NUTRA-SWEET THE ASPARTAME PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WARFAREWEAPON

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NUTRA-SWEET THE ASPARTAME PENTAGON BIOLOGICAL WARFAREWEAPON

 

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Nutrapoison Part One by Alex Constantine

 

" I recognized my two selves: a crusading idealist and a cold, granitic

believer in the law of the jungle. Edgar Monsanto Queeny, Monsanto

chairman,

1943-63, " The Spirit of Enterprise " , 1934. "

 

--------------------------------

 

The FDA is ever mindful to refer to aspartame, widely known as

NutraSweet,

as a " food additive " -never a " drug. " A " drug " on the label of a Diet

Coke

might discourage the consumer. And because aspartame is classified a

food

additive, adverse reactions are not reported to a federal agency, nor

is

continued safety monitoring required by law.1 NutraSweet is a non-

nutritive

sweetener. The brand name is misnomer. Try Non-NutraSweet.

 

Food additives seldom cause brain lesions, headaches, mood

alterations, skin

polyps, blindness, brain tumors, insomnia and depression, or erode

intelligence and short-term memory.

 

Aspartame, according to some of the most capable scientists in the

country,

does. In 1991 the National Institutes of Health, a branch of the

Department

of Health and Human Services, published a bibliography, *Adverse

Effects of

Aspartame*, listing not less than 167 reasons to avoid it.2 Aspartame

is an

rDNA derivative, a combination of two amino acids (long supplied by a

pair

of Maryland biotechnology firms: Genex Corp. of Rockville and

Purification

Engineering in Baltimore.)3 The Pentagon once listed it in an

inventory of

prospective biochemical warfare weapons submitted to Congress.4 But

instead

of poisoning enemy populations, the " food additive " is currently

marketed as

a sweetening agent in some 1200 food products.

 

In light of the chemo-warfare implications, the pasts of G.D. Searle

and

aspartame are ominous. Established in 1888 on the north side of

Chicago,

G.D. Searle has long been a fixture of the medical establishment. The

company manufactures everything from prescription drugs to nuclear

imaging

optical equipment.5 Directors of G.D. Searle include such geopolitical

heavy-hitters as Andre M. de Staercke, Reagan's ambassador to Belgium

and

Reuben Richards, an executive vice president at Citibank. Also Arthur

Wood,

the retired CEO of Sears, Roebuck & C disgorged by the clan of General

Robert E. Wood, wartime chairman of the America First Committee.6

America

Firsters, organized by native Nazis cloaked as isolationists, were

quietly

financed by the likes of Sullivan & Cromwell's Allen Dulles and Edwin

Webster of Kidder, Peabody.7 Until the acquisition by Monsanto in

1985, the

firm's chairman was William L. Searle, a Harvard graduate, Naval

reservist

and-a grim irony in view of aspartame's adverse effects-an officer in

the

Army Chemical Corps in the early 1950s, when the same division tested

LSD on

groups of human subjects in concert with the CIA.8 The chief of the

Chemical

Warfare Division at this time was Dr. Laurence Laird Layton, whose

son Larry

was convicted for the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan at Jonestown

( " Come to

the pavilion! What a legacy! " ). Jonestown, of course, bore a

remarkable

likeness to a concentration camp, and kept a full store of

pharmaceutical

drugs. (The Jonestown pharmacy was stocked with a variety of behavior

control drugs: qualudes, valium, morphine, demerol and 11,000 doses of

thorazine-a better supply, in fact, than the Guyanese government's

own, not

to mention a surfeit of cyanide.9)

 

Dr. Layton was married to the daughter of Hugo Phillip, a German

banker and

stockbroker representing the likes of Siemens & Halske, the makers of

cyanide for the Final Solution, and I.G. Farben, the manufacturer of a

lethal nerve gas put to the same purpose.10 Dr. Layton,a Quaker,

developed a

form of purified uranium used to set off the Manhattan Project's first

self-sustaining chain reaction at the University of Chicago in 1942

by his

wife's German-born Uncle, Dr. James Franck. At Dugway Proving Ground

in

Utah, Dr. Layton concentrated his efforts, as did I.G. Farben, on the

development of nerve gasses.11 Dr. Layton later defended his

participation

in the Army's chemical warfare section: " You can blow people to bits

with

bombs, you can shoot them with shells, you can atomize them with

atomic

bombs, but the same people think there's something terrible about

poisoning

the air and letting people breath it.

 

Anything having to do with gas warfare, chemical warfare, has this

taint of

horror on it, even if you only make people vomit. " 12 Nazis and

chemical

warfare are recurring themes in the aspartame story. Currently, the

chief

patent holder of the sweetener is the Monsanto Co., based in St.

Louis. In

1967, Monsanto entered into a joint venture with I.G. Farbenfabriken,

the

aforementioned financial core of the Hitler regime and the key

supplier of

poison gas to the Nazi racial extermination program. After the

Holocaust,

the German chemical firm joined with American counterparts in the

development of chemical warfare agents and founded the " Chemagrow

Corporation " in Kansas City, Missouri, a front that employed German

and

American specialists on behalf of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps.13 Dr.

Otto

Bayer, I.G.'s research director, had a binding relationship with

Monsanto

chemists.14 In the post-war period, Dr. Bayer developed and tested

chemical

warfare agents with Dr. Gerhard Schrader, the Nazi concocter of

Tabun, the

preferred nerve gas of the SS. Schrader was also an organophosphate

pioneer,

and tested the poison on populated areas of West Germany under the

guise of

killing insects.15 Schrader's experiments reek suspiciously of the

ongoing

aerial application of malathion-developed by Dr. Schrader, a recruit

of the

U.S.

 

Chemical Warfare Service when Germany surrendered-in present-day

Southern

Califonia.16 Another bridge to I.G. Farben was Monsanto's acquisition

of

American Viscose, long owned by the England's Courtauld family.

 

As early as 1928, the U.S. Commerce Department issued a report

critical of

the Courtauld's ties to I.G. Farben and the Nazi party.17 Incredibly,

George

Courtauld was handed an appointment as director of personnel for

England's

Special Operations Executive, the wartime intelligence service, in

1940.18 A

year later, with the exhaustion of British military financial

reserves,

American Viscose, worth $120 million was put on the block in New

York. The

desperate British treasury received less than half that amount from

the

sale, brokered by Siegmund Warburg, among others. 19 Monsanto

acquired the

company in 1949.20 The Nazi connection to Monsanto crops up again on

the

board of directors with John Reed, a former crony of " Putzi "

