Informant

by Kurt Eichenwald

  “Where did the calls come in?’’

  “Most of them to my home, but the first one came to my office,’’ Whitacre said.

  “And you’ve had no calls in the past few weeks?’’

  “He called one other time to the office, but I couldn’t record that. Mick Andreas stopped by while I was on the phone with him.’’

  Shepard began asking another question, when Whitacre changed the subject.

  “Something you guys would want to know. A guy named Wayne Brasser was fired today. ADM told him to pack up and leave before the end of the day.’’

  “Why was that?’’ Weatherall asked.

  “I think because he knew a lot about price-fixing,’’ Whitacre said. “I think that he was considered a liability, because he thought it was wrong and made his feelings known.’’

  Shepard wrote down Brasser’s name with little enthusiasm. Whitacre hadn’t backed up any lead in more than a month. Why should this one be different?

  In Decatur, Shepard was on the phone with Cudmore. His frustrations with Whitacre were getting to him. Whitacre seemed to think he was smarter than everyone else and could lie with impunity.

  “Things are falling apart, and I don’t know what to believe,’’ he told Cudmore.

  He had contacted the Behavioral Science Unit—the FBI’s experts in profiling and psychological analysis. They offered insights and a suggestion. Cudmore listened as Shepard explained the idea.

  “Sounds good,’’ the prosecutor replied. “Get it going.’’

  Two weeks later, Whitacre drove to the Holiday Inn for another meeting with the FBI. He was feeling calm and confident. The once-steady growth in lysine prices had slowed to a halt. Calls from Japan had stopped. The FBI seemed concerned about how little ADM trusted him. And Whitacre had kept up his act of cooperating, even pressing for a written agreement. This investigation, he felt sure, would collapse soon. His plan had worked better than he could have hoped.

  Whitacre parked and headed inside. He already knew from his voice mail that the agents were in room 515. He arrived upstairs and tapped on the door.

  Shepard let him in. The agents greeted Whitacre and shook his hand. That was when Whitacre noticed something was differ-ent. This time, a dark-haired man was busy in an adjoining room. The man, who looked younger than Whitacre, came through the doorway.

  “Mark,’’ Shepard said, “this is Special Agent Ed Hamara. He’s going to be helping us this evening.’’

  Another agent. No matter. Whitacre greeted Hamara warmly. Shepard and Weatherall eyed their witness. Apparently, he had no idea what was happening.

  “Agent Hamara is one of the Bureau’s polygraphers,’’ Shepard said.

  Whitacre shot Shepard a perplexed look.

  “Polygrapher,’’ Shepard repeated. “He conducts lie detector tests.’’

  CHAPTER 5

  Is your first name Mark?”

  Agent Hamara brought his pen down on the chart paper rolling through the polygraph machine, marking the moment he finished his first question. Whitacre, in a chair beside him, answered yes. Hamara wrote a small plus sign beneath the wavy ink tracings.

  Whitacre sat still. Rubber tubes wrapped his chest and abdomen, measuring his breathing. On his ring and index fingers, two small clips monitored his skin for changes in the flow of electricity. A blood-pressure cuff, at about eighty millimeters of mercury, checked the brachial artery in his arm for variations in blood volume. He faced a window that looked out onto the highway. The curtain was closed.

  Shepard and Weatherall had surprised him with the polygraph, but Whitacre did not even consider making a fuss. Without saying so directly, Shepard had made it clear that a refusal in itself would be considered an admission of deceit. So Whitacre had walked to the adjoining room with Hamara, stripped off his jacket, and sat patiently as he was hooked up to the machine. Hamara had closed the door, leaving them alone.

  Hamara’s manner was soothing; to eliminate anxiety that might contaminate the results, he had told Whitacre the questions to expect. None of the relevant questions involved price-fixing, only Fujiwara.

  “Were you born in 1957?’’ Hamara asked.

  “Yes.’’

