Paul G. Dietrich

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This entry is divided

Part 1: This overview

Paul G Dietrich (Doc. Index)

Paul George Dietrich was a lawyer, editor, World Health Organisation (WHO) critic and lifelong tobacco industry lobbyist. (Don't confuse him with another Paul Dietrich who was a tobacco chemist working for the Swiss flavour firm Firmenich -- who possibly was a close relative.) This Paul George Dietrich was an attorney and Republican political insider, who worked most of his life as a lobbyist and magazine editor rather than in the law. He was a partner in many early projects with ex-ILO president-turned-lobbyist David A Morse. [ILO=International Labor Organisation]

The ILO was an important UN agency alongside the WHO (it became CIA controlled, as an anti-communism platform) These agencies were all based in Geneva, Switzerland, which was close to the primary headquarters of Philip Morris in Europe which had its research center nearby in Neuchatel.

Important background

David Morse was close friends with Warren W Furth (a deputy director of administration at the WHO), and he also had a close relationship with his own deputy and successor at the ILO, Francis Blanchard. This group all became close friends with the British aristocrat, Hamish Maxwell who ran Philip Morris Europe. In the close UN atmosphere of Geneva, they all regularly played competitive squash at a court built in the grounds of tobacco-flavour company Firmenich (who's chief US salesman was Paul Dietrich (possibly the relative)).

Two Australians joined this social group, Geoffrey C Bible and R William Murray who had arrived in Geneva working for the UN Refugee Agency. Bible became the squash club champion, and he briefly worked for Morse at the ILO, while Bill Murray became Hamish Maxwell's deputy at Philip Morris Europe. Bible was later employed by Philip Morris under Murray; and they two Australians then followed Hamish Maxwell into the newly created division of Philip Morris International -- creating a triumvirate who worked as a team as they rose through the American company. They stayed with Maxwell as his deputies when he shifted to New York, and later Murray and Bible themselves became successive presidents and chairmen of Philip Morris International. (under Maxwell's Chairmanship). The important point is that the Philip Morris group remained in touch with the UN group when they all ended up in the USA.

Lobbying for Philip Morris

[SEE THE DOCUMENT TIMELINE FOR ORIGINAL DOCUMENT]

In the 1980s, the WHO became the major global health agency loudly proclaiming an anti-smoking position. Philip Morris then employed Morse (now a Washington lawyer with the international lawfirm Surrey & Morse to create a number of organisations which would specialise in promoting the idea that the World Health Organisation (WHO) was misdirecting its efforts and wasting its funding because it was constantly promoting legislative measures to limit smoking and the advertising of cigarettes. Morse created for them the Institute of International Health & Development (IIHD) which was nominally a subsidiary of the Catholic University of Washington. (Morse was a power within the Knights of Malta and the US Catholic Church; Paul G Dietrich and his wife Laura Jordan Dietrich were also important within the Knights)

Paul G Dietrich had originally run the Missouri Council for Economic Development, then spent 4 years (Jan 77-81) as a Republican Assemblyman in the State House. He left the Assembly (after failing to gain Primary selection) on January 3 1981. Samuel Landfather had set up a think-tank known as the National Center for Legislative Research in 1989 and Dietrich joined him as President and editor of their Legislative Policy (quarterly free-mail) journal. The Tobacco Institute paid them to publish articles. Later the NCLR seems to have come under Dietrich's control and they shifted the operation to Washington DC.

Dietrich had offices within the premises of Surrey & Morse until Morse's premature death. The law office business was then acquired/merged with/by Jones Day Reavis & Pogue. Dietrich transferred over to their offices while retaining control of the IIHD and running his own lobby business. Later in 1983 he transferred his office to another Washington DC lawfirm, Squire Sanders & Dempsey.

Both Dietrich and Morse, served on the board of directors of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta-Federal Association (SMOM) better known as the Knights of Malta. One political and lobbying value of having sway within the Knight is that the order dispensed Catholic knighthoods in the USA. Morse and Dietrich were both members of the board of trustees of the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Dietrich's only unselfish contribution to philanthropy was via a position on the National Advisory Board of Harvard University's, AIDS Institute. It did, however, give him something to boast about in his C/V.

