Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome Read Online Free PDF Page B

Research Initiative Act on his desk. 300 billion dollars allocated for medical and technological research and treatment for that first year, officially, and unofficially, whatever it cost to get things moving. It ended up costing three trillion dollars by the end of it. That’s a hell of a lot of money.
    It got done for two reasons. One, there wasn’t anyone in the US who wasn’t affected by the syndrome. Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, hippie and gun nut, atheist and evangelical, it didn’t matter. Someone in your family got sick. One of your friends got sick. One of your co-workers got sick.
You
got sick.
    Two, and I say this as a member of the loyal opposition, President Haden simply would not take no for an answer. He worked to pack the Congressional hearings with witnesses who would appeal on both sides of the aisle—the day [former NBA star and Basketball Hall of Famer] Marcus Shane came to testify I don’t think I’ve seen so many grown men and women act like children scrambling for autographs. And then Shane talked about how the disease had locked in his kid and I saw [Senate Appropriation Committee Chairman] Owen Webster—that heartless bastard!—openly sobbing into his microphone. That’s when any doubt I had that this thing was going to get done evaporated.
    There were a few holdouts. David Abrams, who was then a backbencher representative, made a lot of noise on the radio talk show circuit about the cost and the threat of new taxes and the expansion of big government and so on, and even took a few swipes at the President, despite them being of the same party. I understand Haden let it slide by until Abrams made a crack about the First Lady to a Tulsa talk show host. By the end of the day, as I understand it, Abrams was having a very intimate discussion with the NSA, and they showed him some pictures they had or
something
, and then that was the last anyone heard of Abrams until the act passed. He even voted for it and everything.
    Thomas Stevenson:
    I can’t say that I have any recollection of the NSA ever meeting with David Abrams at the time. You might ask him. I would be interested in what he has to say on the matter.
    Neal Joseph:
    Look. At the end of the day, it came down to this: the President wanted his wife back. He was willing to do anything to make that happen. And he was President of the United States, which meant he was
able
to do anything to make it happen. As a side effect, millions would ultimately benefit from the decision, but make no mistake. Benjamin Haden was being purely, entirely and unabashedly selfish. He loved his wife, he was lost without her, and he wanted her back. End of story.
    Could you blame him for it? Could anyone blame him for it?

PART THREE: THE MOON SHOT
    Irving Bennett:
    The Haden Research Initiative Act was sold to the public as a “moon shot”—as in, we went from Kennedy saying we would go to the moon to Armstrong setting foot on it in nine years because we decided as a nation that we would, and we put the resources and willpower to work. President Haden made it clear that he wanted the same unity of purpose here. And of course everyone got behind it because the syndrome touched everyone’s life to a greater or lesser extent.
    But it didn’t change the fact that the first year of the HRIA was complete chaos. National unity of purpose is fine, but when it comes to spreading $300 billion around, logistics and a solid plan is better. And it was clear that at least at the outset, no one had a plan on how to apportion the money, to allocate resources for research and development, or to set concrete goals. The US government basically threw all that money into the air and yelled “go” to whoever grabbed it.
    Haden and the rest of the government quickly realized that, and Haden in particular was incensed. He may have forced the creation of one of the biggest social programs in the history of the United States, but he still had “skinflint