carey Gillam

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</div><div>https://theintercept.com/2019/08/23/monsanto-republicans-cancer-research</div><div>
</div><div>EMAILS SHOW MONSANTO ORCHESTRATED GOP EFFORT TO INTIMIDATE CANCER RESEARCHERS</div><div>
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</div><div>Lee Fang</div><div>August 23 2019, 3:00 a.m.</div><div>IN 2015, the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, classified glyphosate, an active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, as a “probable carcinogen,” setting off a global debate about the world’s most popular weedkiller.</div><div>
</div><div>Over the last four years, Republicans in Congress have excoriated and pushed to defund the IARC, casting their defense of the chemical as a quest on behalf of small American farmers. Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., has written that his outrage over the cancer research is on behalf of the “farmers and food manufacturers who rely on traditional farming methods to produce the food that fuels America — and the world.”</div><div>
</div><div>But according to a recent trove of documents, the ongoing political assault on the IARC has been scripted in part by Monsanto, the St. Louis-based chemical and seed conglomerate that produces Roundup and Roundup-resistant crops.</div><div>
</div><div>Roundup has been cash cow for the company since the 1970s, fueling billions of dollars in annual profits. Its use has skyrocketed in recent decades since the company developed genetically modified corn and other crops that are resistant to it; it is now the world’s leading herbicide.</div><div>
</div><div>A growing number of individuals say that Monsanto failed to warn consumers of the dangers of using Roundup and had marketed the chemical spray as harmless to humans, while internally recommending that its own employees use gloves and protective gear. Critics say that the Roundup formula used in the U.S. also contains a surfactant that makes the herbicide far more toxic than the variation of the spray sold in the European market.</div><div>
</div><div>Monsanto, which merged with German multinational pharmaceutical company Bayer AG last year, is facing as many as 11,000 cases relating to glyphosate. Last year, Dewayne Johnson, a former groundskeeper now dying of cancer, was the first to win his jury trial in San Francisco state court against Monsanto, alleging that years of using Roundup contributed to his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Johnson was awarded $289 million by a jury, though a judge later reduced the amount to $78 million. Another plaintiff, Edwin Hardeman, also alleged that he spent decades spraying the glyphosate-based weedkiller with little to no protective gear and developed the same blood cancer, won a similar case in federal court this year.</div><div>
</div><div>[Plaintiff Dewayne Johnson after hearing the verdict in his case against Monsanto at the Superior Court of California in San Francisco on Aug. 10, 2018. Photo: Josh Edelson, Pool/AP]</div><div>The newly disclosed files, released by a plaintiff’s law firm, Baum Hedlund, include company emails, documents, and deposition transcripts showing that Monsanto lawyers and lobbyists guided lawmakers, coordinating efforts to question the IARC’s credibility and slash U.S. support for the international body.</div><div>
</div><div>The company has denied claims that its products cause cancer, and Monsanto lawyers have declared that Environmental Protection Agency’s designation of glyphosate as safe should clear the company of any legal liability. In a recent marketing campaign, Bayer touted its friendly cooperation with regulators as a sign that the public should have nothing to fear from its products.</div><div>
</div><div>But the documents also suggest that the firm has used its influence with lawmakers to antagonize regulators, applying pressure and investigative threats to shape the science used to research glyphosate and other controversial chemical compounds, as part of a larger campaign to silence critics and discredit the IARC.</div><div>
</div><div>IN JUNE 2015, Michael Dykes, then serving as Monsanto’s vice president of government affairs, laid out the company’s strategy for “managing the IARC issue,” following the cancer research center’s determination that March.</div><div>
</div><div>The company, he wrote in an email, had dispatched its team of lobbyists to brief “key staff at EPA, USTR, USDA, and the State Department as well as members of Congress” to raise concerns with the IARC’s scientific process, and with how the decision could impact agriculture as well as international trade. Lobbyists also met with an official at the Department of Health and Human Services; they saw the agency’s support as key “to secure a WHO clarification.”</div><div>
</div><div>Later in the year, Dykes updated the Monsanto team with plans to push back against the IARC, including the possible placement of advertisements — in the form of letters from third-party groups — in Capitol Hill newspapers, as well as preparation to use a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing as a venue to get the EPA to reaffirm support for glyphosate. “We will make sure Committee members ask EPA the glyphosate safety question,” Dykes wrote.</div><div>
</div><div>[Roundup weed killing products on May 14, 2019. Photo Illustration: Scott Olson/Getty Images</div><div>The following year, FTI Government Affairs, one of several consulting firms guiding Monsanto’s political response to the IARC decision, assisted GOP lawmakers with an effort to investigate U.S. support for the IARC.</div><div>
</div><div>In one email sent by Todd Rands, a former Monsanto attorney working with FTI, sent a draft of a letter ostensibly written by Rep. Rob Aderholt, R-Ala., a senior lawmaker on the House Appropriations Committee, addressed to Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes for Health. NIH is the government agency responsible for most federal public health research and is the largest funder to the IARC. The letter, in fact, had been written by FTI consultants, along with Rands’s edits, accordingto his deposition testimony.</div><div>