Hanfstangl, a

Harvard-bred emigre to Germany who talked Hitler out of committing

suicide

in 1924 and contributed to the financing of *Mein Kampf*. 21 Reed is

also

chairman of Citibank and long a confederate of the CIA. According to a

lawsuit filed by San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli, Reed was an

instigator, with Ronald Reagan, James Baker and Margaret Thatcher, of

the

" Purple Ink Document, " a plan to finance CIA covert operations with

wartime

Japanese gold stolen from a buried Philippine hoard.22 Other covert

military

connections to Monsanto include Dr. Charles Allen Thomas, chairman of

the

Monsanto Board, 1965[?]. Dr. Thomas directed a group of scientists

during WW

Il in the refinement of plutonium for use in the atomic bomb. In the

postwar

period Monsanto operated Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratories

for the

Manhattan Project.23 (Manhattan gestated with the Oak Ridge Institute

for

Nuclear Studies, where Lethal doses of radiation were tested on 200

unwary

cancer patients, turning them into " nuclear calibration devices "

gratis the

AEC and NASA, until 1974. 24) Nazi scientists and a 7,000 ton

stockpile of

uranium were delivered to the Project by its security and

counter-intelligence director, Col. Boris Pash, a G2 designate to the

CIA's

Bloodstone program-and the *eminence grise* of PB/7, a clandestine

Nazi unit

that, according to State Department records, conducted a regimen of

political assassinations and kidnappings in Europe and the Eastern

bloc.25

Monsanto Director William Ruckelshaus was an acting director of the

FBI

under Richard Nixon, a period in the Bureau s history marred by

COINTELPRO

outrages, including assassinations. Nixon subsequently appointed

Ruckelshaus

to the position of EPA director, a nagging irony given his ties to

industry

(Browning Ferris and Cummins Engine Co.). CIA counterintelligentsia

on the

Monsanto board include Stansfield Turner, a former Director of Central

Intelligence, and Earle H. Harbison, an Agency information specialist

for

nineteen years.

 

Harbison is also a director of Merrill Lynch, and thus raises the

spectre of

CIA drug dealing. ln 1984 President Ronald Reagan's Commission on

Organized

Crime concluded that Merrill Lynch employed couriers " observed

transferring

enormous amounts of cash through investment houses and banks in New

York

City to Italy and Switzerland. Tens of millions of dollars in heroin

sales

in this country were transferred over seas. " Merrill Lynch invested

the drug

proceeds in the New bullion market before making the offshore

transfers. 26

As might be expected in view of Monsanto's Nazi, chemical w are and

CIA

ties, NutraSweet is a can of worms unprecedented in the American food

industry. The history of the product is laden with flawed and

fabricated

research findings and, when necessary to further the product along,

blatant

lies-the basis of FDA approval and the incredulity of independent

medical

researchers.

 

Senator Metzenbaum described the FDA as " the handmaiden'' of the drug

industry in 1985, but she comports under all regimes. In the Clinton

administration for example, Mike Taylor was graced with the position

of

deputy director of the FDA. Taylor is a cousin of Tipper Gore, Vice

President Albert Gore's wife, and once an outside counsel to

Monsanto. (Gore

voted with Senate conservatives in 1985 against aspartame labelling.)

 

Under the tutelage of the Clinton administration, one Chicago reporter

quipped, the FDA strictly enforces one " unwritten " violation of law-

failure

to bribe.

 

Granitic Believers

 

G.D. Sear!e, the pharmaceutical firm that introduced NutraSweet,

worked

symbiotically with federal and congressional officials, bribed

investigators

when violations of law were exposed, *anything* to move aspartame to

market.

As far back as 1969, an internal Searle " strategy memo " concluded the

company must obtain FDA approval to outpace firms competing for the

artificial sweetener market. Another memo in December 1970 urged that

FDA

officials were to be " brought into a subconscious spirit of

participation "

with Searle.27 To that end, with enormous profits at stake, the

pharmaceutical house set out on a long struggle to transform the

Pentagon's

biochemical warfare agent into " the taste Mother Nature intended.

 

The official story is that aspartame was discovered in 1966 by a

scientist

developing an ulcer drug (not a " food additive " ).

 

Supposedly he discovered, upon carelessly licking his fingers that

they

tasted sweet. Thus was the chemicals industry blessed with a

successor to

saccharine, the coal-tar derivative that foundered eight years later

under

the pressure of cancer concerns.

 

Aspartame found early opposition in consumer attorney James Turner,

author

of *The Chemical Feast* and a former Nader's Raider. At his own

expense,

Turner fought approval for ten years, basing his argument on

aspartame's

potential side effects, particularly on children. His concern was

shared by

Dr. John Olney, Professor of neuropathology and psychiatry at

Washington

School of Medicine in St. Louis. Dr. Olney found that aspartame,

combined

with MSG seasoning, increased the odds of brain damage in children.

 

Other studies have found that children are especially vulnerable to

its

toxic effects, a measure of the relation between consumption and body

weight. The FDA determined in 1981, when the sweetener was approved,

that

the maximum projected intake of Aspartame is 50 milligrams a day per

kilogram of body weight. A child of 66 pounds would consume about 23

milligrams by imbibing four cans of Diet Coke. The child might also

conceivably down an aspartame-flavored snack or two, nearing the FDA's

projected maximum daily intake.29 Dr. William Partridge, a professor

of

neuroendocrine regulation at MIT, told *Common Cause* in August 1984

that it

wouldn't be surprising if a child- " confronted with aspartame

contained in

iced tea chocolate milk, milk shakes, chocolate pudding pie, Jello,

ice

cream and numerous other products " -consumed 50 milligrams per

kilogram in a

day.

 

Internally, aspartame breaks down into its constituent amino acids and

methanol, which degrades into formaldehyde. The FDA announced in 1984

that

" no evidence " has been found to establish that the methanol byproduct

reaches toxic levels, claiming that " many fruit juices contain higher

levels

of the natural compound. " 30 But the _Medical World News_ had already

reported in 1978 that the methanol content of aspartame is 1,000 times

greater than most foods under FDA control.31 NutraSweet, the " good

stuff " of

sentimental adverts, is a truly insidious product. According to

independent

trials, aspartame intake is shown by animal studies to alter brain

chemicals

affecting behavior. Aspartame's effects on the brain led Richard

Wurtman, an

MIT neuroscientist, to the discovery, as recorded in _The New England

Journal of Medicine_ (No. 309, 1983), that the sweetener defeats its

purpose

as a diet aid, since high doses may instill a craving for calorie-

laden

carbohydrates. One of his pilot studies found that the

NutraSweet-carbohydrate combination increases the " sweetener's effect

on

brain composition. " Searle officials denigrated Wurtman 's findings,

but the

American Cancer Society has since confirmed the irony-after tracking

80,000

women for six years-that " among women who gained weight, artificial

sweetener users gained more than those who didn't use the products, "

as

reported in _Medical Self-Care_ (387). (Since his battle with G.D.

Searle,

Wurtman founded Interneuron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the producer of a

sports

drink that enhances athletic performance, and a weight loss drug

marketed in

over 40 countries. Wurtman's share of the company, established in

1989, was

worth $10 million by 1992. 32 Even more daunting are the findings of

Dr.

Paul Spiers, a neuropsychologist at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital,

that

aspartame use can depress intelligence. For this reason, he selected

experimental subjects with a history of consuming it but unaware that

they

might be suffering ill effects. The subjects were given NutraSweet in

capsules of the FDA's allowable limit.

 

Spiers was alarmed to discover that they developed " cognitive

deficits.''

One of the tests required recall of square patterns and alphabetical

sequences, becoming increasingly more difficult.

 

The test is challenging, but most people improve as they learn how it

is

done. The aspartame users, however, did not improve.

 

" Some frankly showed a reverse pattern, " said Spiers. " 33 Aspartame

has been

shown to erode short-term memory. At the May, 1985 hearings on

NutraSweet,

Louisiana Senator Russell Long related a bizarre anecdote: SENATOR

LONG: I

have received a letter recently from a person who is well known to me

and

whose word is impeccable, as far as I am concerned. This person told

me that

she had been dieting and she had been using diet drinks with

aspartame in

it. She said she found her memory was going. She seemed to be

completely

losing her memory. When she would meet people whom she knew

intimately, she

could not recall what their name was, or even who they were. She

could not

recall a good bit of that which was going on about her to the extent

that

she was afraid she was losing her mind. . . In due course, someone

suggested

that it might be this NutraSweet, so she stopped using it and her

memory

came back and her mind was restored. Senator Howard Metzenbaum

replied that

he had received " a number of letters from doctors reporting similar

developments. . . There have been hundreds of incidents of people who

have

suffered loss of memory, headaches, dizziness, and other neurological

symptoms which they feel are related to aspartame. " 34 Senator Orrin

Hatch, a

hidebound archconservative and NutraSweet advocate, downplayed

criticism of

the sugar substitute. " Some people have lost their memory after

drinking a

variety of things, " he argued. ''The bottom line is this: The studies

supporting aspartame's approval have been examined and reexamined.

More than

enough sound, valid studies exist to demonstrate aspartame's safety. "

 

Hatch of Utah, reports the _Wall Street Journal_, has " given his

strong

support of the pharmaceutical industries. " 35 So have

the " Hatchlings. " David

Kessler, FDA Commissioner under presidents Bush and Clinton, was once

an

aide to Orrin Hatch. Hatch's former campaign manager and aide, C.

McClain

Haddow, was sentenced to prison for conflict-of-interest charges

arising

from his work as a Reagan administration health official. And Thomas

Parry,

Hatch's former chief of staff, has carved a sumptuous life for

himself as a

Republican fund-raiser and lobbyist with clients in the pharmaceutical

industry. All told, Parry represents 30 clients, including Eli Lilly,

Warner-Lambert, and Johnson & Johnson, not to mention ranking defense

firms

and the Bahamas government. Parry's pharmaceutical clients have

enriched

Senator Hatch's campaign coffers, and in turn Hatch lavishes his

attentions

on them.

 

By the time Orrin Hatch was stumping for NutraSweet in the U.S.

Senate, the

Center for Disease Control in Atlanta had received 600 letters

complaining

of NutraSweet's adverse effects. The National Soft Drink Association

(NSDA)

had them too. " There have been hundreds of reports from around the

country

suggesting a possible relationship between their consumption of

NutraSweet

and subsequent symptoms including headaches, aberrational behavior,

slurred

speech, etc. " FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes, appointed by Ronald

Reagan

in April, 1981 (moving the _New York Times_ to observe that " some

industry

officials consider Dr. Hayes more sympathetic to their viewpoints

than past

holders of the office " ), considered such complaints " anecdotal.'' Of

course,

like scores of other conservatives roaming the executive branch in the

1980s, the ethics of Arthur Hull Hayes were entirely malleable-not

only did

he approve a product based on studies that were " scientifically

lacking in

design and execution, " according to a report issued by _Science

Times_ in

February 1985, but upon leaving the FDA he took the post of senior

medical

consultant for Burson-Marsteller, the public relations firm retained

by G.D.

Searle.37 Burson-Marsteller, a huge public relations conglomerate,

swelled

in the 1980s by leveraging smaller competitors -including Black,

Manafort,

Stone & Kelley, a lobbying firm best known for influence peddling

along the

Beltway-presently outsizing even the Hill & Knowlton empire. Typical

in the

aspartame story are Burson-Marsteller's links to the intelligence

community

and rightwing operatives of the GOP. Thomas Devereaux Bell, Jr., an

executive officer of the firm, is the former chairman of the Center

for

naval Analysis in Alexandria, Virginia. Bell was also the executive

director

of Ronald Reagan's Inaugural Ball Committee (in which capacity he

ushered in

the likes of Licio Gelli, head of P2, the notorious Italian secret

society).

Bell's career in Washington began in 1971 as a deputy director of

Richard

Nixon's Committee to ReElect the President. He went on to serve as an

administrative aide to Senator William Brock and the Reagan transition

team.38

 

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Nutrapoison Part Two by Alex Constantine

 

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At the FDA, Hayes used aspartame as a political statement that the

Reagan

administration was embarking on a grand voyage of

conservative " regulatory

reform, " sluicing through treasonous liberal constraints on " free

enterprise. " Despite what one FDA scientist described as 'very

serious'

questions concerning pivotal brain tumor tests, Hayes eagerly approved

aspartame for use in dry foods in July 1981.39 Three FDA scientists

advised

against the approval of aspartame, citing G.D. Searle's own brain

tumor

tests, because there was no proof that " aspartame is safe for use as

a food

additive under its intended conditions of use.

 

" 40 Hayes has since declined to answer any questions about his

decision,

which ignored the recommendations of the FDA's own board of inquiry.

He

relied instead on a study conducted by Japan's Ajinomoto, Inc.-a

licensee of

G.D. Searle. Hayes acknowledged in his 1981 decision that he had only

consulted a preliminary report of the Japanese evaluation, and only

*skimmed* it. More serious, Hayes violated federal law by basing

approval on

the test, as it had not been reviewed by the FDA board.41 Who is

Arthur Hull

Hayes? He was no disinterested bureaucrat.

 

True to the biochemical theme of the aspartame story, Dr. Hayes

served in

the Army Medical Corps in the 1960s. According to the _Washington

Post_,

Hayes was assigned to Edgewood Arsenal at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the

Army's

chemical warfare base of operations, " one of a number of doctors who

conducted drug tests for the Army on volunteers . . . to determine the

effect of a mind-disorienting drug called CAR 301,060. " According to a

declassified 1976 report prepared by the Army Inspector General,

Hayes had

planned a research study to develop the mind-altering CAR 301,060 as a

*crowd control agent.* In 1972, Hayes left Edgewood Arsenal, and a

new plan

for the experiments was drawn up by Edgewood physicians. The 1976

report

notes that similar tests had been conducted before Hayes took charge.

42

Also at the center of the effort to land FDA approval of NutraSweet

stood

Donald Rumsfeld- " Rummy " to his friends -chairman of G.D. Searle upon

leaving

the Ford administration in 1977.

 

Rumsfeld, the product of a wealthy Chicago suburb, was a Princeton

graduate

and a Navy pilot during the Korean conflict.

 

He entered politics as a Congressional House aide attending night

classes at

Georgetown University Law School, which is closely aligned with the

CIA.43

Rumsfeld campaigned ambitiously for Richard Nixon, who drafted him to

direct

the Office of Equal Opportunity on May 26,1969. He quickly

established an

office to spy on his employees in a holy crusade to flush out

" revolutionaries " said to be granting federal funds to politically

subversive organizations-a throwback to McCarthy's tantrums.44

Rumsfeld also

figured in Nixon's notorious Power Control Group, spearheaded by

Charles

Colson and John Ehrlichman.45 Gerald Ford named Rumsfeld executive

chief of

staff upon the resignation of Al Haig. In 1986 he was named chairman

of the

Institute for Contemporary Studies, a neoconservative " think tank "

(read:

propaganda mill) established in 1972 by Edwin Meese and Caspar

Weinberger.

ICS has sponsored such opinion-shaping projects as a study of

expansions in

" entitlement programs " and their erosive effects on the economy, and

a book

on the uses of coercion by Communist regimes.46 Rumsfeld, at 43,

became the

county's youngest secretary of defense. For many years he has been a

vocal

proponent of chemical weapons.47 He is chairman of the Rand Corp.48

In 1988,

he dropped a presidential bid, and was named a v.p. of Westmark

Systems, led

by past NSA Director Bobby Ray Inman. Rumsfeld was one of Westmark's

founding directors, sharing the board with Joseph Amato, a former vice

president at TRW (and a colleague of Inman's at the National Security

Agency), and Dale Frey, chairman of the General Electric Investment

Corp.49

Rumsfeld, a veteran political operative, was an adept at the vulgar

art of

public relations. He was recruited by G.D. Searle because he had " a

Boy

Scout image, " according to one company official.50 A house politician

was

precisely what Searle needed to compensate for the damage done by

independent researchers concerned about the toxic effects of

aspartame. In

March 1976, an FDA task force brought into question *all* of the

company's

testing procedures between 1967 and 1975. The task force

described " serious

deficiencies in Searle's operations and practices which undermine the

basis

for reliance on Searle's integrity. " The final report of the FDA task

force

noted faulty and fraudulent product testing, knowingly misrepresented

findings, and instances of " irrelevant or unproductive animal

research where

experiments have been poorly conceived, carelessly executed or

inaccurately

analyzed. " 51 Richard Merrill, the FDA's chief counsel, petitioned

Samuel K.

Skinner U.S. Attorney for the northern district of Illinois, for a

grand

jury investigation of Searle's " willful and knowing failure " to submit

required test reports, and for " concealing material facts and making

false

statements " in reports on aspartame submitted to the agency.52 Yet

industry

analysts, interviewed by the _Wall Street Journal_ six months after

Rumsfeld's appointment as chairman, noted a rapid turnabout in

Searle's

fortunes as a result of his direction.53 Searle denies that Chairman

Rumsfeld ever had any contact with the FDA, or the Carter and Reagan

administrations, to lobby for aspartame.54 But the _Wall Street

Journal_

article reported in 1977 that Rumsfeld " keenly understands the

importance of

a public image. So he has been mending fences with the FDA by

personally

asking top agency officials what Searle should do to straighten out

its

reputation. " Westley M. Dixon, Searle's vice chairman, told the

_Journal_

that without Rumsfeld " we wouldn't have gotten approval for Norpace, "

a drug

investigated by the FDA in 1975.55 The grand jury investigation of

Searle

disintegrated in January, 1977 when the FDA formally requested that

Samuel

Skinner, U.S. attorney and a protege of Illinois Governor James

Thompson,

investigate the firm for falsifying and withholding aspartame test

data. A

month later, Skinner met with attorneys from Searle's Chicago law

firm,

Sidley & Austin. Jimmy Carter ascended to The presidency a few weeks

later.

He announced that Skinner would not be asked to remain in office, but

the

outgoing Republican wasn't found wanting for employment. He informed

reporters that he had already begun " preliminary discussions " with

Sidley &

Austin.56 G.D. Searle and Sidley & Austin are Siamese Twins. Edwin

Austin, a

senior partner in the law firm, was appointed to the Illinois Supreme

Court

in 1969. The Searle family drew upon his services extensively, and he

taught

Sunday school in Wilmette, a Chicago suburb, as did Dr. Claude Howard

Searle, whose father cofounded the pharmaceutical house.

 

The firm is grafted to the beating heart of the Republican party.

 

Morris Leibman of Sidley & Austin was for many years chairman of the

American Bar Association's " Standing Committee on Law and National

Security, " a position that won him Reagan's Medal of Freedom in

1981.57 John

E. Robson, head of Sidley & Austin's Washington office, was appointed

executive vice-president of Searle & Co. in 1977, the same year

Skinner was

named a partner in the law firm. Robson, too, was active in Republican

politics. He was the first General Counsel of the Department of

Transportation, and at the behest of Gerald Ford in 1975, chairman of

the

Civil Aeronautics Board.58 He moved on to Searle, and stayed with the

company until it was bought outright by Monsanto in 1985. Howard

Trienens, a

law clerk to the late chief Justice Vinson in the early 1950s, was a

G.D.

Searle director and worked for Sidley & Austin since 1949.59

Archconservative California Governor George Deukmejian joined Sidley &

Austin's Los Angeles branch upon leaving office in 1991, and is

reportedly

making a " very comfortable " living. He has a keen " sense " for

bringing in

corporate clients, a partner in the firm told the Los Angeles Times,

many of

them past contributors to his campaign fund. Deukmejian's business

connections have given him a reputation as a Sidley &

Austin " rainmaker, "

but the L.A. City Council has questioned his ethics in promoting a

contract

with Sumitomo Corp. on a metropolitan railway project.60 Searle aside,

Sidley & Austin has served some of the most notorious special

interests in

the country. The firm lobbied overtime, for instance, on behalf of

Charles

Keating's Lincoln Savings & Loan, and provided counsel on tax issues

and

dealing with federal authorities. The firm assisted Keating when

Lincoln was

foundering, and curried political favor to keep the S & L operating

despite

massive debts. As a result, the firm was forced to settle with Lincoln

depositors in 1991, agreeing to cover an excess of $40 million in

claims.6l

Sidley & Austin also represented the AMA when a group of drugstore

chains

sued seven drug makers-including Searle-for price fixing and antitrust

violations. The lawsuit, filed in October 1993, amounts to billions of

dollars in compensation.62 Skinner recused himself from the Searle

prosecution four months before leaving offtce-asking, in a memo to

subordinates, that the matter be kept " confidential to avoid any undo

embarrassment " -a stall that nearly allowed the statute of limitations

to

expire.

 

William Conlon, a senior U.S. attorney, inherited the case. He eased

off,

citing case load pressures, and gave a deaf ear to complaints of

delays from

the Justice Department, which urged that a grand jury be convened to

prosecute Searle for falsifying NutraSweet test data. In January,

1979,

Conlon too joined Sidley & Austin.63 The 33-page letter from Merrill

to

Skinner charged Searle with criminal fraud in its animal test

results. In

1984 Common Cause asked Dan Reidy of the U. S. attorney's office how

the

investigation had stalled. Reidy replied that because it was a grand

jury

investigation, he was " bound by law to secrecy. " A Searle spokesman

exploited the demise of the grand July claim that there was " no

validity to

the charges, that the company had been " exonerated. " Philip Brodsky,

an

investigator for the FDA, expressed surprise that Searle hadn't been

indicted. " I thought surely they would prosecute them, " he said.64

Eleven

years later Senator Metzenbaum issued a press release charging

Skinner with

stalling the criminal investigation as he prepared to decamp from

office.

Metzenbaum and his staff demanded an FBI investigation of Skinner's

mishandling of the case. In December 1988, the conflict-of-interest

bombshell blew up in the face of newly elected George Bush, who was

about to

appoint Skinner to the position of Transportation Secretary.65 Like

most of

the Machiavellians in the NutraSweet story, Samuel Knox Skinner kept

company

with hardright Republicans. He entered politics as a campaign

volunteer for

Barry Goldwater. 66 In 1975, he was appointed to Federal Prosecutor in

Chicago by President Ford. Sidley & Austin promoted him to senior

partner

after only one year with the firm. Skinner was the director of George

Bush's

presidential campaign in Illinois. On occasion he was berated for his

involvement with the state's Republican apparatus: In 1987, for

instance,

the Chicago SunTimes linked him with a clutch of lawyers close to

Governor

Thompson, who were awarded lucrative assignments handling the affairs

of

financially crippled insurance companies. Skinner was a leading light

of the

Illinois Fraud Prevention Commission -he targeted welfare cheats (as

opposed

to white-collar criminals in the drug industry)-and President Reagan's

Commission on Organized Crime. In December 1991, he left

Transportation to

take the position of President Bush's Chief of Staff.67

 

" A Shocking Story "

 

Had Skinner pressed on with the investigation, aspartame's

manufacturer

would have been forced to explain a long history of fabricated

laboratory

tests and slippery dealings with federal regulators, not to mention

the

public.

 

Dr. Alexander Schmidt, a former FDA commissioner, said of the original

Aspartame Task Force investigation: " What was discovered was

reprehensible.

.. .incredibly sloppy science. " A 1980 public board of inquiry opined

that

the company's testing procedures were " bizarre. " 68 Searle's decision

to

market aspartame culminated with the falsification of test results to

obtain

FDA approval . In November 1969, officials of the firm hired Dr. Harry

Waisman, a researcher for the University of Wisconsin, to test for

brain

damage in rhesus monkeys. Seven monkeys were fed aspartame for

periods up to

one year. In the end, though, the evaluation flopped because the

technicians

failed to perform the intelligence tests and autopsies required to

determine

brain damage. When questioned about the false data by the FDA, Searle

officials claimed to have had no direct control over the study.

 

But the protocol for the study was written by a Searle pathologist

*after*

it had begun. And, according to Dr. Gross, " Frequent high-level

communications took place between Searle executives and Dr. Waisman

prior to

and during the study. " 69 To make matters worse, Dr. Waisman died in

March,

1971, in mid-study.

 

Searle submitted the toxicity test to the FDA on October 12, 1972. It

bore

Dr. Waisman's name as coauthor. Richard Merrill noted: " Dr. Waisman

was the

expert in the field and his name would carry great weight, " but

complained

to Skinner that Searle took " great literary license " in drafting the

report,

" which *covers up* the admitted inadequacy of the design, control and

documentation of this study. " 70 Searle submitted some 150 test

reports, yet

Dr. Martha Freeman of the FDA Bureau of Drugs noted in a 1973

memo, " the

information provided is inadequate to permit an evaluation of the

potential

toxicity of aspartame. " 71 The FDA task force set up by Dr. Schmidt

in 1975

reviewed 25 studies on seven products manufactured by G.D. Searle, a

total

of 500 pages and 15,000 exhibits.72 Searle was held to be the author

of

" reports that the FDA believes contain false information "

and " concealed

facts resulting from having drafted Dr. Waisman's 'pilot' monkey

study so

that it would *appear* to be a valid, thorough scientific study, " and

not a

forgery.

 

In 1975 Searle submitted a battery of cancer test results

entitled " The

Willigan Report, which contained a statistical table that excluded

four

malignant mammary tumors detected by Dr. Willigan and incorporated in

his

data. The malignancies were made to appear benign. Searle dismissed

the

misrepresentation as a computer " programming error " undetected by

supervising statisticians. Dr. Gross interviewed all concerned with

the

tests. He concluded in a statement to Metzenbaum's committee in

August,

1985, that " to accept the Searle explanation is to believe that the

unfavorable mammary malignancy data were innocently omitted from the

summary

table four separate times by three different individuals. " 74 The

Waisman and

Willigan Reports were prepared by Searle Labs, as were 88% of the

safety

evaluations conducted by 1981.75 They are typical of the shoddy

documentation upon which FDA Commissioner Hayes based his decision

that

aspartame does not constitute a public health risk. Although two

members of

the 1975 task force considered the tests to be criminal frauds, Hayes

and

Searle declared the results valid. In an appeal to Hayes' decision,

James

Turner said: " The entire argument that since the studies are no longer

considered fraudulent *by FDA* they are therefore scientifically

valid is an

example of a rhetorical shell game that, if successful, can only bring

discredit and ridicule on the FDA. " 76 Dr. Gross, the chief scientist

on the

FDA task force, told the CBS *Nightly News* staff in January, 1984,

that

Searle made " *deliberate* decisions " to cloak the toxic effects of

aspartame.

 

" They took great pains to camouflage these shortcomings of the

study,''

Gross said, " as I say, filter and just present to the FDA what they

wished

the FDA to know. And they did other *terrible* things. For instance,

animals

would develop tumors while they were under study-well, G.D. Searle

would

*remove these tumors from the animals*, " surgically masking the

cancerous

effects of aspartame.77 Yet one 1986 _New England Journal of Medicine_

article claimed that noncompulsive aspartame intake has " no sinister

effects. "

 

Dr. Woodrow Monte told CBS, " Every time a truly impartial team of

scientists

have looked at NutraSweet, it has been turned down. "

 

Dr. Monte, director of the nutrition laboratory at Arizona State

University,

held that these studies " show *extreme* dangers over the long

term. " 78 Dr.

Monte was rewarded for his comments by a fusillade from the press. On

February 23, Dan Dorfman, a business news reporter for WCBS in New

York,

broke a story that several CBS employees had invested in options on

NutraSweet that pay off if the stock price drops.79 Dr. Monte and his

attorney had purchased the options as well. It emerged that the CBS

staffers

had purchased the options on the advice of stock market newsletters

printed

prior to the nightly news report. The investments were not illegal,

nor did

they reap a profit. Searle's stock was not affected by the publicity,

and

the investors took a loss.

 

Nevertheless, the _Wall Street Journal_ ran a front-page story

condemning

the " inside trading. " Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media picked up the

cudgel

against Dr. Monte and the CBS employees as if they'd committed a

shocking

Wall Street swindle.80 Accuracy in Media, formed in 1969, is an

intelligence

operation abetted by the CIA. The rabidly right-wing organization was

co-founded by Bernard Yoh, a counter-insurgency adviser under the

notorious

Edward Landsdale in Vietnam, and a fount of CIA funds to military

intelligence units in the Delta region. Board member Elbridge Durbrow

was

once a foreign service " diplomat, " and advised commanders of Maxwell

Air

Force Base in Alabama. Another AIM board member, Frank Trager, has

conducted

research for the Pentagon and CIA, and churns out pamphlets on

international

business and intelligence operations. Major financial contributors to

AIM

include Richard Nixon, " Bebe " Rebozo, Edward Scripps, the wretched Dr.

Edward Teller and former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon.81

Accuracy in

Media is a strident advocate of the chemical industry, which provides

it

with generous funding. The media " watchdog " has long waged a campaign

on

behalf of dioxin, denouncing the " Agent Orange scare " as the creation

of

delirious, anti-business liberals. Among the leading manufacturers of

Agent

Orange for the Vietnam war effort was Monsanto, preparing-at the very

moment

AIM took aim at detractors of NutraSweet[TM]- to buy G.D. Searle.

 

The Good Stuff

 

Dr. Monte cautioned in 1987 that he didn't want to sound like

a " conspiracy

theory " hound, but the aspartame chronology clarifies its commercial

emergence. The FDA Board of Inquiry advised against the sweetener on

September 30, 1980. On January21, 1981-the day after Reagan's

inauguration-Searle submitted " ten new studies. " Dr. Monte was

skeptical.

" It is impossib1e that they could have conducted those studies in four

months, " he said.

