# Why Is One of Big Oil's Top Greenwashing PR Firms Handling Media for COP 27?

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 8 Nov 2022, 31 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/pdrl.fm/3e5572/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9a7ab5ee-ce11-48ff-a544-b3ec00ea9b1e/2b69babf-a4e2-46c7-836d-b3ec00f08851/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

COP 27 is underway in Egypt and the stakes have never been higher. So why is longtime fossil fuel industry greenwasher Hill + Knowlton handing media for the conference? We look back on the firm's longstanding history crafting science denial and delay strategies for tobacco and fossil fuel companies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Welcome back to DRILL. I'm Amy Westerveldt. The Conference of
[0:04] Speaker 1: the Parties or COP the annual Global un climate negotiations
[0:10] Speaker 1: have kicked off in Egypt, and I'll be digging into
[0:13] Speaker 1: a few aspects of it over the next couple of weeks.
[0:17] Speaker 1: This week, I want to talk about greenwashing and how
[0:21] Speaker 1: it's made its way into these proceedings really since they
[0:25] Speaker 1: began back in the early nineties. You might remember a
[0:29] Speaker 1: guy named E. Bruce Harrison who's come up quite a
[0:32] Speaker 1: bit in this podcast over the years. Back in the
[0:35] Speaker 1: late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties, Harrison saw these
[0:40] Speaker 1: international climate meetings coming a mile away, and he helped
[0:44] Speaker 1: his oil and gas clients strategize to ensure that climate
[0:48] Speaker 1: commitments would always be voluntary, not mandatory. He created an
[0:54] Speaker 1: industry group called the Global Climate Coalition, whose job was
[0:58] Speaker 1: to make sure that international climate talks never resulted in
[1:01] Speaker 1: anything binding. Here's Brown University environmental sociologist Bob Rule explaining
[1:07] Speaker 1: the GCC's role.
[1:09] Speaker 2: I mean, the GCC supported the passage of the United
[1:13] Speaker 2: Nations Framework Convention on Climate CHAP. They supported that in
[1:18] Speaker 2: ninety two.
[1:19] Speaker 3: Because it was toothless, you know, oh, yes, well we
[1:23] Speaker 3: need to further study, and of course we need to
[1:26] Speaker 3: do this and everything will be voluntary. And then of
[1:28] Speaker 3: course when Clinton says mandatory, they go, oh no, no, no,
[1:31] Speaker 3: you can't have that.
[1:32] Speaker 2: And you know, they lobby like hell and get a
[1:34] Speaker 2: voluntary action plan, voluntary initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, YadA, YadA, YadA.
[1:41] Speaker 2: So by ninety two we already have they already got
[1:43] Speaker 2: a template, they already got an organization, they've got their
[1:47] Speaker 2: rhetoric down, they've got the organization down. There is a playbook.
[1:52] Speaker 1: When the world did get close to enacting a binding
[1:55] Speaker 1: treaty on climate, the Kyoto Protocol back in nineteen ninety seven,
[2:00] Speaker 1: and it was the GCC that killed it. Here's brule again.
[2:04] Speaker 4: These are the guys like, well, what do we do, Well,
[2:08] Speaker 4: let's do this, and they, you know, they screwed around
[2:11] Speaker 4: and made a couple of mistakes here and there, but
[2:12] Speaker 4: they got the playbook and they got it down and
[2:15] Speaker 4: they destroyed the Kyoto Protocol.
[2:17] Speaker 3: And well, now we know how to play this game,
[2:20] Speaker 3: and we've got a playbook, and we have a cadre
[2:23] Speaker 3: of people that know how to make this happen.
[2:26] Speaker 2: They say, what works well when you can attack the science,
[2:30] Speaker 2: do okay, play up the economics. Play up the economics,
[2:35] Speaker 2: play up the threat to the American way of life,
[2:37] Speaker 2: talk about international inequality, talk about energy security.
[2:42] Speaker 1: A lot of the talking points they crafted back then
[2:46] Speaker 1: are the same ones that are being trotted out today.
[2:49] Speaker 1: The Global South has been used as an excuse for
[2:52] Speaker 1: the global North not to act on climate. Now it's
[2:56] Speaker 1: being used as an excuse for the global South not
[2:59] Speaker 1: to act on climate. The industry changes its narrative there
[3:03] Speaker 1: depending on what suits it.
[3:05] Speaker 2: Cultural opportunists, I mean, with all this compassion for global
[3:09] Speaker 2: poverty and the only way to get them out of
[3:11] Speaker 2: it is fossil fuels, which one and know that's not true.
[3:15] Speaker 4: And two what you know, this is.
