Mark Whitacre: After ‘The Informant!’

Mark Whitacre’s larger-than-life role
as an FBI mole is forever memorialized in the movie The Informant. But the whistleblower’s story has a second act—and here it is.

Mark Whitacre could never have enough—education, money, cars, or prestige. Then, through a series of events that became fodder for two books and a movie, his world of power and privilege blew apart.

As told in the movie The Informant! (based on the book by journalist Kurt Eichenwald), Whitacre spent three years as a mole for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, gathering evidence about a price-fixing conspiracy at
agriculture behemoth Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). Yet he was also embezzling more than $9 million dollars from the company—a fact that ADM revealed when the FBI investigation hit the news.

Along the way, Whitacre’s behavior became ever more delusional. He lied to his FBI handlers and then to the media. He turned down a lenient deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, only to end up with a much longer prison sentence for fraud and tax evasion.

On March 4, 1998, he swapped a 13,000-square-foot home in Decatur, Illinois, for a 10-by-10-foot prison cell.

“Only a person with untreated bipolar disorder would have done some of the things I did,” he explained in a talk earlier this year at an International Bipolar Foundation event in La Jolla, California.

Now Whitacre, 56, is all about second chances. After his release from prison in 2006, he reunited with his wife and re-established his career in biotechnology. He also reaches out to at-risk youth, counsels prison inmates who have psychiatric disorders, and does what he can to fight stigma.

Whitacre has become a seasoned speaker, giving presentations on business ethics or faith-based talks about redemption. He only rarely addresses mental illness, as he did in La Jolla.

His luncheon speech touched on topics still charged with emotion. Whitacre broke into tears several times during the painfully personal exposé of his journey from woe to “go!” At other moments, though, he exuded a magnetic confidence about who he’s grown to be and what he’s still going to accomplish with the help of his family, friends and faith.

Helped and harmed

During his speech, Whitacre thanked and blamed bipolar for his meteoric rise and dramatic crash. Hypomanic traits no doubt enabled Whitacre to complete simultaneous bachelor’s and master’s degrees in animal nutrition at Ohio State University, then become Cornell University’s youngest recipient of a doctorate in 1983. He ultimately accumulated nine academic degrees, including more doctorates, on his way to becoming the youngest divisional president in ADM’s history.

By age 32, he was earning $3 million a year as an ADM executive—while working an average of 100 hours a week and sleeping two or three hours a night. “I was obsessed, and the more I worked, the more money I made,” he said. The more he made, the more he spent on a lavish lifestyle that included exotic cars and high-maintenance horses. And the more he made, the more he wanted.

It was an attitude befitting the corporate culture at ADM, where Whitacre was involved in an international price-fixing scheme that increased company profits at the consumer’s expense. Whitacre’s wife, Ginger, became his conscience. They’d been married since 1979, and sweethearts through high school and college before that. She pushed him to confess his role in ADM’s criminal conspiracy to the FBI. Yet when Whitacre agreed to help collect evidence for the feds, his good deed would have a bad effect on his bipolar.

For three years, from 1992 to 1995, Whitacre wore a wire to meetings at ADM headquarters and around the world, certain he would be killed if he were caught. As he described in his speech, the stress of his double life and fear of being found out made him more and more unstable. “Working undercover against a corporation while working for it had taken my manic behavior to a whole new level,” Whitacre recalled.

In one well-known episode, he headed outside with a leaf blower at 3 a.m. in the middle of a thunderstorm, dressed in a shirt and tie with no umbrella, to try to keep his driveway clear. “I thought that was normal,” he told the crowd in La Jolla. There was one benefit, though: “I was twice as smart as agent 007 when I was manic.” Brief periods of depression barely dented Whitacre’s feverish pace. Despite escalating mood problems, he said, he wasn’t allowed to see a psychiatrist, psychologist or attorney although, “I needed to see all three.”

Whitacre finally got help after he’d been fired from ADM, attempted to take his own life and was hospitalized. He was diagnosed with bipolar I—he now calls getting the diagnosis “a blessing”—and began taking medication.

That was then

Although Whitacre’s public identity is forever tied to his whistleblower past, he now focuses on moving positively forward. He espouses “getting better, not bitter,” and celebrates starting over.

Keeping bipolar symptoms under control is a big part of his new life. Whitacre underscored the importance of being on the right medication and getting psychotherapy— both “late entries” to his life. He went without talk therapy for most of his prison term, but found a different kind of support there: a renewed devotion to his Christian faith.

He’s certain his faith helps him maintain equilibrium, along with his wife’s unwavering support. Left on her own to raise their daughter and two sons, Ginger followed him through three prison moves during his incarceration.

“The divorce rate for people in prison more than five years is 99 percent,” he told his listeners, proudly acknowledging his 34th wedding anniversary this June.

He’s also a runner, weight lifter and devotee of push-ups when he’s on the road. He likes to work out in the evening so he’ll sleep better.

Now chief operating officer and president of operations of Cypress Systems, Inc., a biotechnology firm based in Fresno, California, Whitacre makes time to volunteer with JPW3, a faith-based prison ministry, and to raise awareness for the Sean Costello Memorial Fund for Bipolar Research.

When Whitacre comes home to “the Kentucky side of Cincinnati”—specifically, the city of Florence—leisure is a precious commodity. He and his wife kick back in jeans and love taking walks with their pets.

“We have two beloved dogs, one an 11-year-old Greyhound we adopted from a rescue program and a 2 year-old Corgi.

They are just so wonderful and very therapeutic,” Whitacre told bp.

He and Ginger are also avid movie fans and see a new film every weekend—accompanied by a giant popcorn and large Diet Coke to share.

Whitacre feels a giant sense of relief that his “mole” days are behind him, along with the extremes of untreated bipolar. As he proclaimed gratefully to his audience in La Jolla, “It’s not a hurdle for me now. This is treatable and you can get it right.”

Printed as “My Story: After ‘The Informant'”, Summer 2013