee, we need money for bribes, and the demands for money start coming as they dangle this 30 million payoff, and ultimately you either run out of cash or catch on that theres no money coming, ever. Well, one of the people who fell for this was Mark Whitacre. He received a fax, believed it was true, sent money to nigeria, convinced some of his friends to send money to nigeria. When they ran out of money, got money out of adm by doing the very thing the nigerians had been talking about, bogus contracts with boguswith bogus foreign corporations, and shipped that money to nigeria. See, the first 800,000 of what was taken from adm went to nigeria. And then realized it had all been a con, that he had just lost, you know, almost 1 million and he had given guarantees to the other people who put money in. And whats so funny, he gave people guarantees of money they put in that they stole from adm and so they turned around and got more money out of adm to compensate themselves for their losses. Thethethe endpoint to all thisand this is what thethe prosecutors believe is the ultimate truthwhitacre at that pointnow whitacre denies this, but the prosecutors say it and it certainly does fit the facts whitacre at point decides to go to get his millions and comes in and says, hey, i got this call from a japanese executive named fujiwara, who says that we have a saboteur, and hell tell us who it is for 10 million, if we pay it to a swiss bank account. well, whitacre has a swiss bank account, and the prosecutors believe that that was whitacres effort to get his millions that he didnt get from the nigerians. I mean, this is theits very funny, because somebody called this book john grisham on acid. i mean, it is very, in some ways, convoluted. Its cons within cons within cons, and circles within circles. Cspan this is a strange little story. Whatsim not even sure he pronounces it this waythis waylametvov . Guest the lametvov. Cspan youve used lammet instead of the french pronunciation. Guest iyeah. Cspan what is the lametvov . Guest the lametvov. Cspan lametnew word, vov. Guest the lametvov iswhenwhen this story began, very shortly afterwards, shortly after the raids, faxes began to arrive at the home fax numbers of some very powerful people, of Dwayne Andreas, of members of the board, of the mulroneys of the worldwhich were addressed to the adm board, from the adm shareholders watch committee, and these faxes would make a series of allegations about what was on the tapes, and many of them wereweremany of the allegations, what was on the tapes, were pretty much on target, ultultimately proved to be on targetand they were all signed by the lametvov. now this was something that nobodyi mean, you know, people handle whitecollar cases all the timenobody had seen a circumstance where theyre getting these letters coming in from something they cant even figure out what it is. Some lawyer goes off to the library and starts looking up what is the lametvov and finds upfinds a reference with slightly different spellingthe lametvov zaquitem i think it is, which is something out of the babylonian talmud that refers to the 36 righteous individuals who exist in every generation, who are there to point out evil, and so that seemed to fit the portrayal. Now thethe pursuit was, who is the lametvov, andand he ended up being aaan individual in florida who was a veryhe was very aggressive, a very Firm Believer ininthat there was wrongthat there was widespread wrongdoing at adm. He was a shareholder who, as he told the fbi, was exercising his Constitutional Rights to express his opinion and have the management of adm changed through any lawful means, and planned to continue to do so. Cspan did you talk to him . Guest thats another one of those questions that i cant answer. Cspan how is it thatthis is the largestat the timepricefixing case, antitrust case in the history of government prosecution. Guest yes. Cspan . To a corporation . How is it that the chairman of the board, Dwayne Andreas, continues to serve on the board and is the chairman emeritus, and that Brian Mulroney and other board membersbob strauss, all of those people survived this kind of a crisis . Guest well, mulroneymulroney and bob straussi mean, the members of the board wereyou know, acted as members of the board. Theythey formed a committee, they settled the case. As for Dwayne Andreas andandand other people in the companyone of the things that was most atrocious, to me, about this case was after the board viewedor the boards representatives viewed the videotapes, where mick andreas and terry wilson are clearly engaged in criminal activity, they didnt go back home and demand that these guys resign. You know, they waited until after the settlement. That was almost a year, and so they left people in there that they knew were engaged in criminal