Biography of Jeffrey Wigand and Speakers Bureau with booking information for famous speakers like Jeffrey Wigand. A workaholic with a stubborn depth of character, his pride at being a corporate executive making $300,000 a year turned into rage against a level of corruption which he found intolerable. His department budget was more than $30 million and he had a staff of 243. On 2/28/1994, ABC's newsmagazine, "Day One," broadcasted a story contending that Philip Morris "spiked" the nicotine content of its cigarettes. When he questioned the C.E.O. He spent about a month in Vietnam but was not involved in any fighting there. Complete Wiki Biography of Jeffrey Wigand, which contains net worth and salary earnings in 2020. While Wigand excelled professionally during his time overseas, his relationship with his wife, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, deteriorated. They were aware that Wigand had been called to testify as part of a 1993 U.S. Justice Department investigation into Philip Morris' "fire safe" cigarette program. After 17 years in the health-care field, Wigand went to work for Brown & Williamson, the tobacco company, in December 1988 with an initial assignment of developing a new, healthier cigarette to put into a competitive market. The family moved to Pleasant Valley, a small town near Poughkeepsie in upstate New York, when Wigand was a teenager. He moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Louisville and seemed happy. His exposure of tobacco industry lies led directly to stronger government curbs on the behavior of the tobacco industry. ABC also agreed to pay all legal fees – an amount that totaled some $15 million, rather than face a libel suit that would cost a great deal more. His dramatic life story as popularized in the highly acclaimed 1999 film The Insider, in which Russell Crowe portrayed Wigand's part. In 1991, his evaluation at work read that he had "a difficulty in communication." Jeffrey Wigand, Self: Secrets Through the Smoke. Wigand remarried to a Johnson & Johnson sales representative named Lucretia in 1986.For the next two years, Wigand worked as a high school science and Japanese teacher, earning approximately one-tenth his previous salary at Brown & Williamson. Jeffrey Wigand wiki ionformation include family relationships: spouse or partner (wife or husband); siblings; childen/kids; parents life. Wigand supported previously publicized contentions that Brown & Williamson lawyers improperly controlled research programs in an effort to limit potential liability in injury lawsuits filed against the company. Three days later, Mike Wallace went on the air with the following statement: "We at '60 Minutes'--and that's about 100 of us who turn out this broadcast each week--are proud of working here and at CBS News, and so we were dismayed that the management at CBS had seen fit to give in to perceived threats of legal action against us by a tobacco industry giant. Moreover, he supposedly said the company's former CEO Thomas Sandefur was guilty of perjury when he told Congress that nicotine was not addictive. The son of a mechanical engineer, a dad who stressed independence, Jeffrey Wigand grew up in a strict Catholic home in the Bronx, the oldest of five children. They moved to Louisville, bought a two-story red-brick house and he took up smoking and drinking. He was drinking heavily and his marriage was suffering badly from the fallout of his public battle as well as the illness of his daughter. When they returned to the States, they separated. Driven by a potent mixture of moral outrage and desire for revenge, Wigand slowly overcame his fear of retribution to expose the tobacco industry's lies about the health risks of cigarettes. As you see, we were just ordinary people placed in some extraordinary situations and did the right thing… as all should do. They married in 1986. Every year, 425,000 Americans die of smoking-related illnesses. Then, in 1994, Wigand broke his confidentiality agreement and agreed to work as a consultant with CBS's 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman on a story about tobacco industry efforts to develop a "fire safe" cigarette. Biography. We've broadcast many such investigative pieces down the years, and we want to be able to continue. Bergman asked Wigand to help him interpret secret internal Philip Morris documents anonymously sent to him in late 1993. Parts of the Wigand transcript leaked to the New York Daily News. An average-looking man with a somewhat rounded face and body, Wigand describes himself as a "plodder." Jeffrey Wigand body measurments, height, weight and age details. Jeffrey Stephen Wigand (/ ˈ w aɪ ɡ æ n d /; born December 17, 1942) is an American biochemist and former vice president of research and development at Brown & Williamson in Louisville, Kentucky, who worked on the development of reduced-harm cigarettes and in 1996 blew the whistle on tobacco tampering at the company.