By Cliff Peale
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Jeffrey Wigand spoke Tuesday at Xavier University. (Craig Ruttle photo) | ZOOM |

Jeffrey Wigand acknowledges that his fight with Big Tobacco was "not fun" but that he would do it again.

Wigand, who went before a court and on national television in 1995 to break the story about how tobacco companies were hiding the true effect of cigarettes, spoke to an audience Tuesday at Xavier University, making the case for more emphasis on ethics and moral values.

"I got through it. I'm whole," he said. "And I can say at the end of it that I maintained my integrity."

Wigand's ordeal was popularized by Russell Crowe in the 1999 movie The Insider. He said he considers the movie "a final vindication."

But ethical values among business leaders, lawyers, scientists and even sports executives continue to decline, he said. He echoed the feeling of local business executives at the event that a culture of dishonesty is at the core of the spate of business scandals of the past few years.

Companies including Enron Corp., Arthur Andersen and WorldCom Inc. have seen billions of dollars in false sales or earnings, executives under criminal indictment and plummeting stock prices.

But the executives disputed that the system of regulating companies needs to be overhauled. Instead, they said companies need to reinforce simple ethical codes.

"Those people are crooks," Larry Pike, former chief executive officer of Union Central Life Insurance Co., Forest Park, said when talking about top executives of scandal-ridden companies. "They should be treated as crooks and put in jail. I don't think (the new law) Sarbanes-Oxley or all the laws we've passed are going to make a difference in these people.

"They might as well put on a mask and go rob a bank."

Wigand said students need to learn ethical lessons early.

"I think by the time you get to a university, if you have your first ethics course then, it's probably a little late," he said.

Wigand said his struggle with his employer, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., began shortly after he was hired as vice president of research and development in December 1988.

He said he immediately started a project on how to make cigarettes safer and that company executives chastised him for writing the findings down.

"Frankly, I didn't know what to do with the knowledge I had at that time," he said. "So I basically turned and looked the other way."

He said the turning point came after he had talked to CBS' 60 Minutes, a saga that forms the basic story for The Insider.

He was scheduled to give a deposition in a lawsuit and was faced with a court order that could put him in jail if he testified.

"I realized if I didn't go forward that very minute, that very day, I would never get the chance to go forward again," he said. "At that time, I was having a difficult time looking at myself in the mirror. ... I was creating harm by my silence."

E-mail cpeale@enquirer.com