 

" Obviously they'd previously done those studies but hadn't officially

submitted them, although much of the information in those studies was

informally presented to the board of inquiry. "

 

With the " new tests " in hand, Hayes acted as though critical,

overriding evi

dence had proven the safety of aspartame.82 James Turner,

representing thc

Community Nutrition Institute in Washington, D.C., said that Arthur

Hull

Hayes, to arrive at his decision that aspartame is safe, firewalked

apath

" through a mass of scientific mismanagement, improper procedures,

wrong

conclusions and general scientific inexactness. " Two FDA officials

declared

in 1985 that Hayes was determined to clear all obstacles to NutraSweet

approval. One FDA bureaucrat reported that " people at the top " were

closed

to questions concerning the quality of the tests submitted by

Searle.83 In

July, 1984 a broad investigation of NutraSweet's adverse effects was

conducted by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control. Federal

health

officials said at the outset that they believed no harm would emerge

from

the data to indict aspartame.

 

Robert McQuate, Ph.D., science director of the National Soft Drink

Association, predicted with mystical confidence that the study would

" provide further evidence that aspartame is a safe ingredient. " 84 Dr.

McQuate didn't fret the goring of his biochemical ox. In November the

CDC

announced that no " serious, widespread " side effects had been

found.85 It

was " unlikely, " said CDC officials, that " complainers " could

establish a

link between NutraSweet and their maladies-the same bromide once

tossed to

victims of radiation experiments. The reported side-effects of

aspartame

fell into two distinct categories: central nervous system (65%) and

gastrointestinal disorders (24%).86 Yet the CDC claimed erroneously

that no

consistent reaction pattern had been found. 87 Robert Shapiro, then

president of Nutrasweet, used the occasion to enthuse that the survey

" clearly established the safety " of the sugar substitute.88

Nevertheless,

the CDC recommended a new set of studies because aspartame users

continued

to complain of ill effects.

 

--------------------------------

 

Nutrapoison Part Three by Alex Constantine

 

--------------------------------

 

Based on the ersatz assurances of the CDC report, PepsiCo announced

that it

would drop saccharine and begin sweetening its diet drinks entirely

with

aspartame. The decision would have been approved by Wayne Calloway,

then CEO

of PepsiCo and director of the multinationals Citicorp, General

Electric and

Exxon. In 1983 soda bottlers, organized around Pepsi had petitioned

the FDA

for a delay in approval of NutraSweet for soft drinks until further

evaluation verified its safety-interpreted by market analysts as a

ploy to

drive down the price of the sweetener. They soon abandoned the effort

to

block approval (and all health concerns they might have had). " We

believe

saccharine is safe, " Pepsi USA President Roger Enrico lied, but " we

wanted

the taste improvement. " PepsiCo, already drawing on a tenth of

Searle's 7.5

million pound annual production of aspartame, signed an agreement

with G.D.

Searle to boost purchases 500 percent.89 (Like other corporate

pushers of

aspartame, Pepsi has long maintained ties to the intelligence

community. One

product of the relationship was a Pepsi plant in Vientiane, Laos with

a

laboratory outfitted for heroin production. Alfred McCoy, in *The

Politics

of Heroin in Southeast Asia* documents the efforts of Richard Nixon to

promote the plant's construction in 1965, and the CIA's continuing

subsidization of the plant. McCoy complained to Pepsi officials that

the

facilities were but a cover for the importation and refinement of

morphine,

but it continued to operate unhindered.)

 

Yet another report was filed by Reagan's General Accounting Office in

July

1987, this one on the FDA's handling of aspartame.

 

The GAO concluded that the agency had followed proper procedures and

conducted valid studies. But the report noted that the FDA had

followed

guidelines for food -not drug- testing, despite the recommendation of

the

agency's own biologists favoring *drug* tests, which are considerably

more

stringent. This recommendation was overruled by FDA officials.90

Another

blemish in the study was bared by Dr. Louis Elsas, director of medical

genetics at Emory University in Atlanta.

 

" They never asked the right questions about what it does to brain

function

in humans, " he told the _Washington Post_. Half of the scientists

polled

expressed reservations about the safety of NutraSweet. One-fifth

reported

" major concerns. " Monsanto quibbled in a press release that these

critics

had themselves never conducted aspartame research. A score of

independent

scientists have. They found side effects.

 

Senator Metzenbaum berated Searle's flawed and fabricated tests at the

August 1, 1985 Senate hearings. " The FDA, " he said, " is content to

have the

manufacturer of aspartame, G.D. Searle, conduct these studies. How

*absurd*. "

 

He also faulted the AMA

 

The _Journal of the American Medical Association_ recently published a

report on aspartame which, with some significant disclaimers, stated

it was

safe for most people. I wish that this report could ease my concerns.

It

does not. It merely restates the FDA position which relies solely on

the

tests conducted by G.D. Searle. As I have indicated these tests are

under a

cloud.

 

In addition, the concerns raised recently by the scientists ... were

not

even included in the report.

 

In defense of the tests, executives of G.D. Searle argued that the

sweetener

has been approved by foreign regulatory agencies and the World Health

Organization. But H.J. Roberts, an internal medicine specialist in

West Palm

Beach, Florida, reviewed the foreign studies and found that " the vast

majority of these agencies accepted company-sponsored research

without ever

having done independent confirmatory studies.''91 Deficiencies in

testing

were aggravated by a lack of laboratory training at Searle. One of the

pivotal safety studies involved fetal damage, but the FDA task force

found

that the medical researcher in charge was " inexperienced in conducting

studies of this nature and yet given full responsibility. " They were

appalled to discover that his sole credential was a field study of the

cottontail rabbit for the Illinois Wildlife Service, yet at Searle

he'd been

assigned to laboratory training and supervision. When asked about his

*curriculum vitae* in fetal research, he replied that he'd once

attended a

seminar on the subject, and the company had provided him with a stack

of

reference works.92 (Yet J.D. Searle, in its 1981 Annual Report, billed

itself as " a research based pharmaceutical company. " )

 

Corporate control of NutraSweet testing continues at Monsanto,

torturing the

ethics of academic medicine. In August 1987 the University of

Illinois, a

recipient of Monsanto's largess, issued a study exonerating aspartame

of

causing seizures in laboratory animals. Dave Hattan, a safety

regulator for

the FDA, responded that the study only confirmed the need for testing

on

humans. At independent labs, he insisted, aspartame provoked seizures.

 

Industrial support tends to contaminate test data. Dr. Elsas, in a

1988

letter to the _New England Journal of Medicine_, advocates unbiased

review

of clinical research. " The NutraSweet Co., " he said, " may have had an

interest in protocols that would find that their product had no

untoward

effects. " 94 Monsanto reportedly granted one NutraSweet researcher a

$1.3

million honorarium.95 The same hired gun willing to manipulate lab

results

will have no qualms publicly defending a tainted pharmaceutical, like

the

diabetic specialist who objected that a Senate hearing on aspartame,

which

called him as a witness, might arouse groundless public anxiety.96

Victims

and health activists have attempted in the courts to put a stop to the

marketing of NutraSweet, to no avail. In 1985 a coalition of consumer

groups

were handed a ruling by the federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the

District of Columbia that the FDA had followed proper procedures in

approving aspartame for soft drinks. A year later the _Washington

Post_

reported that the Supreme Court again refused to consider the

case " despite

critics' arguments that the product, sold under the brand name

NutraSweet,

may cause brain damage. " 97 Likewise, the medical establishment has

thrown up

an impenetrable wall to aspartame critics. Dr. Roberts, author of a

brief

study, " Aspartame-Associated Confusion and Memory Loss: A Possible

Human

Model for Early Alzheimer's Disease, " found it impossible to publish

the

article in a peer review medical journal. This was peculiar, he

thought,

" considering the increasing magnitude of Alzheimer's disease, and the

relevance of my observations to newer biochemical findings and

avenues of

research. " He can " personally vouch for the *enormous* difficulty in

getting

published articles concerning reactions to aspartame products, " a

trend in

censorship with " ominous overtones. " The options, Dr. Roberts says,

are

" generally limited to 'burying' the findings in a small-circulation

journal

(such as the bulletin of a county medical society), reporting the

results as

a letter to the editor, or (unfortunately, most often) discarding the

project. " 98

 

Silence surrounds the most odious conspiracies.

