A whiff of tobacco about Bush's new man in Oz

[KiwiCoromandel]

IT HAS been 19 months since we've had an American ambassador in Canberra, yet despite this hiatus the relationship between the two countries is as chummy as ever.

Today Robert McCallum arrives as the representative of the most unconvincing US president in living memory. His old Yale pal George Bush inveigled him out of the Atlanta law firm Alston & Bird and invited him to take a political position at the Department of Justice in Washington, where eventually he became third-most senior officer. Now it's Canberra.

In his wake in Washington there is a small lake of unresolved litigation that has its source in the lengthy and expensive case that the Department of Justice started (in Bill Clinton's era) against the big cigarette manufacturers - USA v Philip Morris et al.

This was a huge action, in which the government alleged that the tobacco companies knew of the lethal consequences of their trade and yet not only sought to cover that up but to fraudulently entice young people into the habit. Originally the department sought a penalty of $US130 billion payable at $US5.2 billion a year over 24 years. The idea was that this would fund a nationwide "quit smoking" program.

At the eleventh hour, the Justice Department lawyers were instructed to ask the court for a penalty of $US10 billion at a rate of $US2 billion a year for five years.

The person who gave that instruction is America's new boy in Canberra, Robert McCallum. He has argued ever since that his intervention was not political and that his relationship with the White House and the fact that his old law firm acted for tobacco interests had nothing to do with it. The reason he sought this reduction was to make the penalty "forward looking, focused on future frauds by the defendants" and therefore appeal proof.

more here.....

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/a-whiff...5407952564.html

image:www.usdoj.gov:Robert McCallum..new American ambassador to Australia...just a whiff of tobacco?