Andrew Whist

Andrew J. Whist was the chief tobacco industry strategist for delaying and defeating public smoking regulations until 1999. After exposure of his activities through the release of the tobacco archive documents, Philip Morris "loaned" him out to help privatise Australia's national telephone company Telstra. . He retired may 1, 1999 from Philip Morris.

For most of his life he has worked in an in-house public relations practitioner, lobbying for Philip Morris (PM) Australia, and later for the global operation through Philip Morris International out of New York. And since Philip Morris International led the industry actions on the whole, Whist had extraordinary influence over maintaining tobacco sales worldwide.

He was given a relative free hand at Philip Morris International, by its English CEO and President, Hamish Maxwell and by the three Australian executives who were his immediate superiors for most of this time: R. William "Bill" Murray,  Geoffrey C. Bible and William H. Webb. He was also a close friend of two other Australians who operated globally, Bryan C. Simpson, who ran INFOTAB (the International Tobacco Information group in London and Brussels), and John Dollisson, who mainly concentrated on Australia, Asia and Asian Whitecoats recruitment.

Background
Whist was born in Denmark but migrated to Australia as a youth. He became a 'real Aussie' with very little accent and Anglicized his name Andreas Ulf Whist, to Andrew. Later he Americanized it with a middle-initial "J" (which meant nothing, but copied President Truman's precedence) when he arrive in the USA.

He trained as a Certified Public Accountant in Melbourne, Victoria, at about the same time that Bill Murray and Geoffrey Bible were also gaining their CPA certificates, so it is likely that these three were friends from the 1970s.

He joined Philip Morris Australia in August 1968, at the express request of Hamish Maxwell who was in charge of PM International. He had previously worked in Australia for Hush Puppies shoe business, and he joined PM as a brand manager, but quickly rose to take the role of Head of Public Relations and assistant to the managing director.

Tobacco history
* 1968 April: he joined PM Australia as the head of public relations (which included the Smoking & Health project), and quickly rose to become deputy to Managing Director.

* 1969: He wants the Australian industry to fund a film on the Cederlof-Friberg twin studies (which purport to show no health effects from smoking). In July he persuades the two Swedish scientists to come to Australia on the promise of an honorary doctorates given by the University of Melbourne. They are then given a leisurely trip around the country, a flight stop-over in Tahiti in the company of Qantas hostesses, and a cruise liner to take them from Puerto Rico, back to Stockholm.

* 1970:  He is the driving force behind the establishment of the Tobacco Research Foundation, which is used as a carrot to keep some scientists quiet. In this and the following few years he has a regular flow of 'independent' scientists flying out to Australia and New Zealand on media tours - they all work for the tobacco industry.

* 1972:  The Australian Labor Party, led by Gough Whitlam, forms government. It has a policy of restricting tobacco advertising, and intends to take other health-related measures.

* 1975: He is involved along with John Dollisson in the events leading up to the November 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam Labor Government, and develops close links with both state and federal Liberal politicians.

* 1977: He now has sufficient standing as a strategist in the tobacco industry to be invited onto the Operation Berkshire project which then becomes the International Committee on Smoking Issues (ICOSI) committee (with meetings in Europe).

* 1978: He is still running his tours of scientists around Australia, and he now has close contacts with Bryan Simpson of Rupert Murdoch's News Limited group.

* 1978 Oct: The ICOSI team invited him to help them undermine the (June 1979) Stockholm World Conference on Smoking & Health "because of his combat experience". They are also impressed with his friend Bryan Simpson (who later becomes Secretary General of the revamped ICOSI called INFOTAB). At this time he is listed as Assistant to the Managing Director, and Director of Corporate Affairs in Australia.

* 1980 Jan: He runs a "Freedom to Advertise" conference in Surfer's Paradise, Queensland with Rupert Murdoch and Bryan Simpson as speakers.

* 1980 July-Aug: He transfered to the Philip Morris International Corporate Affairs division based in the company's New York head office. Initially he is to run the World Health Organisation (WHO) offensive.

* 1981 Jan: a new Japanese study (Hirayama) shows that non-smoking wives of smoking men are more likely to get lung cancer. Overnight the emphasis is on environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). INFOTAB is created from the remnants of ICOSI, and Whist is put in control of the Social Acceptability Working Party (SAWP) which tries to find a counter for the public-smoking problem.

* 1982: His old friend Bryan Simpson is given the job of Secretary-General of INFOTAB. He and Whist now hold the two key positions in directing the international tobacco industry fight-back. The Freedom to Advertise campaign is running full-bore, and European Court of Justice/ WHO strategy papers are being distributed. Whist arranges for Geoff Bible (briefly running PM Australia) to meet Rupert Murdoch's right hand man, Ken Cowley. (News Ltd is still Australian-based)

* 1983-4: Whist was dealing with Surrey & Morse, the law firm of David Morse, which had in its employ (so it claimed) the Associate Director General of the World Health Organisation, Warren W. Furth - an old Geneva friend of Bible, Murray and Morse.
 * Whist is forced to answer questions about bribery in Venezuela, and he is actively running the fake organisations AECA, NYSIA and Libertad; recruiting top UN officials like Francis Blanchard of the ILO; and funding international smoker's organisations like FOREST (UK) to conduct tours of Canada, and elsewhere.

