Radiolab - I Don't Have To Answer That

Episode Date: January 30, 2016

Roosevelt, Kennedy, Eisenhower … they all got a pass. But today we peer back at the moment when poking into the private lives of political figures became standard practice. In 1987, Gary Hart was a young charismatic Democrat, poised to win his party’s nomination and possibly the presidency. Many of us know the story of what happened next, and even if you don’t, it’s a familiar tale. But at the time, politicians and political reporters found themselves in uncharted territory. With help from author Matt Bai, we look at how the events of that May shaped the way we cover politics, and expanded our sense of what's appropriate when it comes to judging a candidate.   Produced by Simon Adler Special Thanks to Joe Trippi

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y. C. See?

Yeah. Hey, I'm Chad I boomrod. I'm Robert Krollwitch. This is Radio Lab. And, you know, here we are in this moment where we're about to get started with another election cycle. Another Iowa, another New Hampshire, Carolina. All of that. And this is the time when we report is decided, well, we're going to have to tell you some stuff.

and you're going to have to decide what matters to you. And the story that we're going to tell in this podcast is about a moment, a shockingly recent moment. That's how I felt when I first heard this story. A moment of when what reporters decide to tell and what people decide to value really changed. So we're going to take you back to an evening in 1987, Tom Fiedler, ace political reporter for the Miami Herald. It's late at night and he's in his office. I sat at my desk and just, in fact, packing up to go home. My phone rang, and I'm thinking, oh, it's probably my wife, and she's wondering why I haven't left yet.

I said, all right, I'll pick it up. Well, when he picked up the phone... Turned out this... It turned out it was not a voice he recognized. It was a woman's voice, maybe in her late 20s. And she said to him, I have something you need to know. It was a tip about one of the most powerful and charismatic men in American politics, former Senator Gary Hart, who at the time was not only the most likely candidate to become the Democrat,

nominee, he was very possibly going to be the next president of the United States. Her words to me were Gary Hart is having an affair with one of my best friends. And she told him, basically, I can prove it. And, you know, I was rather, I guess, dumbstruck by that. And he thought, well, now what do we do? Now, if you're of a certain age, you probably remember this story. you probably know what happens next, but even if you've never heard of Gary Hart,

you still probably know the outline of this story. The accusations... ...Elland Anthony Wheeler is a Democrat from the... Then the denial... I did not have sexual relations with that woman. And then after that, the whole wall-to-wall media thing... ...pesting scan. Which just goes on and on and on

until you want to take your head off your shoulders, put it on the sidewalk, and beat it with a baseball bat. But the thing that's easy to forget... Is that it wasn't always like this? No. Hart was the first to walk into this vortex of social forces. And after that, the rules of political journalism and politics change almost immediately. That, by the way, is Matt By.

National political columnist for Yahoo News. He wrote a book about this incident, which he called All the Truth is Out. And in that book, he makes the argument that this is the moment, Gary Hart, 1987, when political journalism slid off the rails. Or, you might argue, when it finally got serious. Well, you know, just flashback a minute because I think the context is important. 1984. Hart kind of comes from nowhere. It's a whole new ballgame in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Runs for president. Storms, New Hampshire. Senator Gary Hart is on his way to a clear-cut victory over Walter Mondale. Beats Mondale there and becomes a political celebrity. This country cannot stand four more years of Reaganomics for the rich. Gary Hart. Gary Hart, the senator from Colorado. Gary Hart. I'm a Democrat and proud of it.

Hart was this tall, good-looking Democrat. He's got great wavy hair. I mean, dashing, handsome, charismatic, and young. This is Leslie Stahl. CBS. She's covered politics for 40 years now. Works for 60 minutes. He was cool and smart.

Women liked him, too. He's an anti-Orthodox Democrat, very liberal, anti-nukes. He is sort of the Bill Clinton before Bill Clinton. He doesn't get the Democratic nomination in 1984. Walter Mondale does by a nose, but when Mondale gets crushed by Ronald Reagan. Hart is immediately presumed to be the next nominee of the party at a time when these things were more obvious. So fast forward to 1987. Like it or not, campaign 88 is underway.

And the leading contender frontrunner Gary Hart in New Hampshire, he's winning. He's running double digits higher than any Democrat. And he's projected to beat George. Bush, the Republican frontman. The next president of the United States, Gary Hart. It felt like, look, this is a guy who is changing politics, who is unafraid to speak the truth, who is willing to be really clear about what he wants to do. That's Kevin Sweeney. He was Hart's Press Secretary in 1987. He joined the campaign just a few years out of college. 23, I'm idealistic. The first time we really met, I was wearing a necktie with pictures of Lincoln and Washington.

