If the tobacco companies hadn’t discovered Gray Robertson, they might have had to invent him. As luck would have it, they found him right under their noses, peering into an air duct in the tony Washington office building that is home to Philip Morris and the Tobacco Institute.
Robertson, who ran a small consulting firm specializing in indoor air quality, had been hired to inspect the building’s ventilation system. Lunch-bound tobacco lobbyists asked Robertson what he was doing, and his answers planted the seeds of an idea. This was some eight years ago. At the time, industry officials were desperate for help in countering rising concern about secondhand smoke. Rich but reviled-and unable to speak effectively for themselves-they were ready to throw money in the path of anyone whose pronouncements on the subject might bring relief. That chance encounter was the start of a mutually profitable and largely clandestine relationship that boosted the profile of Robertson’s fledgling company and strengthened the tobacco industry’s fight against smoking bans.
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