Production Notes
It may sound sensational, but I assure you it’s true. In the process of making Factor 8, I received strange phone calls, I was followed, my house was broken into, my tires slashed, and sensitive information -- including my personal notes -- mysteriously appeared on the Internet. I also had a gun pointed at the back of my head, there was a murder, and a key inmate informant was whisked out of state and put into isolation.
When I went looking for the governor’s papers of Bill Clinton, to find state documents relevant to my investigation, I was told that 4,000 boxes had been hidden away in private storage and could not be found.
When I went to the Arkansas State Health Department to request records regarding disease rates at the prison and anything about the plasma program, I was stonewalled. I actually had to sue the state agency just to get access to its files that by law are suppose to be a matter of public record.
When I went to the Arkansas State Police Headquarters key documents had disappeared.
When complete strangers showed up out of the blue asking me what I was doing and with whom did I work for, I had to ask myself, “what’s going on here?”
One thing is for certain, if I had a dollar for every time someone (in the past 7 years I’ve been investigating this story) told me to “be careful!” I could have paid my rent several times over.
Then in January 2004, I was sued, and shortly before Factor 8 was to screen in Park City, Utah, a federal Judge blocked my premiere. The case was eventually dismissed, but not without costing me two more years of my life and a lot of heartache. ... Not exactly what I expected to happen to me in my home state.
Now victims around the world are asking me for information. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have talked to me about its investigation into the Arkansas shipments, and so has the U.S. Department of Justice about the possibility of its own investigation. I am working with activists in the U.K. pushing for a criminal investigation there, and with Congressmen in Japan and with the major media in Australia regarding their questions about shipments of tainted Arkansas prison plasma. Yet, despite global interest, few Americans know of this travesty.