The Insider Monologues

A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a 60 Minutes exposé on Big Tobacco.

Time? BULLSHIT! You corporate LACKEY! Who told you your incompetent little fingers had the requisite skills to edit me! I'm trying to band-aid a situation here, and you're too dim to…

Mike? "Mike." Try "Mr. Wallace". We work in the same corporation doesn't mean we work in the same profession. What are you going to do now? You're gonna finesse me, lawyer me some more? I've been in this profession 50 FUCKING YEARS! You, and the people you work for, are destroying the most-respected, the highest-rated, the most-profitable show on this network!

In the real world, when you get to where I am, there are other considerations.

I'm not talking celebrity, vanity, CBS. I'm talking about when you're nearer the end of your life than the beginning. Now, what do you think you think about then? The future? In the future I'm going to do this? Become that? What future? No. What you think is "How will I be regarded in the end?" After I'm gone. Now, along the way I suppose I made some minor impact. I did Iran-Gate and the Ayatollah, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Saddam, Sadat, etcetera, etcetera. I showed them thieves in suits. I've spent a lifetime building all that. But history only remembers most what you did last. And should that be fronting a segment that allowed a tobacco giant to crash this network? Does it give someone at my time of life pause? Yeah.

Do me a favor, will you - spare me, for God's sake, get in the real world, what do you think? I'm going to resign in protest? To force it on the air? The answer's "no". I don't plan to spend the end of my days wandering in the wilderness of National Public Radio. That decision I've already made.

I mean, he's got a corporate secrecy agreement - give me a break! I mean, this is a public health issue! Like an unsafe airframe on a passenger jet or some company dumping cyanide into the East River, issues like that! He can talk, we can air it! They've got no right to hide behind a "corporate agreement"! Pass the milk.

A servant of God? Really? Americans believe that you, as an Islamic fundamentalist, that you are a leader who contributed to the bombing of the US Embassy...

Ordinary people under extraordinary pressure, Mike. What the hell do you expect? Grace and consistency?

Jeffrey, where are you going with this? Where are you going? (Pause) You are important to a lot of people, Jeffrey. You think about that, and you think about them. (Pause) I'm all out of heroes, man. Guys like you are in short supply.

You pay me to go get guys like Wigand, to draw him out. To get him to trust us, to get him to go on television. I do. I deliver him. He sits. He talks. He violates his own fucking confidentiality agreement. And he's only the key witness in the biggest public health reform issue, maybe the biggest, most-expensive corporate-malfeasance case in U.S. history. And Jeffrey Wigand, who's out on a limb, does he go on television and tell the truth? Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we gonna air it? Of course not. Why? Because he's not telling the truth? No. Because he is telling the truth. That's why we're not going to air it. And the more truth he tells, the worse it gets!

This news division has been villified by the New York Times! In print, on television, for caving to corporate interests!

No, you fucked you! Don't invert stuff! Big Tobacco tried to smear Wigand, you bought it. The Wall Street Journal, here: not exactly a bastion of anti-capitalist sentiment, refutes Big Tobacco's smear campaign as the lowest form of character assassination! And now, even now, when every word of what Wigand has said on our show is printed, the entire deposition of his testimony in a court of law in the State of Mississippi, the cat *totally* out of the bag, you're still standing here debating! Don, what the hell else do you need?

You'd better take a *good* look, because I'm getting two things: pissed off and curious.

In all that time, Mike, did you ever get out a plane, walk into a room and find that a source for a story changed his mind? Lost his heart? Walked out on us? Not one fucking time. You want to know why?

What do I tell the my source for the next tough story, huh? 'Hang in with us, you'll be ok maybe'? No. What got broken here doesn't go back together.

I never left a source hang out to dry, ever! Abandoned! Not 'til right fucking now. When I came on this job, I came with my word intact. I'm gonna leave with my word intact. Fuck the rules of the game!

And I don't like paranoid accusations! I'm a journalist. Think. Use your head. How do I operate as a journalist by screwing the people who could provide me with information before they provided me with it?

I'm Lowell Bergman, I'm from 60 Minutes. You know, you take the 60 Minutes out of that sentence, nobody returns your phone call.

Well that's the whole point, Jeffrey. That's the whole point. Anyone's. Everyone's. They are gonna look under every rock, dig up every flaw, every mistake you've ever made. They are going to distort and exaggerate everything you've ever done, man. Don't you understand?

"Words." While you've been dicking around some fucking company golf tournaments, I've been out in the world, giving my word... and backing it up with action. Now, are you gonna go and do this thing, or not?

You fought for me? You manipulated me! Into where I am now - staring at the Brown & Williamson building, it's all dark except for the tenth floor. That's the legal department, that's where they fuck with my life!

There are times when I wish I hadn't done it. There are times when I feel com… compelled to do it. If you asked me, would I do it again, do I think it's worth it? Yeah I think its worth it.

So, what you're saying is it wasn't enough to fire me for no good reason. Now you question my integrity? On top of the humiliation of being fired, you threaten me? You threaten my family? It never crossed my mind not to honor my agreement. And I will tell you, Mr. Sandefur... and Brown & Williamson too - fuck me? Well, fuck you!

I believe Mr. Sandefur perjured himself because I watched those testimonies very carefully.

Part of the reason I'm here is that I felt that their representations clearly misstated - at least within Brown and Williamson's representation - clearly misstated what is common language within the company: "We are in the nicotine delivery business."

The process is known as "impact boosting". While not spiking nicotine, they clearly manipulate it. There was extensive use of this technology known as "ammonia chemistry". It allows for the nicotine to be more rapidly absorbed in the lung and therefore affect the brain and central nervous system. The straw that broke the camel's back for me, and really put me in trouble with Sandefur, was a compound called coumarin. When I came on board at B. and W., they had tried the transition from coumarin to a similar flavor that would give the same taste, and had been unsuccessful. I wanted out immediately. I was told that it could affect sales, so I should mind my own business. I constructed a memo to Mr. Sandefur indicating I could not in conscience continue with coumarin, a product we now know and we had documentation was similar to coumadin, a lung-specific carcinogen.

I sent the documents forward to Sandefur. I was told that we would continue to work on a substitute but we weren't going to remove it as it would impact sales, and that was his decision.

You manipulated me into where I am now - staring at the Brown and Williamson Building. It's all dark except the tenth floor. That's the legal department, where they fuck with my life!

A can opener! A $39.95 can opener. I cancelled payment... it was junk. You ever bounce a check, Lowell? You ever look at another woman's tits? You ever cheat a little on your taxes? Whose life, if you look at it under a microscope, doesn't have any flaws...?

Maybe that's what you've been telling yourself all these years to justify having a good job. Having status. Maybe for the audience, its just voyeurism, something to do on a Sunday night. And maybe it won't change a fucking thing. And people like myself, and my family are left hung out to dry, used up, broke, alone.

I have to put my family's welfare on the line here, my friend! And what are you puttin' up? You're puttin' up words!

I find chemistry to be magical. I find it an adventure, an exploration into the physical building blocks of our universe.

Up to you, Jeffrey! That's the power you have, Jeffrey! Vital inside information the American public need to know! Lowell Bergman, the hotshot who never met a source he couldn't turn around!