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TESTIMONY OF DAVID W. OGDEN 

September 5, 2001

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I am pleased to respond to the Committee's request that I testify about how the Department of Justice managed United States v. Philip Morris during my tenure at DOJ.

I served in the Department of Justice from August 1995 until January 2001, first in the Deputy Attorney General's office, then as Counselor and Chief of Staff to the Attorney General, and finally from February 1999 through January 2001 as Acting Assistant Attorney General and then Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Division.

While on the Attorney General's staff, I represented the Department in the Administration's efforts to work with the Congress on the enactment of comprehensive tobacco legislation in 1998. During the consideration of legislation, the Department put on hold its consideration of a Justice Department lawsuit against the cigarette manufacturers. When the legislative effort collapsed in the summer of 1998, the Department began more seriously evaluating the merits of such a lawsuit. Attorney General Reno had previously indicated that she did not believe the United States could recover from cigarette manufacturers for Medicaid expenditures (as the states had in their $240 billion settlement), but she was interested in whether the United States could recover expenditures under Medicare and other federal healthcare programs and obtain meaningful injunctive relief. In December 1998, the Attorney General concluded that there were substantial legal theories upon which a lawsuit by the United States against the major cigarette manufacturers could be based, but that much work needed to be done to decide the specific shape of any lawsuit that would be filed.

I was appointed Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division on February 1, 1999. One of my tasks was to establish a process to ensure a full evaluation of such a lawsuit and to make a recommendation to the Attorney General. Soon after I arrived, we completed the process begun by my predecessor to establish the Tobacco Litigation Team . . .

Mr. Chairman, in closing I would like to say that I consider this to be a very important lawsuit. Proceeding under established legal principles, it calls upon the federal courts to send the message that businesses may not operate by defrauding the public about deadly and addictive products and expect to profit from it. It also calls upon the courts to fashion injunctive relief to address a national health crisis born of decades of fraud, and to stop the cigarette companies from continuing to market cigarettes -- and their cycle of addiction, disease and death -- to America's youth.

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