Former government lawyer describes Bush administration meddling in landmark tobacco suit

ormer Justice Department attorney Sharon Eubanks described the Bush officials’ interference in the case against the tobacco giants in a March 22 report by Carol Leonnig in the Washington Post. Eubanks, who retired in December 2005, said she decided to come forward out of concern for the “overwhelming politicization” of the department, exhibited most recently in the purging of eight US attorneys.

“Political interference is happening at Justice across the department,” she told the Post. “When decisions are made now in the Bush attorney general’s office, politics is the primary consideration.... The rule of law goes out the window.”

Eubanks was the lead prosecutor in a major racketeering case brought by the government in 1999 against the six largest tobacco companies in the US: Philip Morris (Marlboro and others), RJ Reynolds (Camel and others), Brown & Williamson (later acquired by RJ Reynolds), Lorillard Tobacco (Newport), The Liggett Group and the American Tobacco Company.

The corporations, which account for 99 percent of the cigarette market, were charged with conspiring to conceal the dangers of smoking and the addictiveness of nicotine; deceptively marketing “light” and “low tar” cigarettes as less harmful than regular cigarettes; deliberately targeting young people to recruit new smokers; misleading the public on the dangers of secondhand smoke; and deliberately refraining from producing safer, less-addictive cigarettes.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/toba-m27.shtml