Dietrich's wife, Laura Jordan Dietrich, is even more intriguing. She was a former assistant to John Bolton at the U.S. State Department. Later she became President Reagan's US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Right.

Most commentators, however, agree that she was a recruiter and trainer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Dietrich's Puff Piece

He claims to have been:

• President of the Catholic University of America's Institute for International Health & Development (The institute only existed as space on the desk of his office)
• Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the famous art-oriented culture magazine Saturday Review from 1984 to 1987. This was unfortunately true: Philip Morris secretly purchased this top public-interest magazine via lawyers Shook Hardy & Bacon. Dietrich and some associates ran the magazine as subtle tobacco industry propaganda (explained below)
• Publisher of the quarterly journal, International Health And Development. He doesn't say that this was also run for Philip Morris. And when the tobacco industry pulled the financial plug on this journal and the "Saturday Review", his partners and production staff (all longterm contractors) took over and ran the Philip Morris Magazine to work out their contracts.
• He also says that he was a former television producer for both CBS television and Public Broadcasting (This is exaggerated, but he did have some experience in TV production operations. However it is difficult to know to what degree this was propagenda for corporations, or ultra-libertarian views.)

Dietrich served four years as a Republican State Representative for St Louis in the Missouri General Assembly. In his spare time he was the Editor of a book titled A Guide to American Foreign Policy And National Defense. (This was a subsidiary operation of the NCLR 0 which also ran the John Davis Lodge Center for International Studies and the Congressional Policy Institute)

Dietrich became a major force in promoting resistance to smoking reduction measures, mainly because he had all the right connections for a lobbyist -- in government circles (military and CIA); in the Republican side of politics; and in the corporate-oriented media (print and TV). He was a frequent contributor to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal (mainly attacking the WHO) and he has written extensively on the subject of international economic development. He was also paid generously by both Philip Morris and British-American Tobacco to run media tours and lecture courses around the world. He obviously enjoyed travel, and he volunteered his services to run media and staff-lobbying training programs at various exotic sites around the world

However there is no doubt that Dietrich's main role when servicing the tobacco industry was to mount sustained political attacks on the World Health Organization (WHO). The Tobacco Institute and Philip Morris had a number of contract lobbyists who tried to pressure the WHO to abandon anti-smoking programs and focus on other disease conditions. He was also used as a political ambassador to open doors to Ministers of Health in various nations, and to influence their anti-smoking programs. .

Tobacco-funded activities

Over the years Dietrich operated in many ways.

• He was an attorney with the tobacco industry law firm of Surrey & Morse which was absorbed by Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, based in Washington, D.C. Walter Sterling Surrey was a life-long associate of the US intelligence service.
• For some time he ran a pseudo-policy organization National Center for Legislative Research which was funded by the Tobacco Institute ($30,000 pa) to publish pro-tobacco articles. He was editor of the NCLR journal "Legislative Policy" (a free-distribution magazine to federal and state legislatures - funded by major corporations) [[2]]
• With Morse and his wife Laura Jordan Dietrich, he ran the Institute for International Health & Development based at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. This was a front-organization entirely funded by Philip Morris to publish and distribute their fake scientific conference proceedings without revealing the source. The IIHD also published a quarterly anti-WHO magazine and engage in general anti-WHO activities. etc.
• He was actively involved with both David A Morse and Andrew Whist in the tobacco-front operations of the American European Community Association, the New York Society for International Affairs and Libertad (all controlled by Philip Morris)
• He served as publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Saturday Review, a popular American cultural magazine which was briefly owned and controlled by Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, and the Tobacco Institute.
• He became editor and publisher of the Philip Morris Magazine (A free distribution, waiting-room glossy with a wide circulation)
• He wrote anti-WHO editorial material for the Wall Street Journal and International Herald Tribune as a paid consultant for both Philip Morris and British American Tobacco, and regularly lectured to journalists during tobacco industry junkets to various exotic locations.
• He became a member of the Development Committee of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) while working actively as a tobacco lobbyist against WHO and PAHO anti-smoking programs.

Non-tobacco activities

Dietrich has always operated in the shadowy area between right-wing politics, State Department (and CIA) operations, tobacco and other corporate promotions. He had impeccable Republican-political and bureaucratic connections.

• Former Director, International Foreign Policy Association

Before becoming a tobacco lobbyist:

• He was president of the Missouri Council for Economic Development
• He spent four years as a state legislator, serving as a House Representative from the city of St. Louis in Missouri's General Assembly.
• For a few years he headed the Fund for a Conservative Majority (FCM) which raised nearly $6 million for various Reagan primary and presidential campaigns
• He was briefly a television producer for CBS and Public Broadcasting (supposedly).
• He worked briefly in the offices of the firm Squire, Sanders & Dempsey (this was probably a subsidiary of Jones Day Reavis & Pogue which absorbed Surrey & Morse)

Miscellaneous:

• He is listed as chairman of the International Hospital Committee of the Order of Malta-Federal Association, in Washington.
• He provides services to the Knights of Malta. (SMOM)
• He is also still a member of the board of trustees of Catholic University of America.
• He was editor of both the Reuters Emerging Market Guides and the Reuters Asian Stock Sourcebook.
• He now operates in business the manager of Foxhall Capital Investment funds and a couple of other similar capital and investment funds with operations in the USA and in various tax shelters. He promotes himself as an international financial investment expert. [3]
• He is a member of the National Advisory Board of Harvard University School of Public Health's Aids Institute.
• He a member of the Advisory Group of International Health Systems Assessment of the New York Academy of Sciences.
• He claims to be a member of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Foundation
• He is also and active member of the Federalist Society
• He was on the Board, and has been working on television programs through the ultra right-wing Templeton Foundation. His term expired in December, 2008.

General Information

A December, 1991 issue of the tobacco industry newsletter "Infotopics" contains an article describing a meeting in Bariloche, Argentina of the Association of Tobacco Manufacturers and Importers of Latin America. Dietrich appeared as a speaker at this conference along with two tobacco industry consultants and one of the industry's most aggressive science manipulators:

• Dr. Philip Witorsch, director of the Department of Environmental Medicine and Toxicology of George Washington University in the U.S. Witorsch ran the notorious consulting group known as IAPAG with Sorrel Schwartz and Nancy Balter
• Professor Jean Boddewyn of the marketing department of the City University of New York
• British American Tobacco's scientific adviser Dr. Sharon Boyse, from London.

According to the newsletter, at the meeting, Dietrich "criticized the World Health Organization's heavy bureaucracy as well as its campaigns about smoking, wearing seat belts and the environment. He also claimed that the Japanese, who smoke more than many other national groups, also live longer."

Tobacco industry documents show how Dietrich carried out a strategy developed by Philip Morris in its Boca Raton Action Plan, in attempting to re-direct the focus of the World Health Organization away from tobacco, and to thwart the WHO's tobacco control initiatives,

Paul Dietrich was used by the tobacco companies as a seemingly independent journalist and international affairs specialist to advance anti-WHO views through speeches and publications."
"Dietrich had long relationships with tobacco companies, but did not disclose this publicly, identifying himself instead as President of the Institute for International Health & Development, or as a member of the Development Committee of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), an organization that also serves as WHO's Regional Office for the Americas."

In an October 11, 1994 editorial printed in the Times, Dietrich excoriated the WHO for supposedly misdirecting its priorities and neglecting diseases like tuberculosis malaria, and writing,

"With modern vaccines and medicines now available to prevent many killer diseases, the misallocation of resources is often the only obstacle to saving lives. Yet the WHO devotes less than 1 per cent of its regular budget to malaria, despite describing the disease as the "most serious health problem in the poorest areas of the world."

This entry is divided

Part 1: This overview

Paul G Dietrich (Doc. Index)

References

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