The Informant

One night in early November, 1992, the high-ranking ADM executive did something extraordinary when he confessed to FBI agent Brian Shepard (played by Scott Bakula) that ADM executives-including Whitacre himself-had routinely met with competitors to fix the price of lysine, a food additive. It was initially Whitacre’s wife (played by Melanie Lynskey) who forced Whitacre to become a whistleblower by threatening to go to the FBI herself if he would not have informed the authorities of ADMs illegal price-fixing activities. That meeting marked the first time that a participant in a price fixing cartel had ever voluntarily tipped off law-enforcement officials about a scheme. After informing the FBI, he assisted Dean Paisley (portrayed by Allan Havey), Brian Shepard, and Robert Herndon (played by Joel McHale) in gathering evidence by clandestinely taping the cartels activity in business meetings in locations as far as Tokyo, Paris, Mexico City, and Hong Kong. During Whitacre’s undercover work that spanned almost three years, the FBI collected hundreds of hours of video and audio tapes that documented crimes committed by executives from around the world fixing the prices of food additives in the largest price-fixing case in history at the time. The film portrays that Whitacre went far beyond the call of duty and was one of the best informants ever. At one point, the FBI needed him to tape meetings in Japan, but Whitacre was not allowed to use the government’s equipment. Japan was not U.S. jurisdiction. Brian Shepard and Robert Herndon asked him to purchase his own equipment at a Radio Shack. If Whitacre was arrested in Japan for taping the meetings, there is nothing the FBI could have done to help him. Knowing that, Whitacre went ahead and purchased the tape recorder and tapes, and did exactly what he was asked to do in Japan.

In a stunning turn of events immediately following the covert portion of the case in 1995, headlines around the world reported that the whistleblower defrauded $9 (or maybe $11.5) million from his company at the same period of time he was secretly working for the FBI and taping his co-workers. No sooner did an army of federal agents stage a dramatic raid on ADM’s Illinois headquarters, than the company hit back with damning evidence that the government’s star witness had his own agenda. Whitacre became delusional with the FBI in his failed attempt to save himself. After a suicide attempt, Whitacre and the FBI learned that he was suffering from manic-depression, also known as bipolar disorder with the resulting grandiosity and embellishments in full bloom. Before the ADM price fixing trial began, the FBI learned that their star witness was suffering from mental illness.

The film focuses on Whitacre’s meltdown which occurred from the pressures of working for the FBI. It goes into great detail about Whitacre’s bizarre behavior and how he cracked under pressure working undercover. After working undercover for years, he became extremely manic, stopped sleeping during most nights, and was seen using a gas leaf blower on his driveway during a thunderstorm at three o’clock in the morning. A vintage bipolar symptom, Whitacre attempted suicide a few months later, but he was saved by his groundskeeper.

Whitacre–who is extremely well educated with B.S. and M.S. from Ohio State and a Ph.D. from Cornell University in nutritional biochemistry–was still the most improbable figure of the story. With his extremely poor judgment associated with bipolar disorder that became worse the longer he worked undercover, he believed up to the end that he would become chief executive officer of ADM when the dust settled. His wife tried to convince him otherwise. He also became peculiarly suggestible as his mental state diminished. For example, after seeing the movie, ”The Firm”, he imitated its hero, Mitch McDeere played by Tom Cruise, and began taping the FBI agents and storing the tapes for later use.

In the end, because Whitacre violated his immunity agreement with the government, he was also charged for price-fixing, the same case that he exposed for the FBI, in addition to wire fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering. In order to save Whitacre, his first attorney, James Epstein, presented a sterling performance to the top U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials convincing them that the government was not duped by Mark Whitacre, but instead the government created him. Whitacre was the highest-ranked executive to ever turn whistleblower. Epstein emphasized that Whitacre was not trained for FBI undercover work; he was simply thrown in there without any training whatsoever and without any support to prevent him from cracking under pressure. He argued that FBI undercover agents get training for several years, and still do not go undercover longer than a year because they can crack due to the pressure. Whitacre, without training went undercover for almost three years. Epstein told the DOJ officials that he would go public in a trial with everything that Whitacre went through for three years working undercover, and to only be punished after he helped break one of the largest white-collar cases in history. He convinced the government that Whitacre solved a billion dollar case for the FBI, and that the case was a hundred-fold larger than Whitacre’s fraud. Epstein was successful in getting a very light sentence for Whitacre. He saved Whitacre. However, Whitacre, with his manic-depression fully out of control by then, saw it differently and he fired Epstein because he was not willing to do any jail time.

Whitacre then hired another attorney and they distanced themselves from the government where Whitacre was no longer of value to them as a witness. The government used the tapes in the ADM trials, but not Whitacre. In turn, Whitacre received a federal prison sentence that was three-times longer than the white-collar criminals he exposed in a much larger criminal conspiracy. Kurt Eichenwald, author of ”The informant” which was the source for this film, and several FBI agents adamantly disagreed with the nine-year sentence that Whitacre received. The story ends with the three FBI agents, and a former prosecutor involved with the case, working on their attempt to obtain clemency or a presidential pardon for Whitacre in return for his substantial assistance with one of the largest and most important white-collar cases in U.S. history.

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