It didn't take long after the news had broken about widespread asbestos pollution in Libby in 1999 for a team from W.R. Grace to seek a meeting with our Editorial Board. We heard about how Grace couldn't have known about the danger at the time, how the company's safety measures were state of the art by contemporary standards, and how shocking it was to belatedly learn of the threat to the health of its workers and the citizens of Libby.

The presentation wasn't particularly convincing at the time, and the arguments surely didn't cut much ice before the federal grand jury that has indicted top Grace executives and managers this week. The company and its leaders were charged with 10 counts of allegedly conspiring to keep the danger secret, thus intentionally exposing Libby residents to asbestos-laced vermiculite.

So far, the contamination has been blamed for the deaths of about 200 people in Libby and the illness of hundreds more.

The government contends that Grace knew about the problem as early as 1976, and that executives had reports or studies about the dangers of asbestos vermiculite exposure in 1977, 1980, 1981 and 1982. According to the indictment, Grace health official Henry Eschenbach responded to one of those studies by writing in a memo that "Our major problem is death from respiratory cancer. This is no surprise."

The indictment said that as late as 2002, the company still was insisting its vermiculite was not a threat to human health.

If the government's accusations hold up, an obvious question is raised: Why would a company make such lies in the face of overwhelming evidence? Could the answer to such self-destructive actions be as simple as the well-known distinction between long- and short-term thinking?

Perhaps it just was easier, given Grace's corporate culture, to remain in denial as long as the company was bringing in short-term profits every quarter.

If that were so, some of those executives could be paying for their short-term thinking with long-term prison sentences.