The Tobacco Institute

James P. Richards

James Prioleau Richards, an 11-term Congressman from South Carolina (1933-1957), became the first president of the Tobacco Institute from 1958 to 1960. He had been a US delegate to the United Nations in 1953, and was a Special Assistant for President Eisenhower to the Middle East from Jan. 1957 to Jan. 1958, whose mission was to dispense US military and economic assistance to countries deemed to be in danger of communist subversion, particularly Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan.

"The year 1958-59 saw an exchange of opinion between the Board of Directors of the Society and The Tobacco Institute, Inc. James P. Richards, President and Executive Director of The Tobacco Instltute, Inc., challenged American Cancer Society policy in a letter to former Governor Walter J. Kohler of Wisconsin, then Chairman of the Board of the. Society. Richards charged that "a few individuals in the Society seem to be concentrating more on the fight against tobacco than on the avowed basic purposes of the Society." To this Mefford B. Runyon, then Executive Vice President of the Society, responded on behalf of the Board of Directors: "We repeat and emphasize that no evidence of any kind has ever been produced that is inconsistent with the view that excessive cigarette smoking is one of the principal causes of lung cancer; that the great preponderance of scientific evaluation accepts this conclusion; and that it also accepts the mounting body of evidence indicting the cigarette as a shortener of life. Your long communication and the enclosures thereto contain the dissenting views of various scientists who do not accept these conclusions. Some of these quotations are statements out of context which we believe do not fairly represent the scientist's true opinion. Other quotations are from memoranda prepared by staff members of the Society for the consideration of its committees, and unless and until they are approved by the Board,.they are not Society policy. Nothing new was presented to change the conclusions of our Board as to the validity of its conclusions reached well over a year ago of the wisdom and necessity of the actions since then, and of the consistency of these actions with the objectives of the Society in the fight on cancer . . . It is not necessary for every scientist to accept this conclusion nor for every other possible cause to be excluded before definite public health action is taken. It would cause unnecessary suffering and death to wait for absolute proof of a relationship betwoen cigarette smoking and lung cancer . . . The future course of action of the Society will be carefully considered and will be decided by the Board of Directors. It will carry out its responsibility to the public as it sees it, based on the premises stated above and subsequent facts as they develop." (The Position of the American Cancer Society Regarding Tobacco and Lung Cancer. To the City Editor. [form letter]. American Cancer Society News Service, Jan. 7, 1964.)

George V. Allen

George V. Allen, director of the US Information Agency, the government's official propaganda organ, was elected the second president of the Tobacco Institute (1960-66). He entered the US Foreign Service in 1930, and his first ambassadorial posting was to Iran in 1946. "He was assistant secretary of state for public affairs under President Truman and in this time directed the Office of International Information, progenitor of the US Information Agency." He was chairman of the US delegation to UNESCO in 1948 and 1949, and participated in the UN Conference in San Francisco in 1945. (Allen's Election As President Announced By Tobacco Institute." Durham Morning Herald, Nov. 13, 1960, and other newspapers.) He had succeeded Albert Lasker's crony, William Benton, as Truman's Assistant Secretary of State for Political Affairs (March 1948 to Nov. 28, 1949); and he succeeded Benton's partner, Chester Bowles, as the US Ambassador to India from 1953-54.

"It was the unanimous finding of the subcommittee that this program of communications has been inadequate to the task of acquainting the general public with the industry's side of the health issue... Lack of aggressive communications in the area of smoking and health raises a fundamental question as to whether the Institute is justifying its existence." (Report on Third Meeting, Subcommittee on Communications, Tobacco Institute, April 21, 1961).

Radio Broadcast Transcript, The Smoking Question. Mutual Broadcasting System, Nov. 18, 1962. Host Charles Warren; Guests: George V. Allen and Scripps-Howard Science Editor John Trohan.

Lester Breslow, Chief of the Division of Medical Services, California Department of Public Health, refuses to release unpublished data that he had provided for the Surgeon General report, claiming that "At the present time, we do not wish to give our unpublished data any further circulation." (Breslow to George V. Allen, President and Director of the Tobacco Institute, May 12, 1964.)

John R. Goldsmith, Head of Air Pollution Medical Studies, claims that their data "was regrettably prepared in some haste and I do not have a copy that is suitable for distribution." (Goldsmith to Allen, May 13, 1964.)

Former US Senator from Kentucky, Earle C. Clements, was President from 1966 to 1970. Horace Kornegay was President from 1970 to 1980; and Samuel D. Chilcote became President in 1981.

William Kloepfer Jr., public relations director of the Tobacco Institute since 1967.

William Kloepfer Jr.