[3:18] Speaker 2: A colonialist attitude of telling people how to figure out
[3:21] Speaker 2: their own lives, Thank you very much. They can reason
[3:24] Speaker 2: for themselves folk concern over the global South, because if
[3:30] Speaker 2: it's their argument, and so anything that supports their position
[3:34] Speaker 2: they'll grab onto for Right now, it's just it's just
[3:38] Speaker 2: opportunism as far as I'm concerned, because if they were
[3:40] Speaker 2: really concerned, they would have done. You know, there's all
[3:43] Speaker 2: kinds of things you can do. I don't see you
[3:45] Speaker 2: joining any of those groups.
[3:47] Speaker 1: So from the very first, cop oil companies and importantly
[3:51] Speaker 1: their PR firms, have played a major role in determining
[3:54] Speaker 1: the outcome of global climate negotiations, which is why it
[3:58] Speaker 1: was pretty shocking to learn that the government of Egypt,
[4:01] Speaker 1: this year's host country, selected the firm Hill and Knowlton
[4:05] Speaker 1: to handle media for cop hillan Milton have been handling
[4:09] Speaker 1: briefings and press conferences for months leading up to the conference.
[4:14] Speaker 1: That name might sound familiar to listeners of this podcast too, because,
[4:18] Speaker 1: like Harrison, their founder, John Hill was the focus of
[4:22] Speaker 1: an episode in our mad Men season a couple of
[4:25] Speaker 1: years back. Hillan Noulton not only masterminded Big Tobacco's deception
[4:29] Speaker 1: strategy back in the sixties, they also worked for the
[4:32] Speaker 1: fossil fuel industry during those years and were a conduit
[4:36] Speaker 1: of information between the two industries. Talking about the similarities
[4:42] Speaker 1: between Big Tobaccos and Big Oil's strategies without talking about
[4:46] Speaker 1: John Hill leaves out an important piece of the history,
[4:51] Speaker 1: and Hillan Nolton's conflicts of interests aren't in the distant
[4:54] Speaker 1: past either. Today the firm handles media for the oil
[4:57] Speaker 1: and Gas climate Initiative, a coalish of the world's twelve
[5:01] Speaker 1: largest oil and gas companies and a central hub for
[5:05] Speaker 1: all of their greenwashing messages, from Meaningless that Zero pledges
[5:09] Speaker 1: on carbon to the hilariously named Aiming for Zero Methane
[5:14] Speaker 1: Emissions Initiative, which will be a major force in negotiations
[5:18] Speaker 1: on methane emissions at COP this year. It's hard to
[5:22] Speaker 1: imagine that the Hill and Milton team handling pr for
[5:25] Speaker 1: COP isn't feeding back immediately to the team that handles
[5:28] Speaker 1: the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative. With that in mind,
[5:32] Speaker 1: I thought it might be worth rerunning our episode on
[5:35] Speaker 1: hilln Nolton, its founder John Hill, and its role in
[5:40] Speaker 1: crafting climate denial that's coming up right after this quick break.
[5:51] Speaker 5: When you look behind the veil, you find that it's
[5:54] Speaker 5: the same companies, it's the same firms. Often it's the
[5:57] Speaker 5: same people providing these services. And nowhere is that clearer than,
[6:02] Speaker 5: for example, with the role of Hill and Nolton.
[6:06] Speaker 1: Remember a couple of weeks ago, I said I'd found
[6:08] Speaker 1: some new leads that were relevant to this season. One
[6:11] Speaker 1: of them was the guy you just heard talking there,
[6:14] Speaker 1: Carol Muffett, who runs the Center for International environmental law.
[6:18] Speaker 1: I already knew about Carroll and his organization, of course,
[6:21] Speaker 1: but what I didn't know was that he had quite
[6:23] Speaker 1: a bit of information and documentation that has never been
[6:27] Speaker 1: published on the various public relations firms that have worked
[6:30] Speaker 1: with the fossil fuel industry, and specifically with both the
[6:33] Speaker 1: fossil fuel industry and tobacco.
[6:36] Speaker 5: Hilen Nolton, which is widely recognized as a lead advocate
[6:41] Speaker 5: for the tobacco industry and the tobacco wars. Helen Milton,
[6:45] Speaker 5: was simultaneously and from a very early stage, also actively
[6:48] Speaker 5: representing an array of oil and gas companies on issues
[6:52] Speaker 5: of concern to them, and often the same account leads
[6:56] Speaker 5: on the tobacco campaigns were also account leads for oil companies.
[7:00] Speaker 1: As we learned in earlier episodes this season, these two
[7:03] Speaker 1: industries have a long history of influencing each other, and
[7:07] Speaker 1: at the center of that influence are a few key
[7:09] Speaker 1: spinmasters there the guys were focusing on this season. I'm
[7:13] Speaker 1: Amy Westervelt and this is Drilled, season three, the mad
[7:17] Speaker 1: Men of Climate Denial. Today we're going to dig into
[7:20] Speaker 1: the story of John Hill, founder of Hill and Milton.
