Waxman Requests Probe of Tobacco Document Claims

A California congressman on Thursday asked the Justice Department to investigate claims that a tobacco industry group destroyed up to 1 million pages of internal documents in Europe to keep them out of the hands of legal opponents in the U.S.

In a letter to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) called for an investigation of allegations by a tobacco insider, Ron Tully, who during the 1990s headed the Tobacco Documentation Centre, an industry group in Britain. Tully’s charges also include bribery.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said the letter had not yet been reviewed.

Jay Pool, a vice president for Philip Morris Cos., said the firm had “found no evidence of wrongdoing” in its own investigation of Tully’s claims.

Pool dismissed the Waxman letter as the latest attempt by anti-smoking groups to keep the Justice Department from abandoning its lawsuit against the tobacco industry. The multibillion-dollar racketeering case was filed by the Clinton administration. Despite predictions that Ashcroft will seek to dismiss or settle the case, he has not done so yet.

Tully, who could not be reached, is director of public affairs for Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. in Santa Fe, N.M. Despite the incendiary charges, he appears to be a reluctant witness. His allegations are contained in two letters he sent in 1998 without intending that they become public. But copies found their way into the files of Philip Morris, which recently produced them to a plaintiff in a lawsuit.

Under the litigation settlement between the industry and the states, tobacco firms must put documents they produce in lawsuits on a Web site. The Tully letters, after being posted, were noticed by anti-smoking groups.

In 1988, Tully joined Infotab, an industry group based in Switzerland that included Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. Two years later, he moved to the Tobacco Documentation Centre and was executive director when he left in 1997.

In one of the letters, he told of eliminating documents from Infotab and documentation center files. The idea “was to identify and remove all documents which could be viewed as ‘problematic,’ damaging or useful to plaintiffs in any ongoing industry litigation.”

Altogether, he said, he “authorized the destruction of close to 1 million individual pages.”

In the letters, written to Marion Funck, general counsel of cigarette maker Reemtsma, Tully also discussed improper inducements to health officials and anti-smoking activists to temper their attacks.

In 1989, Tully said he became aware of payments to senior officials at the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization and in the health ministry of Malawi.

He said he also was asked to offer an “incentive” to Luk Joossens, a European activist. He said he “conveyed Joossens’ response,” though he did not say in the letter what the response was.

Reached Thursday at a conference in South Africa, Joossens told The Times that he recalled meeting Tully in 1990. But though “very honored” that the industry might wish to buy his silence, Joossens said no bribe offer was ever made.

After Tully left the documentation center in 1997, his expenses were the subject of an audit by the center’s board. In his letters, Tully defended his financial dealings.

Philip Morris officials declined to say Thursday how the audit was resolved.