USA

WARNING: This site deals only with the corporate corruption of science, and makes no inference about the motives or activities of individuals involved.
    There are many reasons why individuals become embroiled in corporate corruption activities - from political zealotry to over-enthusiastic activism; from gullibility to greed.
    Please read the OVERVIEW carefully, and make up your own mind.

OPINION ONLY

Tom Borelli ran the Science & Technology division of Philip Morris USA, which eventually came under the Corporate Scientific Affairs section of PM Management Corp, run by corporate lawyer Steve Parrish.

In the Clinton era, the tobacco industry discovered that it had directed most of its efforts towards persuading and recruiting the "Conservative Media" and numerous libertarian commentators and columnists and neglected those from the Democratic side of the political spectrum. Those from the right were easy to enlist to their cause — supporting the industry's right to promote smoking — because they all shared extreme-free-market anti-regulatory ideologies.

But with the Democrats now in control, the industry had to develop media relationships with the 'liberal media' and that required a different approach.

Tom Borelli, a New York Democrat, was given the task of cultivating journalists and newspaper columnists. And one of those who proved to be most ameniable was Kathleen Parker Cleveland, who wrote a widely syndicated weekly column under the name Kathleen Parker. She was either gullible-enough to believe the distorted science she was fed by Borelli, arrogant enough to believe she knew better than all the scientists and regulators, or greedy enough not to care. [Or perhaps all three]

The approach Borelli used to seduce journalists like Cleveland became known in Philip Morris circles as "The Borrelli Formula", and it was claimed to highlite the "Need for Individuals to Take Ownership of the "Liberal Media"

See speech:

This approach involved sponsorship and support of numerous press clubs; the creation of journalistic awards and sponsorships; and the commissioning of op-eds which could be circulated free to the small newspapers with or without a prominent byline — and often without the need for the newspaper to pay for the copy.

Borelli also part-controlled (via funding) the National Journalism Center in Washington DC which ran 12 week courses for right-wing candidates, as well as a job-placement service for graduates. Borelli's section worked with ex-CIA operator, Richard Hines in journalist recruitment, and Hines also investigated the possibility of an International Journalism Center in Europe (especially Eastern Europe following the Berlin Wall collapse) — all to be controlled by tobacco and other aggressive corporations and trade associations.

Journalists from the National Journalism Center like Michael Fumento, and syndicated columnists like Kathleen Parker were highly valued.

Some key documents

• The Kathleen Parker-Cleveland file was held in Tom Borelli's office [Bates No 2046563546/2046563735] She wrote under the name Kathleen Parker, but Borelli knew her as Kathleen P Cleveland or Parker-Cleveland, and there were a number of different files containing her material and contracts.

    Prominent in the main Borelli file were documents which suggest that her value was particularly in obscuring the dangers posed to children by second-hand smoke from smoking parents: These show up as:

• Laundry list of Confounding Factors in Associations of ETS and Health Effects in Children (She appears to have prepared this list in 1990) This is a list of alternative explanations — some of which were unlikely in the extreme.
• Quotes about Children, Respiratory Illness and ETS (c 1989)
• Aug 1991 Note from Borelli to his associates on ETS Risk Assessment. (Which had been part-based on concerns about the vulnerability of children).
• Draft op-ed written for [PM exec.] William Campbell about "American freedom" (Parent's freedom to smoke in their home)
• Draft op-ed for Smoker's Alliance (virtually the same as above) (1994)
• Parents for Priorities, Draft proposal. Promoting the idea that crime is a greater health danger (and therefore priority) than ETS. This has a section on
  Strategy;
  • Suggestions that the new organisation be a non-profit
  • That it use as a front. the Safe Streets Foundation which looked at health threats other than tobacco;
  • Possible Coalitions list (advocacy groups on missing children, child murders, etc.)
• Political Correctness & the Marketplace of Ideas. A proposal for 1 hour TV program which attacks activism using as examples:
  • Alar and the NRDC scare over apples
  • Dioxins (then being promoted as relatively harmless)
  • Commercial Free Speech — the right to advertise.
  The intention was to use Prof Erik Collins at Uni of South Carolina as the anchor (for PBS in the Spring of 1993)

1991 June 26: One of Kathleen Parker's draft op-ed for Philip Morris International. It boosts he PM USA contact Tom Borelli, flatters corrupt scientist Gary Huber, and attacks the EPA and Japanese epidemiologist Tasheki Hirayama — who first established proof 'beyond reasonable doubt' that the non-smoking wives of smoking husbands had substantially increased rates of lung-cancer — whetther or not they cooked over charcoal-burning hibachis.
[To maintain that a top Japanese epidemiologist like Hirayama would not have considered hibachi cooking as a possible confounder in his research is ridiculous — an attack on his employment of elementary techniques, bordering on racism]

1991 July 18: Her address is "Barringer Bldg, Suite 1001, 1338 Main St, Cola,[Columbia] South Carolina." Philip Morris International is sending her some "background materials" [Address is now H & J Co of Columbia, real estate]

    She is being handled by Aurora Gonzales who did the Latin American lobbying, convention design, and misinformation work for Philip Morris International's Corporate Affairs division (under Andrew Whist).

    In this case Aurora is sending her material on a corrupt university research scientist, Gary Huber who, over a lifetime, received about $3 million of industry research grants for producing dubious {to say the least} findings. (see article below)

    She also appears to be writing generic op-eds (which can carry anyone's byline) for Gonzalez for distribution to Latin American newspapers.

    The propaganda material sent by Gonzalez (it has been published in Consumers' Research magazine)

See her rewrite as a Latin American op-ed draft

1991 Sep 13: She is faxing Philip Morris a list of story ideas. She has learned the tobacco industry's need well, and has a whole list of possible stories for them to fund.
[Some researcher should track down how many of these ideas became columns in her syndication to newspapers.]

1991 Oct 27: Faxing "Huber pieces" from her husband attorney's office (Speights & Runyan) to Philip Gambasicci, who worked at this time for Philip Morris (later for BAT).

As you know from writing speeches and presentations, it is difficult to write without knowing pne's audience. Clearly, one would write one way for an uneducated housewife who is concerned about smoking around her children and another way for scientifically educated consumers who are interested in the sociological impact of politicized government regulation.

    So... what I have written is a very generic summary of Huber's conclusions absent any scientific Jargon that might induce heavy slumber. This can be expanded to include some of the science, or we might put some science "infobi.ts" in an accompanying box. This sort of editorial decision-making all depends upon the publication and the targeted reading public.

    Let"s talk as soon as possible. If these are satisfactory, I'll get the Spanish versions to you by Wednesday or Thursday.

1991 Oct 29: Gambaccini sents her articles to Tom Borelli. He plans to edit them translate them into Spanish, and send them to PM affiliates throughout Latin America.
[The Spanish versions are in the archives]
    Gambaccini then distributes these op-eds to Philip Morris manufacturers and distributors in Latin America, asking for cuttings if they get published.

1991 Nov 27: "EPA C-Theory" a proposed article (probably an op-ed) written by Parker Cleveland and sent to Philip Morris for approval. Someone at PM has marked it Draft.. Shred! And some Philip Morris issues-manager (probably Wendy Burrell of Corporate Affairs) has sub-edited it to remove some of the stupidities.

    Cleveland was exploiting the NRDC's over-sensationalising of the Alar apple-coating 'scandal' to attack the EPA and other environmental activism. She was taking a "junk-science" labeling approach — to brand anti-smoking activism and EPA regulatory efforts as

"policy agendas [which] are influenced by such special interests in the absence of science or, in some cases, in the deliberate denial of existing science."

1991 Dec 2: Proposal for a Socratic Dialog at the Academy for the Study of Commercial Speech by Parker Cleveland to Philip Morris.

At last month's meeting about the University of South Carolina's newly established Academy for the Study of Commercial Free Speech, our discussion seemed to focus on the legal ramifications of First Amendment issues.

    The Academy, indeed, intends to tackle these issues, but does not wish to limit its scope to strictly First Amendment discussions. The Academy's purpose is both to study and to protect private sector commercial speech.

    This means examining not only the legal ramifications of regulations, but the environment of intolerance which generally precedes regulations.

