QUESTION: WHO IS SIDLEY & AUSTIN???????????????
"Searle aside, Sidley & Austin has served some of the most notorious special interests in the country. The firm lobbied overtime, for instance, on behalf of Charles Keating's Lincoln Savings & Loan, and provided counsel on tax issues and dealing with federal authorities. The firm assisted Keating when Lincoln was foundering, and curried political favor to keep the S&L operating despite massive debts. As a result, the firm was forced to settle with Lincoln depositors in 1991, agreeing to cover an excess of $40 million in claims. Sidley & Austin also represented the AMA when a group of drugstore chains sued seven drug makers-including Searle for price fixing and antitrust violations. The lawsuit, filed in October 1993, amounts to billions of dollars in compensation.
Richard Merrill, the FDA's chief counsel, petitioned Samuel K. Skinner U.S. Attorney for the northern district of Illinois, for a grand jury investigation of Searle's "willful and knowing failure" to submit required test reports, and for "concealing material facts and making false statements" in reports on aspartame submitted to the agency.
The grand jury investigation o Searle disintegrated in January, 1977 when the FDA formally requested that Samuel Skinner, U.S. attorney and a protege of Illinois Governor James Thompson, investigate the firm for falsifying and withholding aspartame test data. A month later, Skinner met with attorneys from Searle's Chicago law firm, Sidley & Austin. He informed reporters that he had already begun "preliminary discussions" with Sidley & Austin.
G.D. Searle and Sidley & Austin are Siamese Twins. Edwin Austin, a senior partner in the law firm, was appointed to the Illinois Supreme Court in 1969. The Searle family drew upon his services extensively, and he taught Sunday school in Wilmette, a Chicago suburb, as did Dr. Claude Howard Searle, whose father cofounded the pharmaceutical
house.
The firm is grafted to the beating heart of the Republican party. Morris Leibman of Sidley & Austin was for many years chairman of the American Bar Association's "Standing Committee on Law and National Security," a position that won him Reagan's Medal of Freedom in 1981.
John E. Robson, head of Sidley & Austin's Washington office, was appointed executive vice-president of Searle & Co. in 1977, the same year Skinner was named a partner in the law firm. Robson, too, was active in Republican politics. He was the first General Counsel of the Department of Transportation, and at the behest of Gerald Ford in1975, chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board. He moved on to Searle, and stayed with the company until it was bought outright by Monsanto in 1985. Howard Trienens, a law clerk to the late chief Justice Vinson in the early 1950s, was a G.D. Searle director and worked for Sidley & Austin since 1949. Archconservative California Governor George Deukmejian joined Sidley & Austin's Los Angeles branch upon leaving office in 1991, and is reportedly making a "very comfortable" living. He has a keen "sense" for bringing in corporate clients, a partner in the firm told the Los Angeles Times, many of them past contributors to his campaign fund. Deukmejian's business connections have given him a reputation as a Sidley & Austin "rainmaker," but the L.A. City Council has questioned his ethics in promoting a contract with Sumitomo Corp. on a metropolitan railway project.
Skinner recused himself from the Searle prosecution four months before leaving offtce-asking, in a memo to suordinates, that the matter be kept "confidential to avoid any undo embarrassment"-a stall that nearly allowed the
statute of limitations to expire. William Conlon, a senior U.S. attorney, inherited the case. He eased off, citing case
load pressures, and gave a deaf ear to complaints of delays from the Justice Department, which urged that a grand
jury be convened to prosecute Searle for falsifying NutraSweet test data. In January, 1979, Conlon too joined Sidley & Austin.
The 33-page letter from Merrill to Skinner charged Searle with criminal fraud in its animal test results. In 1984
Common Cause asked Dan Reidy of the U. S. attorney's office how the investigation had stalled. Reidy replied that
because it was a grand jury investigation, he was "bound by law to secrecy." A Searle spokesman exploited the
demise of the grand July claim that there was "no validity to the charges, that the company had been "exonerated."
Philip Brodsky, an investigator for the FDA, expressed surprise that Searle hadn't been indicted. "I thought surely
they would prosecute them," he said. Eleven years later Senator Metzenbaum issued a press release charging Skinner with stalling the criminal investigation as he prepared to decamp from office. Metzenbaum and his staff demanded an FBI investigation of Skinner's mishandling of the case. In December 1988, the conflict-of-interest bombshell blew up in the face of newly elected George Bush, who was about to appoint Skinner to the position of Transportation Secretary.
Like most of the Machiavellians in the NutraSweet story, Samuel Knox Skinner kept company with hardright
Republicans. He entered politics as a campaign volunteer for Barry Goldwater. 66 In 1975, he was appointed to
Federal Prosecutor in Chicago by President Ford. Sidley & Austin promoted him to senior partner after only one
year with the firm. Skinner was the director of George Bush's presidential campaign in Illinois. On occasion he was
berated for his involvement with the state's Republican apparatus: In 1987, for instance, the Chicago SunTimes
linked him with a clutch of lawyers close to Governor Thompson, who were awarded lucrative assignments handling the affairs of financially crippled insurance companies. Skinner was a leading light of the Illinois Fraud Prevention Commission -he targeted welfare cheats (as opposed to white-collar criminals in the drug industry)-and President Reagan's Commission on Organized Crime. In December 1991, he left Transportation to take the position of
President Bush's Chief of Staff.
"A Shocking Story"
Had Skinner pressed on with the investigation, aspartame's manufacturer would have been forced to explain a long
history of fabricated laboratory tests and slippery dealings with federal regulators, not to mention the public.
Dr. Alexander Schmidt, a former FDA commissioner, said of the original Aspartame Task Force investigation:
"What was discovered was reprehensible. . .incredibly sloppy science." A 1980 public board of inquiry opined that
the company's testing procedures were "bizarre."68
Searle's decision to market aspartame culminated with the falsification of test results to obtain FDA approval . In
November 1969, officials of the firm hired Dr. Harry Waisman, a researcher for the University of Wisconsin, to test
for brain damage in rhesus monkeys. Seven monkeys were fed aspartame for periods up to one year. In the end,
though, the evaluation flopped because the technicians failed to perform the intelligence tests and autopsies required
to determine brain damage. When questioned about the false data by the FDA, Searle officials claimed to have had
no direct control over the study. But the protocol for the study was written by a Searle pathologist *after* it had
begun. And, according to Dr. Gross, "Frequent high-level communications took place between Searle executives and
Dr. Waisman prior to and during the study."
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