Washington on it, and Hart said, that's the ugliest necktine I've ever seen in my life. I said my mother made it, and he said, I apologize. Well, that's a good beginning. Yeah, I knew pretty early I wanted to work for Hart. You remember why? He was really liberal and social issues at the time, unafraid to be specific or take a stand. He said Hart placed an extraordinary amount of emphasis on not just winning the campaign, but what would they do when they got in office?

He commanded that attitude. So they wrote out all these position papers on foreign policy, energy, international trade, the budget, even what would his relationship with Gorbachev be? There was something about heart and something about what happened on the campaign where it did feel like the kind of campaign that I haven't seen since. And when does the subject of what goes on below the belt come up, if at all? Well, there were rumors, definitely rumors. By this time, there are a lot of whispers about his personal life and a lot of specular. He's been married to his college sweetheart, Lee, for a very long time. They've been separated twice, the long separations.

And during those separations, he's dated openly in Washington. So it's a well-known fact of life in Washington where he is a central figure and has a lot of friends in the press corps that he's dated, that he's dated people for extended periods of time, that he and his wife have a troubled marriage. Together and not together. He stayed on Bob Woodward's couch for a little while when she kicked him out at one point. Nobody wrote about that. And the reason they didn't write about it was because of a very old, very well-established convention. I mean, look, go back through the 20th century.

Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower, you know, heroes, towering figures. Their personal lives simply were not in play. Take, for example, JFK. Leslie Stahl says that when the press was covering him... Vast numbers of reporters knew that John Kennedy was cheating on his wife. That was no secret. But we wouldn't have dreamed of printing that, even if the whispers were loud enough to spread around the country. It just wasn't done.

Is the thought, hey, nobody does that, so I, you know, forget about it? Or, hey, that has nothing to do with state crap. I think the feeling was that, so what? You know, we all get to have a zone of privacy. And the assumption was that what happened in your private zone behind closed doors. It had nothing to do with whether you were going to be a good president or not. I mean, there are certain ethics and certain standards, I guess. This is the world that Hart still thinks he's living in,

that as long as it doesn't burst into public view, it won't be a story. But Matt By says that world was actually changing because of a political earthquake that had happened just over a decade before. Talking about the Watergate break in. Burglarizing and bugging Democratic headquarters in Washington. That is the big first knocked out brick in that wall. Five people have been arrested and charged with breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

You know, arguably the biggest scandal in White House history. You had Nixon tapping phone lines, compiling enemy lists. And for the reporters covering Nixon. It really is an embarrassment. You had an entire White House press corps, political press corps, campaign press corps, who had followed this man, Richard Nixon, for decades. And somehow either missed the fact or failed to report the fact that he had some significant psychological issues and was paranoid.

and could be corrupted. I think there was a sense that we let the public down. Leslie Stahl remembers it this way. The regular White House press reporters, they should have been digging, chipping away, chipping away, chipping away. They should have been looking behind the curtain. And so right after Watergate, reporters became tougher saying,

okay, we have to be skeptical about everything. And in particular, the character issue. Meaning suddenly your makeup, your personal behavior, who you are in your private moments matters a whole hell of a lot for the kind of president you can be and whether or not we can trust you as a public leader. Hart's character is the subject tonight of our weekend journal. When Americans choose presidents, personal character traits are important. In this day and age, candidates' personal lives are getting a great deal of scrutiny. I remember there was a bit of a shift in the kinds of reporters who were covering now.

international politics. They had a different orientation and they were really interested in the character question. That's Kevin Sweeney again. He says he was initially frustrated by reporters' strange obsession with things that were not really issues, important issues in the campaign. Like age, there was some confusion about Hart's age, the fact that he changed the family name, his signature changed at a certain point in his life. He says when those stories initially popped up. I thought it was a false set of issues. I didn't really take it seriously. But then when it came to the rumors of, quote, womanizing or marital infidelity, he felt like he needed to talk to Gary Hart. I did say, if anything is happening, it needs to stop.

I mean, this can't, whatever it is. I mean, and he said, you know, nothing is happening. And he shot back and said they have no right to cover that. That's ridiculous. It's not an issue. That, you know, why is that an issue? That's not their job. And I kept pushing back saying, I don't actually care what their job is. I don't care what you think their job is. This is the new context that exist now. I don't know why or how, but the rules have changed. The rules have changed. So, you know, it was... This brings us back to Tom Fiedler of the Miami Herald. He was covering Gary Hart, going with him to all the stops in Iowa, New Hampshire, and so forth. And it seemed like at every stop along the way, someone, some reporter would raise her his hand and would say, what about

the rumors of his womanizing? Tom says that he would see reporters out. asking all these questions, and he was a little bit troubled. So on April 27, 1987, he wrote a column asking the question. Is it ethical for journalists to be even raising this kind of a question? And I really came down to the conclusion that unless the media, unless the reporters involved, had actual proof that this was a problem, that he was a womanizer, we just shouldn't be printing that. Column runs on a Monday morning. That night... He gets the call.

