List. Narration. TheInformant2009.

1.     You know that orange juice you have every morning? You know what's in that? Corn. And you know what's in the maple syrup on your pancakes? You know what makes it taste so good? Corn. When you're good and help with the trash, you know what makes the big, green bags biodegradable?

2.     Porsche or Porsche? I've heard it both ways. Three years in Germany, I should know. What's German for "corn"? The German word I really like is kugelschreiber. That's "pen." All those syllables just for "pen."

3.     Archer Daniels Midland. Most people have never heard of us. Chances are, they've never had a meal we're not part of. Just read the side of the package. That's us. Now ADM is taking the dextrose from the corn and turning it into an amino acid called lysine. It's all very scientific. If you're a stockholder all that matters is corn goes in one end and profit comes out the other. We have the largest lysine plant in the world. That's where I come in.

4.     What do they pay Kirk? What does a guy like that get? I bet he gets a hundred grand.He's just gonna sit behind that desk and ride it into the future.

5.     Feed a chicken corn and it gets sick, like what happened to the first settlers. Pellagra disease. Niacin deficiency. Gave them all sorts of problems: dermatitis, ataxia, even dementia. Feed a chicken corn and lysine and it goes from egg to supermarket fryer in six months instead of eight.

6.     Toro. That's what Spanish bullfighters say. But it's also what the Japanese call the high-end tuna sushi. Toro. Raw fish. Who went first on that one? The guy without the grill. I've been to Tokio. They sell little-girl underwear in the vending machines right on the main drag, the Ginza, or whatever. Guys in suits buying used girl panties. How is that okay? That's not okay.

7.     This would be a great place for some outlet stores. People would come from all over southern Illinois, probably Missouri. Famous name-brand labels and appliances at savings of up to 50 percent every day. Maybe a food court with a Mexican place. The birds eat the bugs, the cars eat the birds, the rust eats the cars and new construction eats the rust.

8.     There's a sale at Bachrach's. They have those Oscar de la Renta ties that nobody buys. What are they, two for one for another week? Diagonal bands of color hanging around your neck. They never put the nice Brioni ties on sale. I should just get all my ties in Paris wear them once or twice and shove them in a duty-free bag. Nobody gets stopped at customs for ties.

9.     Mick Andreas gets the vice president of the United States as his godfather. He goes to Richard Nixon's house for Thanksgiving. It's not like his parents died in a car accident and he ended up in an orphanage. Mick's dad wrote a check to the Nixon campaign. It wound up in the account of the Watergate burglars. Did he admit it? I don't think so. Besides, ADM probably owns the FBI. They probably wanted me to move into Dwayne's old house when I took this job because they got it wired like in a Crichton novel.

10. There should be a TV show about a guy who calls home one day and he's there. He answers, he's talking to himself, only it's someone else. He's somehow divided into two and the second one of him drives away. And the rest of the show is about him trying to find the guy.

11. He seems like a real good guy. I hope he doesn't mind me calling him Brian instead of Agent Shepard. I might even try Bri out. This must be very different for him talking to a guy like me instead of a bank robber or a drug dealer. I could see us fishing or whatever. What a good listener. You don't meet one of those every day.

12. You think the automobile companies can't make a car that gets 100 miles to the gallon? You think the networks don't know who'll win the World Series before the season starts? Paranoid is what people who are trying to take advantage call you to get you to drop your guard. I read that in an in-flight magazine.

13. I don't like wool on skin. Not even that merino wool they have at Marshall Field in Chicago. Ginger likes it because it's formfitting, but she likes avocados. And who wants that texture in their mouth? Who'd make up someone named Regina? It's the capital of Saskatchewan.

14. There are these butterflies in Central America. They're blue and orange and yellow and have poison in their wings. Just enough poison to stop a bird heart. But the birds know this somehow, so they don't eat them. But there are other ones, butterflies, they're orange, blue and yellow too, but no poison wings. They're just flying around, looking dangerous, getting by on their looks.

15. I like an indoor pool. Year-round usage. I like the steam off it in the winter. Very mysterious, that steam.

16. I like my hands. I think they're probably my favorite part of my body. I think that can be used to my advantage in social situations. If I can get people focused on my hands, I can get a good result in a meeting. Eye contact is real important too.

17. Being able to do two things at once is a big part of success. I try and do abdominal exercises. Isometrics, even when I'm at a meeting. Tensing. Holding. Then releasing. I'll floss in the shower while the conditioner is in my hair when you're just supposed to leave it in. Those things can really add up to a significant time savings.

18. The metric system never panned out. We had rulers with inches on one edge, centimeters on the other. I pronounced it "centimeters" instead of "centimeters" and nobody corrected me. They let me walk around stupid. I'm not upset we never crossed over though it's helpful to know the conversions. The liter bottle is the thing that caught on because it's a nicer word, "liter" than "quart." Quart.

19. One of the Japanese guys told me a story. This lysine salesman is in a meeting with someone from ConAgra or some other company, I don't know. And the client leans forward and says: "I have the same tie as you, only the pattern is reversed." And then he drops dead, face down on the table. Alive and then dead. Brain aneurysm. Maybe everyone has a sentence like that, a little time bomb. "I have the same tie as you, only the pattern's reversed." Dead. The last thing they'll ever say. Something like.

