Tobacco Case Marked by Series of Sound Bites

Tobacco company lawyers, vowing to discredit prominent whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand through a fierce campaign of damage control, confronted the renegade former Brown & Williamson tobacco executive at a deposition Monday here that quickly took the tone of a sound-bite Olympics.

The day was marked by a series of news conferences, questionable assertions of fraud and the unusual spectacle of showing the deposition to reporters via tape delay.

Wigand, 53, the highest-ranking defector in the history of the tobacco industry and a witness in pending civil and criminal probes of the cigarette makers, will be examined under oath for up to five days at a law office on the 25th floor of the Brown & Williamson Tower. Wigand, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.’s vice president for research and development from 1989 to 1993, went public with allegations that the company lied about the risks of addiction and disease from smoking.

His deposition is being taken in a fraud and breach of contract suit that accuses him of violating confidentiality agreements he signed before and after he was fired in 1993.

Along with lawyers for B&W; and Wigand, the deposition is being monitored by Jimmye Warren, a prosecutor in the fraud section of the Justice Department, to ensure the testimony does not compromise the criminal investigation. About two dozen reporters and camera operators watched the deposition from an amphitheater-like conference room on the 14th floor of the B&W; headquarters.

By coincidence, the deposition began the day after the death of Wigand’s chief nemesis, former B&W; Chief Executive Thomas E. Sandefur Jr. Sandefur, 56, died Sunday of aplastic anemia, a blood disease.

In an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” and a deposition in the state of Mississippi’s lawsuit against the tobacco companies, Wigand had accused Sandefur of lying to Congress in 1994 when he testified, along with other tobacco chief executives, that he did not believe nicotine was addictive.

Wigand also accused Sandefur of opposing work on safer cigarettes to avoid legal liability for conventional smokes. And Wigand said Sandefur rebuffed his advice to remove coumarin, a flavor enhancer suspected of causing cancer, from a pipe tobacco to avoid a negative effect on sales.

Wigand also said B&W; used chemicals in its tobacco blends to enhance the effect of nicotine and said company lawyers had altered minutes of scientific meetings and concealed scientific research from potential litigants by shipping it overseas.

B&W; executives have hotly denied the allegations and have said they would prove that Wigand is a liar when they got him under oath.

But on Day 1, at least, the company made little headway.

Just before noon, attorney Gordon Smith, a member of B&W;’s legal team, descended from the 25th floor to announce that Wigand had been questioned about a professional diary he kept and that “that diary is a fraud.”

According to Smith, Wigand had written in his diary about scientific meetings in 1989 at the Fundamental Research Center in Southampton, England--a facility that Smith said was not established until the following year.

However, as the videotape later revealed, Wigand testified that they had always called the research site the Fundamental Research Center, even though it wasn’t given the formal name until 1990.

Smith also said Wigand had been confronted with travel records showing that he was out of town on the day in April 1991 that his diary showed he had had a contentious meeting in Louisville with top B&W; lawyer Kendrick Wells, whom Wigand has accused of ordering changes in scientific minutes.

“Kendrick Wells and I will butt heads,” Wigand had written. “He needs to stay out of science and play lawyer,” Wigand wrote, adding, “What an idiot.”

In his testimony, Wigand said he had written the entry a few weeks after the meeting with Wells and probably made a mistake about the date.

Altogether, Smith held at least four news briefings, and lawyers for Wigand staged two of their own. In the escalating smoking wars, pro- and anti-tobacco lawyers clearly agree on one thing: that everyone who reads or watches the news is a potential juror in tobacco-related litigation, from class-action suits on behalf of allegedly addicted smokers to lawsuits by states seeking reimbursement of Medicaid funds spent to treat smoking-related ailments.

Wigand’s lawyers offered up the first sound bites before the deposition started, even hanging a sign, for the benefit of cameras, that read, “The Truth vs Tobacco.”

Wigand, wearing a dark double-breasted suit, spoke briefly of his battle with B&W;, saying it will be worth it if “one child will make it through life unfettered by . . . tobacco.”

Wigand’s lawyer John Aldock, whose fees are being paid by CBS as part of Wigand’s agreement to appear on “60 Minutes,” said Wigand “has paid an enormous price,” and going public “has changed the landscape . . . of tobacco in this country.”

Despite efforts to smear him, Aldock said, “the core allegations about the conduct of this tobacco company and this industry . . . will not change.”

Wigand was fired in 1993 under disputed circumstances but until last spring continued to receive a six-figure salary as part of his severance package.

Before and after his firing, he signed several confidentiality agreements. B&W;, in the lawsuit filed last November, said Wigand violated those agreements by talking to “60 Minutes,” leaking documents to other news organizations, and offering himself as an expert witness in lawsuits against the industry.