</div><div>The FTI-written letter declared that glyphosate “does not cause cancer,” accused the IARC of peddling “bunk science,” and threatened a reassessment of the NIH budget to ensure that the agency is “committed to only funding organizations that produce information and conclusions based on sound science, robust processes, and credible methodology.”</div><div>
</div><div>During his deposition, Rands said that he believed it appropriate for Monsanto to draft a letter on behalf of a lawmaker to NIH, calling such ghostwriting a “common practice in Washington.”</div><div>
</div><div>It’s not clear what Aderholt’s office did with the FTI-authored letter. Aderholt’s office did not respond to a request for comment from The Intercept. On June 2, 2016, Aderholt sent a letter to NIH to request a briefing on the IARC’s designation of glyphosate as a probable carcinogen and “the standards that NIH places on research funded by the U.S. taxpayers,” a letter that mirrored many of the demands in the FTI letter, though it used different language.</div><div>
</div><div>More GOP letters and demands for investigation over NIH’s funding for IARC followed. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, then-chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., Chaffetz’s successor as Oversight chair, and Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, then-chair of the House Science Committee, all called for inquiries into IARC funding and the designation of glyphosate as a carcinogen.</div><div>
</div><div>The Monsanto lobbyists closely conferred with the committees as they honed in on the IARC’s funding. Drew Feeley, an attorney for the GOP staff of the House Oversight Committee, emailed an FTI consultant to explain that his office was working to attach a line to a government budget bill designed “to apply to IARC” in order to slash its funding over the glyphosate issue. “Thanks again for coordinating,” Feeley wrote to the Monsanto consultant. Feeley, notably, is now serving as an attorney with the Council on Environmental Quality, the White House office that oversees environmental policy.</div><div>
</div><div>“We expect the House OGR investigation about IARC to expand as they move into the new administration,” wrote Rands, in an update to Monsanto colleagues.</div><div>
</div><div>Last year, under Smith, the House Science Committee devoted an entire committee hearing into questioning the IARC, with a focus on its conduct around glyphosate. Smith subsequently sent more letters to cancer researchers in Norway, demanding they “correct the flaws in IARC.” The House Appropriations Committee followed up by cutting $2 million in funding to the IARC, a symbolic move to distance the U.S. from the international body, which relies on a budget of around $40 million from a range of member countries.</div><div>
</div><div>THE CONGRESSIONAL OUTREACH was only part of a multifaceted effort to control the backlash sparked by the IARC designation.</div><div>
</div><div>In recent years, a great deal of new information has come to light around Monsanto’s work to conceal the potential health risks around glyphosate. Earlier this month, new documents revealed that Monsanto operated a “fusion center” to <b>discredit critics of the company, including former Reuters journalist Carey Gillam</b>, who has written extensively about glyphosate. The operation even monitored and considered legal action again singer Neil Young, a critic of Monsanto.</div><div>
</div><div>Le Monde, the French newspaper, published an award-winning investigation on the controversy, referring to the Monsanto-run campaign to discredit the IARC as an effort to “intimidate” the cancer research center.</div><div>
</div><div>A separate cache of litigation files, released in May, revealed that Monsanto also contracted with Hakluyt, a corporate intelligence firm, to keep close tabs on political elites in Washington. The company consulted with senior Trump and EPA officials, and confirmed that the administration would support Monsanto on glyphosate issues. “We have Monsanto’s back on pesticide regulation,” a domestic policy adviser in the White House told Hakluyt.</div><div>
</div><div>[pixA building on the campus of Monsanto headquarters in St. Louis on May 23, 2016. Photo: Michael B. Thomas/AFP/Getty Images</div><div>The last year has exposed other cloak-and-dagger tactics. The company was criticized for ghostwriting scientific studies on the safety of glyphosate, which were presented as independent research. At the San Francisco civil trial over glyphosate, an FTI consultant working for Monsanto was caught posing as a journalist working for the BBC and another British outlet.</div><div>
</div><div>And in 2017, one of the most stunning disclosures revealed that a senior EPA staffer, Jess Rowland, had quietly tipped Monsanto off to the fact that federal agencies had sought to reevaluate the safety of glyphosate, boasting to the company that he could “kill” federal investigations into glyphosate. Shortly before a crucial European Union vote on glyphosate products, the EPA suddenly released a report declaring the safety of the product. The document was later taken down because it had not yet been completed. One Monsanto official relayed to a colleague that Rowland had told him, “If I can kill this I should get a medal,” in regards to the glyphosate review conducted by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a department of Health and Human Services.</div><div>
</div><div>After leaving the EPA, Rowland went to work in the private sector, consulting for chemical companies.</div><div>