[7:35] Speaker 1: John Hill was born on a farm in Indiana in
[7:38] Speaker 1: eighteen ninety. His grandfather had been wealthy, but his father
[7:41] Speaker 1: lost all the family's money in a series of business
[7:44] Speaker 1: deals gone wrong, and Hill would spend the rest of
[7:47] Speaker 1: his life chasing the company and approval of rich men.
[7:51] Speaker 1: Like a lot of our other mad men, he started
[7:53] Speaker 1: his career as a journalist, but unlike the others, he
[7:57] Speaker 1: seems to have been fairly good at it, while they
[7:59] Speaker 1: each spent a year or to struggling to make journalism happen.
[8:02] Speaker 1: Hill was a financial and business reporter for seventeen years
[8:06] Speaker 1: before he got into the PR game. He even started
[8:09] Speaker 1: a couple of newspapers himself, although he struggled to keep
[8:12] Speaker 1: them afloat. Some things never change. His first foray into
[8:25] Speaker 1: PR came in nineteen twenty in Ohio, when he took
[8:28] Speaker 1: a gig creating a newsletter that Cleveland's Union Trust Company
[8:32] Speaker 1: wanted to send out to local executives. By this time,
[8:36] Speaker 1: he was the financial editor of a steel industry trade
[8:39] Speaker 1: magazine because Ohio. These jobs put him in regular contact
[8:44] Speaker 1: with executives, who complained to him constantly that most reporters
[8:48] Speaker 1: were inept at numbers. They also introduced him to a
[8:51] Speaker 1: lot of influencers and executives in the area, and eventually
[8:54] Speaker 1: Hill saw a niche that he could fill helping companies
[8:57] Speaker 1: explain themselves to reporters who he didn't get it quite
[9:01] Speaker 1: as well as he did. Hill opened up his own
[9:04] Speaker 1: firm in nineteen twenty seven, with Union Trust and Otis
[9:07] Speaker 1: Steele as his first clients. Because Hill was well liked
[9:11] Speaker 1: by local executives, word spread fast, and within a couple
[9:14] Speaker 1: months he'd built an impressive roster. It included United Alloy Steel,
[9:18] Speaker 1: Republic Steel, and Standard Oil of Ohio. The Standard Oil
[9:23] Speaker 1: account was an important win for Hill because guess what,
[9:26] Speaker 1: he was a huge Ivy Lee fan, our first featured madman.
[9:31] Speaker 1: Lee may have tapped Edward Burneize as his successor, but
[9:34] Speaker 1: John Hill was probably the more natural fit for that role.
[9:38] Speaker 1: Hill hated how flashy Berneise and many of the other
[9:41] Speaker 1: PR guys of his day were. He preferred Lee's distinguished
[9:44] Speaker 1: Southern gentleman shtick, and he emulated it. Like Lee, he
[9:49] Speaker 1: preferred to stay behind the scenes, although Hill took it
[9:52] Speaker 1: to an extreme, almost never appearing in the press. When
[9:55] Speaker 1: he did show up in public, it was always in
[9:57] Speaker 1: a conservative suit, clean shaven, hair slicked back, wire rimmed glasses.
[10:02] Speaker 1: But just when his business was starting to take off.
[10:06] Speaker 6: The tremendous crowds which you see gathered outside the Stock
[10:09] Speaker 6: Exchange are due to the greatest crash in the.
[10:12] Speaker 5: History of the New York Stock Exchange and market prices.
[10:16] Speaker 1: Hill's steel and oil clients weathered the financial storm okay,
[10:20] Speaker 1: and Republic Steel had just helped to score the firm
[10:23] Speaker 1: a whale the American Iron and Steel Institute, the trade
[10:27] Speaker 1: group for the whole industry. They requested that Hill and
[10:30] Speaker 1: Nolton open up a New York branch near their headquarters
[10:33] Speaker 1: in the Empire State Building. That same month, Franklin Delano
[10:36] Speaker 1: Roosevelt took office.
[10:38] Speaker 2: I my Well.
[10:41] Speaker 4: Doing new deal for the American Paper.
