The movie "The Informant" is getting good play in the media -- as a
comedy. Starring Matt Damon. I have not seen the film.
The crimes involved are those of ADM, its officers and its price-
fixing conspirators.
This has been discussed on Pen-L in the past but because of the
success of the movie I want to flag it. NPR today had a long program
on the case but I only caught enough of it to arouse my ire.
The book on which the movie of the same name, "The Informant," is
based turned the story of the crimes on its head and made the actual
informer the subject, instead of the crimnals, notably ADM and its
executives. In so doing, the author Kurt Eichenwald was able to
whitewash the US Department of Justice, big Washington lawyers, and
the FBI. I wasn't surprised, years later, when the same author tried
in another book to whitewash Ken Lay of Enron. Ken Lay was already
too far gone when that book came out. Eichenwald was a reporter for
the NY Times business section at the time of the ADM & the later Enron
scandals. Eichenwald had his own scandal later and is no longer with
the NY Times.
There is another book, a much better book, on the multiple crimes
involved, titled Rats In The Grain by James B. Lieber. Jaded as I am,
there are things in the Lieber book that still shocked me.
Gene Coyle
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