The title of the book is "The Informant" and the story is about a criminal global corporation, a delusional employee who, at great personal peril, blows the whistle on his employer, and such familiar but shadowy organizations as the CIA, FBI, and Justice Department.
"The Informant," written by New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald, is not a novel, but a true-crime thriller about the long-running international price-fixing scheme orchestrated by the Archer Daniels Midland Co., which resulted in the theft of millions and millions of dollars from consumers around the world.
We know Archer Daniels Midland Company, as ADM, self professed "supermarket to the world," from its high profile institutional advertising, much of it on public broadcasting,. including repeated daily promotional spots on Five College radio (WFCR) and Springfield public television's Channel 57.
In its advertising spots, ADM prefers to be linked to news programs, particularly the much admired News Hour with Jim Lehrer, viewed nightly by the so-called egg-head audience, which is made up of many of the nation's policy makers.
ADM's preference for being linked to news programs is enhanced by its hired pitchman, David Brinkley, formerly one of the brightest stars in television's news firmament. Each night's spot suggests that a selfless Archer Daniels Midland Co. not only can single-handedly feed the world, but cure cancer at the same time, if it weren't for outside impediments: "It's just politics," Brinkley laments.
Odd that ADM should be so passionate about underwriting Jim Lehrer and local news segments, because as Eichenwald documents in his riveting book, ADM's entire corporate history and culture has been dedicated to secrecy, illegal business activities, and bribes and payoffs to politicians. Eichenwald relates how Dwayne Andreas, head of ADM, walked into the White House in 1972 with $100,000 in one-hundred dollar bills, which was deposited with Richard Nixon's personal secretary and "was kept in a White House safe for the months until Watergate led Nixon to decide it should be returned."
"The Informant" draws a detailed picture of a rogue corporation whose expressed position was that "our competitors are our friends, our customers are our enemies." The book traces in painstaking but precise detail the government investigation of ADM's price-fixing activities that began in 1992 and resulted in the company pleading guilty and paying a fine of $100 million. In addition in 1999, three of ADM's top executives, including Mark Whitaker, the psychotic informant who brought the company and himself down, were sentenced to prison for their role in the worldwide price-fixing scheme.
And yet the myth continues to be broadcast to millions of listeners and viewers each day that ADM is a friend to the world's people, and as evidence of its goodness it enables us to listen to the important news of the day by its generous "underwriting" or corporate sponsorship.
Shame on public broadcasting. Shame on Jim Lehrer. Shame on local public radio and public television outlets for condoning the tainted, corrupt sources of the money, or pretending that ADM is just lending its support because of its commitment to an improved civic life for our nation.
Read Kurt Eichenwald's book, "the Informant" and you will not only cringe, but seethe with anger everytime you hear that phrase "supermarket to the world" and wonder how preachy public broadcasters can be so hypocritical.