 

1. " Sweet Talk, " Science and the Citizen column, _Scientific

American_,

July, 1987, p. 15.

 

2. " Adverse Effects of Aspartame-January '86 through December '90, "

Current

Bibliography series, National Library of Medicine pamphlet, National

Institutes of Health, U.S.

 

Department of Health and Human Services, 1991.

 

3. " Pepsi Switches Sweeteners-Aspartame Winning Diet Cola Market, "

_Washington Post_, November 2, 1984, p. A-1.

 

4. Mae Brussell, World Watchers #842, KAZU-FM, Monterey, CA., January

25,

1988.

 

5. _Moody 's Industrial Manual_, 1975, p 2606

 

6. G.D. Searle's 1981 _Annual Report_. Also, Arnold Foster and

Benjamin R.

Epstein, *Cross-Currents*, Doubleday & Co. (New York: 1956), p. 153.

 

7. Nancy Lisagor and Frank Lipsius, *A Law Unto Itself: The Untold

Story of

the Law Firm of Sullivan & Cromwell*, William Morrow (New York:

1988), pp.

13738, 163.

 

8. John Marks, *The Search for " The Manchurian Candidate " : The CIA

and Mind

Control*, Times Books (New York: 1979), pp.58,67 & 212. Marks writes

that

incapacitating " large numbers of people fell to the Army Chemical

Corps,

which also tested LSD and even stronger hallucinogens. The CIA

concentrated

on individuals. "

 

9. John Peer Nugent, *White Night.- The Untold Story of What Happened

Before-and Beyond-Jonestown*, Rawson, Wade (New York: 1979), pp. 143,

177.

 

10. Michael Meiers, *Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment?A Review

of the

Evidence*, Mellen House (Lampeter, UK: 1988) p. 42.

 

11. Ibid., p. 43.

 

12. Ibid., pp. 42-43. For a sanitized account of Dr. Layton's career,

see

Min S. Yee and Thomas N. Layton, *In My Father 's House: The Story of

the

Layton Family and the Reverend Jim Jones*, Holt, Rinehart and Winston

(New

York, 1981).

 

13. National Council of the National Front of Democratic Germany and

the

Committee of Anti-Fascist Resistance Fighters of the German Democratic

Republic, *The Brown Book: War and Nazi Criminals in West Germany*,

Verlag

Zeit im Bild, 1965, pp. 33-34.

 

14. Dan J. Forrestal, *Faith, Hope & $5,000: The Story of Monsanto*,

Simon

and Schuster (New York: 1977), p. 159.

 

15. *Brown Book*, p. 34.

 

16. Tom Bower, *The Paperclip Conspiracy: The Hunt for the Nazi

Scientists*,

Little, Brown & Co. (Boston 1987), pp. 93, 95.

 

17. Howard W. Ambruster, *Treason's Peace: German Dyes and American

Dupes*,

Beechhurst Press (New York: 1947), p.144

 

18. Nigel West, *MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations,

1909-1945*, Random House (New York: 1983), p.92

 

19. Jaques Attali, *A Man of Influence: The Extraordinary Career of

S. G.

Warburg*, Adler & Adler (Bethesda, Maryland 1987),p. 167.

 

20. Forrestal, p. 121ff.

 

21. Anthony Cave Brown, *The Last Hero, Wild Bill Donovan*, Vintage

(New

York: 1982), pp. 210211. Also: Ernst Hanfstangl, _Unheard Witness_,

J.R.

Lippincott (New York 1957)

 

22. " Search for the Tiger's Treasure, " _Las Vegas Sun_, December

 

26, 1993, p.1.

 

23. _Moody 's Industrial Manual_, 1968, p. 4080.

 

24. " Radiation and the Guinea Pigs, " _Guardian_, March 3, 1994, p. 3.

Also

see, " Nuclear Scientists Irradiated People in Secret Research, " _New

York

Times_, December 17, 1993, p. Al.

 

25. Christopher Simpson, *Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis

and Its

Effects On the Cold War*, Wiedenfeld & Nicholson (New York: 1988),

pp.26,

152-53. Col. Pash, a former high school gym teacher, was an officer

of the

Office of Policy coordination under Frank Wisner. His unit, writes

Simpson,

" known as PB/7, was given a written charter that read in part

that 'PB/7

will be responsible for assassinations, kidnaping, and such other

functions

as from time to time may be given it... by higher authority. " ' Pash

was a

member of the Russian Orthodox Church, a veteran of the Russian Civil

War.

Monsanto's Clinton Engineering Works in Oak Ridge became the Manhattan

Project's headquarters in 1943, and was " manned almost entirely by

experienced officers and agents of the CIC. " See lan Sayer and Douglas

Botting, *America's Secret Army: The Untold Story of the Counter

intelligence Corps*, Franklin Watts (New York 1989), pp. 71ff.,346.

 

26. Robin Thomas Naylor, *Hot Money and the Politics of Debt*, Simon &

Schuster (New York, 1987), p.289.

 

27. " Statement from Adrian Gross, Former FDA Investigator and

Scientist, "

_Congressional Record_, August 1, 1985, p. S10835.

 

28. Florence Graves, " How Safe is Your Diet Soft Drink? " _Common

Cause_,

July/August,1984.

 

29. Ibid.

 

30. " FDA Finding on Aspartame, " _New York Times_, January 14,1984, p.

28.

 

31. Article in Medical World News,1978, cited in I .N.

Love " NutraSweet

Isn't that Sweet, " _Gentle Strength Times_, October 1987, p. 3.

 

32. " Dick Wurtman's Ideas Aren't So Crazy After All, " _Business Week_,

December 14, 1992, p. 60.

 

33. " A Sour View of Aspartame , " _San Francisco Chronicle_, August

25, 1987.

 

34. " Amendment No. 60 " (debate), _Congressional Record_, May 7, l985,

p.

S5516.

 

35. " Lobbyist's Cozy Ties with Ex-Boss Sen. Hatch Include Client

Referrals,

Political Fund-Raising, " _Wall Street Journal_, February 18, 1993.

Eli Lilly

contributed $17,500 to Hatch's campaign chest between 1985 and 1988.

Sen.

Hatch filed a of friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Eli Lilly in

a 1989

patent case. Other pharmaceutical houses enjoy his political favors.

Lobbyist Thomas Parry remains a key adviser to Sen. Hatch:- " Nobody

gets

better care than his former chief of staff, " reports the _Journal_.

