Informant (21 page)

“Tell him how terrible it is that they never got the price up,’’ he said. “How disorganized they are, or how disappointed we are.’’

“Yeah,’’ Whitacre said.

“And you know, our plan is supergood,’’ Andreas continued. “Everything is fine, except those guys fucked up the market so that nobody could play.’’

Yamamoto had to be kept on the defensive. “Go up to him and say, well you know, we tried pulling back,’’ Andreas said, “and all that happened was the price went down.’’

“Yeah,’’ Whitacre said, “the price went down.’’

“Who’s leading the price down?’’ Andreas asked rhetorically.”They’re leading the price down.’’

“Especially Ajinomoto,’’ Whitacre said. “I think it would be fair to say that, don’t you?’’

“Yeah, sure, I would say it.’’

“Put the blame on the other guy?’’

“Absolutely,’’ Andreas said.

“Let them lose a little trust in the big guy.’’

Andreas nodded. “Exactly. That’s right.’’

Whitacre glanced at Andreas’s saltwater aquarium, absentmindedly watching the fish. After a few minutes, the meeting broke up. Whitacre headed back to his office.

Sitting down at his desk, he checked his watch. “Eight-thirty
A.M.
, April fifteenth,” he announced. “Just saw Mick Andreas. For the, for the marching orders.”

A few hours later, Shepard and Weatherall glanced around a room on the eighteenth floor of the Chicago Marriott Downtown. The Chicago technical team had done a good job. Everything looked normal, nothing out of place. The table lamp, with the hidden FBI video camera inside, matched the decor well.

The agents went to the FBI command center in room 1817. The technical team was hooking up a monitor that would allow them to watch the Yamamoto meeting. When they turned it on, Shepard and Weatherall noticed that the room’s furniture was not set up properly. The camera was stationary, but no chair was in front of it. They walked back to the meeting room, moving furniture around until they were satisfied.

Soon, Whitacre showed up at the command center. After introducing him to the technical agents, Shepard and Weatherall took him to the meeting room.

“Now, Mark, the camera is right over there,’’ Shepard said, pointing at the lamp.

Whitacre wondered how heavy it was. He walked over and started to pick up the lamp.

“Don’t lift that!’’ Shepard said.

Whitacre put the lamp back down.

Shepard walked over to one of the chairs. “This is the spot. Make sure Yamamoto sits right here.’’

“Okay,’’ Whitacre said.

There were a few other points to remember, Shepard instructed. The FBI could only tape when a person who had consented to the recording was present. If Whitacre left—to go to the bathroom, anything—the FBI had to shut off the camera. So if he was leaving the room, Shepard said, Whitacre should say something to tip off the listening agents. Whitacre said that he understood.

Shepard glanced at his watch. It was 5:45. Time for everyone to take their places.

Whitacre waited in the lobby for fifteen minutes when, at 6:05, Yamamoto came through the revolving door.

“Massy,’’ Whitacre said, “good to see you again. Welcome back to Chicago.’’

“Thank you, good to see you too.’’

Whitacre guided Yamamoto to the hotel bar, where they sat down and ordered drinks.

For eighteen minutes, an FBI agent conducting surveillance watched as the executives talked, drank, and ate dinner. Finally, at 6:25, the agent terminated the surveillance. It would be picked up again later.

•   •   •

Just past seven-thirty, Whitacre and Yamamoto paid their bill, walked to an elevator, and stepped in. As the doors closed, an agent posing as a hotel guest picked up a house phone and dialed the FBI command room.

“On their way up,’’ the agent said.

Whitacre and Yamamoto stepped off on the eighteenth floor. Another surveillance agent followed. Once the two executives walked inside the meeting room, the agent picked up his pace. He slid a card key into the electronic lock for the FBI command room and opened the door.

“They’re in,’’ the agent said.

An agent sitting in front of the black-and-white television monitor turned a knob and pushed down buttons on a video-recording device.

It was 17 seconds past 7:40
P.M.
The grainy image of chairs in the next room appeared on the screen. Whitacre was standing beside them.

“Have a seat, Massy,’’ Whitacre said. He positioned himself perfectly, effectively blocking the only other seat in the room. Yamamoto would have to take the chair directly in front of the camera.