  Hamara marked another plus sign on the paper. Whitacre’s breathing was steady, at about eighteen breaths per minute. His heart rate was consistent, and the electrical resistance of his skin had stabilized. Hamara waited about twenty seconds before proceeding.

  “Regarding the phone calls from Fujiwara, do you intend to answer each question truthfully?’’

  “Yes.’’

  In itself, the question was meaningless, a sacrifice. It was intended to bleed off any anxiety about the exam’s two relevant questions.

  Twenty seconds passed.

  “Are you concerned I will ask you a question on this test that we have not already reviewed?’’

  “No.’’

  Hamara marked down a negative sign and glanced at Whitacre’s response. He was telling the truth. Whitacre was properly prepared. The results would not be influenced by anxiety about the test.

  “Before this year, did you ever lie to better your own position?’’

  “No.’’

  A lie, but an expected one. The question was another control. Most anyone asked so general a question would have to say yes—no one ever fibbed to their parents about that late night in high school? But when Hamara discussed this question in the pretest interview, he had stressed the importance of being a truthful person. It was a technique designed to force a dishonest answer, one that could be measured against other deceptions that might occur.

  Twenty seconds.

  “Did Fujiwara ever telephone you at home and tell you there was a mole at ADM?’’

  “Yes.’’

  A relevant question.

  Whitacre glanced at the ink tracings. Nothing. To him, they looked exactly the same as before.

  Hamara wrote a plus sign. He noticed an almost imperceptible change in the location of the dichrotic notch, a tiny tick in the cardiovascular tracing coming from the pressure cuff.

  Twenty seconds.

  “Before this year, did you ever lie to someone that really trusted you?’’

  “No.’’

  Another control.

  Twenty seconds.

  “Did Fujiwara say he would tell you who the mole was for X amount of dollars?’’

  “Yes.’’

  Relevant.

  Whitacre watched the tracings. It looked unchanged to him.

  Twenty seconds.

  “Are you married?’’

  “Yes.’’

  Hamara wrote down a plus sign.

  The first portion of the test was over.

  “All right, Mr. Whitacre, now I’m going to ask the same questions again,’’ Hamara said, flipping pages. “We want to make sure the results are consistent.’’

  Whitacre nodded, feeling comfortable. “Okay.’’

  After a moment, Hamara started over.

  Shepard and Weatherall waited in the adjoining room for more than an hour. Finally, they heard a doorknob click. Whitacre walked in first, followed by Hamara. Both men seemed relaxed.

  “Can I speak with you?’’ Hamara asked the agents.

  Shepard and Weatherall stepped into the next room and closed the door. Whitacre sat down in a chair. He had no worries. He had watched the tracings and never saw them change. He was sure he had passed easily.

  In the other room, Hamara picked up the numerical scoring he had completed after the exam.

  “How did he do?’’ Weatherall asked.

  Hamara flipped through the results and looked up.

  Whitacre, he said, had splattered the walls with ink.

  After ten minutes, Shepard and Weatherall returned to the room where Whitacre was waiting. Their expressions said everything; the test had gone badly.

  As Weatherall sat down on the bed, he studied Whitacre. The agent was not a big believer in lie detectors; he had seen p
lenty of bad guys pass a polygraph and just as many innocent people fail. But this time, the whole picture—particularly the lack of any Fujiwara recordings—left him with little doubt that Whitacre was hiding something.

  Shepard sat next to Whitacre.

  “Mark, there were some problems,’’ he said.

  Whitacre fidgeted. “Wait a minute, I watched the machine,’’ he said. “I didn’t see any changes.’’

  They spoke to him gently. Let’s try to look at this, let’s try to understand it. Whitacre held fast to his story. His words trailed off. He’d had enough.

  He changed the subject.

  “You know, there’s stuff that happened today that you should know about,’’ Whitacre said. “They’re worried about Wayne Brasser.’’

  Weatherall and Shepard listened, allowing the tension to ease. Everyone was exhausted. They would let it go tonight, let everyone rest. It was best for Whitacre to reflect for a day. Let his psychological distress do much of the agents’ work for them.

