DOCUMENTS INDICATE NICOTINE LEVELS ADJUSTED.

Byline: Alan Sayre Associated Press 

A retired Philip Morris USA executive made comments and left documents indicating nicotine levels in cigarettes were manipulated to keep smokers hooked, according to attorneys suing major tobacco companies.

The lawyers said Ronald Tamol made the comments to a former girlfriend, Harriet ``Hatsy'' Heep, who gave them eight boxes of documents she kept for Tamol.

Heep's deposition in a lawsuit against five of the nation's largest tobacco companies and excerpts from the documents were obtained Wednesday by the Associated Press.

Tobacco executives have denied that the industry adjusts nicotine levels in cigarettes to keep smokers from quitting. Federal grand juries are examining whether some executives perjured themselves in 1994 when they made those denials at a congressional hearing.

A note, which attorneys said they believe is in Tamol's writing, refers to ``minimum nicotine . . . to keep normal smoker hooked.'' The note was dated Feb. 1, 1965, and includes the printed notation ``R.A. Tamol.''

Until 1993, Tamol was Philip Morris' director of research and brand development. Philip Morris is one of the defendants in a class-action suit filed in New Orleans on behalf of every smoker in the nation.

Tamol often said that ``once they (smokers) were theirs, once they were on cigarettes, they were theirs for life,'' Heep said in her deposition.

``I said, `You manipulated the nicotine contents of cigarettes.' He said, `Of course we did, it's our product,' '' Heep said in her deposition Friday.

Heep also said Tamol, who talked constantly about his work, knew that advertising for Marlboro cigarettes, a Philip Morris brand, targeted adolescents.

``That's the direction the marketing was designed to take,'' Heep said. `` `We get them hooked, they're ours for life.' And he was very distressed that my daughter had quit smoking and he was practically cross-examining her about how she had managed to do it.''

One of the class-action suit's major contentions is that the tobacco industry has targeted much of its advertising to children, an allegation that cigarette makers have denied.

Heep, who once lived with Tamol and kept boxes of his papers in her house, said in the deposition that she turned them over to lawyers after he moved out and Philip Morris attorneys began pressing for their destruction.

Philip Morris said in a statement that its requests to see the documents have been denied, and it cannot ``even verify whether the documents are authentic.'' The company accused the lawyers of a ``bizarre stunt.''

Heep has an unpublished telephone number and could not be reached for comment. There was no answer at Tamol's residence in Richmond, Va.