Business: THE U.S.'s TOUGHEST CUSTOMER

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under," causing a driver to lose control. G.M., which eventually redesigned the system, at first did not even recall the model for checking. But executives were disturbed enough by Nader's charges to hire a Washington law firm to look into the matter. The lawyer, in turn, engaged the Vincent Gillen private detective agency to trail Nader. Purely on a fishing expedition that was to find nothing, the agency's head urged his men to uncover what they could about Nader's "women, boys, etc." Tipped by friends that investigators were looking into his private life, Nader charged publicly that he was being harassed. G.M.'s use of grade-B spy-movie tactics was fully exposed when its president, James Roche (now chairman), was summoned before a Senate subcommittee and twice apologized to Nader for the company's investigation.

In his battle for pipeline-safety legislation, Nader secured important technical data from an engineer who was fighting the installation of a gas main near his home. He first learned of the damage that pipeline explosions could cause from a professor whom he met at an M.I.T. conference. "Sometimes the things these professors casually drop at conferences send me up the wall," says Nader.

Influence On the Law

Typical of Nader's battle style was his campaign for more stringent federal meat inspection at packing plants. While speed-reading the small print of a House report on Agriculture Department appropriations, Nader noticed that it urged "further studies" of the U.S. meat-inspection program. Did that mean that there had been earlier studies showing that the U.S. had a meat problem? Indeed it did, as Nader found out when he requested a copy of the little-known study at the Agriculture Department. "Nobody ever asked for this before," said the employee who handed it to him. The study gave graphic descriptions of conditions in some meat plants.

Now Nader had his ammunition. He sent a summary of the study to the House Agriculture Committee, which was about to hold "clean meat" hearings for the first time in eight years. He quickly wrote an article for The New Republic titled "We're Back in the Jungle"—a title that echoed Upton Sinclair's classic indictment of the meat industry 60 years ago, The Jungle. He sent press releases to newspapers located near the worst plants. As a result, Nader was deluged by letters from meat handlers, meat buyers and anonymous Agriculture Department officials. He gave tips and new evidence to the Senate sponsor of the meat bill, Minnesota's Walter Mondale. What Nader's activity produced was the Wholesome Meat Act, which brings small, intrastate meat-packing plants under federal interstate jurisdiction.

One campaign leads to another. Many doctors who wrote Nader about meat urged him to investigate the steadily rising fat content of the venerable hot dog, which they said was contributing to heart disease. Nader found that average frank fat had increased in 15 years from 17% to 33% of the total content. The "fatfurter" campaign was on, and he now emphasizes it frequently in his speeches. Nader cultivates mutually helpful friendships among Congressmen, offering to let them take credit for his digging and even drafting legislative proposals for them. His chief contacts in the Senate are Magnuson,