The voice on the other side says, Gary Hart is having an affair with one of my best friends. He was dumbstruck, as we know. I told her that my position had to be that I couldn't believe what she had to say unless there was proof. And finally she said, my friend is going to fly up to Washington next weekend, and she's going to spend the weekend with Senator Hart.

She said, so all you have to do is, is buy a ticket on that plane. And I thought, well... Would that be ethically okay? What is in bounds and what is out of bounds? I mean, character was this new obsession of political journalism, but according to Matt By, no one had taken that character question

into a candidate's bedroom. That was new. But Feidler thought, well, no, no, no, no. This is inbound. Because Gary Hart was publicly denying that he had been character. on affairs with anyone. Now, to be clear, oftentimes when Gary Hart was asked about these rumors of an affair,

he was never asked directly, just about the rumors. He'd say something like this. It's no one else's business. Now, why is it not anyone else's business? Because it isn't. It hasn't been the business of the American public for 200 years, and it isn't today. He'd say something like that. But Fiedler says a couple times when he's asked, he did say something that amounted to a no.

Such as if there was any truth to these allegations, it would have come out long before. the kinds of answers that were non-denials, denials, another phrase that came out of Watergate. So my view at that point was if, in fact, there was proof that he was carrying on an affair privately while publicly insisting that there really was no basis to this, then that was a relevant issue. Relevant to his performance as a future president? Yes, it was a question of integrity. So we thought the only way that we are going to find out if what the caller told us is true is we've got to catch him.

That's coming up next. This would be Liza calling from Milwaukee. Radiohead is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.s.org. Hey, I'm Chad I boomrod. I'm Robert Krollwitch. This is Radio Lab. Getting back to the story, reporter Tom Fiedler gets a tip saying that candidate Gary Hart is having an affair.

And he thinks to himself, this is inbound if it's true. Therefore, we've got to catch him. So his editor tells a colleague of his Jim McGee to go to the airport telling him. This is what you're going to do. You're going to look for a woman who looks like a model. That's how the woman on the phone described her friend. She's described as a model. in her mid-20s and call me back if you see it.

So this guy, Jim, races to the airport, spots this attractive young woman, fits the description. Of course, we later knew as Donna Rice. So he boards the plane, they land in D.C. He follows her out of the airport and do a cab. He runs to another cab, jumps in it, and he says, follow that cab. Just like the movies. Which they do. He loses her for a while, but then eventually he gets to the house where he thinks Hart and this lady should be.

And he's not there more than a few minutes when the front door opens. And out comes the young woman on the arm of a very handsome man. One small problem. Jim had never met Gary Hart. He had no idea what Gary Hart looked like. He said later, he said, I really couldn't pick Gary Hart out of a lineup. That's when I really thought we have got to go to Washington. And that's what they do.

The Herald Matt By again. They send a team of reporters, investigative reporters, and Fiedler and a photographer to Washington. We arrive Saturday morning. They stake out his townhouse. You know, I'm thinking, my gosh, somebody will surely notice that there are four or five of us. Lurking is probably the right word.

It's May, and one guy's in a parka to disguise himself. And Fiedler, who the candidate knows, is in a jogging suit, and he's pretending to jog around the street all day long. I would change clothes a little bit. Occasionally, I would run without the jacket. Other times I would just be wearing a T-shirt and shirt, He'd run around and around and around.

It's not how the CIA would do it, but it's about what you'd expect from a newspaper. Our quote unquote stakeout went on all day into Saturday night and it got dark. And then front door opens. Out comes this man and out comes the blonde woman. Hart walks out with Donna Rice, sort of arm in arm. He quickly realizes something is wrong. He kind of makes the surveillance. They see him, he sees them, he turns her back around, they go inside.

they go inside. Go back inside the townhouse. He sends her away through the back door. And then he comes back out of the townhouse. Hopes in his car and starts to drive off. So our photographer starts to chase Senator Hart's car. He drives a couple blocks. Up streets, down streets, back and forth.

He gets out of the car. Walks through a park. Chase continues on foot. He knows they're following him and they know. He knows they're following it. Hart ducks around the corner. They lose him for a second. Then they're running to catch up.

And then they turn a corner in an alley. And there's Hart. There is the presumed nominee of the Democratic Party, the most important Democratic politician in the country, and they're confronting each other. And for a moment, standing in the alleyway behind Hart's Townhouse, they just stare at each other because there is no script for this moment. Ultimately, he asked, well, who are you? Well, we're from the Miami Herald. And he didn't really say anything. So I told him that we wanted to know why he was meeting with this woman in his townhouse.

A woman who at that point we knew had spent the night with him. He says in myriad ways, myriad times. I'm not going to tell you who that woman was. This is private. This isn't public. But he says there's no affair, which he would maintain forever after. And ultimately, he said, I've said enough. and he turned and walked inside and slammed the door.