[10:47] Speaker 1: Hill hated the new deal, and so did most of
[10:50] Speaker 1: his clients. Standard Oil had him write up an advertorial
[10:53] Speaker 1: assuring people American business would be okay, and his steel
[10:56] Speaker 1: clients had the firm cranking out pamphlets emphasizing the great
[11:00] Speaker 1: relationship between steel workers and their managers. The reality, of course,
[11:05] Speaker 1: was that steel workers and their bosses had been fighting
[11:08] Speaker 1: for a long time, and America's big steel companies had
[11:12] Speaker 1: done everything they could to repress unionization. As the largest
[11:16] Speaker 1: industry in the country and the largest employer, the steel
[11:19] Speaker 1: industry kind of viewed itself as the last defense against unionization,
[11:23] Speaker 1: a protector of American business, defender of bosses everywhere. They
[11:28] Speaker 1: were helped in their efforts by near constant concern about
[11:31] Speaker 1: creeping communism in the US, Starting with the nineteen nineteen
[11:35] Speaker 1: Red Scare and continuing for decades, anti union pamphlets Helen
[11:39] Speaker 1: Nolton made for Republic Steel highlighted how union shops actually
[11:43] Speaker 1: infringed on workers' rights. A closed union shop denies the
[11:47] Speaker 1: right of the individual worker to make his own choice
[11:50] Speaker 1: as to whether he wishes to belong to a union.
[11:52] Speaker 1: It's the exact same line you see in anti union
[11:54] Speaker 1: ads today. Another hell and Olden client, the National Association
[11:58] Speaker 1: of Manufacturers, one of the earliest industry trade groups, went
[12:02] Speaker 1: beyond pamphlets to sponsor a weekly pro business, anti New
[12:06] Speaker 1: Deal radio drama called The American Family Robinson.
[12:17] Speaker 6: It's time to join the American Family Robinson again in
[12:20] Speaker 6: birch Faull.
[12:21] Speaker 7: But one thing this army situation ought to get credit
[12:24] Speaker 7: for is bringing everybody face to face with the call fax.
[12:27] Speaker 7: That's right and in order to remind the country is
[12:29] Speaker 7: something more specific. It's only business and industry that can
[12:34] Speaker 7: provide soldiers and sailors with the proper equipment.
[12:36] Speaker 4: Sure, that's what I say.
[12:38] Speaker 1: But after more than a decade of suppression, the labor
[12:41] Speaker 1: movement was gaining steam again. A few years after opening
[12:45] Speaker 1: his firm's New York office, John Hell faced his first
[12:48] Speaker 1: big challenge in pr and just like with his hero
[12:51] Speaker 1: Ivy Lee, it came in the form of a violent
[12:55] Speaker 1: labor strike. Steel Workers were starting to band together by
[12:59] Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven, forming the Steel Workers Organizing Committee within
[13:03] Speaker 1: one of the country's biggest unions, the CIO. This officially
[13:06] Speaker 1: freaked steel bosses out. The American Iron and Steel Institute
[13:10] Speaker 1: put HILLN. Nolton on the case, and they wrote up
[13:12] Speaker 1: full page ads with a manifesto for the industry. The
[13:15] Speaker 1: ads suggested that outside agitators had coerced employees into joining
[13:20] Speaker 1: the union. On the last day of June and the
[13:22] Speaker 1: first day of July nineteen thirty six, the trade group
[13:26] Speaker 1: sponsored full page ads in three hundred eighty two newspapers
[13:31] Speaker 1: in thirty four states, but the unions persisted. In nineteen
[13:35] Speaker 1: thirty seven, US Steel agreed to recognize the unions and
[13:38] Speaker 1: negotiate a contract that made it more difficult for the
[13:41] Speaker 1: other companies to resist. But there was one holdout, Little Steel,
[13:46] Speaker 1: an umbrella group that included all the smaller independent steel
[13:49] Speaker 1: companies led by a man named Tom Girdler, president of
[13:53] Speaker 1: Republic Steel, Hilen Nolton's client. They refused to have any
[13:57] Speaker 1: sort of contract with a union, and then in May
[13:59] Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven, Girdler was elected president of the trade group.
[14:04] Speaker 1: Apparently by this point he had been stockpiling weapons for months,
[14:08] Speaker 1: planning on some kind of armed battle with the union.
[14:13] Speaker 1: Later that month, a strike began at the Republic Steel
[14:15] Speaker 1: plant in Chicago.
[14:17] Speaker 6: Armed rikers and armed police in front of a South
[14:20] Speaker 6: Chicago steel plant, tear gas and clubs and bullets, casting
[14:31] Speaker 6: an ugly cloud over an American scene. Ten people dead
[14:35] Speaker 6: and ninety people injured because tempers on both sides had
[14:39] Speaker 6: overcome reason.
[14:41] Speaker 1: The union quickly braided the event the Memorial Day massacre.
[14:45] Speaker 1: They held a mass funeral in Chicago attended by hundreds
[14:49] Speaker 1: of working class residents. Then another riot broke out at
[14:52] Speaker 1: another Republic plant, this time in Youngstown, Ohio. The FDR
[14:56] Speaker 1: administration was having none of this. By October or the
[15:00] Speaker 1: National Labor Relations Spoort had ordered the companies to reinstate
[15:03] Speaker 1: more than seven thousand workers with backpay. Then the Senate
[15:07] Speaker 1: launched investigations into the steel Boss's methods because of Hill's
[15:11] Speaker 1: involvement in pushing anti union messages and ads and newspapers.