</div><div>There’s also a revolving door between lawmakers supporting Monsanto and professionals working on behalf of the company. Shortly after retiring from Congress this year, following his investigation of the IARC, Lamar Smith took a job at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, a lobbying firm that represents Bayer-Monsanto’s interests in Washington.</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/9/monsanto_fusion_center_surveillance_of_critics"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/9/monsanto_fusion_center_surveillance_of_critics</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="text" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 27px; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> “Monsanto Years” by Neil Young and Promise of the Real. This is <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Democracy Now!</em> I’m Amy Goodman. An explosive new report shows documents — in an explosive new <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/07/monsanto-fusion-center-journalists-roundup-neil-young" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; border: 0px;">report</a>, documents reviewed by <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Guardian</em> reveal that the U.S. agribusiness giant Monsanto ran a “fusion center” to surveil and discredit journalists and activists who criticized or wrote damning reports about Monsanto, as well as legendary singer-songwriter Neil Young, who released an album in 2015 called <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Monsanto Years</em>. Monsanto monitored Young’s Twitter activity and even analyzed the lyrics of his album.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The so-called fusion center also surveilled journalist Carey Gillam. She was a Reuters reporter who was reporting extensively on Monsanto and its popular pesticide Roundup, which has been linked to cancer. Documents show Monsanto made plans to harass Gillam online, contact her editors at Reuters in the hopes of having her taken off reporting on Monsanto. The corporation also targeted the nonprofit research group U.S. Right to Know, which submitted a Freedom of Information Act request about the company.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For more, we’re joined in Kansas City, Missouri, by Carey Gillam, a veteran investigative journalist and author of <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science</em>. And in Berkeley, California, Gary Ruskin is with us, co-founder of U.S. Right to Know — both Monsanto targets.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Carey Gillam, let’s begin with you in Kansas City. Can you explain what happened when you released your book, <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Whitewash</em>?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">CAREY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GILLAM</span>:</strong> Yeah, I mean, even before <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Whitewash</em> came out, we know now from the documents that Monsanto was preparing to discredit the book, to discredit me. What we see from the documents that have come out is that the company had a strategic plan, a project action plan, with 20-some different line items and a consulting company in Washington, D.C., and numerous individuals engaged in, you know, covert and secretive strategies to make it look like third parties, for instance, were writing negative book reviews about me. Independent individuals were giving talking points to discredit me and to smear the book. We know from the documents that Monsanto talked about purchasing Google blog postings, search engine optimization, so that if people searched for my name and the book, they would get a host of negative, slanderous information about me. And all of this was done to look like it didn’t come from Monsanto, to look like it was coming from independent third parties — farmers or scientists or others. And we saw that play out. I saw that play out on Amazon, on one weekend, after the book was released, when a whole host of negative book reviews, all at once, with similar talking points, sounding like they came from one person almost, just poured onto Amazon to try to take the book down.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Democracy Now!</em> invited Monsanto to join us on the show. They declined our request but sent us a statement to read on the air: quote, “None of the documents cherry-picked by plaintiffs’ lawyers and their surrogates contradict the findings of the extensive body of science and conclusions of leading health regulators that glyphosate-based herbicides are safe when used as directed and that glyphosate is not carcinogenic. Instead, they show that Monsanto’s activities were intended to ensure there was a fair, accurate and science-based dialogue about the company and its products in response to significant misinformation, including steps to respond to the publication of a book written by an individual who is a frequent critic of pesticides and GMOs. We take the safety of our products and our reputation very seriously and work to ensure that everyone — from regulators to customers to other stakeholders — has accurate and balanced information to make decisions about our products.” Carey Gillam, if you could respond?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">CAREY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GILLAM</span>:</strong> Sure. I mean, first of all, you know, a frequent critic of GMOs and pesticides, you know, is not really an accurate representation. I’m a journalist. I report accurate information about the risks, as well as the rewards, as well as the benefits. But my book, you know, did lay out a lot of information that Monsanto had wanted to keep hidden. It was based very heavily on documents that I obtained from <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">EPA</span>, <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">USDA</span> and <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FDA</span>, as well as some internal Monsanto documents. So, you know, the book is very heavily documented and data-driven. Monsanto has not been able to come up with anything that’s inaccurate in the book.