“Good,’’ Yamamoto said from across the room.

“Would you like another drink?’’

“I don’t think so,’’ Yamamoto said.

“Okay, then we’ll get started. If you’d like one at any time, you let me know.’’

At that moment, Yamamoto appeared on camera. He sat down exactly where the FBI wanted him to be.

In the command room, Shepard and Weatherall stood beside the monitor, watching the flickering images. Shepard listened to the conversation on headphones.

Even without hearing a word, Weatherall was impressed at how easily Whitacre had navigated Yamamoto into the right chair.

Good job, Mark,
he thought.
Good job.

Whitacre’s back was to the camera as he casually walked Yamamoto through the high points of every major price-fixing meeting that the FBI had missed.

“I realize there wasn’t much business discussed in Hawaii,’’ he said, “but it was a lot of business discussed in Mexico and Paris.’’

Yamamoto grunted in agreement.

“Like you said, Terry Wilson said if the price, at that time of sixty cents a pound . . ’’

“Yes,’’ Yamamoto agreed.

“And he said if the price got to a dollar-five, maybe we could talk to our management. And we said we could maybe convince our management to go to a lower volume.’’

Yamamoto grunted.

He and Wilson had informed his management of the discussions, Whitacre said, but the worldwide price never reached $1.05 a pound.

“Our management saw it as a very messed-up market,’’ he continued, “and they just felt like there’s no incentive to reduce volume.’’

Whitacre was following Mick Andreas’s instructions to the letter.

Shepard listened to Whitacre’s words. He was doing a great job recapping earlier meetings. Yamamoto was not objecting to Whitacre’s characterization. This tape would be good evidence. Whitacre was following his instructions perfectly.

The talks dragged on for almost two hours as the men debated production limits. At 9:33, they stood, having agreed only to meet again.

“Okay, Massy,’’ Whitacre said.

“See you again,’’ Yamamoto said.

The two men walked off camera.

On the headphones, Shepard could still hear the executives talking as they headed toward the door.

“Okay, bye-bye. Have a good trip back.’’

“Thank you!’’ Yamamoto replied.

Silence.

Shepard slid off the headphones. “That’s it.’’

Minutes later, a knock came at the door of the FBI command room. It was Whitacre, looking excited and proud. He walked over to Shepard.

“Did you hear how we talked about all the other meetings?’’ Whitacre said. “We went into all of them. He talked about everything.’’

Shepard clapped Whitacre on the shoulder.

“Excellent job, Mark,’’ he said. “Fantastic.’’

•   •   •

Every successful federal criminal case is the product of teamwork between investigators and prosecutors. The relationship can be delicate; at some point, agents have to hand off their case and hope that the lawyers can carry it across the goal line. But, until then, prosecutors stand by as critics, letting the agents know if their work will hold up under the harsh realities of the courtroom.

As a result, the greatest moments of tension emerge when the agents trot out evidence for their prosecutors. Often, those can be days of high expectations; the agents hope to hear praise for their hard-won information, all the time fearing that their work will be greeted with a dismissive wave.

The day for the first presentation of evidence in the ADM case arrived on April 27, a Wednesday. That morning, Robin Mann arrived at the offices of the Springfield FBI accompanied by Tracy Meares, another Antitrust Division lawyer. Both had come to town eager to review the tapes that they had heard so much about.

The two prosecutors pushed open the glass doors to the FBI office and headed into the lobby. Byron Cudmore was already there, waiting. Cudmore knew this would probably be his last direct involvement in the case for some time. The Clinton administration, through Attorney General Janet Reno, had just demanded the resignations of almost every U.S. Attorney in the country—Cudmore’s boss among them. Cudmore had been sworn in as acting U.S. Attorney the day before, and expected to have less time for the ADM case.

John Hoyt came out and escorted the prosecutors to the SAC’s conference room. Stukey, the SAC, was not available that day, Hoyt explained, but plenty of other agents would be attending.

Shepard and Weatherall arrived a few minutes later, followed by Paisley. The agents were brimming with excitement. They discussed the case, saying that they had secured the cooperation of a highly placed source.