    Thus, one of the goals of The Academy is to help create a climate in which such laws and regulations will not exist - to protect commercial speech from regulation.

    Given that this climate is largely regulated by the media,it is impossible to discuss commercial speech issues without discussing the media's role.

"Also, given the fact that ETS is such a good example of the failure of the media to play fair with the facts - and given that the risk assessment is reaching its final stages - we would like to host our own program before Spring.

    This first discussion would be a "Phase I" activity for The Academy. "Phase II" would more closely resemble our original proposal, with a program attached to an existing agenda. This program, which we will develop after we get this one rolling,
    would be expanded to include the broader First Amendment issues we discussed last month."

Our most expedient - and least expensive - option is to host this panel discussion ourselves on the campus of the University of South Carolina.

    The university offers immediate institutional credibility and, not incidentally a welcome reprieve from the rigors of winter in the North.

    Alternatively, we can try to attach this program to an existing agenda as we discussed before. The disadvantage of this plan is that we're probably talking about 6 months to a year from now. The deadline for next April's ASNE (American Society of Newspaper Editors) was November 1, 1991.

We plan to invite up to ten individuals representing media, special interest "citizen" groups, industry, and commentator types who have no particular bone to pick but who understand the broader issues.

• Steve Parrish (Philip Morris Vice President, Senior Counsel and executive in charge of their disinformation campaigns via Corporate Scientific Affairs):
• John Stossel , Warren Brooks , and a few other journalists with a well-established reputation as 'unfettered free-enterprise" promoters. Stossel was a favoured TV reporter. Warren Brooks had a tobacco-funded journalistic award named after him.
• Thorne Auchter , a Reagan Republican bagman from Florida who became head of the OSHA (until a scandal) then worked behind the scenes for the tobacco industry through a chain of fictional 'policy institutes' with his partners and friends Jim Tozzi and George Carlo.
• Al Hubbard , executive-director of Dan Quayle's infamous "Council on Competitiveness."
• Stanton Evans, editor of Consumer Research magazine, which inevitably took a pro-industry line in every controversy, and received massive grants from industry in response.

1992 Jan: This is a large pile of documents and receipts from the Philip Morris group. It is worth downloading, simply to get an idea of the range of nefarious activities this one tobacco company was involved in. It includes:

• Structural diagrams of the Corporate Scientific Affairs division and staff. After the 1991 restructure, this was now under the control of lawyer Stephen C Parrish (who was also PM's Special Counsel).
• Also see C&B $300,000 check for the Asian ETS Consultants Program [Whitecoats recruitment]
• PM Corporate Scientific Affairs contract with Burson Marsteller (PR).
• Barrera Associates Lobbyist Lisa Barrera's EPA surveillance contract.
• Articles of Association and Bylaws for the Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR).
• The Business Council on the Reduction of Paperwork, a corporate front for continued attacks on the regulating agencies
• Federal Focus Inc. (run by Carlo's partners/friends Jim Tozzi and Thorne Auchter) was also to receive a "Grant-in-aid" of $300,000.

• Paperwork on a dispute about the accounting allocation of $8.7 million in costs from PM's European (FTR) Science & Technology division in Neuchatel, Switzerland: The job description of this Swiss FTR unit was now:

  • Providing strategic input on proactive measures regarding ETS and IAQ;
  • providing Corporate Affairs personnel with scientific support with respect to ETS and IAQ issues;
  • providing advisory and spokesperson services regarding ETS and IAQ in contacts with scientists, journalists, politicians and various institutions;
  • acting as a liaison between Corporate Affairs personnel and Covington & Burling regarding the consultants program [WhiteCoats];
  • monitoring the scientific literature regarding ETS;
  • providing Corporate Affairs personnel with scientific support regarding specific issues such as health warnings, regulatory issues and the efforts of various third-party institutions, and;
  • advising senior management on matters relating to ETS and IAQ.

• Accounting for the USA Science & Technology division run by Tom Borelli (which had an identical job description)
  • Staff expenses
  • Seminars and Workshops
  • Scientist consultants (Rylander, Tso)
  • Contributions (National Journalism Center)
  • Consultants (all propaganda producers)

    • Hines & Quinn $100,000 (Setting up a journalist network)
    • Burson Marsteller - $0.5 m (PR)
    • K Cleveland $25,000 (writing name is Kathleen Parker — a syndicated columnist who ran projects on children and passive smoking)
    • George Carlo $25,000 (HES operations)

1992 Jan 1: Kathleen Parker Cleveland signs a new agreement with Philip Morris for consulting services. She will write news releases, feature articles etc for Corporate Scientific Affairs (Tom Borelli). Her hourly rate has been reacted.

1992 April: She is faxing material to Tom Borelli with a handnote saying she is disappointed with the EPA's risk assessment of ETS. The fax came from the Reavin Mgmt Co, South Carolina.

1992 May: /E Kathleen Parker Cleveland sends to Philip Morris her draft article "Huber Story 1" which quotes the industry-funded article by Gary Huber, in the May 1992 industry-funded magazine "Consumer Research"[A Corporate-corruptable pseudo-consumer magazine which appears to be a favourite of hers.]
Gary Huber is now an "intern and researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center."

[Gary Huber was one of the most notorious, and best-paid corrupt scientists who worked for tobacco. He was also one of the most troublesome.

1. He was ejected from his Harvard post by outraged students,
2. then forced to leave Kentuck University with threats on his life,
3. then employed only as a 'intern' at the University of Texas.
4. Then just after this article was written, he was threatened with perjury during a major law suit, and he turned whistleblower, admitting culpability and publicly exposing the way the industry corrupted scientific research.

1992 June: Parker-Cleveland is being paid 'Travel & Entertainment" costs in Borelli's budget. She is listed along with Burson-Marsteller and the Auchter-Tozzi astroturf Institute for Regulatory Policy. and the CIA journalist-fixer Richard Hines,.http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/iko90h00

1992 Nov 17: She is being copied by Borelli with a

"one page summary of the Brownson study. The summary may be useful in educating our various target groups

"Passive Smoking and Lung Cancer in Nonsmoking Women," R.C. Brownson, M.C.R. Alavanja, E.T. Hock and T.S. Loy, American Journal of Public Health 82(11): 1525-1530, 1992

    This case-control study [Brownson's second] looked at 432 nonsmoking women from Missouri. The authors report no statistically significant risk estimates based on "quantitative" exposure estimates of childhood ETS exposure, household exposure, spousal smoking, or workplace exposure.

1993 May: She is writing on first-name ["Dear John"], familiar and personal terms to Californian Assemblyman John Vasconcellous — and passing on a copy of the correspondence to Philip Morris as proof for payment.

Fighting cynicism is a life-long struggle, isn't it? In the years since I left California, I've travelled many miles, literally and figuratively. I wound up in South Carolina by virtue of my heart. I married a man here — a lawyer, alas — and rediscovered the family of my childhood. My mother was a Carolina native who fled the Deep South following WWII when she "fell in" with a Yankee. Also, a1as, a lawyer.

    My first job was as an instructor at the University of South Carolina's College of Journalism. I discovered I prefer "'doing" to "teaching." I next took a job with a PR firm specializing in environmental risk and science communication,. I left the firm three years ago to work on my own and have carved an interesting niche for myself that's part journalism (my column and as many magazine articles as I can write) and public relations (specifically science communication).

    One of my clients, as I told you, has been Philip Morris. Despite the unpopularity of one of its products, it's a wondertul company to work with — full of bright, talented people who, as far as. I can tell, are not bent on misleading the public.

    I was, delighted when Tom Borelli told me he was going to talk to, you. Delighted to have an excuse to call, but also becaisee — as I told him — I felt you would give him and the environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) issue a fair hearing. You are to be commended for keeping an open mind on a subject that has tipped the scale toward emotionalism, if not sensationalism. As I said, I'd be happy to share my thoughts on the subject, and shall do so without further encouragement.
First, let me say that this is not a lobbying pitch. I don't work on ETS anymore, but have become something of an expert during the past three years. I'm not a smoker and don''t particularly like secondary smoke. But I'm convinced by the scientific ewidience that ETS does not cause lung cancer or any other serious disease in non-smokers.

    How do I know this? I've studied the evidence under the tutelage of reputable scientists, including several who have nothing to do with Philip Morris.

