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 sitti