THE INFORMANT: A True Story.

• Author: Weissman, Robert
• Position: Review

THE INFORMANT: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald Broadway Books $26.00

Against The Grain

IN NOVEMBER 1992, FBI AGENT Brian Shepherd and two other agents paid a visit to the home of Michael Andreas, vice chairman of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the grain trader and food processor that promotes itself as the "Supermarket to the World." The G-men were responding to a back channel communication from ADM, a report that the company was the victim of industrial espionage. The industrial espionage claim turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by an ADM executive. But the visit to Mick Andreas, the son of the politically super-influential Dwayne Andreas, was certainly worth the FBI agents' time.

The meeting set in motion a chain of events that ultimately led to the uncovering of a series of worldwide price-fixing conspiracies. When all was said and done, Mick Andreas would be sentenced to three years in jail; ADM would agree to pay $100 million in fines--at the time, the largest criminal antitrust fines ever--for conspiring to fix the prices of lysine, a farm animal food additive, and citric acid; ADM's Japanese and Korean co-conspirators would plead guilty to criminal charges; and information from the ADM investigation would lead off another series of cases.

The linchpin in the whole story is the executive who perpetrated the industrial espionage hoax: Mark Whitacre, the president of ADM's bio-products division, a rising star in the company, and the informant who gives the title to New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald's mesmerizing story. While he would eventually confess to the FBI that his claim that a Japanese competitor had introduced a secret virus into an ADM plant and that a company executive offered to help ADM eliminate the virus for a $10 million payoff was a lie, Whitacre offered genuine information about price-fixing.

"The competitors are our friends, and the customers are our enemies." That, Whitacre told the FBI, was the governing motto at ADM. And, as he taped phone calls, wore a wire in illegal cartel meetings, cooperated with the FBI to arrange videotaping of secret meetings, and reported back to his FBI handlers, Whitacre handed the FBI the explosive evidence that would be used to leverage the corporate plea agreements and win the conviction of Mick Andreas and another top ADM executives.

As the cloak-and-dagger investigation unfolds, The Informant becomes more intricate and intriguing. More and more evidence of rampant criminality...