THE SMOKING GUN: TOBACCO BARONS' SECRETS WERE FORCED INTO THE OPEN

WHILE independent counsel Kenneth Starr was digging the dirt on Bill
Clinton, other investigators were rummaging through documents prised from
one of the US President's fiercest adversaries---the American tobacco
industry. In 1998, around 30 million pages of industry documents were
forced into the open.

The paper trail will occupy reporters and legal researchers for years. But
for the tobacco giants, the PR nightmare has already begun. In January and
February, there was uproar over the discovery of documents detailing
manufacturers' attempts to woo youngsters. According to one 1987 memo, R.
J. Reynolds designed a fatter cigarette to target "13-24-year-old male
Marlboro smokers". The company blamed a typing error and claimed the memo
should have said "18-24".

Next in the firing line was the biggest tobacco firm of all, Philip Morris,
the manufacturer of Marlboro. An internal document revealed it had
investigated the smoking habits of children as young as 12. And in
February, the world learnt that scientists at Brown & Williamson, owned by
the British American Tobacco conglomerate, once considered a plan to
develop cigarettes with a "cola-like" taste.

A picture soon began to emerge of companies using lawyers to vet everything
their scientists did and wrote. Research projects that looked at the
physiological effects of nicotine and tobacco smoke were often closed down
before they could produce any evidence of harm.

The subtle tactics used to stir up confusion about the health problems
caused by passive smoking also came into the limelight. In May, New
Scientist revealed documents from the London offices of Covington and
Burling, a law firm working for Philip Morris, which detailed a programme
to hire scientists as consultants.

The documents suggested that the consultants infiltrated the medical
establishment and created a learned society that would act as a forum for
views favourable to the industry. The operation was codenamed "Project
Whitecoat".

The story developed a further twist in August when the St Paul Pioneer
Press of Minnesota uncovered documents showing that an industry research
organisation called the Tobacco Institute had paid scientists to submit
letters and articles to journals, questioning the science of passive
smoking. The going rate was $2000 to $5000 per letter, and up to $10 000
for an article. All submissions were edited by industry lawyers.

Richard Hurt, a nicotine and addiction specialist at the Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minnesota, describes the revelations as "staggering". Hurt was
the first expert witness to give evidence against the tobacco industry in a
legal action brought by the State of Minnesota---a landmark case that
resulted in some 39 000 of the most important documents being put onto the
Internet by the US House of Representatives.

Hurt has read thousands of these documents, and says the most striking
revelation was in discovering how the companies manipulated tobacco leaves
to boost the nicotine "hit" that smokers crave. "Philip Morris was the
first, but within a few years everyone was doing it. The scientific
community knew almost nothing about it and yet it was becoming almost
routine."

Checked-by: Pat Dolan