‘60 Minutes’ Source to Testify, Lawyer Says : Media: Although the ex-tobacco exec is already being harassed, he says the testimony should get out.

The attorney for the former tobacco company executive identified as a source for a controversial “60 Minutes” story said he expects the source to repeat in a court deposition charges he reportedly made in the CBS report, which never aired.

The former Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. executive, who sources confirm is Jeffrey Wigand, now a high school teacher in Louisville, Ky., will offer testimony highly critical of the tobacco company when he gives a deposition Wednesday in a lawsuit brought by the State attorney general of Mississippi, said his attorney, Richard Scruggs.

Wigand was vice president of research and development when Brown & Williamson fired him in 1993, according to Scruggs, of Pascagoula, Miss. The reason for his firing could not be established. Wigand felt “betrayed by CBS” because his identity was disclosed in a leaked transcript of the “60 Minutes” story, Scruggs said.

“People at CBS gave up his name to other journalists because there was an internecine war going on between the news guys and the lawyers, and the news people wanted to get the story out,” Scruggs said. “He feels that the information about the tobacco companies still should get out. But his life has been made miserable” by being exposed.

Scruggs said Wigand, who had been making $300,000 a year before he was fired, has been receiving threatening “hang-up calls” since being named in published reports as the source of the story. Scruggs said Wigand also faces a possible lawsuit by Brown & Williamson for violating a confidentiality agreement with the company.

The New York Daily News, printing what it said is an excerpt from the unaired “60 Minutes” report, named Wigand as the source and said he told correspondent Mike Wallace that Brown & Williamson scrapped plans to develop a safer cigarette out of fears of exposing itself to lawsuits over other products and that the company also knowingly used a pipe-tobacco additive that causes cancer in lab animals.

Brown & Williamson could not be reached for comment Sunday. In a letter to CBS on Friday, the company said it was outraged by the leaking of the transcript, although it did not comment on the charges in the story.

Since being identified, Wigand has been subpoenaed to testify in a lawsuit in which the Mississippi attorney general is trying to force the tobacco companies to pay for the state’s cost of treating smoking-related illnesses of the poor.

Scruggs said he has also been retained as one of several lawyers by the state attorneys general of Mississippi and Florida in two similar lawsuits against the tobacco industry.

Scruggs said he has not seen the leaked “60 Minutes” transcript. But he said, in responding to the subpoena and questions of the Mississippi attorney general, he expects Wigand to testify “that he was frustrated in his attempts to create a safer cigarette.” In addition, Scruggs said, “his testimony certainly will confirm William Sandefur [Brown & Williamson chief executive] didn’t tell the truth” about cigarettes in congressional testimony and that in the past, the company “intentionally included a carcinogenic compound” in tobacco.

On Sunday, CBS News President Eric Ober said CBS “greatly regrets” the exposure of the source, whom CBS did not name. Ober said CBS will “fully indemnify” the source.

The network previously had said it would indemnify the source against libel but had declined to indemnify him against a lawsuit over breach of contract, Scruggs said.

“He feels better now that CBS has agreed to fully indemnify him,” Scruggs said, “but he was out there for two weeks, personally exposed to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit” by Brown & Williamson “because his name and facts about him were being leaked to other publications even before CBS decided not to air the story.”