1993 Sep 23: The Baltimore Sun reported

Kathleen Parker Cleveland, who writes a weekly lifestyle column for the Orlando Sentinel, has won The Baltimore Sun's 13th annual H. L. Mencken Writing Award.

    Ms. Cleveland, a free-lance journalist from Columbia, S.C., who uses the byline of Kathleen Parker, was selected as the newspaper writer whose regularly published column captures the power of Mencken's public commentary and the precision of his craft.

1994 Aug: /E Tom Borelli was feeding her draft op-eds written by Philip Morris's staff writers. One had been intended for a William Campbell (PM exec) byline. A rehash of the same article had been drafted for the Smoker's Alliance to put out. Clearly neither had been used, so they found their way into Kathleen Parker Cleveland's file.

1994 Aug 1: She now has a "Parker Cleveland Incorporated" letterhead and both a downtown and a home office. She is corresponding directly with Philip Morris Internationaal's Washington lobbyist Matt Winokur ("Dear Matt").

    She has been writing journalistic versions of scientific claims about "Weak Associations"
[Weak associations are those found in epidemiological studies where the relative risk is below two. In these cases, the regulators need other studies (meta analysis) and biological evidence befoe they regulate.

The objective here was to reinforce tobacco's claim that the EPA did not use 'sound science' in its determination that second-hand smoke was a Class A carcinogen by over-simplifying the process followed by the EPA.]

    This puts lie to her claim to Assemblyman John Vasconcellous, not to be working on ETS. She is writing a multi-section piece on the EPA for Winokur, but she says she won't have it finished until September when she returns from vacation. She still has her columns to write.

1994 Nov: A dreft proposal in her personal file for a project known as "Parents for Priorities". This is a PR strategy to persuade parents to concentrate on preventing child abduction and murder, rather than worrying about trivial matters like second-hand smoke.

A new Surgeon General's Report due for release in the next few weeks targets tobacco and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) as health risks for children in the 1990s.

    Ironically — and absurdly — this report comes at a time when crimes against children — murder, kidnapping, rape — are at a historical high. The problem of crime against children is so serious that parents are afraid to let their children play in the front yard...

1995 Jan 1: She is signing a new agreement with Philip Morris. The contract is signed by Tom Collamore, but Tom Borelli is still her controller.

1997 Dec 17: Kathleen Parker is writing her column (appearing in the Portland Press Herald) "Exaggerate estimate of other's risks used to demonize, criminalize smoking?" This copy turns up in Tom Borelli's files once again (but as a cutting only — no sign that it was commissioned.

    However she is clearly quoting scientific commentary from tobacco industry sources. She also plays the polluting industry's game of pointing to greater risks... "Don't worry about X when Y is a greater threat."

Even for those of us who aren't scientists, the EPA's claims are dubious. We. who grew up in the '50s, when many parents smoked, would be on respirators by now were secondhand smoke so lethaL

    A sixth-grader's scientific acumen is enough to at least wonder why inhaling a minuscule amount of someone else's diluted tobacco smoke would be deadly.

Another syndicated version
[There are a half-dozen clippings from different newspapers in the files]

1998 July 22: The Chicago Tribune carries another of her pro-smoking articles Betrayed by government should have us smokin'
[As with all her other columns and articles, she makes no mention of being paid by the tobacco companies to promote this industry propaganda.]

2006 Jun 26: Writing for the Toledo Blade: "Smoking while pregnant: Stupid, but a crime." She dislikes the Arkansas law prohibiting smoking in cars while children are passengers, and beats up the idea that the zealots may soon try to stop pregnant women from smoking.

    The rest of the article is an attack on the anti-smoking zealotry of John Banzhaf and manages to introduce a comparison between the anti-smoking activists with the terrorism of the Taliban and also with abortion-rights.. [No Nazi Holocaust this time!]

    Her column is still being distributed byTribune Media Services

2011 Apr 15: She was writing some liberal Democratic pieces for the Washington Post: "The Donald: The GOP plays a crazy Trump card."

2012 Oct 6: Washington Post: "Sarah Palin sits out 2012. There is a God. (Hurl Warning)" /

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