Mann threw in some caution. “It’s good somebody’s cooperating. But we’re going to need more. We’re going to need documents and witnesses to corroborate everything to bring this as an antitrust case.’’

Hoyt felt flustered. He broke in.

“Well, we were thinking this was more than an antitrust case,’’ he said, realizing only after making the statement that he might be insulting his guests.

He decided to try again. “There’s a lot more than just antitrust violations going on,’’ he said, spelling out each possible charge, from obstruction of justice to corporate espionage. “We really think this has good potential as a racketeering case, or something else broad like that.’’

Mann said little in response. The racketeering laws dated back to the government’s efforts during the 1970s to combat organized crime, but in recent years they had been applied to white-collar cases. Using the law’s vast powers, the government can seize assets of a criminal enterprise—in this case, potentially ADM itself. It would be an enormous undertaking, requiring approval from the highest levels. That decision was not going to be made today.

Shepard and Weatherall proceeded with the history of the investigation, including the backgrounds of ADM’s lysine business and of their cooperating witness. Mann could sense that the agents were wary of her; even though everyone in the room knew Whitacre’s identity, they wouldn’t refer to him by name, instead calling him “the source.’’ It struck her as unusual.

At one point, Mann said that she would be interested in meeting the witness herself. But the agents batted the idea away. He had been skittish for months and only recently had become cooperative. Meeting another government official, they cautioned, might cause problems. Mann reluctantly agreed to wait.

Finally Shepard, with videotape in hand, stepped over to a VCR that had been set up in the room.

“We want to show you excerpts from a consensual recording made last week in Chicago,’’ he said.

Shepard explained that there would be two people visible in the video: the source, whose back would be to the camera, and Yamamoto. He turned on the video and stepped back, giving Mann an unobstructed view.

The grainy image of a man appeared on the screen. “Have a seat, Massy,’’ the man said.

Mann watched carefully, occasionally writing quotes on a yellow pad. After a few minutes, she grew concerned about the tape. Yamamoto’s accent was too thick. She couldn’t understand what he was saying.

“What was that?’’ she asked at one point.

Shepard stopped the tape. He explained what Yamamoto had just said, and rewound the tape so Mann could hear it again. She listened for another few minutes, and exhaled heavily.

“Stop, go back,’’ she said. “I’m really having trouble with this.’’

Again, Shepard explained what had been said. His comprehension of Yamamoto’s words was undaunted by the accent. But whether the FBI could understand the tape was not particularly important to Mann.

“I don’t know,’’ she said. “We’re going to have some real trouble with this in front of a jury. It’s really hard to hear.’’

There were other problems as well. To convict on price-fixing, a jury would have to find that there had been an agreement; this tape seemed all dispute, no agreement. On top of that, Whitacre was making many of the strongest statements, with Yamamoto’s acquiescence. Any good defense lawyer would argue that the Japanese executive had simply misunderstood. The words had to come from the potential defendant’s mouth.

The room was turning testy. The agents had planned for Mann to be blown away. All they seemed to be hearing, though, were problems.

After struggling with the tape, the group reviewed other case details. Shepard mentioned that Whitacre and Wilson were scheduled to meet in Chicago the next day with two French executives from affiliates of Ajinomoto. Because the meeting was taking place in a restaurant, videotaping would be too difficult, but Whitacre would be wearing multiple recorders. Mann nodded, saying she would be interested in hearing those tapes as soon as possible.

The meeting wound down by the end of the day. Mann and Meares were shown to the lobby. As she rode down the elevator, Mann couldn’t help but think that the case looked fairly promising.

Back upstairs, the agents gathered in Hoyt’s office. The mood was sullen and disappointed. They had hoped for cheers and whistles and had received only questions and concerns.

“Well,’’ Hoyt said, “that was a whole lot of nothing.’’

The first floor of the Best Western Shelton Inn in Decatur was empty early on the morning of April 28. Whitacre walked down the hallway looking for room 143. Finally, he saw it. He glanced back to see if he was still alone before tapping on the door; Shepard answered almost instantly.

“Hey, how you doin’?’’ Whitacre said before the door was closed. “I’ve got to hurry.’’