Tom Griscom

Tom Griscom
White House Communications Director
In office April 2, 1987 – July 1, 1988
President	Ronald Reagan
Preceded by	Jack Koehler
Succeeded by	Mari Maseng
Personal details
Born	1949 (age 74–75) Chattanooga,Tennessee,U.S.
Political party	Republican
Education	University of Tennessee at Chattanooga(BA)

Thomas Cecil Griscom(born 1949) served as Director of White House Communications under PresidentRonald Reagan,was a top aide and adviser for a decade toU.S. SenatorHoward Bakerof Tennessee, and was theexecutive editorandpublisherof theChattanooga Times Free Pressfrom October 1999 to June 30, 2010.

Griscom served in the 1990s as the executive vice president for external relations for theRJ Reynolds Tobacco company,as an employee ofRupert Murdoch'sNews Ltd;and as apublic relationsconsultantwith Powell-Tate.

In December 1998,Fortunemagazine's "The Power of 25: the influence merchants" named Griscom, along with other ex-White House staff, ex-politicians and sons-of-politicians, as a keylobbyistin Washington.

Griscom is a graduate ofBrainerd High Schooland theUniversity of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Life and career

Politics

In 1978 Griscom joined the staff of Senator Baker and served as press secretary. In 1985-86, after Baker's retirement from the Senate, Griscom served as the executive director of theNational Republican Senatorial Committee(NRSC), and was charged with the task of overseeing the re-election efforts of the Republican majority in the Senate. He later became part of the Reagan administration in 1987, while Baker waschief of staff.As Baker's senior staff person, he essentially ran day-to-day operations at theWhite House,and he maintained the strong links between the administration and theRepublican Party.

His most notable claim during this period was that, in 1987, as communications director at the White House, he approved and promoted (against diplomatic advice)Peter Robinson's draft speech made at theBerlin Wall,where President Reagan demanded that Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachev"tear down this wall".

Reynolds Tobacco

In 1990, he joined Reynolds Tobacco as head of its external relations program, and over the next 10 years he was responsible for the company's strategic operations against the growing anti-smoking forces. He also administered and organized the company's involvement in the many cooperative campaigns conducted withPhilip Morrisand theTobacco Institutein lobbying theUnited States Congressto blockanti-smoking legislation.RJR also took a lead role at this time in conductingmisinformationcampaigns for media and public consumption—especially in the promotion of the idea that health regulations were largely the product ofjunk science.

Not long after joining RJR, Griscom became a key director on the management committee of the Tobacco Institute, responsible for secretly funding friendlythink tanksand other organizations, and for organizing scientists, lawyers and other business allies to attack regulatory measures that blockedcigarette advertising,or those that introduced environmental and health regulations.

Steve Milloy,who ran the fake "scientific grassroots" organisation known as theAdvancement of Sound Science Coalition(TASSC) and itsjunk sciencewebsite for Philip Morris on behalf of thetobacco industry,was transferred in mid-1996 to the control of Reynolds under Griscomwhen TASSC and the junkscience links with Philip Morris were exposed.

Griscom subcontracted the administration of this "sound-science" operation toJody Powell(ex-press secretary to PresidentJimmy Carter) andSheila Tate(First LadyNancy Reagan's adviser) at Powell-Tate. RJR and Powell-Tate also handled the distribution of Milloy's book,Science without Sense,supposedly published by theCato Institute(which was itself funded by tobacco interests).Similar books were commissioned and paymentlaunderedthrough think tanks for academic authors.

One other "successful" program run at this time was to characterise relatively harmless substances as "potentially cancerous" as part of the industry's "sound-science" campaign. Griscom's PR staff attempted to both promote and ridicule the idea that coffee could cause cancer via Milloy's junk-science web pages and op-ed articles planted in newspapers. This created thestraw-manidea that everything enjoyable could be classed as potentially dangerous (to counter fears about passive smoking) and no one could live without taking the normal risks associated with living.

Griscom's communications and media division of RJR also hired state and federal lobbyists, plantedghost-writtenarticles and letters to the editor in major newspapers and magazinesand promoted seemingly normal tours by comedians, musicians, artists, etc. who were all carefully trained and contracted to promote the pro-smoking message.

In 1997-98, Griscom represented R.J. Reynolds on a long series oftobacco industrynegotiations with the State Attorneys-General, the Justices Department, the White House and its agencies. This led to a February 1998Master Settlement Agreement,in which the tobacco industry agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation forMedicaidcosts associated with smoking to avoid charges under theRacketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act(RICO).

He left R.J. Reynolds in the later half of 1999 and returned toChattanooga"to help shape the overall identity"of the city's now single daily print newspaper, formed afterWEHCO Mediabought and merged the fiercely competitive afternoonFree Pressand the morningThe Chattanooga Timesto create theChattanooga Times Free Press.On May 26, 2010, Griscom announced he would resign from the newspaper June 30, 2010.

Personal life

Griscom is married to the former Marion Dobbins.

External links

• AppearancesonC-SPAN