Insider

Lowell Bergman:
You'd better take a *good* look, because I'm getting two things: pissed off and curious.

Mike Wallace:
Will you tell him that when I conduct an interview, I sit anywhere I damn please!

Jeffrey Wigand:
F*** it. Let's go to court.

Mike Wallace:
Do me a favour, will you - spare me, for god's sake, get in the real world, what do you think? I'm going to resign in protest? To force it on the air? The answer's "no". I don't plan to spend the end of my days wandering in the wilderness of National Public Radio. That decision I've already made.

Mike Wallace:
"Mike"? Try "Mr. Wallace." We work in the same corporation, doesn't mean we work in the same profession. What are you gonna do now? You gonna finesse me? Lawyer me some more? I've been in this profession fifty f***ing years. You and the people you work for are destroying the most-respected, the highest-rated, the most-profitable show on this network!

Mike Wallace:
You cut it! You cut the guts out of what I said!

Eric Kluster:
It was a time consideration, Mike...

Mike Wallace:
Time? Bullshit! You corporate lackey! Who told you your incompetent little fingers had the requisite skills to edit me?

Jeffrey Wigand:
I told the truth.

Mike Wallace:
Who are these people?

Lowell Bergman:
Ordinary people under extraordinary pressure, Mike. What the hell do you expect? Grace and consistency?

Jeffrey Wigand:
Yes. Yes, I do. I get extremely emotional when a**holes put bullets in my mailbox!

Jeffrey Wigand:
I have to put my family's welfare on the line here, my friend! And what are you puttin' up? You're puttin' up words!

Lowell Bergman:
Words? While you've been dickin' around at some f***ing company golf tournaments, I been out in the world, giving my word and backing it up with action.

Jeffrey Wigand:
I'm just a commodity to you, aren't I? I could be anything. Right? Anything worth putting on between commercials.

Lowell Bergman:
To a network, probably, we're all commodities. To me? You are not a commodity. What you are is important.

Mike Wallace:
No that's fame. Fame has a fifteen minute half-life, infamy lasts a little longer.

Mike Wallace:
In the real world, when you get to where I am, there are other considerations.

Lowell Bergman:
Like what? Corporate responsibility? What, are we talking celebrity here?

Mike Wallace:
I'm not talking celebrity, vanity, CBS. I'm talking about when you're nearer the end of your life than the beginning. Now, what do you think you think about then? The future? In the future I'm going to do this? Become that? What future? No. What you think is "How will I be regarded in the end?" After I'm gone. Now, along the way I suppose I made some minor impact. I did Iran-Gate and the Ayatollah, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Saddam, Sadat, etcetera, etcetera. I showed them thieves in suits. I've spent a lifetime building all that. But history only remembers most what you did last. And should that be fronting a segment that allowed a tobacco giant to crash this network? Does it give someone at my time of life pause? Yeah.

Bergman's wife:
You won.

Lowell Bergman:
Yeah. What did I win?

Lowell Bergman:
You pay me to go get guys like Wigand, to draw him out. To get him to trust us, to get him to go on television. I do. I deliver him. He sits. He talks. He violates his own f***ing confidentiality agreement. And he's only the key witness in the biggest public health reform issue, maybe the biggest, most-expensive corporate-malfeasance case in U.S. history. And Jeffrey Wigand, who's out on a limb, does he go on television and tell the truth? Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we gonna air it? Of course not. Why? Because he's not telling the truth? No. Because he is telling the truth. That's why we're not going to air it. And the more truth he tells, the worse it gets!

Richard Scruggs:
I know what you're facing, Jeff. And, I think I know how you're feeling. In the Navy I flew A-6's off carriers. In combat, events have a duration of seconds, sometimes minutes. But what you're going through goes on day in and day out. Whether you're ready for it or not, week in, week out. Month after month after month. Whether you're up or whether you're down. You're assaulted psychologically. You're assaulted financially, which is its own special kind of violence because it's directed at your kids. What school can you afford? How will that affect their lives? You're asking yourself, "Will that limit what they may become?" You feel your whole family's future's compromised, held hostage. I do know how it is.

Don Hewitt:
This news division has been *villified* by the New York Times! In print, on television, for *caving* to corporate interests!

Don Hewitt:
New York Times ran a blow by blow of what we talked about behind closed doors! You f***ed us!

Lowell Bergman:
No, you f***ed you! Don't invert stuff! Big Tobacco tried to smear Wigand, you bought it. The Wall Street Journal, here: not exactly a bastion of anti-capitalist sentiment, refutes Big Tobacco's smear campaign as the lowest form of character assassination! And now, even now, when every word of what Wigand has said on our show is printed, the entire deposition of his testimony in a court of law in the State of Mississippi, the cat *totally* out of the bag, you're still standing here debating! Don, what the hell else do you need?

Don Hewitt:
Mike, you tell him.

Mike Wallace:
You f***ed up, Don.

Tobacco Lawyer:
Object!

Ron Motley:
There an echo in here? Your objection's been recorded. She typed it into her little machine over there. It's on the record. So now I'll proceed with my deposition of my witness. Does it act as a drug?

Mike Wallace:
And do you wish you hadn't come forward? Do you wish you hadn't blown the whistle?

Jeffrey Wigand:
There are times when I wish I hadn't done it. There are times when I feel com... compelled to do it. If you asked me, would I do it again, do I think it's worth it? Yeah I think its worth it.