[15:14] Speaker 1: He was caught up in this investigation too. Senator Bob
[15:18] Speaker 1: Laffolette discovered that not only had John Hill placed ads,
[15:22] Speaker 1: he had successfully bribed a journalist. George Sikolski, a columnist
[15:26] Speaker 1: for the New York Herald Tribune, frequently wrote about free
[15:29] Speaker 1: enterprise and anti unionism in magazines like The Atlantic Monthly.
[15:33] Speaker 1: From nineteen thirty six to nineteen thirty eight, Sakolski received
[15:38] Speaker 1: twenty nine thousand dollars from Helen Nolton to write anti
[15:41] Speaker 1: union articles for the Steel Industry Trade Group, and it worked.
[15:45] Speaker 1: He wrote stories in prestigious newspapers and magazines about how
[15:48] Speaker 1: the riots were all the union's fault, never disclosing his
[15:52] Speaker 1: connection to Helen Milton or the steel industry. Sekulski also
[15:56] Speaker 1: regularly ranted on the radio for the National Association of
[15:59] Speaker 1: Man Manufacturers and various other pro business groups. Here he
[16:03] Speaker 1: is complaining about that terrible socialist policy, social security.
[16:08] Speaker 2: The Federal government Social Security Act passed by Congress, assigned
[16:12] Speaker 2: by the President.
[16:13] Speaker 7: Now in all the land, when we talk of that, we.
[16:16] Speaker 2: Have something very specifically for us, pretty.
[16:19] Speaker 4: Close to five billion dollars annually within the next fifteen.
[16:23] Speaker 2: Years to be met by texts which were produced increased prices,
[16:28] Speaker 2: reduced profits, and possibly even reduced employment of labor.
[16:32] Speaker 1: The dude was like a progressive era Rush Limbaugh.
[16:36] Speaker 6: Oh the girl who loves a soldier, here's the girl
[16:40] Speaker 6: who adores.
[16:42] Speaker 1: Ultimately, World War Two rendered the whole labor argument moot.
[16:45] Speaker 1: The factories were required to unionize, but there were also
[16:48] Speaker 1: kicked off, another red scare, further solidifying Hill's conservative, pro business,
[16:53] Speaker 1: anti government ideology. And it's that ideology that fueled his
[16:57] Speaker 1: work for his next big and lethal client. More on
[17:02] Speaker 1: that after the.
[17:03] Speaker 6: Break, simply conview, Oh.
[17:19] Speaker 1: World War Two had just put an end to year's
[17:21] Speaker 1: worth of labor strikes in steel mills. John Hill was
[17:25] Speaker 1: hired to help the industry through it all, but his
[17:27] Speaker 1: work on that front was basically a failure. Not only
[17:30] Speaker 1: had his clients lost the war with labor, but their
[17:33] Speaker 1: goonish tactics had been outed in the press. They looked
[17:36] Speaker 1: just like the evil bosses they were pretending really hard
[17:40] Speaker 1: not to be. A lot of people would have lost
[17:42] Speaker 1: those accounts for bungling the labor strikes. So thoroughly Hill
[17:46] Speaker 1: had read the room entirely wrong. And not only that
[17:49] Speaker 1: he'd gotten busted bribing a journalist, but by this point
[17:53] Speaker 1: the steel and oil barons who made up Hill's client
[17:55] Speaker 1: tell considered him a friend, an equal, a trusted confidant,
[18:00] Speaker 1: and he spent almost as much time managing how his
[18:02] Speaker 1: clients saw him as how the public saw them. By
[18:06] Speaker 1: this point, Hill had also learned a very important lesson.
[18:09] Speaker 1: His job was not to sell the public on any
[18:12] Speaker 1: particular product, company, or industry. It was to sell Americans
[18:17] Speaker 1: on the importance of American business in general, and particularly
[18:21] Speaker 1: big business. He was pushing ideology, creating social license for
[18:25] Speaker 1: American industry, and that meant working in Washington too. Shortly
[18:29] Speaker 1: after the war, Hill and Nolton became the first PR
[18:32] Speaker 1: firm to have an entire branch dedicated to public policy work.
[18:36] Speaker 1: The Washington office didn't have its own accounts. It existed
[18:39] Speaker 1: solely to handle government relations for the firm's New York
[18:43] Speaker 1: and Cleveland clients by this point, that meant they had
[18:46] Speaker 1: their hands in everything from energy policy to agriculture and
[18:49] Speaker 1: all points between. For clients like Texaco, Marathon Oil, Coca Cola, Monsanto,
[18:55] Speaker 1: and a big new client, the Tobacco Industry Research Committee.
