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TELEVISION - Feb. 2, 1996

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Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation's press

‘60 Minutes’ Update: Sunday night’s long-delayed “60 Minutes” interview with former tobacco-industry executive Jeffrey Wigand will include Wigand’s response to allegations about his personal history made against him in a 500-page “dossier” released to the press by Brown & Williamson Corp. “It will be two stories--how cigarettes destroy people’s lives and how the tobacco company is trying to destroy the life of a man who refused to knuckle under to them,” “60 Minutes” executive producer Don Hewitt told The Times. Brown & Williamson reportedly hired a private investigator and a public-relations firm to comb through Wigand’s credit-card transactions, college courses and even his phone records. Wigand’s attorney said the resulting “dossier” is a smear campaign and adamantly denies the company’s charges that Wigand is a “shoplifter” and “wife-beater.”

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