Informant
Authors: Kurt Eichenwald
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Retail, #Nonfiction, #Business & Economics
CONTENTS
More praise for
THE INFORMANT
“READS LIKE AN ED McBAIN CRIME NOVEL . . . within a few pages the reader is hooked. I knew how the story ended, but I still couldn’t put the book down.’’
—
New York Times
(daily review)
“A REMARKABLE, FASCINATING AND FAST-PACED BOOK . . . The strange details that emerge would be laughable in the context of a novel. In
The Informant
, they just leave a reader breathlessly amazed.’’
—
Portland Oregonian
“A NEAR MASTERPIECE . . . thrilling, far-reaching, and significant . . . a fast-paced, accessible, race car of a book.’’
—Salon.com
“I WOULD SAY
THE INFORMANT
READS LIKE GRISHAM, ONLY NOBODY EVER COULD HAVE INVENTED THESE CHARACTERS. A tale this riveting and this strange could only have been built from truth.”
—Sherry Sontag, coauthor,
Blind Man’s Bluff
“SUSPENSEFUL . . . a book that can double as an attractive movie proposal.”
—
Washington Post
“A GRIPPING READ . . . ONE OF THE MOST COMPELLING BUSINESS NARRATIVES SINCE
BARBARIANS AT THE GATE
.
The Informant
offers an inside picture of a part of the corporate world that outsiders almost never see—one full of covert meetings, secret codes, and industrial espionage. Usually the pulp of airport fiction, here such shadowy doings become the stuff of sound investigative nonfiction . . . A great cops-and-robbers drama—leavened by occasional touches of screwball comedy . . . This is box-office material, and Eichenwald has written a book that reads a lot like a screenplay.”
—
Business Week
“A THRILLER, filled with espionage, double-crosses, and deceit, where nothing is quite what it first seems.’’
—Dateline NBC
“A COMPELLING NARRATIVE . . . a business book for Grisham readers.’’
—
Chicago Tribune
“A FASCINATING TALE . . . a cohesive narrative of a corporation that placed itself above the law, an ambitious executive who preferred lies over the truth, and determined FBI agents whose hard work was nearly jeopardized not only by their informant but also by their bosses at the Department of Justice.’’
—
St. Petersburg Times
“
THE INFORMANT
IS SUPERB REPORTING in the service of a great story, one with the drama and suspense of a Le Carré novel. Set squarely in the American heartland, delving into the inner sanctum of a global corporation, it explores the shifting boundaries of truth and deception, loyalty and betrayal. It is a remarkable achievement.”
—James B. Stewart, author,
Den of Thieves
and
Blind Eye
“A MESMERIZING STORY . . . a thrilling read.’’
—
Washington Monthly
“WHAT A STORY—AND WHAT AN INFORMANT.’’
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“IN THIS TRUE ACCOUNT THAT HAS MORE SPY ACTION THAN SOME TOM CLANCY NOVELS, we get double-crossing, dirty dealing, lying, conniving, and wiretapping . . .
The Informant
is more deceitful and more spellbinding than many works of fiction.”
—Bookpage
“A REAL PAGE-TURNER.’’
—Ira Glass, host,
This American Life
“THIS GRIPPING STORY of the price-fixing case against Archer Daniels Midland is the next
A Civil Action
.’’
—
The Industry Standard
“THE INFORMANT IS EPIC IN SCOPE, a tale of human foibles—of greed, deceit, and arrogance—and also of the search for truth. Eichenwald has told it masterfully, with the narrative drive of a novel.”
—Jonathan Harr, author,
A Civil Action
“LIKE EVERYONE ELSE WHO HAS RAVED about
The Informant
, I could not stop reading it . . . Like John Grisham’s
The Firm
,
The Informant
is destined for the big screen . . ”
—ABA Journal
“THE TWISTS AND TURNS OF THIS NONFICTION WORK LEAVE MANY THRILLERS IN THE DUST. Eichenwald’s spare prose and journalistic eye for detail make the pages fly.”
—David Baldacci, author,
Absolute Power
and
Saving Faith
“A DILLY OF A BOOK . . . reads like John Grisham on acid, and once begun, you can’t put it down.”
— Liz Smith, in her syndicated column
“A COHESIVE, JAW-DROPPING NARRATIVE . . . a compulsively readable legal procedural,
The Informant
has earned comparisons to the works of John Grisham. But with its dizzying array of subplots, twists, and political maneuvers, the book is more like Grisham’s entire oeuvre compressed into six hundred pages.”
—
The Onion
“CRITICS ARE THRILLED with this revival of a genre they claim has been all but dead since the early ‘80s: investigative nonfiction set in corporate America. By all accounts, Eichenwald’s tale of the Archer Daniels Midland price-fixing scandal, which he covered for the
New York Times
, is a gripping read.’’
—Slate
“
THE INFORMANT
IS MASTERFUL . . . a suspenseful, engrossing story . . . were this story told as fiction, no one would believe it.