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And what Monsanto is actually saying there, you know, they want to talk about fairness and truthfulness and transparency, but what they were doing was actually trying to deceive the public by coming out and engineering all of these secretive things that would look like they were coming from outside the company. You know, if the company has complaints, if the company wants to make a statement about something, they should do it in a truthful way, so that people know it’s coming from Monsanto, and not engage in these secretive strategies.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And what I talk about with this is, it’s not so important, you know, what they were trying to do to me or what they were trying to do to a book. I’m one person. I’m one journalist. But what we know, from a larger trove of documents, is that this is par for the course. You know, this is what they do. They have engaged in smear campaigns against numerous scientists, numerous journalists around the world, and they do it through this third-party strategy so that it looks like it’s coming from a more authentic, more valid, independent source.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> In Oakland, California, Monsanto, in May, was ordered to pay its highest damages yet in the third lawsuit over the popular weed killer Roundup. A jury has ordered Monsanto, which is owned by German pharmaceutical giant Bayer, to pay more than $2 billion in punitive damages to Alva and Alberta Pilliod, a couple who were both diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancer after using Roundup on their properties for over 30 years.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gary Ruskin, that’s Oakland, California. You’re right now in Berkeley. You’re the founder of U.S. Right to Know. Your group was also targeted by Monsanto. Can you respond to what you have been trying to find out, what you understand from these documents, how they targeted you, and why you’re concerned so much about Roundup, why you’ve been raising issues?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GARY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">RUSKIN</span>:</strong> Sure. So, in 2015, we began an investigation of the Monsanto Company and its business practices and its public relations practices. And so I filed a number of Freedom of Information Act requests and tried to understand how they do their business and how they deploy their public relations strategies, and quickly found explosive documents that became a front-page <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times</em> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/us/food-industry-enlisted-academics-in-gmo-lobbying-war-emails-show.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; border: 0px;">story</a> about how Monsanto uses and deploys academics in its public relations strategies and how it pays them secretively and there are secret ties. But, essentially, Monsanto creates a choir, by which it deploys its messaging about, that its products are safe.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And so, as these stories got replicated in outlets both in the United States and across the world, apparently Monsanto became very alarmed by them. And so, we now have documents that show they had this elaborate plan, 30 pages long, 11 Monsanto staff, you know, public relations firm, trade groups, all helping out, trying to respond to our little tiny investigation. You know, I run a very small nonprofit. We only have four staff, including Carey Gillam. And yet Monsanto was so threatened by our small effort to conduct an investigation into their public relations work that they generated this elaborate plan to — they said that our investigative effort had the potential to be extremely damaging, that it would impact the entire industry. And so, not too long after that, up springs lots of really kind of — you know, lots of slime and smears about me and about Carey, that spring up all over the internet, as well. And we also found out that there is this Monsanto fusion center, an internal corporate intelligence center, that is tracking, has been tracking our work in some way. We don’t really know very much about its operations. So, that’s what we know from the documents.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> We began this segment with a song of Neil Young from his album <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Monsanto Years</em>. Talk about what the documents show about Neil Young, how they were going after him.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GARY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">RUSKIN</span>:</strong> Well, it’s very limited, what we have. We know that the Monsanto intelligence center, the fusion center, was analyzing his social media and his work talking about and singing about Monsanto. It’s pretty sparse. That’s all we know. I mean, really, the documents raise many more questions than they answer about: What exactly is the Monsanto fusion center? What does it do? What practices does it carry out? Who really works for it? You know, what tactics and strategies do we use? There’s a <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times</em> story about corporate intelligence centers from last year that talk about the use of military-style tactics. The word “fusion center” really comes from a Department of Homeland Security term, “fusion centers.” You know, it’s well known that some of these fusion centers are staffed by former intelligence people. So, what actually happens at the Monsanto fusion center, we don’t really know.