Behind the Lost Empire

It would have been difficult to do this story without some cooperation from RJR. The newspaper notified the company early on about this project, and company officials said they were eager to tell their side of the story. RJR gave us unprecedented access to experts in its legal, scientific and manufacturing departments. That cooperation, though, had its limits. We weren't, for instance, allowed to interview anyone who currently works for the company's marketing and advertising departments, and some documents we requested either couldn't be found or were withheld.

John Singleton, the director of RJR's corporate communications, handled most of our requests as forthrightly and as quickly as the corporate bureaucracy would allow. We are immensely grateful to John and other members of the public-relations staff for sticking with us for the past 18 months.

Other people at RJR we would especially like to thank for helping us are: Rodney Austin, Charles Blixt, Frank Colby, Paul Crist, Daniel Donahue, William Hobbs, Ed Horrigan, Joe Inman, Jerry Long, Alan Rodgman, Murray Senkus, the late William Smith, J. Paul Sticht, David Townsend and Tylee Wilson.

We would also like to thank others who didn't work at RJR. They include: Phil Carlton, N.C. Attorney General Mike Easley, Don Garner, Wendell Gauthier, Michael J. Horowitz, former Minnesota Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III, Chuck Kueper, Kelli Kueper, Patricia Kueper, John G. Medlin Jr., Paul Monzione, Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore, John R. Sprague Jr., Calder Womble and William F. Womble.

We also want to thank the staffs of the Winston-Salem Journal library, the Library of Congress, the Forsyth County Public Library, the Forsyth County Tax Assessor's Office, the Manuscript Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Special Collections Library at Duke University, the Baptist Collection at Wake Forest University and Andrews Publications.

Gravity Inc. of Fort Worth, Texas, gave us eight CD-ROMs containing thousands of RJR documents that had been subpoenaed by the House Commerce Committee in 1997. Gravity sold the CDs to lawyers.

Bosses don't usually get the credit they deserve. Carl Crothers, the Journal's managing editor, hatched the idea for this project and continued to support it as it grew in scope, time and cost. The Journal's publisher, Jon Witherspoon, also supported the project, paid the bills and encouraged a complete telling of this story.

Taking three reporters off their regular jobs for more than a year caused considerable hardship in the Journal newsroom. Many editors and reporters had to work harder and longer because of this arrangement. The members of the tobacco team want to thank their colleagues for their patience and support.