  Whitacre had mentioned Brasser days before; supposedly, he had been fired after objecting to price-fixing in ADM’s business in sodium gluconate, a chemical used in industrial cleansers. Afterward, Whitacre said, ADM panicked and gave Brasser a big severance to keep quiet. Still, Whitacre said that ADM officials were asking if he knew about a file Brasser may have taken with him. The reason they were asking, Whitacre explained, was that he and Brasser were friends; they spoke often.

  Shepard decided to take advantage of the moment.

  “Mark, I’m interested in this information about Wayne Brasser,’’ he said.

  “What else do you want to know?’’

  “You say you talk to him all the time?’’

  “Yeah, all the time,” Whitacre said eagerly.

  “And he talks to you about what happened?’’

  “Yeah, yeah, he does.’’

  Shepard leaned in.

  “Then let’s call him,’’ he said.

  Whitacre paused, breathing lightly. He had the look of a man who had just been cornered. He glanced from Shepard to Weatherall and back again.

  Finally, he nodded his head. “Sure.’’

  The line was ringing.

  Whitacre sat on a bed with the receiver to his ear. In one hand, he held the microphone wire from the microcassette recorder to the earpiece. Shepard sat across from him, while Weatherall stood by the table. The agents were avoiding looking at Whitacre directly. They didn’t want to unnerve him.

  A woman answered, and Whitacre asked for Brasser.

  “Hello?’’

  “Wayne?’’ Whitacre asked.

  “Yes?’’

  “This is Mark Whitacre.’’

  “Mark, how are ya?’’

  Brasser sounded sleepy, as if he had just woken up. Whitacre noticed the time. It was past eleven-fifteen.

  “Hope I didn’t get you up.’’

  “Ah, no. What’s goin’ on?’’

  The two men chatted, saying little but obviously circling around something. Several executives, Whitacre said, had been talking about Brasser’s file. But Brasser said he had no file; it had been given to Barrie Cox, who ran ADM’s business in citric acid, an ingredient used in everything from soda to detergent.

  Whitacre pressed about the file. What product was that about? he asked.

  “Oh, that was on gluconate,’’ Brasser said. “What they . . . you know. They came back with the information. I just . . . you know. They got the reports back.’’

  Brasser was being evasive, never saying anything specific. It was the language of conspiracy. But Whitacre knew that Brasser needed to be more specific.

  Were these reports from meetings with other gluconate producers? he asked.

  “Yeah.’’

  Whitacre had been instructed to push Brasser on every possible product, looking for confirmation. The agents were particularly interested in citric acid. To Whitacre, the moment felt right to bring it up.

  “They seemed to be worried too, what you know about on, on citric,’’ he said, nervous as he probed further. “The question’s been going around a lot, ‘What does Wayne know about what went on there?’ ”

  Brasser listened calmly. “Barrie told me,’’ he said.

  “Same thing as on the gluconate business?’’

  “Sort of, yeah.’’

  Whitacre felt a rush: Barrie Cox had told Brasser that price-fixing was taking place in his multibillion-dollar market.

  Whitacre brought up Brasser’s pay package. “They hoped they made a deal sweet enough that they wouldn’t have to worry about it.’’

  “Yeah.’’ Brasser’s answer was noncommittal.

  Whitacre glanced at Shepard. The agent had told him before the call to ask if Brasser had attended price-fixing meetings. Whitacre returned to the topic, discussing how citric prices had risen from fifty-eight cents to eighty-two cents in just a few months.

  “You were never at those meetings, were you?”

  “No.’’

  “So Barrie just told you about those?’’

  “Yeah.’’

  What about gluconate? Did he go to those meetings? Did Terry Wilson or Barrie Cox attend?

  “I went to one. After that, they went.’’

  “What do you mean, Barrie and Terry?’’

  “Yep,’’ Brasser said.

  Whitacre laughed once.

  “I went there because I was invited and I didn’t know, you know, what it was,’’ Brasser said. “And I got there and I thought, ‘Holy shit!’ ”

  “Well, they were worried about you knowing about that then. That makes some sense now.”