[19:04] Speaker 7: Listen while I tell you a story, the tale of
[19:09] Speaker 7: the Marlborough brand. It came out of Bridge.
[19:14] Speaker 1: We're gonna spend a fair bit of time talking about
[19:16] Speaker 1: the Tobacco Industry Research Committee for a few reasons. First,
[19:20] Speaker 1: it's a really good example of the type of strategy
[19:23] Speaker 1: Hill would typically recommend for industries. Second, it shows how
[19:27] Speaker 1: a dept he and his firm were at manipulating the press.
[19:31] Speaker 1: And third, because Hill is a huge link between tobacco
[19:35] Speaker 1: and oil. Not only did he have oil clients early
[19:38] Speaker 1: on who informed some of his work on tobacco and
[19:41] Speaker 1: vice versa, but he often brought them together in the
[19:44] Speaker 1: same trade groups. R. J. Reynolds, for example, a key
[19:48] Speaker 1: member of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, also had their
[19:51] Speaker 1: research arm join the American Petroleum Institute, a client of
[19:54] Speaker 1: John Hill's by this point. And then there was the
[19:57] Speaker 1: more direct intersection which attorney Carol Muffett poin out to me.
[20:00] Speaker 5: Gas stations were the most important retail outlets for cigarettes
[20:06] Speaker 5: for decades, and for the oil companies, cigarettes were their
[20:10] Speaker 5: most important retail product other than gasoline itself.
[20:15] Speaker 1: Fascinating, right, but it makes complete sense when you think
[20:18] Speaker 1: about it, and also helps explain why there were so
[20:20] Speaker 1: many overlapping ad campaigns between the companies. Muffett says, there
[20:25] Speaker 1: are two things that make this remarkable.
[20:28] Speaker 5: One was the joint marketing strategies and documents and analysis
[20:33] Speaker 5: that the oil companies would do together with the tobacco companies.
[20:38] Speaker 1: The tobacco industry archives are filled with these strategies and reports,
[20:43] Speaker 1: and many of the joint ventures were between two Helln
[20:45] Speaker 1: Milton clients.
[20:47] Speaker 5: So by the time you get to the nineteen eighties
[20:50] Speaker 5: and nineteen nineties, we were finding joint meetings of advertising
[20:55] Speaker 5: managers from Exxon Mobil and Rjr. Or for Evron and
[21:00] Speaker 5: Philip Morris.
[21:02] Speaker 1: And these meetings were not just quick debriefs either.
[21:05] Speaker 5: They would often include detailed requirements about where the cigarettes
[21:09] Speaker 5: would be posted, what aisles they would be visible to,
[21:13] Speaker 5: ensuring that they were set up next to the candy.
[21:15] Speaker 5: One of These reports runs to two hundred pages and
[21:19] Speaker 5: includes incredibly detailed analysis that broke people down by demographics,
[21:25] Speaker 5: by neighborhoods, by socioeconomic status, with the goal of targeting
[21:31] Speaker 5: them very individually.
[21:32] Speaker 1: Muffett tells me their entanglements eventually went beyond advertising, and.
[21:36] Speaker 5: So it's perhaps unsurprising, though it's also very little known
[21:40] Speaker 5: that the oil and gas companies actually ended up as
[21:44] Speaker 5: defendants in the tobacco suit.
[21:46] Speaker 1: I did not know that, but it's true. I double
[21:49] Speaker 1: checked the tobacco industry archives and there they are Texco, Chevron, Exxon, SOO,
[21:54] Speaker 1: and more, all named defendants in the tobacco suits.
[21:57] Speaker 5: Even less understood. And the thing that I think we
[22:03] Speaker 5: found most striking was that when tobacco companies needed to
[22:09] Speaker 5: assess the toxics in their cigarettes and in cigarette smoke,
[22:13] Speaker 5: the people they turned to to do it were the
[22:15] Speaker 5: oil companies.
[22:18] Speaker 1: Hold on, what why would they do that? Well, remember,
[22:20] Speaker 1: by this point, the oil companies had had their own
[22:23] Speaker 1: air pollution issues because of smog and lead and gasoline,
[22:27] Speaker 1: so they had all the equipment necessary to do this
[22:29] Speaker 1: sort of testing at the time. And it's also worth
[22:32] Speaker 1: repeating that John Hell repped both the main oil industry group,
[22:36] Speaker 1: the American Petroleum Institute, and the mean tobacco industry group,
[22:40] Speaker 1: the Tobacco Industry Research Committee. Here's Muffett again.
[22:44] Speaker 5: And when the oil companies reported back to the tobacco
[22:48] Speaker 5: companies on the toxins they were funding in that smoke,
[22:52] Speaker 5: you know what did they do with the information? Did
[22:54] Speaker 5: they go public and say there's a massive risk here.
