Vanity Fair magazine coverage of the Jeffrey Wigand story

TERM

Jeffrey Wigand is the whistleblower and alleged hero who was a top-level executive at Brown Williamson Tobacco in the late eighties and early nineties who illegally breached two separate confidentiality agreements Tobacco in the late eighties and early nineties who illegally breached two separate confidentiality agreements by leaking trade secrets to a television network (CBS ) and the federal government . Wigand is the son of a mechanical engineer , a dad who stressed independence he grew up in a strict Catholic home in the Bronx , the oldest of five children . A gifted

student , he flourished in the quiet atmosphere of science labs and planned to study medicine , until he exploded at home and announced that he was dropping out of college to join the Air Force . In 1961 Wigand was posted to Misawa , an American base in Japan where he worked in the base hospital O .R . He learned Japanese and , a jogger at college became acquainted with martial arts . Back in the States , he continued his education at the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences , earning his doctorate with distinction . He began work at a health-care company . He met his wife , Lucretia , in 1981 at a sales conference at Ortho Diagnostic Systems , a subsidiary of Johnson Johnson , where he was a director of marketing . They married in 1986 Wigand moved up the corporate ladder into more responsible positions and work stress . A perfectionist , his tendency to say what was on his mind did not endear him...