Lowell Bergman:
What do I tell the next source when the next tough story comes along, huh? 'Hang in with us, you'll be ok maybe'? What got broken here doesn't go back together.

Lowell Bergman:
I fought for you and I still fight for you!

Jeffrey Wigand:
You fought for me? You manipulated me! Into where I am now - staring at the Brown & Williamson building, it's all dark except for the tenth floor. That's the legal department, that's where they f*** with my life!

Lowell Bergman:
Jeffrey, where are you going with this? Where are you going? (Pause) You are important to a lot of people, Jeffrey. You think about that, and you think about them. (Pause) I'm all out of heroes, man. Guys like you are in short supply.

Jeffrey Wigand:
Yeah, guys like you, too.

Jeffrey Wigand:
So, what you're saying is it wasn't enough to fire me for no good reason. Now you question my integrity? On top of the humiliation of being fired, you threaten me? You threaten my family? It never crossed my mind not to honor my agreement. And I will tell you, Mr. Sandefur... and Brown & Williamson too - f*** me? Well, f*** you!

Lowell Bergman:
I am trying to protect you, man.

Jeffrey Wigand:
Well I hope you improve your batting average.

Jeffrey Wigand:
How did a radical journalist from Ramparts Magazine end up at CBS?

Lowell Bergman:
I still do the tough stories. 60 Minutes reaches a lot of people.

Tobacco Lawyer:
Mr Motley, we have rights here.

Ron Motley:
Oh you have rights, and lefts, ups, downs and middles. So what?

Lowell Bergman:
I'm Lowell Bergmann, I'm from 60 Minutes. You know, you take the 60 Minutes out of that sentence, nobody returns your phone call.

Richard Scruggs:
I'd be lying to you if I did not tell you how important it was in a court of public opinion.

Lowell Bergman:
And I'd be lying if I did not tell, I'm about out of moves, Dick.

Debbie:
The subheading reads, 'Brown and Williamson has a 500 page dossier attacking chief critic.' It quotes Richard Scruggs calling it, 'the worse kind of an organized smear campaign against a Whistleblower'. 'A closer look at the file and independent research by this newspaper into its key claims indicate that many of the serious accusations against Mr Wigand are backed by scant or contradictory evidence'.

Mike Wallace:
And that's what cigarettes are for?

Jeffrey Wigand:
A delivery device for Nicotine.

Mike Wallace:
A delivery device for nicotine. Put it in your mouth, lit it up and you're gonna get your fix?

Jeffrey Wigand:
You're gonna get your fix.

Jeffrey Wigand:
I can't seem to find the criteria to decide. It's too big a decision to make without being resolved in my own mind.

Lowell Bergman:
Maybe things have changed.

Jeffrey Wigand:
What's changed?

Lowell Bergman:
You mean since this morning?

Jeffrey Wigand:
No, I mean since whenever.

Mike Wallace:
Am I missing something?

John Harris:
What do you mean, Mike?

Mike Wallace:
I mean, he's got a corporate secrecy agreement - give me a break! I mean, this is a public health issue! Like an unsafe airframe on a passenger jet or some company dumping cyanide into the East River, issues like that! He can talk, we can air it! They've got no right to hide behind a "corporate agreement"! Pass the milk.

Lawyer:
The unlimited checkbook. That's how Big Tobacco wins every time on everything, they spend you to death. Six hundred million a year in outside legal - Chadbourne-Park, uh, Ken Starr's firm, Kirkland & Ellis? Listen: GM and Ford, they get nailed after eleven or twelve pickups blow up, right? These clowns have never, I mean EVER...

John Harris:
Not even once.

Lawyer:
- not even with hundreds of thousands dying each year from an illness related to their product, have EVER lost a personal injury lawsuit! On this case, they'll issue gag orders, sue for breach, anticipatory breach, enjoin him, you, us, his pet dog, the dog's veterinarian, tie 'em up in litigation for 10 or 15 years, I'm telling you, they bat a thousand every time! He knows that, that's why he's not gonna talk to you.

Lowell Bergman:
What does this guy have to say that threatens these people?

Mike Wallace:
Well, it isn't that cigarrettes are bad for you.

Lowell Bergman:
Hardly new news.

Mike Wallace:
No sh*t.

Lowell Bergman:
We've got a guy who wants to talk, but he's constrained. What if he were compelled?

Mike Wallace:
Oh, torture. Great ratings.

Lowell Bergman:
I want you to tell him, in this - in these words: "Get on the f***ing phone!"

Lowell Bergman:
No, you can. Tell him to get on the f***ing phone!

Thomas Sandefur:
I joined Brown & Williamson, came up through sales. I was the best salesman they ever had, and do you know why? I never made a promise I couldn't keep.

Lowell Bergman:
Are you a businessman? Or are you a news man?

Don Hewitt:
Are you suggesting that she and Eric are influenced by money?

Lowell Bergman:
No, no of course they're not influenced by money. They work for free. And you are a volunteer executive producer.

Bergman's wife:
Get some perspective, Lowell.

Lowell Bergman:
I got perspective.

Bergman's wife:
No, you do not.

Lowell Bergman:
From my perspective, what's been going on and what I've been doing is ridiculous. It's half-measures.

Bergman's wife:
You're not listening. Really know what you're gonna do before you do it.