The Insider Quotes

Tobacco Lawyer: Dr. Wigand, I am instructing you not to answer that question in accordance to the terms of the contractual obligations undertaken by you not to disclose any information about your work at the Brown and Williamson tobacco company, and in accordance with the force and effect of the temporary restraining order that has been entered against you by the court in the

State of Kentucky. That means you don't talk! Mr. Motley, we have rights here.
Ron Motley: Boy, you got rights... and lefts. Ups and downs and middles. So what? You don't get to instruct anything around here! This is not North Carolina, not South Carolina, nor Kentucky! This is the sovereign State of Mississippi's proceeding. WIPE THAT SMIRK OFF YOUR FACE! Dr. Wigand's

deposition will be part of this record! And I'm gonna take my witness' testimony whether the hell you like it or not!

Lowell Bergman: I fought for you and I still fight for you!
Jeffrey Wigand: You fought for me? You manipulated me! Into where I am now - staring at the Brown & Williamson building, it's all dark except for the tenth floor. That's the legal department, that's where they fuck with my life!
Lowell Bergman: Jeffrey, where are you going

with this? Where are you going? (Pause) You are important to a lot of people, Jeffrey. You think about that, and you think about them. (Pause) I'm all out of heroes, man. Guys like you are in short supply.
Jeffrey Wigand: Yeah, guys like you, too.

Mike Wallace: [after watching a preview of the "60 Minutes" Wigand interview that has been edited] Where's the rest? Where the hell's the rest?
[we see Don Hewitt and Helen Caperelli coming out of a room to see Mike shouting at Kluster in disbelief]
Mike Wallace: [to Eric Kluster] You cut it! You cut the guts out of what I said!
Eric

Kluster: It was a time consideration, Mike.
Mike Wallace: Time? BULLSHIT! You corporate LACKEY! Who told you your incompetent little fingers had the requisite skills to edit me! I'm trying to band-aid a situation here, and you're too dim to...
[Mike is suddenly interrupted by Helen Caperelli, who walks up to him and Kluster]
Helen

Caperelli: Mike... Mike... Mike...
Mike Wallace: [to Helen Caperelli] Mike? "Mike." Try "Mr. Wallace". We work in the same corporation doesn't mean we work in the same profession. What are you going to do now? You're gonna finesse me, lawyer me some more? I've been in this profession 50 FUCKING YEARS! You, and the people you work for, are destroying the

most-respected, the highest-rated, the most-profitable show on this network!

[Jeffrey won't answer the phone, Lowell is on the phone to the manager of the hotel he is at]
Lowell Bergman: I want you to tell him, in this - in these words: "Get on the fucking phone!"
The Hotel Worker: I can't say that.
Lowell Bergman: No, you can. Tell him to get on the fucking phone!
The Hotel Worker: He told me to tell you to

"Get on the... fucking phone!"

Lowell Bergman: This news division has been *villified* by the New York Times! In print, on television, for *caving* to corporate interests!
Don Hewitt: New York Times ran a blow by blow of what we talked about behind closed doors! You fucked us!
Lowell Bergman: No, you fucked you! Don't invert stuff! Big Tobacco tried to smear

Wigand, you bought it. The Wall Street Journal, here: not exactly a bastion of anti-capitalist sentiment, refutes Big Tobacco's smear campaign as the lowest form of character assassination! And now, even now, when every word of what Wigand has said on our show is printed, the entire deposition of his testimony in a court of law in the State of Mississippi, the cat *totally* out of the bag, you're

still standing here debating! Don, what the hell else do you need?
Don Hewitt: Mike, you tell him.
Mike Wallace: You fucked up, Don.

Lowell Bergman: You pay me to go get guys like Wigand, to draw him out. To get him to trust us, to get him to go on television. I do. I deliver him. He sits. He talks. He violates his own fucking confidentiality agreement. And he's only the key witness in the biggest public health reform issue, maybe the biggest, most-expensive corporate-malfeasance case in U.S. history. And

Jeffrey Wigand, who's out on a limb, does he go on television and tell the truth? Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we gonna air it? Of course not. Why? Because he's not telling the truth? No. Because he is telling the truth. That's why we're not going to air it. And the more truth he tells, the worse it gets!

Mike Wallace: In the real world, when you get to where I am, there are other considerations.
Lowell Bergman: Like what? Corporate responsibility? What, are we talking celebrity here?
Mike Wallace: I'm not talking celebrity, vanity, CBS. I'm talking about when you're nearer the end of your life than the beginning. Now, what do you

think you think about then? The future? In the future I'm going to do this? Become that? What future? No. What you think is "How will I be regarded in the end?" After I'm gone. Now, along the way I suppose I made some minor impact. I did Iran-Gate and the Ayatollah, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Saddam, Sadat, etcetera, etcetera. I showed them thieves in suits. I've spent a lifetime building all

that. But history only remembers most what you did last. And should that be fronting a segment that allowed a tobacco giant to crash this network? Does it give someone at my time of life pause? Yeah.

Jeffrey Wigand: I can't seem to find the criteria to decide. It's too big a decision to make without being resolved in my own mind.
Lowell Bergman: Maybe things have changed.
Jeffrey Wigand: What's changed?
Lowell Bergman: You mean since this morning?
Jeffrey Wigand: No, I mean since

whenever.

Lowell Bergman: In all that time, Mike, did you ever get out a plane, walk into a room and find that a source for a story changed his mind? Lost his heart? Walked out on us? Not one fucking time. You want to know why?
Mike Wallace: I see a rhetorical question on the horizon.
Lowell Bergman: I'm gonna tell you why: because when I tell

someone I'm gonna do something, I deliver.

Richard Scruggs: I know what you're facing, Jeff. And, I think I know how you're feeling. In the Navy I flew A-6's off carriers. In combat, events have a duration of seconds, sometimes minutes. But what you're going through goes on day in and day out. Whether you're ready for it or not, week in, week out. Month after month after month. Whether you're up or whether you're down.

You're assaulted psychologically. You're assaulted financially, which is its own special kind of violence because it's directed at your kids. What school can you afford? How will that affect their lives? You're asking yourself, "Will that limit what they may become?" You feel your whole family's future's compromised, held hostage. I do know how it is.

Lowell Bergman: Alright... ABC Telemarketing Company?
Jeffrey Wigand: ABC...?
Lowell Bergman: ABC Telemarketing Company.
Jeffrey Wigand: A can opener! A $39.95 can opener. I cancelled payment... it was junk. You ever bounce a check, Lowell? You ever look at another woman's tits? You ever cheat a little on your

taxes? Whose life, if you look at it under a microscope, doesn't have any flaws...?
Lowell Bergman: Well that's the whole point, Jeffrey. That's the whole point. Anyone's. Everyone's. They are gonna look under every rock, dig up every flaw, every mistake you've ever made. They are going to distort and exaggerate everything you've ever done, man. Don't you understand?

Jeffrey Wigand: What does this have to do with my testimony?
Lowell Bergman: That's not the point.
Jeffrey Wigand: What does this have to do with my testimony? I told the truth! It's valid and true and provable...!
Lowell Bergman: That's not the fucking point, whether you told the truth or not!... Hello?

Jeffrey Wigand: I told the truth... I told the truth... I've got to teach class. I've got to go. I've got to teach class.
Lowell Bergman: And I've got to refute every fucking accusation made in this report before The Wall Street Journal runs... I am trying to protect you, man.
Jeffrey Wigand: Well, I hope you improve your batting

average.