As the government wound up its eight-month racketeering trial against the tobacco industry, Justice Department lawyers surprised everyone by announcing yesterday they would seek just $10 billion from cigarette makers to finance stop-smoking programs — not the $130 billion that had been expected.
We decided to see how three of our stalwart Washington bureaus handled this puzzler.
As the New York Times reported today, the decision “set off a firestorm.” But instead of enlightening readers about the reasons behind the abrupt change of plans, Times reporters Michael Janofsky and David Johnston immediately sensed a classic “he said/she said” donnybrook in the making, and stepped back to record, as a Democrat threw the first conspiracy charge:
“Why, in the middle of a lawsuit, would you give up, which is exactly what this administration has done?” said Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. “Was it because of the power of the tobacco lobby? Was it their close connection with people within the administration? Was it the fact that they’d never had the stomach to tackle this special interest group in Washington?” He added, “I think it’s all of the above.”
Durbin is closely followed by another critic, William V. Corr, director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a group that has battled the industry for years. Corr also accuses the Bush administration of caving in.
“Here we are, at the last minute of the case, with senior political officials interfering with the trial team’s materials and decisions,” Mr. Corr said. Referring to antismoking groups, he added, “We’ve had a widespread sense since 2001 that the Bush administration was trying to kill the lawsuit.”
The Times offers up an anonymous and fairly lame rebuttal from a Justice Department official: “This is not politics. This is exactly the contrary.”
The Los Angeles Times’ Myron Levin and Richard Simon took the same route as the New York Times, raising accusations of political tampering.
At least eight Senate and House Democrats — including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) — asked the Justice Department inspector general to investigate why senior officials apparently ordered the department’s trial team to cut their most costly demand against the industry by more than 90 percent.
“The administration needs to explain their sudden change in course,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). And Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) accused the Justice Department of “selling out the American people.”
Readers of today’s Washington Post, however, got the benefits of reporter Carol D. Leonnig’s legwork.
Government lawyers asked two of their own witnesses to soften recommendations about sanctions that should be imposed on the tobacco industry if it lost a landmark civil racketeering case, one of the witnesses and sources familiar with the case said yesterday.
Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said the Justice Department’s lead trial lawyer called him May 9 to say her superiors wanted him to scale back the recommendations he had made in written testimony. They sought to remove his suggestions for a ban on tobacco company methods of marketing to young people before Myers took the stand. Myers said he refused to do so.
The second witness declined to speak to Leonnig, but others she interviewed confirmed that the second witness had also been asked to back off recommended sanctions.
Political tampering accusations, from Democrats and from anti-tobacco advocates, are about as surprising as the sun rising in the East, and it’s incomplete reporting at best to print them and call it a day. Evidence that witnesses were actually asked to amend their testimony is, by contrast, news. So in this three-way playoff, the trophy goes to the Post.
–Susan Q. Stranahan
Susan Q. Stranahan wrote for CJR.