activity. Now thats a problemthats a problem for the shareholders of adm. Thats something they need to be asking themselves. Why didnt these people get tossed out . Cspan how do you. Guest anyanybody else would have been. Cspan how can you deal with it, though . One of the things your book does is show how intertwined the fbi, the Justice Department, the antitrust division, the fraud section of theyou know, all thesethe criminal division, all that stuffhow do youif youre a stockholder, how do you ever get to it . Guest you know, the answer to that, i have no idea, because it is difficult. I mean, you know, directors have to take their jobs seriously. On some levels, the directors of thisof this company did take their jobs seriously. On other levels, i dont think they did. I thinkand i think the most glaring example of that is the failure to remove mick andreas and terry wilson after they were aware of the evof the evidence against them. Cspan but you have a whole other part of this book where you set up the llawyers, and the relationship between the Williams Connolly law firm of washington, dc, the old willedward Bennett Williams firm, and they represented adm, and then the lawyer that representedand ityou can explain thatthe lawyer that represented them. Guest itsitsits very convoluted,. unintelligible . Cspan . The committee. Guest Williams Connolly is representing the board and the special committee, and Simpson Thacher is representing the special committee. I mean, there were times i was talking to peoplelike, whos really representing who . It really wasnt clear. Ultimately. Cspan whowho is this man from Williams Connolly . Guest that is Aubrey Daniels iii. Cspan why is he famous inin our history . Guest he was the prosecutor of lieutenant calley, thethe person who led the attack onmassacreat my lai. Cspan who did he represent in all this . Guest he represented adm, and he. Cspan whos this fellow right here . Guest that is richard beatty, who is the chairman of Simpson Thacher, who represented the special committee. Cspan where are they located . Guest they are located in new york, and. Cspan so you had the boards special committee represented by richard beatty, and the company represented by Aubrey Daniel iii. Guest thats the best way i ever heard it described. But ultimately, its like, who is the company . i was veryone of the stranger questions was, who does aubwho does Williams Connolly actually represent . and iand i always had trouble with that, because it. Cspan stockholders . Guest well, itno, because if Simpson Thacher is representing the special committeei mean, it could be dual representation, but it was a very odd circumstance, where even the people involved werent exactly sure, and in the end, Williams Connolly wasWilliams Connolly is a very aggressive law firm, and they took the tack of be aggressive; fight this to the death. beatty, from Simpson Thacher, was the first one allowed to view the videotapes, and he was one who looked at the circumstance and said, we got to cut a deal. and there becameone of theone ofthe thing thats most interesting, when beattybeatty is ais a lawyer with a reputation, you know, second to none, and he comes in advocating, we have to cut a deal, and suddenly these conspiracy stories start emerging fromfrom adm, particularly from the andreas family, that beatty, whose otherwhosewhose biggest client is henry kravis of kohlberg, kravis, roberts companythat beatty is trying to cripple adm with a settlement in order to set the company up for a takeover by henry kravisbizarre, to me. Cspan i got to ask you, then, about something that our audience has brought up on occasion on our callin shows. The Bilderberg Group comes up in all this. Guest yes. Cspan . David rockefeller and Dwayne Andreas and henry kravis and the meeting in toronto. Whats that about . Guest the Bilderberg Group, which is thisis thisprobably the focus of more conspiracy theories thanthanthan i would want to count, is this organization of World Leaders who go into nice big secret meetings to talk about Economic Trends globally and political issues globally, and Dwayne Andreas was a member of the Bilderberg Group, as was henry kravis, and they were in this meeting in toronto at whiand by that point. Cspan who is kravis, by the way . Guest kravis is the chairman of a leveraged buyout Company Called kohlberg, kravis, roberts company. They became famousthey were the ones who bought rjr nabisco inin the takeover deal that was chronicled in barbarians at the gate, so. Cspan and ross johnson is on the board. Guest right. Cspan . Of Archer Daniels midland, and who is he in relationship to all of this . Guest right. Ross johnson was the chairman ofofof rjr nabisco, dick beatty was the lawyer advising henry kravis. I mean, its funny, its like a lot of the characters from