Informant:true Story

Chapter 1 The large gray van, its windows tinted to block the glances of the curious, pulled away from the Decatur Airport, heading toward Route 105. Inside, four foreign visitors watched as images of the modest town came into view. Working-class houses. An Assembly of God church. A man-made lake. The vast fields of corn that could be seen from the air were no longer visible, replaced instead by an entanglement of industrial plants and office buildings. These were the sights of a thousand other blue-collar neighborhoods in a thousand other Midwestern towns. Still, on this day, September 10, 1992, it was hard not to feel a slight sense of awe. For years, world leaders had seen these images, perhaps from this very van, in a virtual pilgrimage of power. In the last few months alone, this road had been traveled by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, and by Dan Quayle, the American vice president. Those men, like leaders before them, had been drawn to this out-of-the-way place in the center of America largely by one company and often by one man: Archer Daniels Midland and its influential chairman, Dwayne Andreas. Few Americans were familiar with who Andreas was or what he did. But among the world's moneyed and powerful, he and his grain processing company were known well. In Washington, anyone who mattered was acquainted with Andreasor more likely, with his money. For decades, he had been one of the country's foremost political contributors, heaping cash almost indiscriminately on Democrats and Republicansthis year alone, Andreas money would be used by both George Bush and Bill Clinton in their battle for the presidency. The largesse helped transform Andreas into one of Washington's most important men, even as he remained comfortably ensconced in its shadows. But it also thrust him into controversy. It was the $25,000 from Andreas that operatives of President Nixon laundered into the bank account of a Watergate burglar. Following the wide-ranging investigations that stemmed from the Watergate scandal, Andreas was tried and acquitted on charges of violating campaign-finance lawsbut that was for the $100,000 he gave to Nixon's 1968 rival, Hubert Humphrey. The foreign visitors traveling to ADM on this day hoped for an opportunity to meet Andreas but were uncertain if they would. At this point, they were scheduled only to speak with others in ADM management, the people who ran its day-to-day business. If all went well, the visitors expected the meeting to last some time. After all, before the day's end, there were several important things that they needed to learn. But there was also one important thing that they needed to steal. The van turned onto Faries Parkway, heading directly toward ADM's homely, sprawling complex. Yellow flowers planted along the side of the road did little to soften the effect of the property's jagged barbed-wire fence. At the main gate, the driver gave a nod to the guard before turning right toward the squat, nondescript building that housed ADM's top brass. The van came to a stop beside the seven-foot bronze statue of Ronald Reagan, mounted on a two-ton granite base, that Dwayne Andreas had erected to commemorate a 1984 visit by the then-president. Hirokazu Ikeda stepped down from the enormous vehicle, trailed closely by Kanji Mimoto, both senior executives from Ajinomoto Inc., a giant Japanese competitor of ADM. Two other Ajinomoto executives followedone Japanese, one European. Shading their eyes from the morning sun, the men headed into the building's lobby and introduced themselves to a receptionist. She placed a call, and within seconds a young, energetic man came bounding down a hallway toward them. It was Mark Whitacre, the thirty-four-year-old president of ADM's newest unit, the Bioproducts Division. HeEichenwald, Kurt is the author of 'Informant:true Story' with ISBN 9780767903264 and ISBN 0767903269.