  “You know, what they’re doing is, you know, playin’ with fire,’’ Brasser said.

  Whitacre looked over at Shepard. The agent was watching him now, expectantly.

  “Whenever those things happen, it seems the same guys are involved, doesn’t it?’’ Whitacre asked.

  “Yeah,’’ Brasser said. He switched topics. Was there any chance he could get back to the company?

  Whitacre sidestepped the question and asked about ADM’s payment to Brasser. Although he had worked there about five years, Brasser said, he had received eighteen months’ severance plus a company car. But everything that was happening at ADM still bothered him; Brasser said he had warned Wilson of the dangers.

  “I said, ‘You realize that you’re gambling, you’re really gambling a lot here.’ ”

  “Well, it’s a big deal in my opinion,’’ Whitacre said. “It’s unethical, and it’s definitely illegal.’’

  “I’m sure if Mick and them are aware of it, they’re far enough away from it that, you know, they can’t get the problems.’’

  Whitacre agreed.

  Brasser sounded resigned. “They’re gonna get caught sooner or later.’’

  “Well, if they get caught on that one, it will just lead to one product right after another. And then it will be about every product that ADM’s into. You know?’’

  “I don’t know what would happen,’’ Brasser said.

  The agent listened to Whitacre’s side of the conversation, already able to tell that the men were expressing their disgust at ADM’s illegal activities. Brasser said that Wilson was even interested in fixing prices for lactic acid, another additive.

  “You mean, he wanted to make deals like that on lactic, too?’’ Whitacre asked.

  “Yeah,’’ Brasser said.

  But Brasser said first they would have to go to war with competitors so that ADM could grab market share. Whitacre understood the strategy; low prices make everybody willing to talk.

  “Boy,’’ Whitacre said.

  “Well, he said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ He said, ‘Anybody has to go to jail, it will be Barrie Cox and myself.’ ”

  The statement jolted Whitacre. Trying to keep from blurting anything out, he sniffed.

  “He said that, huh?’’

  “I said, ‘I don’t want to know about it.’ ”

/>   “He actually said jail and everything?’’

  “Yeah,’’ Brasser replied, laughing.

  Whitacre looked at the clock; it was past eleven-thirty-five. He told Brasser that he needed to sleep, but still the conversation continued. Five minutes later, it wound down, with Whitacre promising to keep in touch.

  “Have a good Christmas and all the best to the family,’’ Whitacre said. “All right?’’

  “Let’s call, let’s talk before Christmas.’’

  Whitacre agreed, and the men said their good-byes. Whitacre breathed out as the call disconnected.

  He looked at Shepard and Weatherall.

  “Boy,’’ he sighed.

  Less than twenty minutes later, Shepard escorted Whitacre to the hotel room door, his hand touching the executive’s shoulder. They needed to speak again tomorrow, Shepard said, and he’d leave a message with the room number. Whitacre nodded, looking wrung out. He opened the door and left.

  Shepard turned to Weatherall, shaking his head. They had heard enough to know this tape was fabulous.

  Their witness—this lying, manipulative man who had just failed a polygraph exam—was in the middle of a massive criminal conspiracy.

  And, even with all of Whitacre’s wild tales, the scheme seemed bigger than they had dared imagine.

  • • •

  At the stoplight just outside of the Holiday Inn, Whitacre turned left, heading home to Moweaqua.

  He still didn’t believe that he flunked the polygraph. It didn’t make sense. None of the lines on the paper moved differently, regardless of the question. Probably, he thought, the agents just told him he had blown the exam to get leverage over him. Probably so.

  He took a breath, letting out some of the anxiety from the evening. That tape of Brasser had come out better than he had expected. Now the FBI agents knew that there was somebody else who could tell them a lot about price-fixing. Maybe they might be interested in trying to flip him to be their witness.

  Best of all, Brasser didn’t know a thing about lysine. Whitacre decided to talk a lot more about him in the days to come.