The Secret Affair of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Philip Morris

From the Center for Media and Democracy:

The best-kept secret in the halls of Congress -- until today -- may have been the extent to which New York's new senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, helped cigarette maker Philip Morris during her former employment as an attorney with the global law firm Davis, Polk & Wardwell. Information about her relationship with the cigarette maker wasn't included in her official biography or her campaign materials, but on Friday, March 27, 2009, the New York Times published an article describing in detail how Gillibrand, under her maiden name Kirsten Rutnik, was involved at high levels in the legal affairs of Philip Morris.

In 1998, as an attorney at Davis Polk, Gillibrand served on Philip Morris' Privilege and Crime Fraud Committee, an elite group of attorneys from both inside and outside Philip Morris. Some of Gillibrand's colleagues on the Committee were full partners in their respective law firms, which reveals the respect she earned in her service to the company.

*snip*

Senator Gillibrand was also involved with legal matters at PM's overseas lab in Cologne, Germany, Institut Fur Biologische Forschung, (or Institute for Biological Research, known inside PM as INBIFO). At this laboratory PM studied topics such as the health effects of inhaling secondhand smoke, and the role of tobacco in forming cancerous tumors. Performing such sensitive research in a foreign country allowed PM to keep the results beyond the reach of the United States government, news media and plaintiffs’ lawyers.

A former colleague of Gillibrand's at Davis Polk, Vincent Chang, told the Times that Davis, Polk lawyers were permitted to decline to work on the tobacco cases if they had a moral or ethical objection to the work. However, Ms. Gillibrand did not decline to work for PM, a company whose products contribute to the untimely deaths of over 400,000 Americans annually, and millions more worldwide. Instead, she represented the tobacco company with skill and zeal enough to make her a highly respected member of PM's legal team.

http://prwatch.org/node/8298

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Too many DUers have fallen for this Blue Dog's ruse......she is not a liberal or progressive. Neither is Carolyn McCarthy who's running against her but that's another story.

uh huh...

Al Gore took tobacco money years after his sister died of lung cancer.

Anyway..

"As a member of Congress, Senator Gillibrand has a record of supporting strong measures to reduce tobacco use. Senator Gillibrand several times voted for legislation, now law, to significantly increase federal tobacco taxes to fund expansion of the State Childen's Health Insurance Program. As a member of the House, she also co-sponsored and voted for legislation to grant the FDA authority over the manufacturing, marketing and sale of tobacco products."
- Matthew L. Myers, President, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids

1. Your source quotes the NY Republican party.
2. This discussion has been had on DU several times. No matter how many times you pout about it, Gillibrand is the Senator from New York


What more do you think you can add?

lets see what happens to each in 2010.

Jon Cooper has never garnered more than 9,782 votes in any election and typically raised about $40,000 for his Suffolk Legislature campaigns. Now he's weighing a Democratic primary challenge to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a race that could pit him against the state's political heavyweights and would probably cost at least $25 million....

In 2007 Cooper became the first elected official in New York State to endorse Barack Obama's presidential campaign, for which he raised nearly $1 million. Now he's exploring whether he can parlay that experience into a springboard to become the first openly gay U.S. senator.


http://www.newsday.com/news/local/politics/ny-pocoop0512613998apr05,0,5255650.story

then this will be relevant...

until then it's just trashing an elected Democrat