 

36. Ibid.

 

37. Jane E. Brody, " Sweetener Worries Some Scientists, " _Science

Times_,

February 5, 1985.

 

38. _Who 's Who in Industry and Finance_, 97th ed., Macmillian

(Wilmette,

IL.) p. 583.

 

39. " Food and Drug Administration Food Additive Approval Process

Followed

for Aspartame, " GAO Report B223552, June 18,1987.

 

40. " GAO Investigating NutraSweet Approval, " UPI, reprinted in

_Congressional Record_, August 1, 1985,p. S10823.

 

41. Graves.

 

42. " Head of FDA Tested Drugs on Volunteers, " _Washington Post_, June

26,

1983, p. A4.

 

43. Austin H. Kiplinger, *Washington Now*, Harper & Row (New York:

1975),

pp. 36-37.

 

44. Daniel Guttman and Barry Willner, *The Shadow Government The

Government's Multimillion Dollar Giveaway of its Decision-Making

Powers to

Private Management Consultants, ''Experts, " and Think Tanks*,

Pantheon,

(New York:1989),p.173.

 

45. Bruce Oudes, ed., *The President-Richard Nixon 's Secret

Files*,

Harper & Row (New York: 1989), p. 173.

 

46. James A Smith, *The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the

New

Policy Elite*, Free Press (New York: 1991), p.282.

 

47. Sterling Seagrave, *Yellow Rain: A Journey Through The Terror of

Chemical Warfare*, M. Evans and Co. (New York 1981), pp. 258 " After a

meeting with President Nixon, Representative Gerald Ford attacks

politicians

who criticize the Pentagon CBW efforts, saying the critics seem to

favor

'unilateral disarmament. " '

 

48. Christopher Palmeri, " Act Three, " _Forbes_, October 26, 1992, p.

88

 

49. " Westmark Systems Expands Board, Hires 3 New Vice Presidents, "

_Wall

Street Journal_, February 11,1988, p.33.

 

50. Graves.

 

51. Ibid.

 

52. " Hon. Samuel K. Skinner, " _Congressional Record_, Congressional

Printing

Office, Washington, D.C., August 1, 1985, pp. S10827, S10835.

 

53. Graves.

 

54. _Congressional Record_, August 1,1985, p. S10823.

 

55. Graves.

 

56. " Critics Cause Bush Cabinet Search to Stumble, " _Los Angeles

Times_,

December 22,1988.

 

57. Herman Rogan, *Traditions and Challenges: The Story of Sidley &

Austin*,

R.R. Donelly & Sons (Chicago: 1983), p.266.

 

58. *Who's Who in America*, 48th ed., 1994.

 

59. Ibid.

 

60. " Deukmejian Thrives in Private Life, Law Work, " _Los Angeles

Times_,

January 3, 1992, p. Al.

 

61. " Chicago Law Firm Agrees to Pay Up to $34 Million in Lincoln S & L

Case, "

_Los Angeles Times_, May 21, 1991, p. D5;and " Sidley & Austin RTC

Said to

Reach Pact, " _Wall Street Journal_, October 31, 1991, p. B4. The

basis of

the suit was a memo written on May 10, 1988 by Margery Waxman, a

partner in

Sidley & Austin's Washington office, to Charles Keating. In it, she

said

" pressure " had been applied to M. Danny Wall, then chairman of the

Home Loan

Bank Board, " to work toward meeting your demands and he has so

instructed

his staff. "

 

62. " Suit Accuses 7 Drug Makers of Price-Fixing, " _Los Angeles Times_,

October 15, 1993, p. Dl. Other pharmaceutical houses accused of

conspiring

to fix prescription drug prices included Smith-Kline-Beecham, Ciba-

Geigy

Corp., American Home Products, Schering-Plough and Glaxo.

 

63. Ida Honorof, " FDA Coverup of Hazards of Nutra-Sweet, " _Report to

Consumers_, Vol. XVIII, No.401, December, 1987. Also, " Two Ex-U.S.

Prosecutors' Roles in Case Against Searle are Questioned in Probe, "

_Wall

Street Journal_, February 7,1986, p. 4. Ironically, William Conlon

won an

appointment to the Illinois State Board of Ethics in 1982 (Kogan,

p.359).

 

64. Graves

 

65. _Los Angeles Times_, December 22, 1988.

 

66. " Sam Skinner: A Pragmatist in a Storm, " _Wall Street Journal_,

December

6, 1991.

 

67. " Samuel Knox Skinner, " _New York Times_, December 23, 1988.

 

68. Graves.

 

69. " Statement from Adrian Gross, Former FDA Investigator and

Scientist, "

_Congressional Record_, August 1, 1985, p. S10835.

 

70. _Congressional Record_, August 1, 1985, p. S 10831,

and " Statements from

Adrian Gross, " p. S10838.

 

71. " FDA Handling of Research on NutraSweet is Defended, " _New York

Times_,

July 18, 1987, p. 50

 

72. H.J. Roberts, M.D.,*Aspartame (NutraSweet): Is it Safe?*, Charles

Press

(Philadelphia: 1990), p. 10.

 

73. _Congressional Record_, August 1, 1985, p. S108-28.

 

74. Ibid., p. S108-34.

 

75. Ibid.

 

76. Graves.

 

77. " Sweet Suspicions, " three-part CBS Nightly News series, January

1984.

Transcript reprinted in the _Congressional Record_, August 1, 1985, p.

S108-26.

 

78. Ibid.

 

79. Raymond Bonner, " Searle Stock Query Held 'Smokescreen, " ' _New York

Times_, February 29, 1984, p. D5

 

80. William Safire, " Sweet and Sour, " _New York Times_, June 1, 1984,

p.

A31.

 

81. Louis Wolf, " Accuracy in Media Rewrites the News and History, "

_Covert

Action Information Bulletin_, Number 21 (Spring 1984), pp. 24-37.

 

82. I.N. Love, " NutraSweet Isn't that 'Sweet, " ' in _Gentle Strength

Times_,

October 1987, p.3.

 

83. Graves.

 

84. " Complaints on Aspartame Lead to Nationwide Investigation, " _Los

Angeles

Times_, July 5, 1984, p. Hl.

 

85. " Federal Agency Sees Little Risk in Sweetener, " _New York Times_,

November 2, 1984, p. A22.

 

86. _Los Angeles Times_, July 5, 1984.

 

87. _New York Times_, November 2, 1984.

 

88. " U.S. Study of Aspartame Finds no Serious Effects, " _Washington

Post_,

November 2, 1984, p. A18

 

89. " Pepsi Switches Sweeteners, " _Washington Post_, November 2, 1984,

p. AI.

 

90. " Most Scientists in Poll Doubt NutraSweet's Safety, " _Washington

Post_,

August 17, 1987, p. A23.

 

91. Roberts, p. 238.

 

92. _Congressional Report_, May 7, 1987, p. S5500.

 

93. " New Findings Back Use of Sweetener, " _New York Times_, August

1987, p.

30.

 

94. " Researchers Differ Over Long Range Effects of Sweetener, " _Los

Angeles

Times_, November 3, 1988, p. Hl.

 

95. Roberts, p. 244.

 

96. Roberts, p. 248.

 

97. " High Court Rejects Sweetener Review, " _Washington Post_, April

23,

1986, p. C.

 

98. . Roberts,p. 246-47.

--- End forwarded message ---