* 1985 Jan: Whist is now the Senior VP External Affairs with PM International, but he is under such pressure that they bring another Australian to New York, Philip Francis who had replaced Whist in Melbourne.

* 1986 June: With Bill Murray, he plays a guiding role in Operation Downunder.
 * Dec: in a report to PM's directors giving a quick precise of his divisions actions over the year, Whist writes:

"This has been an emergent year for Philip Morris International Corporate Affairs, for two basic reasons. First, the issues we face -- taxation, marketing restrictions, environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) -- are now literally world-wide problems, and the anti-smoking groups use sophisticated tactics to attack us on these issues throughout the world."

* 1988 : He recruits members of the Indoor Air Pollution Advisory Group (IAPAG) team and Gray Robertson's HBI group to go to Australia. The Australian tobacco industry is under serious political attack (the Labor Party is back in power).


 * July: he was moved from control of PM International in New York to the domestic company PM USA as Senior Vice President for Legislative Relations (Corporate Affairs), under Ehud Houminer but he retains responsibility for NYSIA and AECA. This change seems to be more for show in dealing with domestic tobacco politics, than for any real change in function.

* 1990: He takes the key tactical position in implementing the Boca Raton Action Plan, under the control of Geoff Bible. He is now officially back at PM International as Senior VP for External Affairs.

* 1995: He co-hosts with R. Emmett Tyrell of the American Spectator a Libertad function for Steve Forbes (Presidential campaign) which brings him into contact with George H. W. Bush. He is also working with Paul Dietrich on a project to have the US government cut WHO's budget.
 * Whist also accompanied Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin (the future Bush Admin. Sec for Health and Human Services) to South Africa and Zimbarbwe. He later wrote a thankyou note saying: "I value your loyalty and friendship and look forward to sharing many more great meals and exchanging many more unbelievable stories with you in the future . . . I eagerly anticipate our next adventure together—maybe it will be Australia."
 * Wisconsin had projected a tax increase on cigarettes to $1.00, but Governor Thompson tried to lower the tax to a nickel. Overall, it is known via official filings that Thompson accepted at least $20,000 from Philip Morris over a few years (They spent $1 million in lobbying fees in his state in 1996).

* 1996 June: Governor Thompson gets his wish. Whist and three other Philip Morris staff take Governors Arne Carlson of Minnesota and Thompson on an all-expenses paid and no-money-spared 8-day junket to Australia, with scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef. These trips were supposedly funded by the AECA and the NYSIA.

* 1997: Minnesota lawyers Brian Bates and Michael Ravnitzky file a complaint over the illegal junket ("prohibited gifts from a lobbyist"), and Whist has to admit in the Wall Street Journal that the NYSIA office is "a chair in my apartment." State of Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, Minutes, November 21, 1997.

* 1998: The Master Settlement Agreement is signed by Geoff Bible on behalf of the tobacco industry, and millions of tobacco company documents start to be release on-line. The Australians at the top of the Philip Morris hierarchy bail out and take retirement. Whist realises that he will be constantly called up as a witness in court cases and government inquiries.

* 1999 May 12: His friends hold a farewell Party for him in New York. He has been lent to Australia's part-privatised telecommunications monopoly, Telstra, as a trial for an executive exchange scheme. His job was to help persuade the Australian politicians to fully privatise the company. Geoff Bible conducted the negotiations.

In answer to a question in the Australian parliament, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Peter McGauran, stated that "As part of a fact-finding mission in 1998, Telstra met with Phillip Morris representatives to seek information on public affairs organisational structure and processes.' As a result of this, McGauran informed the House of Representatives that between February and July 1999 Whist had been "engaged" to "provide advice and his views to the Telstra management of the day on matters related to organisational structure, processes and resources in the company's public affairs area."

* 2000: Retired in Melbourne (it is said).

Andrew Whist served as Senior Vice President of External Affairs for Philip Morris, Inc. in 1986 and again from 1992 to 1993. (Source: Philip Morris Summary - PMI Liability Notebook) Mr. Whist worked for Philip Morris International Corporate Affairs. (PMI's Introduction to Privilege Log and Glossary of Names, Estate of Burl Butler v. PMI, et al, April 19, 1996)

Related Sourcewatch resources •	Philip Morris International Corporate Affairs, 1986 memo by Andrew Whist about PM interference in legislation in foreign countries

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Tobacco industry

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