Reply #16: Expert Says He Was Told to Soften Tobacco Testimony

[UpInArms]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/19/AR2005061900691.html

A top Justice Department official threatened to remove a government expert from its witness list if he did not water down his recommended penalties for the tobacco industry, the witness said in an interview yesterday.

Harvard University business professor Max H. Bazerman said a career trial lawyer told him senior Justice officials wanted him to change his recommendation that the court appoint a monitor to review whether it was appropriate to remove senior tobacco company management. Bazerman said the lawyer was passing along the "strong request" the week before Bazerman was to take the witness stand on May 4 in the government's landmark racketeering case against the industry.

The government says the tobacco industry engaged in a 50-year conspiracy to defraud the public about the dangers and addictiveness of smoking.

Bazerman said the lawyer told him the change -- opposed by the career lawyers on the case -- had come from Justice Department senior litigation counsel Frank J. Marine and Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum Jr.

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