U.S. House Committee on Commerce

Committee on Commerce Tobacco Documents

This Web site contains more than 40,000 documents. The U.S. House site does not use a search engine; however, the documents are indexed by the Bates Numbers in privilege logs. The privilege logs may be imported into Microsoft^® Excel files for easier viewing and searching.

Background on the Documents that Appear on this Web Site

Chairman Bliley obtained the documents on December 5, 1997, from six companies and organizations (Council for Tobacco Research; Tobacco Institute; Philip Morris; Lorillard; Brown & Williamson; and R.J. Reynolds) involved in the Minnesota tobacco case after issuing subpoenas for their production on December 4, 1997. These documents were originally withheld as "privileged" documents. They were made available to the public via this Web site on April 4, 1998. On June 6, 1998, 400 more documents from four of the tobacco companies were released to the public.

Searching for the Documents

• Choose the collection of documents you wish to search.
• Download the privilege log where indicated on the page. Save it as a .txt file.
• Open the file in a spreadsheet application, such as Microsoft^® Excel.
• Search for keywords within the brief abstract in the privilege log.

When you find a document you wish to view, return to the site and

• Enter the Bates Number (or range of numbers) and click Get Documents.
• View the document. Typically, each page of a document must be viewed separately.

Difficulties with this Web Site

Because this site has no search engine, it is time consuming to download and import the privilege logs. It is also time consuming to view the pages of each document separately.

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This page last reviewed November 18, 1999