20. Mick Andreas and his dad would never lie for me. They say we're in it together. What a joke. Team-building offsite meetings at some lake in Wisconsin. I can't protect these guys if they're breaking the law. Hey, I tried. Anybody could see the choices I had. I did my best for ADM. You don't see them here in the chair.

21. No, he wasn't in.

22. I've got well over two million frequent flyer miles. I'm pretty much platinum across the board. I get a letter from the CEO every year, thanking me. It's a form letter. It looks like he's signing it. They probably walk in and he signs like a hundred while he's on the phone.

23. Now what happens? Something you breathe in on an airplane, some bacteria and now it's in his hands, the cup, the phone. Probably got it from his kids and now I'll spend the weekend with it. I'll miss a few days or Alexander will run a fever and who pays for that? Where does the FBI weigh in on that as a cooperating witness? What does it say about exposure to airborne contaminants?

24. That's a big break right there. Absolutely. There's no choices to be made, no debate. You're an ant, you just eat it.

25. Well, you make it work in the other divisions. Tell them.

26. Terry doesn't like me very much. He's got blotchy skin. What causes that blotchiness? It must mean something medical. He'll have a stroke and someone will say, "He was blotchy. It happens."

27. When polar bears hunt, they crouch down by a hole in the ice and wait for a seal. They keep one paw over their nose so that they blend in because they've got black noses. They'd blend in perfectly if not for the nose. So the question is, how do they know their noses are black? From looking at other polar bears? Do they see their reflections in the water, and think, "I'd be invisible if not for that." That seems like a lot of thinking for a bear.

28. When it's over, the board of directors at ADM is gonna understand. They're gonna see the position I was in. I acted in everyone's best interest. That's the only conclusion they can reach. I'm the youngest division president they've ever had. I speak a number of languages fluently.

29. It feels good to talk, to clear the air. You get to be like a balloon after a while a balloon looking for a pin to bump into and relieve the pressure. You could get sick from keeping it inside and get a tumor or something. I didn't ask for that. I have a friend from school who has a law practice. And he's always telling me how they can't talk about their cases. Like in The Firm. You can tell them anything. They have to keep it to themselves or they get in a lot of trouble. They're boxed. That's what they say: boxed. There are so many really nice people in the world, people who want to help out. Good neighbors, good listeners. Like when they had floods in Mississippi and people lose everything and are sleeping in a gym someone always shows up with a warm coat and a homemade pot roast. That's why Ginger and I bought that girl a computer after she had the spine injury. That kind of thing really makes a difference. Jim here strikes me as that kind of guy. He's the one-in-a-hundred guy who, when you come into the emergency room you thank your lucky stars it's his watch.

30. Well, the FBI never forced me to cooperate. I don't owe Brian Shepard the truth. I gave Brian Shepard two and a half years and now I have legal bills to show for it. And I'm the good guy in this, the guy who took on ADM. Is Brian Shepard gonna lose his job for that? His standard of living? I've gone to the school on career day and talked about biochemistry and the career opportunities available. Can Brian Shepard and Bob Herndon say that? I'm the white hat. I did enough for Brian Shepard. Who's gonna take care of me? Who has a plaque for the Mark Whitacre Environmental Award? Where are your friends when it's dump on Whitacre? Where's the pot roast and the warm coat?

31. Didn't these people see The Firm? Or read the book? It's all there. Everything they did to me, they did to Tom Cruise. I'm not the one they should be mad at.

32. We took the kids one year to the Renaissance festival. You get to be the white knight. The kids get to ride a horse and joust against the forces of darkness. The white knight always wins. The forces of darkness fall onto an old mattress. Someone plays a lute and plays a song from medieval times. It was 90 degrees, and the heat and humidity index. I can't even remember what the radio said. We were next in line and the mare collapsed, went down in a heap. Ginger was eating Ye Olde Drumstick and she dropped it. The kids were crying. And I remember this farmer saying he had a gun in his truck. Just like that. From the white knight to a gun in the truck. They had everyone turn before they put the animal down. But even if you couldn't see, you could still hear. How do you get that back? How does that get to be fair?

33. I read this study in TIME magazine when I was at Cornell. There were people who never believed I would make it into an Ivy League school. Maybe Ginger who I met in the 8th grade. And the study said that people had nice, sympathetic feelings about people who were adopted, and treated them better. So I made up this adoption story and people did treat me better. When I got a job, one of my professors told people at Ralston Purina I was this guy that had accomplished all of this in spite of being adopted. So it was really other people who spread the story, not me. I admit it was wrong to start it, it was other people who kept it going. Even the people at ADM. My new lawyer sees that.

34. Ron Henkoff from Fortune called Dr. Miller and Miller confirmed the letter./That's a violation of my doctor-patient confidentiality./Then why did Fortune magazine run the story?

35. [Deleted scene] Abe Lincoln was born 45 minutes from here. I've never been to his log cabin. He walked miles to give a woman who bought some tea correct change when he worked as a clerk. They called him HonestAbe for that and he got to be president. I've never gone to see his childhood home. I'm sure it's well preserved. Original beds and dining room tables. Doorways are probably smaller from when people were shorter even though Lincoln himself was six four. It's only 45 minutes away.