Kloepfer had been a public relations director for the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association for eight years, before joining the Tobacco Institute in 1967. He was born in Illinois and received a degree in political science from Northwestern University in 1949. He was on the publicity staff of the Republican National Committee from 1952 to 1955. He was press secretary for Vice President Nixon during Nixon's campaign tour in the 1954 Congressional elections, then an administrative assistant to U.S. Rep. Laurence Curtis of Boston for two years. (Biographical Notes. William Kloepfer Jr., Senior Vice President - Public Realtions. Tobacco Institute Inc. The Organization Papers-by-Laws- Certificate of Incorporation.) Anti-smoker FCC Commissioner Newton N. Minow also got his bachelor's degree at Northwestern in 1949.

Kloepfer was also an NBC news editor, and worked on a committee supporting the nomination of Sen. Robert Taft for President in 1952. He retired from the Tobacco Institute in 1988. He was replaced by Charles Powers. (Deposition of WILLIAM J. KLOEPFER, January 14, 1998, SMALL [NEW YORK CLASS ACTION TOBACCO LITIGATION] v. LORILLARD TOBACCO CO.; CALIFORNIA [DAVIS] v. R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO CO.)

CTR and Tobacco Institute "Personnel/Affiliations as of May 27, 1988"

Norman M. Adler was the lobbyist for the Tobacco Institute in 1993. (1993 Lobbyist Annual Report. Office of the City Clerk, The City of New York.)

Their expenditures were exceeded by the Lobby for a Tobacco-Free New York, $25,000, by Get & de Milly, Inc. (1993 Lobbyist Annual Report. Office of the City Clerk, The City of New York.)

The End of the Tobacco Institute

Official Psychopathic Lies: "The Tobacco Institute, the Washington trade group that for nearly 40 years has fought efforts to brand tobacco as a health hazard, has been placed under control of a temporary receiver by a New York state judge for allegedly abusing its tax-exempt status." This is how the lying piece of media filth who concocted this story, Bill McAllister of the Washington Post, falsely portrays an organization which for decades obsequiously served as the health establishment's milch-cow, and never uttered a squeak of protest against the anti-smokers' suppression of research and deliberate scientific fraud. McAllister is a whore of Katherine Graham, covering up the truth to protect the Lasker Syndicate.

Corrupt New York Attorney General Dennis C. Vacco, who initiated the receivership, gibbered that the Tobacco Institute and the CTR "together fed the public a pack of lies in an underhanded effort to promote smoking and addict our kids." The only "pack of lies" has been shoved down our throats by the ANTI-SMOKERS - and it's a no-brainer that the New York State Attorney General is the slut of that clique of those Wall Street bloodsuckers who've controlled our health establishment for six decades. (As for the children, they should be brought in to watch the execution of anti-smokers, to teach them that, in a just society, criminals get their just desserts.) "This action begins a process that will ensure that the tobacco industry will no longer be able to continue to finance their propaganda machine at taxpayer expense," brayed Vacco. You piece of lying excrement, the only taxpayer-funded propaganda machine is that of your health fascist masters! (N.Y. Judge Places Tobacco Institute Under Control of Receiver. By Bill McAllister. The Washington Post, May 3, 1998. And, proving this point, every other scummy little media whore sang exactly the same tune: Tobacco Trade Groups Ordered Into Temporary Receivership. By Henry Berkowitz, Newsday; Judge appoints receivers for 'not-for-profit' tobacco groups, The Associated Press; Tobacco research arms placed in receivership, Reuters.)

Milton S. Gould

88-year-old Milton Gould, of counsel at the law firm LeBoeuf Lamb Greene and MacRae since 1994, was appointed to run the Tobacco Institute. From 1978 to 1996, he was a director of Toys 'R' Us, whose Chairman of the Board, Charles Lazarus, was also a director of anti-smoker Sen. Frank Lautenberg's ADP.

Joseph F. Murphy, Esq., of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae, New York, was a director of the American Council on Science and Health in the 1980s. Executive Director Elizabeth Whelan's profile lists her father's name as Joseph F. Murphy.

Gould died in 1999. His obituary describes him as a co-founder of "one of New York's most politically connected" law firms. William Casey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was one of his clients.

Milton Gould was a director of 20th Century-Fox in 1962. Fellow directors included Samuel Rosenman and John Loeb, the benefactor of the Harvard School of Public Health, and the uncle of Thomas L. Kempner. They voted as a bloc against Daryl Zanuck, and resigned when they lost, 8 to 3. (link died: :www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Chateau/3987/july2.html)

Wisconsin Regional Vice Presidents of the Tobacco Institute

Tobacco Institute Regional Vice President Michael F. Brozek also organized the legislative and public affairs division of the State Medical Society. M. Alice O'Connor, who replaced him, later lobbied for the Medical Society and other health interests.

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