A PhD from Cornell, a lucrative career at a Fortune 500 company, a 3 year stint as an FBI informant, and almost 10 years in federal prison.. Mark Whitacre's story as described by Kurt Eichenwald is as bizarre as it is true.
Eichenwald takes the reader through Whitacre's role in the biggest antitrust case ever tried in the United States. Whitacre's employer, ADM, is a global supplier of agricultural products. In their own words, "the competitors are our friends, the customer are our enemies" - and in the spirit of this prinicple, ADM engaged in a price fixing scheme with some of their largest international competitors. That may sound humdrum, but Eichenwald's description of the FBI investigation, that involved secret tapings of top executives at these price fixing meetings, across 5 different countries for 3 years, is only the beginning of a complex case that has more twists and turns than a John Grisham novel. But it's even better than a John Grisham novel, because it's all true! The first half of the book focuses on the FBI investigation and Whitacre's role as an informant. There is chapter after chapter of incriminating evidence which the author diseminates in an engaging narrative.
And it doesn't end there. Whitacre's credibility as a key witness for the prosecution is called into question when allegations of fraud and money laundering are brought against him. Eichenwald sifts through mountains of research material - audio tapes, video tapes, interviews, court documents - to examine Whitacre's motivation as a whistle blower in light of all these accusations. Eichenwald does a good job of being unbiased and laying out the evidence as it is. It's for the reader to judge whether Whitacre is an unsung hero, a crook, someone with serious mental health issues, or simply human.
