Suit: Tobacco Firm Plotted Coverup

Key Philip Morris officials suggested that internal documents about sensitive research conducted at a German laboratory be destroyed and that the company take special precautions to make sure negative information be kept secret, according to documents filed Tuesday in a Minnesota lawsuit against several major tobacco companies.

One memo written in November 1977 by a Philip Morris scientist to the company’s director of research said that if studies on nicotine’s addictive properties turned out unfavorably “we will want to bury it.”

“Accordingly, there are only two copies of this memo, the one attached and the original which I have,” scientist William Dunn wrote to research director Thomas S. Osdene.

Another document made public Tuesday was an undated, unsigned, handwritten memo from Osdene’s files that Philip Morris turned over to Minnesota lawyers. The note includes the direction that “if important letters or documents have to be sent, please send them to home, where I will act on them & destroy.”

The document “appears to be” in Osdene’s handwriting, according to the brief filed by lawyers working for the Minnesota attorney general.