EBH (Doc Index)

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This stub is a work-in-progress by the ScienceCorruption.com journalists's group. We are indexing the millions of documents stored at the San Francisco Uni's Legacy Tobacco Archive [1] With some entries you'll need to go to this site and type into the Search panel a (multi-digit) Bates number. You can search on names for other documents also.     Send any corrections or additions to editor@sciencecorruption.com

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This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

E. Bruce Harrison, the infamous PR company which led the American battle against the environmental movement was sold off by Bruce Harrison and his wife Patricia, initially to Pinnacle, which then on-sold it to Ruder Finn (aka Ruder & Finn). It is now part of the global Omnicon group of advertising, polling and PR companies -- one of the three major global media-supply conglomerates that dominate this backroom operation feeding the world's media.


Documents & Timeline

1992 Aug 21 Matt Swetonic, who runs the Total Indoor Environmental Quality (TIEQ) Coalition and its associated National Environmental Development Association (NEDA) from the same offices as the E Bruce Harrison Company has written to Betsy Annese, his main contact at RJ Reynolds Tobacco about a meeting with the notorious scientific lobbyist George L Carlo.

(Carlo runs the major Wireless Technology Research sham research program for the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) via his Health and Environmental Sciences Group (HEAG).)

I have known Carlo since 1983, when he was part of my "flying circus" of Dow scientists touring the country talking about the Agent Orange issue. As recently as three or four years ago, he had a working relationship with EBH doing projects for various chemical industry clients. In short, we know Carlo very well and, as a result, he was quite open and candid in the meeting.

The study you sent me from Risk Analysis was funded through the Institute for Regulatory Policy (IRP) which, as you know has been the lead group trying to pressure the White House to release the Executive Order on risk assessment reform.

[Polluting industries were all lobbying to try to get 'risk analysis' legislated as an essential component of all environmental and health regulation. They controlled most of the consultants and academics who did risk assessment (they funded chairs at universities). Thorne Auchter who ran IRP, was a hidden partner in Carlo's HESG. They had produced papers promoting the value of risk-assessment (which depends on judgements rather than science)]
According to Carlo, EPA was so concerned about the implications of the (IRP/Auchter/Carlo) study that he was called to a meeting at the agency to explain "what the hell I was up to."

Carlo is unwilling to speak out directly in support of ETS, his "handlers" (probably Dow Chemical at this time) at the "primary funding organization" did little to publicize it when it was published in March.

Carlo was personally involved in a number of meetings at the White House on the Executive Order and he believes, as does Ward Hubbell (Ex.Dir of TIEQ/NEDA) that it was because it would have been perceived as a cave-in to industry at the expense of the public health. According to Carlo, Boyden Gray "screamed" (his word not mine) at them at one meeting that they had blown the whole thing by the heavy-handed corporate lobbying tactics and that he couldn't afford to hand the Democrats one more issue to beat President Bush over he head with in an election year.

[Ward Hubbell at that time had left the White House to work for TIEQ.
C Boyden Gray was President HW Bush's Counsel to the President" during his second term. He had been "Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief during the Reagan Administration. Gray was also heir to a large part of the RJ Reynolds fortune, and he founded and he later ran the think-tanks Citizens for a Sound Economy and Citizens for a Sensible Environment, both of which worked for the tobacco industry.
Carlo was promoting the idea that the tobacco industry fund a new attempt at forcing risk-assessment on the EPA and other regulatory agencies by running a highly publicized series of reform symposiums to generate community support.

He feels Harrison (EBH) has plenty of environmental umbrella groups through which the effort could be funded, and indeed suggests NEDA as a potential sponsor. Ward agrees and sees the new NEDA/RAP (Risk Assessment Project) as the proper vehicle.
I can't say whether or not the project is doable however, I think it has sufficient merit to carry the conversation forward. Think this thing over and let me know if there is anything you want me to do.[2]

1992 Dec 10 The E Bruce Harrison Company monthly report for November (sent to Betsy Annese)

  • Prepared document presenting an overview of TIEQ's 1993 activities.
  • Organised a TIEQ executive committee meeting for December 3.
  • Met with Trudy Bryan of DuPont to discuss increasing TIEQ membership contributions
  • Worked to recruit new companies to join the TIEQ coalition.
  • Met with Ron Gots to discuss contractual issues, plans for 1993 : [Gots was a Bethesda physician/toxicologist; member of the IAPAG group and TASSC; and IAQ tester (via the National Medical Advisory Service which provided witnesses to tobacco and chemical companies.). He was chairman of the TIEQ SAB and his wife Barbara was also actively involved.]
  • Monitored activities of ESCA's model IAQ bill drafting committee, and began preparing TIEQ position papers.
  • Co-sponsored and attended the symposium on multiple chemical sensitivity conducted by the International Society of Toxicology and Pharmacology.
[Gots and Gio Batta Gori were running this ISRTP symposium at Arlington for the tobacco industry]. Gots later founded the Environmental Sensitivities Research Institute (ESRI).
  • Met with Doug Greenwood of the American Institute for Architects to discuss AIA's work on indoor air issues.
  • Met with Ken Smith, editorial writer for the Washington Times, to discuss editorial on the involvement of DiFranza with the Surgeon General's report on youth smoking and the proceedings of the senate hearing on caret emissions;
  • Worked with Peggy Carter to gain information that would provide a news hook for Doug Bandow's coverage of the DiFranza study.
[Dr. Joseph DiFranza has produced a report on the tobacco industry's efforts to get the dirt on him after he had published a study on smoking in minors. Reynolds tried to get the names of the children involved via subpoenas, but since they were minors this failed. A very corrupt journalist [[Douglas Bandow|Doug Bandow (who usually worked through the Cato Institute) was being paid to write this up as a case of scientific fraud perpetrated against the tobacco company, and a very compliant Washington Times was willing to publish it.]
  • Many more items on this list. [3]

1996 Mar 14 Matt Swetonic of EBH is memoing Tom Borelli at Philip Morris (with a CC to Jim Wieghart).
Subject: Tobacco Industry Funded Research in Medical Journals.
He is recommending Rick Weiss who has written for the Washington Post as a "reporter who we may be able to interest in doing a major piece on medical journalst that refuse to publish research funded by the tobacco industry."

"In a Frontline show in late February on beast implants, Marcia Angell of the New England Journal of Medicine dismissed as nonsense the notion that industry funding taints medical research. She pointed out that half of all medical research is funded by industry, and to disregared it "would decicmate the science in this country." We know from an editorial she wrote a few years ago that she is also skeptical of the research linking ETS to disease." [4]

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