barbarians at the gate reappear here. But at this meeting in toronto, andreas took it as his opportunity to confront kravis with his suspicions, and so he walks over and corners him, and says, you know, are you trying toare you trying to take over my company . , again, the idea being that beattys structuring a deal, a settlement so thatso that itll cripple adm and set kravis up to take it over. Its likekravis says, no, and, you know, the two men part ways, andand andreas still isnt convinced, but, you know, that wasthat was their little confrontation. Cspan as you know, well never get it all in, and weve almost talked for two hours. Whats the reaction to this by people that you know around adm and the andreases to your book . Guest a number of interesting reactions; in decatur, ii went out there and there was athere was a wonderful discussion i hadactually, it was on cspan 2with the folks at decatur about the book, and i heard a lot of things from a lot of people about how this was really how things happened. Thei have heard from the chicago us attorney asking me, you know, you have a lot of things youre not supposed to have. How did you get them . i heard from people in the fbi thanking me for getting the story right. On the other hand, ive also, you knowi havent heard personally, but iveive seen lettersthe lametvov, the fellow who we talked about earlier, is convinced thatthat this story isis hiding the truth about adm, that adm, in fact, does have an underthetable bonus plan, and that imim just lying about it, and so, you know, the book is not without its critics. But for the most part, what i have heard has been either people who are involved in it thanking me or saying how accurate it is, or people who knew nothing about itthose are actually my favorite reactionspeople who knew nothing about it who always callifif they know me, they call me when theyre on chapter 17, including my own mother, saying, is this really true . , because once you get to the level ofof the lametvov andand abductions, and was there really an abduction . No, maybe there wasnt, and the Swiss Bank Accounts and the suicide attempts, i mean people begin to think thatthat this canthis story could not have possibly happened. Cspan theres a lot of description in the book about soandsos driving down the road looking out the window, looks up at the clouds, at the puffy white clouds and all that, andim exaggerating, but. Guest yeah. I was going to say, i never did puffy white clouds. Cspan its pretty close to that, though, as you know. Guest i thinki dont know how id figure out puffy white clouds. Cspan here is a footnote i wanted to ask you about at the beginning of chapter four. the description of the weather on the road from decatur to springfield comes from records on file with the National Climactic Data Center in asheville, north carolina. The records include the hourly surface weather observations for november 10th, 1992, from both the decatur and springfield stations maintained by the Us Department of commerce. did you go get those descriptions so that you could put them in the book . Guest ii had a researcher who knows those people very well, and i would give him the dates and times. Cspan thats how you embellished on the. Guest . That i would need. Cspan . Excuse that word. Guest well, embellish is not the word. Cspan i know. I know. But thatbut thats. Guest well, noletsi mean, talking about that one scene whatwhat i dodid for that one scene that started off withi forget thethe file numberbut the particular fbi document that states the exact time that a tape recording was turned over. Cspan fd504b . Guest fd504b. That set the time of when this event took place. From other reporting, i knew that within a short time of that document being filled out, this individual drove from decatur to springfield on interstate 72. So then i proceeded to go out and do that drive, reciting everything i saw as i went along, then called people to make sure nothing had changed over the years, because, remember, this is a different year than when i did the drive. Then i had the general background, and i knew the time, but was it raining . Was itwas it calm . Was ityou know, thatand i was kind of hoping it would be bad weather, because bad weather is easier to write aboutand fortunately, itit was. You know, i askedi asked my researcher tototo find outto get the records from decatur and springfield for this hour in this time frame, and theand that is what you end up finding in the book. Cspan how much help did you have . Guest i hadi had three reresearchers who worked for me, one at a time. The deal i make with my researchers is, you know, you work for me and i sort of become youryour advocate for your job, and one of them i got hired away from myself, soand ultimately two of them were hired into jobs, and the