Spears, Alexander W.
This is a 1996 memo from the tobacco industry-funded policy group called "Frontiers of Freedom." Frontiers of Freedom was created by Malcolm Wallop, a Republican ex-Senator from Wyoming. In this memo, Jeff Taylor of Frontiers writes to Alexander Spears of Lorillard to solicit funding. Taylor describes the activities in which Frontiers of Freedom engaged to attack the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's efforts to regulate the tobacco industry. The memo also shows how Frontiers managed to generate a clamor among Congressmembers for the praise of the relatively new group. Wallop writes,
"One sure gauge of our growth took place recently when we presented 15 members of Congress with our 'Defender of Freedom' award. When we returned to the office, we had calls from a handful of other Members asking why they had not been recognized by Frontiers."
One of the "Achievements" Frontiers lists for 1996 was Wallop's guest-hosting of the Armstrong Williams talk show. Armstrong Williams was recently revealed to have accepted $240,000 in taxpayer funds from the Bush administration to comment positively on his show about Bush's "No Child Left Behind" education act. A USA Today article about the scandal can be seen at
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-01-06-williams-whitehouse_x.htm
Other policy topics on which Frontiers of Freedom was active include privatizing Social Security, privacy and anti-terrorism legislation (and, ironically, this was all back in 1996).