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> The website American Council on Science and Health, or [<span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">ACSH</span>], has posted articles attempting to discredit our guests, Carey Gillam and Gary Ruskin. One article is titled “Dear Gary Ruskin and Anti-GMOers, Stop Being Puppets for Putin.” Internal Monsanto documents show the company funds the [<span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">ACSH</span>]. One document says, in all caps, “You <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">WILL</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">NOT</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GET</span> A <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">BETTER</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">VALUE</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">FOR</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">YOUR</span><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">DOLLAR</span> than [<span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">ACSH</span>].” Carey Gillam, if you could respond to this? And also, according to <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Guardian</em>, Monsanto paid Google — and you talked about this — to promote search results for “Monsanto Glyphosate Carey Gillam” that criticized your work. Explain how this works, how they can pay Google to increase the chance that when I look for your name, I’m going to see something negative.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">CAREY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GILLAM</span>:</strong> Well, I cannot pretend to understand how the algorithms of Google work. But what we do know and what we have seen is that when there is information that Monsanto really wants to promote, or others in the agrochemical industry, you can see this play out on Google search engines. Sometimes it will say, you know, a Google ad off to the left of it. But there are ways to optimize this sort of search engine so that information does rise to the top. And certainly Monsanto has had the resources, the information to do that. And we know that they talk about doing that.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, in terms of the other payments, this <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">ACSH</span> group, that I’ve talked about and you mentioned, the American Council on Science and Health, this is one, what we call, front group, one group that we have been able to establish that Monsanto has helped fund, sends money to, secretly. The group is supposed to look like it’s independent and authoritative. They post op-eds all in <em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">USA</span> Today</em>, and they have — their people write in <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Forbes</em> magazine. And what they’re doing is really — you know, they’re paid hit men for Monsanto. And we see that in these internal emails. And it’s really, you know, ingenious on the part of corporations like Monsanto, but what it does is it fools consumers. It’s designed to fool scientists, consumers, lawmakers, anyone who’s really looking for authoritative information and doesn’t understand that this is being funded by special corporate interests.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> Gary Ruskin, you’re calling for the release of all records on this subject. You believe that these documents are just the tip of the iceberg. Are you continuing to be monitored, harassed, targeted?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GARY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">RUSKIN</span>:</strong> Well, we don’t really know, except that we do know that if you search for my name or Carey’s name on the internet, you see a fantastic amount of smears and slime and things that aren’t true. And so, why is that? Where does that come from? You know, the documents that were just released do suggest that Monsanto was carrying out some kind of a campaign to discredit us and to discredit our organization and Carey’s book. And so, the documents are what we know.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> Carey Gillam, will you be suing?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">CAREY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GILLAM</span>:</strong> You know, no. I mean, I have made some inquiries and talked to some legal counsel, and we’ve talked about this. I mean, the publisher of the book would be very concerned, is very concerned, about what Monsanto has done to try to interfere with sales of the book.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 30px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">AMY</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> We’re going to have to leave it there, but I thank you both very much for being with us, Carey Gillam, a veteran journalist, author of <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Whitewash</em>, and Gary Ruskin of U.S. Right to Know. I’m Amy Goodman. This is <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Democracy Now!</em>Thanks so much for joining us.</font></p></div><hr class="hidden-xs" style="box-sizing: content-box; height: 1px; margin: 35px 0px 30px; border: none; clear: both; background: rgb(236, 238, 239);" /><div class="next_story_body" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 15px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Up Next</font></h4><h5 style="box-sizing: border-box; letter-spacing: 0.5px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><a data-ga-action="Story: Next Story" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2018/8/14/how_monsanto_plants_stories_suppresses_science" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">How Monsanto Plants Stories, Suppresses Science & Silences Dissent to Sell a Cancer-Linked Chemical</font></a></h5></div></div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p>