[22:58] Speaker 1: No, Instead, they into a joint enterprise with the oil companies,
[23:02] Speaker 1: agreeing to make cigarette filters for Big Tobacco, a product
[23:06] Speaker 1: Muffet calls one of the.
[23:07] Speaker 5: Most ubiquitous plastic pollutants in the world, cigarette filters, and
[23:13] Speaker 5: the leaders in developing them were Exxon and Shell. And
[23:17] Speaker 5: they did it because they saw a marketing opportunity and
[23:20] Speaker 5: a market opportunity in capturing the smoke.
[23:24] Speaker 1: And of course for tobacco, it wasn't just a handy
[23:27] Speaker 1: defense against rising health concerns around smoking. It was also
[23:30] Speaker 1: a chance to sell more cigarettes.
[23:33] Speaker 6: My barber is.
[23:34] Speaker 7: Always right, listen, real, which filter cigarette do you recommend?
[23:39] Speaker 6: La marras pilot. Marris makes a filter, the filter that's
[23:43] Speaker 6: full of flavor.
[23:44] Speaker 5: It's really worth recognizing that as part of the tobacco litigation.
[23:47] Speaker 5: It came out that both the filter manufacturers and the
[23:50] Speaker 5: tobacco companies understood all along that those filters were a
[23:56] Speaker 5: marketing tool, that they did virtually nothing to reduce the
[24:00] Speaker 5: toxic nature of cigarette smoke, and those filters are not
[24:06] Speaker 5: just you know, they did more than just create a
[24:09] Speaker 5: new product stream for the oil and gas companies and
[24:13] Speaker 5: creating an excuse for the tobacco industry to continue selling cigarettes.
[24:18] Speaker 5: They also started showing up in the environment over and
[24:23] Speaker 5: over as the cutting edge of the plastics crisis.
[24:28] Speaker 1: It's true, every time you see one of those inventories
[24:31] Speaker 1: from beach cleanups or big ocean plastic cleanups, one of
[24:35] Speaker 1: the top five items they collect is always cigarette butts
[24:38] Speaker 1: because of the filters. Well, of course, I know that
[24:41] Speaker 1: oil companies are in the petrochemical business and definitely linked
[24:44] Speaker 1: to plastic. I had had no idea that they had
[24:47] Speaker 1: come up with the cigarette filter or that filters were
[24:50] Speaker 1: complete bullshit, and they knew it that they were just
[24:54] Speaker 1: made to throw up a smoke screen for tobacco and
[24:56] Speaker 1: create a new revenue stream for big oil. So while
[25:03] Speaker 1: all of this back and forth is happening between the
[25:05] Speaker 1: oil guys and the tobacco guys Hill and Nelton has
[25:07] Speaker 1: their staff funding and sourcing research on all the other
[25:11] Speaker 1: things connected to lung cancer, and they're looking for scientists
[25:14] Speaker 1: to sign on to the advisory board of the Tobacco
[25:17] Speaker 1: Industry Research Committee. This was all Hill's brainchild. The tobacco
[25:22] Speaker 1: companies initially argued with him. They didn't want to do
[25:24] Speaker 1: a whole separate research committee. They'd already done their own
[25:27] Speaker 1: research and they thought that Hill should just be pushing
[25:30] Speaker 1: that instead of trying to get them to fund more studies.
[25:34] Speaker 1: They didn't need a whole independent research committee, but Hill
[25:37] Speaker 1: insisted they needed third party, independent research that would be
[25:41] Speaker 1: perceived as more credible than the company's own research by
[25:45] Speaker 1: the media. Eventually they gave in. In December nineteen fifty three,
[25:48] Speaker 1: the CEOs of all the major American tobacco companies met
[25:52] Speaker 1: with Hill at the Plaza Hotel to launch the Tobacco
[25:55] Speaker 1: Industry Research Committee. Now they just needed a reputable cancer
[25:59] Speaker 1: research as their scientific director, and that was not easy
[26:03] Speaker 1: to find. So in the first several months of the
[26:05] Speaker 1: committee's existence, its research was conducted by hillan Nolton staffers.
[26:11] Speaker 1: There are all of these internal staff memos from this
[26:13] Speaker 1: time where they're giving updates on clients, and the oil
[26:16] Speaker 1: tobacco connection is stark because you've got updates on Texaco,
[26:20] Speaker 1: followed immediately by updates on this phony research committee with
[26:24] Speaker 1: lots of the same staff on both. Eventually they hired
[26:28] Speaker 1: doctor Clarence Cook Little. He went by CECI, and Helen
[26:32] Speaker 1: Nolton proclaimed him a world renowned cancer researcher, which was
[26:36] Speaker 1: a bit of a stretch. He'd been president of the
[26:38] Speaker 1: University of Michigan and had worked for a year as
[26:41] Speaker 1: the managing director of the American Cancer Society, but he'd
[26:45] Speaker 1: never actually done any cancer research. The quote unquote cancer
[26:50] Speaker 1: lab that Little ran raised mice for actual researchers to
[26:55] Speaker 1: use in the hands of hilln Nolton, though, Little became
[26:58] Speaker 1: a widely respected res researcher, so much so that in
[27:02] Speaker 1: May nineteen fifty five, when famed journalist Edward R. Murrow
[27:06] Speaker 1: wanted to tackle the smoking controversy in a two part special,
[27:10] Speaker 1: Little was introduced like this.
