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The Insider Movie

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The Insider is a documentary of an ex-company executive that wanted to reveal his company’s best secret to a 60 minute program produced, L. Bergman. Wigand was a high salaried executive at Brown &Williamson Tobacco Corp in Louisville, KY, owned British American Tobacco. He worked as a scientist in the research and development field for the # 3 tobacco company in the world. In 1993 he was dismissed due to his resistance of company’s use of a potentially dangerous pipe tobacco additive. When Wigand met with the management of B&W to arrange his benefits and severance package he was met with intimidation and threats to force Wigand into signing a strict confidentiality agreement and that for his family’s best interest. B&W knew that without that agreement, Wigand would reveal the truth about the nicotine and content of their product, a very damaging claim to the company and its profits. B&W threatened him with revoking his severance pay, medical coverage and initiating legal proceedings if he went along with his plan. Wigand decided not to sign the contract and to cooperate with Federal regulators and anti-tobacco investigators, becoming one of the most famous corporate whistle-blowers.

Wigand was faced with an ethical dilemma of whether to uphold his fiduciary duties to Brown & Williamson, or follow his personal moral philosophies and values, by going public with the lies in the tobacco industry. He wanted to let America know of the company’s unethical behavior of the tobacco industry. Wigand claimed the big 7 CEOs of the tobacco company perjured themselves by claiming unawareness of nicotine’s addictiveness while testifying in congress. The FDA clearly stated that cigarettes are damaging to the lung, throat and body in general. He claimed the tobacco industry was providing a damaging product knowingly to its consumers which presented a complete lack of

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