One-time Democratic presidential candidates lamented the growth of the national security state in a forum held last month at Georgetown.
Former Vice-President Walter Mondale, who unsuccessfully challenged Ronald Reagan’s reelection bid, estimated that about 18,000 “indicators” are sent to the NSA daily, but only 1,000 of them are suspicious and require following up by the agency. Mondale also served as a U. S. senator from Minnesota during the 1970s and was the American ambassador to Japan during the Clinton years.
Former U. S. Senator Gary Hart [1] recalled that he even felt paranoid after his landlord told him, soon after moving to the D.C. area to represent Colorado back in the 1970s, that several people posing as Labor Department officials tried to enter his apartment. That must have been an interesting job.
“It was in April of 1987 that former Senator Gary Hart announced the beginning of his second presidential campaign,” Time magazine recollected in a compendium of Top 10 political sex scandals. “Less than a month later, the Miami Herald published a photo of a young woman leaving Hart’s residence,” Time recapped. “The candidate expressed outrage at the paper, but within a week the Herald received tips that Hart had visited Bimini with a woman who was not his wife, then published photos showing a 29-year-old model, Donna Rice, sitting on Hart’s lap. Less than a week later, Hart announced he was dropping out of the race (he would later re-enter, unsuccessfully).”
Spencer Irvine is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.
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