Bob Dole, Tobacco Racketeer

Jonathan Rauch | October 1, 1999

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Counts 109, 110, 111, 112, and 113 consist of the testimony given before Congress, in 1994, in which the chief executives of five tobacco giants denied that smoking is addictive and denied manipulating the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. The hearings were televised, so that is five counts of wire fraud.

"Racketeering Act No. 116," a suitably brassy coda, charges that Brown & Williamson posted on its Web site a document titled "Hot Topics: Smoking and Health Issues." The document conceded "that, by some definitions, including that of the Surgeon General in 1988, cigarette smoking would be classified as addictive." Unfortunately, Brown & Williamson went on to say: "The issue should be whether consumers are aware that smoking may be difficult to quit (they are) and whether there is anything in cigarette smoke that impairs smokers from reaching and implementing a decision to quit (which we believe there is not)." Wire fraud.

Never mind obstruction of justice; the President should have been impeached for wire fraud when, on national television, he denied having sex with Monica Lewinsky. And poor Bob Dole. As a presidential candidate in 1996, he was asked in a televised interview if he thought tobacco is addictive. He replied, "Some people who've tried it can quit easily, others don't quit. So I guess it's addictive to some and not to others." You can send your contributions to the Bob Dole Racketeering & Wire Fraud Defense Fund to me here at National Journal.

In its lawsuit against the tobacco industry, the Clinton Administration has redefined fraud and racketeering to mean, in effect, publicly disagreeing with the Clinton Administration. The Administration charges that the industry deliberately lied, which is not the same as honestly disagreeing; but charges like No. 116 show the distinction to be a flimsy one in the hands of government prosecutors.

On his entertaining and often startling Web site www.overlawyered.com, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Walter Olson notes that all sorts of businesses should pay close attention. In any heated public controversy, he notes, "there can scarcely be a better way to silence one side than to concoct a theory that exposes it to charges of 'racketeering' for disseminating views its opponents consider erroneous."

The effects of smoking are bad. The record of tobacco companies is bad. But the Administration has done a remarkable thing. It has given all Americans -- beginning, of course, with Bob Dole, and not excluding tobacco-bashers -- a vital stake in the defeat of this wretched lawsuit.