The healthcare and consumer-goods giant assigned more than 30 staffers to 'Project Plato.' In a memo on the project in July, a company lawyer warned the team: Tell no one, not even your spouse.

'It is critical that any activities related to Project Plato, including the mere fact the project exists, be kept in strict confidence,' Chris Andrew, a J&J lawyer, wrote in an internal memo reviewed by Reuters.

The covert team would go on to evaluate a strategy to shift all the liability from about 38,000 pending talc cases onto a newly created subsidiary, which would immediately declare bankruptcy. 

The goal, as a lawyer for the subsidiary said in a court filing, was to halt all the litigation and transfer the cases to bankruptcy court, where plaintiffs would compete for compensation from a limited pool of money.

Tens of thousands of plaintiffs, many with mesothelioma or ovarian cancer, have filed lawsuits alleging that exposure to talc in J&J's Baby Powder and other company products made them sick.