[27:13] Speaker 7: The cigarette industry, aware of this fact and fully cognizant
[27:16] Speaker 7: of its responsibility, has organized the Tobacco Industry Research Committee.
[27:22] Speaker 7: Its scientific director is the eminent cancer investigator, doctor Clarence
[27:26] Speaker 7: Cook Little, head of the Jackson Memorial Laboratory at Bar.
[27:30] Speaker 6: Harbor, Maine.
[27:32] Speaker 1: The research group arranged for Murrow to talk to two
[27:34] Speaker 1: other quote unquote independent scientists, both of whom were also
[27:38] Speaker 1: on Tobacco's payroll, unbeknownst to Murrow, and the resulting documentary
[27:42] Speaker 1: actually had the effect of making the legit scientists who
[27:46] Speaker 1: hadn't gone through hillan Nelton's extensive media training look like activists,
[27:51] Speaker 1: and the industry plants looked like the serious, logical adults
[27:55] Speaker 1: in the room.
[27:56] Speaker 7: Doctor Little, have any cancer causing agents been identified? Cigarettes? No, none, whatever,
[28:04] Speaker 7: either in cigarettes or in any product of smoking as such.
[28:10] Speaker 1: Although he officially retired in nineteen sixty two, John Hill
[28:14] Speaker 1: remained very involved in his firm, going to the office
[28:17] Speaker 1: daily right up to a month before he died at
[28:20] Speaker 1: the age of eighty six in nineteen seventy seven. Hill
[28:23] Speaker 1: had stayed true to his commitment to stay out of
[28:25] Speaker 1: the press himself, and none of his industrial machinations were
[28:29] Speaker 1: well known at the time of his death. His New
[28:31] Speaker 1: York Times obituary sounds like it could have been written
[28:33] Speaker 1: about any kindly octogenarian at the time, always conscious of
[28:38] Speaker 1: his health, mister Hill lunched daily on cottage cheese and
[28:41] Speaker 1: fruit or prune whip, and claimed that he worked out
[28:44] Speaker 1: in a gym two nights a week. He reads. He
[28:47] Speaker 1: rode his own horses around his place in Pauling, New York,
[28:50] Speaker 1: weekends frequently with business executives who also loved the sport,
[28:54] Speaker 1: and spent two weeks each year bareback riding in Arizona,
[28:59] Speaker 1: yepun up and bareback writing and manipulating Americans. That's John Hill.
[29:11] Speaker 1: Coming up next week, we'll meet the couple that spawned
[29:14] Speaker 1: climate denial, and we've got two more episodes for you
[29:16] Speaker 1: this season after that, So stay tuned. Drilled is produced
[29:30] Speaker 1: and distributed by Critical Frequency. The show is reported, written
[29:34] Speaker 1: and produced by me Amy Westervelt. Our editor is Julia Ritchie.
[29:39] Speaker 1: Our editorial advisor is Raka Murphy. Sound design and score
[29:43] Speaker 1: by B Beaman. Katie Ross created the amazing artwork for
[29:47] Speaker 1: this season special. Thanks to our First Amendment Attorney James
[29:51] Speaker 1: Wheaton and the First Amendment Project. Thanks for this episode.
[29:54] Speaker 1: Also to researcher Karen Miller for her terrific book on
[29:57] Speaker 1: John Hill, the voice of business journalist Dan Ziegert for
[30:01] Speaker 1: sharing some of his reporting on Hill and pointing me
[30:04] Speaker 1: to the whole murrow of fiasco. Drilled is made possible
[30:07] Speaker 1: in part by a generous grant from the Institute for
[30:10] Speaker 1: Governance and Sustainable Development. We appreciate their support. You can
[30:14] Speaker 1: find Drilled wherever you get your podcasts. Remember to leave
[30:17] Speaker 1: us a rating or review. It really helps people find
[30:19] Speaker 1: the show. You can follow us on Twitter at we
[30:22] Speaker 1: are Drilled, and visit our website drillednews dot com for
[30:26] Speaker 1: more reporting on this subject and behind the scenes stories
[30:29] Speaker 1: from this season. Thanks for listening and we'll see you
[30:32] Speaker 1: next time.

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