—The DailyDeal.com
“A TERRIFIC BOOK . . . a transfixing tale . . . mesmerizes you immediately with a well-crafted filigree of detail . . . the book resembles a tightly constructed novel. It’s full of parallel plots that develop independently, occasionally crisscrossing or passing in the night until the inexorable collision.”
—
Star Tribune
(Minneapolis, Minn.)
THE
INFORMANT
A TRUE STORY
K
URT
E
ICHENWALD
BROADWAY BOOKS NEW YORK
To
ADAM, RYAN,
and
SAM,
my wonderful and beloved boys.
And to my wife,
THERESA,
Always.
You too must not count overmuch
on your reality as you feel it today,
since, like that of yesterday,
it may prove to be an illusion tomorrow.
—LUIGI PIRANDELLO
Six Characters in Search of an Author
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is based on about eight hundred hours of interviews with more than one hundred participants in these events, as well as tens of thousands of confidential corporate and government records, including secret grand jury testimony. Much of the dialogue comes from publicly unavailable transcripts of secret recordings made by a cooperating witness with the FBI over more than two years. Other conversations are based on contemporaneous records of the events or the best recollections of participants. While I have disguised the identities of one witness and of some people mentioned in passing on the tapes, everything else in this book—no matter how unbelievable—is real.
Every scene, every name, every crime.
And every lie.
T
HE
M
AIN
C
HARACTERS
WITH THE ARCHER DANIELS MIDLAND COMPANY
DWAYNE ANDREAS,
chairman and chief executive
MICHAEL “MICK” ANDREAS,
vice-chairman
JAMES RANDALL,
president
TERRANCE “TERRY” WILSON,
president, corn processing
BARRIE COX,
vice president, food additives
G. ALLEN ANDREAS,
vice president and chief executive, ADM International
RICHARD REISING,
general counsel
MARK CHEVIRON,
head of security
REINHART RICHTER,
president, ADM Mexico
HOWARD BUFFETT,
assistant to the chairman
JAMES SHAFTER,
of counsel
RONALD FERRARI,
former product manager, protein specialties
IN THE BIOPRODUCTS DIVISION
MARK WHITACRE,
president
MARTY ALLISON,
vice president
SIDNEY HULSE,
vice president
DAVID PAGE,
director of market development
ELIZABETH TAYLOR,
secretary
ON THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE OF THE BOARD
BRIAN MULRONEY,
former prime minister of Canada
F. ROSS JOHNSON,
former chairman, RJR Nabisco
JOHN DANIELS,
former chairman, Archer Daniels Midland
RAY GOLDBERG,
professor of agriculture, Harvard Business School
ADVISORS TO DWAYNE ANDREAS
ROBERT S. STRAUSS,
partner, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, Washington, D.C.
ZEV FURST,
principal, First International
WITH THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, WASHINGTON, D.C.
LOUIS FREEH,
Director
WILLIAM ESPOSITO,
Assistant Director, Criminal Investigative Division
NEIL GALLAGHER,
Deputy Assistant Director of the Criminal Investigative Division
EDWARD HERBST,
Supervisory Special Agent
ALIX SUGGS,
Supervisory Special Agent
WITH THE RESIDENT AGENCY, DECATUR, IL
BRIAN SHEPARD,
Special Agent
WITH THE RESIDENT AGENCY, CHAMPAIGN, IL
JOE WEATHERALL,
Special Agent
WITH THE FIELD OFFICE, SPRINGFIELD, IL
ROBERT HERNDON,
Special Agent
DONALD STUKEY,
Special Agent in Charge (SAC)
JOHN HOYT,
Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC)
DEAN PAISLEY,
Supervisory Special Agent
KATE KILLHAM,
Supervisory Special Agent
KEVIN CORR,
Principal Legal Advisor
THOMAS GIBBONS,
Special Agent
WITH THE FIELD OFFICE, CHICAGO, IL
MICHAEL BASSETT
, Special Agent
ANTHONY D’ANGELO,
Special Agent
ED WORTHINGTON,
Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC)
ROBERT GRANT,
Supervisory Special Agent
WITH THE FIELD OFFICE, MOBILE, AL
CRAIG DAHLE,
Special Agent
WITH THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
JANET RENO,
Attorney General
JAMIE GORELICK,
Deputy Attorney General
SETH WAXMAN,
Associate Deputy Attorney General
IN THE ANTITRUST DIVISION, WASHINGTON, D.C.
ANNE BINGAMAN,
Assistant Attorney General
GARY SPRATLING,
Deputy Assistant Attorney General
IN THE ANTITRUST DIVISION, MIDWEST FIELD OFFICE, CHICAGO, IL
JAMES GRIFFIN,
Chief
MARVIN PRICE,
Assistant Chief
ROBIN MANN,
attorney
JAMES MUTCHNIK,
attorney
WITH THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, SPRINGFIELD, IL
FRANCES HULIN,
United States Attorney
BYRON CUDMORE,
First Assistant United States Attorney
RODGER HEATON,
Assistant United States Attorney
JOSEPH HARTZLER,
Assistant United States Attorney
WITH THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, CHICAGO, IL