Roger Stone's Original 'Dirty Trick' Target Gets The Last Laugh
RUMSEY, YOLO COUNTY (CBS13) — Former Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey chuckles when he talks about the prison sentence Roger Stone faces for lying to Congress and witness tampering.
"I may take him a sandwich if he goes to jail," McCloskey says with a smile.
McCloskey lays claim to the dubious honor of being the target of Stone's very first dirty political trick. It happened in 1972 when McCloskey, a decorated Korean War veteran and vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, challenged President Richard Nixon's re-election in the Republican primaries.
"I knew I would never be president. My goal was to try to get a vote against the war that would scare the Nixon people into ending it," he said.
Roger Stone was only a couple of years out of high school when he went to work for Nixon's re-election campaign and seized the opportunity to try to sabotage McCloskey's challenge. FBI documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show Stone traveled to New Hampshire to present a donation to the McCloskey campaign of $125 on behalf of the Young Socialist Alliance in Massachusetts.
Stone had initially been asked to say the donation was from the Gay Liberation Movement – but he refused. Stone later sent a receipt for the donation to the conservative-leaning New Hampshire Union Leader in an apparent effort to paint McCloskey as a communist.
Although McCloskey is 92 years old, he remembers the 1972 incident as if it happened yesterday.
"That was his first dirty trick," McCloskey said. "He got a lot worse later."
McCloskey eventually became disillusioned with the Republican party and quit in 2007. He believes Roger Stone is a prime example of the breakdown in civility in politics.
"He is a slimeball. He represents the worst of the American political scene," McCloskey said.
As it turns out, Stone's $125 donation to McCloskey in New Hampshire was a waste of Nixon's campaign money. McCloskey said the Union Leader's right-wing publisher at the time, William Loeb, refused to run with the story.