Dirty Tricks

Stone apparently has been at this business since early childhood. He says he became a Republican at age 12, after a neighbor in Norwalk, Connecticut, gave him a copy of Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative. Stone was devastated by Goldwater's defeat, but remained fully devoted to the party, rising through the ranks of youth groups like Teenage Republicans, College Republicans, Young Republicans, and the Young Americans for Freedom. As a 19-year-old student at George Washington University, Stone was the youngest Watergate dirty trickster. On orders from CREEP boss Bart Porter, Stone hired Michael McMinoway--known as "Sedan Chair II"--to infiltrate the McGovern campaign and report back. Using the pseudonym "Jason Rainier," Stone made contributions to the New Hampshire McCloskey campaign in the name of supposed left-wing groups like Young Socialist Alliance. He then sent the receipts along with an anonymous letter to the Manchester Union-Leader. He also recommended that CREEP hire a fellow student named Theodore Brill, who was subsequently paid $130 a week to spy on "radical groups." Stone says the ideas for this "kid stuff"--none of which was actually illegal at the time--emanated from Charles Colson, and that if he had refused to do it, CREEP would have fired him and gotten someone else. Stone's Watergate involvement made headlines again last year during the Meese confirmation hearings, when a note saying "Roger Stone bagman for paid informant in McGovern campaign, kept his mouth shut so they can't touch him" disappeared from Meese's 1980 campaign files...