Jeffrey Wigand: The Whistle-Blower

But Wigand didn't contact the media or the government initially, because doing so would have violated his confidentiality agreement with the company and cost him his severance package. One of his daughters suffered from spina bifida and required daily medical treatment. He needed the health benefits. "There was never an epiphany," he says of his decision to go public. "It was more incremental." There was Sandefur's testifying before Congress alongside six other tobacco company CEOs that nicotine wasn't addictive, although Wigand knew that his boss had known for years that it was addictive. There were the B& W documents that had been made public by a paralegal named Merrell Williams that corroborated Wigand's account. There were the antitobacco lawsuits that needed his expert testimony.

When he finally agreed to the 60 Minutes interview and to testify in the Mississippi antitobacco suit, he had no idea how or if his life would return to normal. He was facing lawsuits by B& W and anonymous death threats. "I couldn't have engineered the way this has played out," he says. "No way."

Wigand can't simply go away and let the tobacco industry pay the settlement and return to business as usual. He's a fighter, a former black belt in judo, with a thick, squat build. He's a Bronx guy through and through. He enjoys mixing it up. "They can't blow smoke at me," Wigand says. "I constantly keep them on the truth course. I keep the truth lit, and they don't like it. But I'm not alone. I've got more people to shine the light on them now."

Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer. To learn more about Jeffrey Wigand, visit his Web site or email him (jwigand@jeffreywigand.com).