third hashad a job of her own. Cspan why no index . Guest you know, that was a very debated thing, and ultimately the decision was made that this book was written to read like a novel. Itsits a game on truth and fiction, you know. You never know where reality is until the whole book is over. If you put fif you put in aaan index, and actually since its has come out, ive reconsidered this, and i think it wasii thinkii agreed with this. Ii was actually an advocate of it at the end, and i think it was the wrong call. You ultimately create a situation where people can jump around, and they can find, you know, pieces, and the pieces allow thatyou know, youre brought into the middle of something which could be complete fiction, youre brought into the middle of something would could be totally true, and you have no idea, no way of knowing, that thats the case. As i thought about it and went through it, novels dont have indexes, a civil action didnt have an index, and maybe that would be thethe last shred ofof doing it this way. But iiii think myi think my call on that was wrong. Cspan is there a movie here . Have you sold the rights . Guest were about to sign a contract this week. Cspan you have any sense of how soon they would make a movie . Guest ii sold my last book for a movie, and im still. Cspan what was that . Guest . Im still waiting for that one to come out. Cspan whatwhat was the last book . Guest that was called serpent on the rock. It was about thea sthe largest investment scandal in history. Cspan and where do you write this stuff . Guest where . Cspan where, physically. Guest physically, i write it in mywell, both books were in different placesi wrote the first one in my very tiny offthelivingroom office. Then from the proceeds of my last book, i built a new office, and build in myyou know, off the basement. My kids are usually playingi have a soundproof door, which is greatand its ai just sit there and type away. Cspan what do you write it on . Guest on a pc. Well, itsand its interesting, though, therestheres a lot of Different Things ii do, you know, thei talked aboutearlier about structuring the book, and that involved diagramming, and the diagrams start off being on a white board and eventually werewere put onto construction paper and i will hang documents up that i know im going to be coming to and i need to incorporate into the story. I had another white board that i would write factual questions on or issues on, things that i had to resthings that i wanted to get that i didnt have, because in the writing of it, you find, you know, theyre eating a sandwich. Well, what kind of sandwich was it . You know, i got to go back and find that somehow. There was a timethere was a meeting in herethere are two hotels that are right next to each otherthe forsyth inn and the hampton innnot the forsyth inn, the. Cspan in decatur. Guest in dyeah, just outside of decatur, these two hotels that are virtually identical, and literally right next to each other, and everybody recalled this meeting as having taken place in one hotel, but ii realized, wait, i think i have a record of that day, and went and spent, you know, over an hour digging through these receipts and documents and other pieces of information, and found a slip of paper that made reference to the actual location of thisof this event, and it was the other hotel. I was very happy that day, but i was like, nobody will ever know i got this right. cspan this time we are out of time, on part two, and this is the informant, the cover of thethe book, and our guest has been kurt eichenwald. Thank you very much. Guest thanks for having me. In order to have empathy with people instead of pity piteous putting someone over there. It empathy is establishing a connection that allows you to think of that person is Something Like yourself and once you do that it becomes difficult to treat that person in ways that you would not like to be treated. Sally hemings for example who is sort of this people dont know very much about her and think of her primarily as a problem, as the controversy and i turn that into my book as a person. She was the daughter. She was someones sister. She was someones mother, a friend, and without thinking of her in those sorts of ways, putting her in that light it sorted b. C. To say anything you want to say about her in a sense. You can give her fathers of her childrens sort of every 10 years based upon nothing because you dont know her because there is no sense of connection with her as a person. There is no care with her life. What i thought i would try to do with this book was to talk not just about her but to talk about her entire family, to put all of the hemingses into a context that would make it easier for people to see them as human beings and not as slaves, not as part of the particular problem