"The FBI was ready to take down America's most politically powerful corporation. But there was one thing they didn't count on."

So reads the cover of this high-powered true crime story, an accurate teaser to a bizarre financial scandal with more plot twists than a John Grisham novel. In 1992 the FBI stumbled upon Mark Whitacre, a top executive at the Archer Daniels Midland corporation who was willing to act as a government witness to a vast international price-fixing conspiracy. ADM, which advertises itself as "The Supermarket to the World," processes grains and other farm staples into oils, flours, and fibers for products that fill America's shelves, from Jell-O pudding to StarKist tuna. The company's chairman and chief executive, Dwayne Andreas, was so influential that he introduced Ronald Reagan to Mikhail Gorbachev, and it was his maneuvering that ensured that high fructose corn syrup would replace sugar in most foods (ever wondered why Coke and Pepsi don't taste quite like they used to?). There were two mottoes at ADM: "The competitors are our friends, and the customers are our enemies" and "We know when we're lying." And lie they did. With the help of Whitacre, the FBI made hundreds of tapes and videos of ADM executives making price-fixing deals with their corrivals from Japan, Korea, and Canada, all while drinking coffee and laughing about their crimes. The tapes should have cinched the case, but there was one problem: Their star witness was manipulative, deceitful, and unstable. Nothing was as it seemed, and the investigation into one of the most astounding white-collar crime cases in history had only just begun.

Kurt Eichenwald, an investigative reporter, covered the story for The New York Times and interviewed more than 100 participants in the case. He methodically records the six-year investigation, leaving no plot twist or tape transcript unexplored. While his primary focus is on deconstructing the disturbed Whitacre and revealing the malleability of truth, the portrait of ADM (and even the Justice Department) is damning enough to make anyone a cynic. --Lesley Reed


From AudioFile
When the U.S. government accused powerful agri-business giant Archer Daniels Midland of price-fixing, they thought they had the ultimate star witness--a vice president turned informant who had taped nefarious meetings with competitors. They ended up with a horrible liability instead; their informant turned out to be a psychotic liar who stole millions from his employer. Michael McConnohie dramatizes this true-crime story masterfully. White-collar crime might not sound too interesting, but Eichenwald's punchy prose and McConnohie's masterful reading keeps a listener's attention to the end, when author confronts in-formant in a dynamic denouement. T.F. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

FROM OUR EDITORS

Bookseller Reviews

As vivid and tense as a John Grisham novel, as pictorial as Mission Impossible II, The Informant resembles a fine Chinese puzzle, always hiding one more layer. The plot snaps out a you like a half-starved viper: Within a major American corporation, a senior executive has been serving as a secret government informant. His covert tapes record incontrovertible of a vast international criminal conspiracy. But just when the FBI is about to snap on the cuffs, they receive scalding news: Their star snitch is a champion embezzler. Apparently for years he's been siphoning millions of dollars from the company and transferring the loot overseas. Before the last twist, the C.I.A., political heavy-weights, botched crimes, suicide attempts, acts of extortion, and courtroom surprises have flared past our line of sight. Riveting.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From an award-winning New York Times investigative reporter comes an outrageous story of greed, corruption, and conspiracy—which left the FBI and Justice Department counting on the cooperation of one man . . .

It was one of the FBI's biggest secrets: a senior executive with America's most politically powerful corporation, Archer Daniels Midland, had become a confidential government witness, secretly recording a vast criminal conspiracy spanning five continents. Mark Whitacre, the promising golden boy of ADM, had put his career and family at risk to wear a wire and deceive his friends and colleagues. Using Whitacre and a small team of agents to tap into the secrets at ADM, the FBI discovered the company's scheme to steal millions of dollars from its own customers.

But as the FBI and federal prosecutors closed in on ADM, using stakeouts, wiretaps, and secret recordings of illegal meetings around the world, they suddenly found that everything was not all that it appeared. At the same time Whitacre was cooperating with the Feds while playing the role of loyal company man, he had his own
agenda he kept hidden from everyone around him—his wife, his lawyer, even the FBI agents who had come to trust him with the case they had put their careers on the line for. Whitacre became sucked into his own world of James Bond antics, imperiling the criminal case and creating a web of deceit that left the FBI and prosecutors uncertain where the lies stopped and the truth began.

In this gripping account unfolds one of the most captivating and bizarre tales in the history of the FBI and corporate America. Meticulously researched and richly told by New York Timessenior writer Kurt Eichenwald, The Informant re-creates the drama of the story, beginning with the secret recordings, stakeouts, and interviews with suspects and witnesses to the power struggles within ADM and its board—including the high-profile chairman Dwayne Andreas, F. Ross Johnson, and Brian Mulroney—to the big-gun Washington lawyers hired by ADM and on up through the ranks of the Justice Department to FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno.

A page-turning real-life thriller that features deadpan FBI agents, crooked executives, idealistic lawyers, and shady witnesses with an addiction to intrigue, The Informant tells an important and compelling story of power and betrayal in America

SYNOPSIS

From an award-winning New York Times investigative reporter comes an outrageous story of greed, corruption, and conspiracy￯﾿ﾽwhich left the FBI and Justice Department counting on the cooperation of one man . . .

FROM THE CRITICS

Mike France - BusinessWeek

Using loads of new evidence and indepth interviews with players on every side of the drama, Eichenwald constructs one of the most compelling business narratives since Barbarians at the Gate.

Booknews

A reporter reveals the script-like convoluted tale, complete with a cast of main characters, of an Archer Daniels Midland executive who acted as an FBI informant to uncover a price- fixing conspiracy at this powerful US corporation in the mid-1990s. Lacks an index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

AudioFile

When the U.S. government accused powerful agri-business giant Archer Daniels Midland of price-fixing, they thought they had the ultimate star witness—a vice president turned informant who had taped nefarious meetings with competitors. They ended up with a horrible liability instead; their informant turned out to be a psychotic liar who stole millions from his employer. Michael McConnohie dramatizes this true-crime story masterfully. White-collar crime might not sound too interesting, but Eichenwald's punchy prose and McConnohie's masterful reading keeps a listener's attention to the end, when author confronts in-formant in a dynamic denouement. T.F. ￯﾿ﾽ AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Bryan Burrough - New York Times Book Review

Eichenwald has written what may be the best business narrative since the early 1980's . . . The writing is lean, spare and without pretense.

Allan Sloan - New York Times

...within a few pages the reader is hooked. I knew how the story ended, but I still couldn't put the book down...The Informant is a good and valuable book. Its reporting is extraordinary and sucks you in. It shows how in big business life can imitate art. And Mr. Eichenwald didn't even have to make any of it up.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING