The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

164 the world according to monsantoThe revolving door also moves people from the regulatory agencies toMonsanto. We have already seen that Linda Fisher was appointed Monsantovice president for governmental affairs in 1995 after serving as assistantadministrator of the EPA, and William Ruckelshaus, who headed theagency from May 1983 to January 1985, later joined the company’s board ofdirectors. Similarly, Michael Friedman, former deputy director of the FDA,was hired by Monsanto’s pharmaceutical subsidiary Searle.But the flow of people is even stronger in the other direction, from Monsantoto governmental or intergovernmental agencies. Recall that in 1989Margaret Miller moved from the company’s labs to the FDA. Her colleagueLidia Watrud joined the EPA. Virginia Meldon, former Monsanto publicrelations director, was hired by the Clinton administration. More recently,Rufus Yerxa, former chief counsel for Monsanto, was appointed U.S. representativeto the World Trade Organization (WTO) in August 2002, and inJanuary 2005, Martha Scott Poindexter was hired by the Senate Committeeon Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry after serving as director of governmentalaffairs for Monsanto’s Washington office. Finally, Robert Fraley, oneof the “discoverers” of Roundup Ready soybeans, who became a Monsantovice president, was named a technical adviser to USDA.Dan Glickman: “I Had a Lot of Pressure on Me”“You know, the revolving door is not just in agriculture. It tends to be inmany, many areas, finance areas, health care.” These were the words not ofan anti-GMO activist but of Dan Glickman, Bill Clinton’s secretary of agriculturefrom March 1995 to January 2001, whom I interviewed in Washingtonon July 17, 2006. Known for having been a strong advocate ofbiotechnology, he had been familiar with the USDA long before takingcharge of it: he had represented Kansas in Congress for eighteen years andchaired the House Agriculture Committee.When he arrived at this strategic department, which then had an annualbudget of $70 billion and more than 100,000 employees throughout thecountry, it had changed a good deal since being established in 1862 by AbrahamLincoln, who called it the “people’s department,” because it was supposedto be at the service of farmers and their families, then 50 percent ofthe population. One hundred and forty years later, its many detractors call it