Free A Song in the Night by Bob Massie

progressive who had cautious foreign policy views. In some circles he was viewed as a hawk on Vietnam, but he was also one of the leading proponents of human rights in the Soviet Union and around the world.
    I was installed as the most junior possible intern in theSenate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a roiling bullpen of investigators presided over by the great foreign policy expert Dorothy Fosdick. My job was to make photocopies, get coffee, attend hearings, take notes, and just soak up as much of the culture of the U.S. Senate as possible.
    It was a turbulent time, because just upstairs, in the Russell Senate Caucus Room, the brilliant lights of live television were shining down on the hot and hapless witnesses who were appearing before the Senate select committee on Watergate. Occasionally I got into the office early enough to get a seat at the very back of the room, where I watched the great crocodile of the Senate, Sam Ervin of North Carolina, preside over the tawdry story that was unfolding in front of him with the skill of a wily country judge. Day after day, week after week, month after month, the hearings went on, as it became clear that the culture of corruption in American politics had stained more deeply than anyone had previously been willing to admit. My rosy and enthusiastic view of the glories of democracy began to fade as I listened to men and women who worked for President Nixon testify to a long litany of lying, cover-ups, bribery, and other crimes. It all came to a head just as I was leaving Washington, when it became clear that the president of the United States himself had been part of the conspiracy. Impeachment proceedings jumped forward, and in August 1974 the president dramatically resigned.
    My role in Washington did not end at that moment, however, because I became involved in a project that took me back for the two following summers. Senator Jackson had becomeincreasingly interested in the way large companies traded raw materials through international markets, rewarding some and punishing others as a way to increase their profits. He was in the midst of using the staff skills in the Investigations Subcommittee to probe the dealings of international oil companies.
    When I went back to work for him in the summer of 1975, I became interested in the global trade in blood products, and I researched how products such as Factor VIII were collected, how they were made, and where they were sold. As I learned more and more about the industry, I became alarmed about how these firms were collecting blood from the poorest, most vulnerable, and often least healthy people in the world, from impoverished Nicaraguan peasants to skid-row bums in American cities. I learned that even though the products were thought to be infected with hepatitis (we only knew about hepatitis A and B then), they were being marketed aggressively in Europe and elsewhere as the most advanced form of treatment for hemophilia and other bleeding disorders. They were in fact very convenient for someone who could get a needle into his own veins, yet they came from a system so blinded by the desire for profit that the growing dangers of contamination were ignored.
    I persuaded Senator Jackson and some of his staff that there were serious questions which deserved examination. Senator Jackson eventually sent an official letter to all the major pharmaceutical companies that made blood products, asking them for more detailed information about the supply, manufacture, safety, pricing, and distribution of their products.We received two kinds of answers. Some companies sent us boxes and boxes crammed with promotional brochures, irrelevant memos, shipping manifests, factory manuals, and other loosely related material. The other companies sent us a single-page letter, which, in not very subtle but still highly legal terms, told Senator Jackson to go to hell.
    Jackson was not happy, and his team discussed pushing the investigation to a higher