Searle President Donald Rumsfeld, Nixon, and the Watergate team [Extract Nutrapoison by Alex Constantine ]

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