We did tell him, though, he said, we're going to write this story unless you give us a reason that explains as to why what we are seeing and what we're concluding is wrong, and he never did that. So we kind of look at ourselves and say, well, now what do we do? Ultimately, the call was we have the proof we feel we needed. that publicly he was saying these things, and we now know that privately he was engaged in this. So they ran back to the hotel room, Fiedler, frantically typed out the story.

Gary Hart, comma, whose presidential campaign has been dogged by rumors of womanizing, comma, spent Friday night and much of Saturday with a woman who came from Miami to meet him. I finally went back, and I probably slept for three or four hours. Okay, so you're going to do the story. The only thing that gives me pause is if under this standard, you'd lose Jack Kennedy, certainly. You'd lose Woodrow Wilson, I think. So you'd lose a lot of people you might not want to lose. But, you know, you'd leap to the conclusion that the public would banish a person for that.

And I don't go there. So are you worried about how it's going to land? That's our producer, Jamie York. terrified. I was terrified. And the next morning. The political world explodes. Democratic presidential hopeful Gary Hart. Gary Hartth. It truly became a

firestorm. The Miami Herald reports today that Hart quote spent Friday night and most of Saturday. The Miami Herald reports that Hart and a Miami woman spent Friday night alone together. In his Washington townhouse with a young woman. That story begins ricocheting around the country. On CNN. So by Sunday, confronted by Harold reporters last night, Heart denied any impropriety.

Heart denied any impropriety. It's very apparent that not only is heart in trouble, but the entire culture of media around politics has changed in some very dramatic way. And when you think about the mindset of the television people, the radio people, the newspaper people, is there any self-doubt there? Is there people saying, is this really a question of his ability to conduct matters of state? Is that question being asked? There's a tremendous amount of self-doubt.

Not everyone agrees that such intense public scrutiny is necessary. There was widespread feeling. The Miami Herald was put on the defensive. The Fiedler and his colleagues had done was wrong. You know, that's out of bounds. What business is it of the press? You staked out a guy in his home? What are they up to sneaking around in the bushes and all that?

A lot of reporters don't think it's relevant. And one reason is this. Nobody knows where this is going to lead. Has this set a precedent? Should reporters be seen? Staking out George Bush's house, Bruce Babbitt's house, Joe Biden's house. But then in the same breath, there's generally this sense of, but you know, all he had to do basically was stay clean.

What was he thinking? Heart is to blame. It's Gary Hart's fault. And didn't he understand that things had changed? And doesn't the public maybe have a right to know? And so the newspaper that began the controversy is not backing down. This was not character assassination. This was character suicide.

He did it. We didn't. Even as the debate heats up over the ethics of its coverage of Gary So there was a real conflict. All the various echelon of media respond to this differently. The New York Times refuses to touch it originally. The Washington Post is deeply conflicted. And as for the public... In an unscientific Herald telephone poll, 63% of the callers said they thought the paper was making too much of a fuss over Gary Hart. I mean, the polling shows that people think the media overstepped. He's still polling very strongly. He's winning in the public mind.

According to Leslie Stahl, most people seem to be willing to compartmentalize. Most people can split off. How's he going to be his president? And, you know, is he cheating on his wife? It was not clear that the tide was going to take Hart out at all. So Hart and his team tried to get ahead of the story. They schedule a press conference in New Hampshire. And on the flight over, Kevin Sweeney, his press secretary, preps him. I remember asking Hart a question something like, have you ever been unfaithful to your wife?

And he shot back at me with anger. He said, I don't have to answer that question. That's a question that I can answer to God, to my wife. But it's not a question that I need to answer in politics. That's a dangerous question to be asking. We don't want to go there. And I just said, that's a great answer. Just hold that anger.

That's an appropriate response. We get to the press conference. Hart and Sweeney walk into this colonial-style room at Dartmouth College. There are lights everywhere. The room is filled. Sweaty. It's hot. There's more media than anyone's ever seen.

packed in. It's a really intense environment. Senator Hart has very little buffer and he's handling the questions. How are you going to convince him that you're not going to make this kind of mistake in judgment about personal behavior again? Really pretty brilliantly. I won't tell them, I'll demonstrate it. It's time goes on. People are going to want to know about your judgment, your character, on the issues that affect their lives and their families and their nation. That's what this campaign is going to be about. He's kind of firing on all cylinders. and Hart goes through, you know, 30 minutes, 40 minutes of questions, and then...

You raised, in your remarks yesterday, you raised the issue of morality and you raised the issue of truthfulness. At some point, he calls on a young reporter named Paul Taylor. Very specific. I have a series of questions about it. And Paul Taylor walks him through a series of questions. You said you did nothing immoral. Did you mean that you had no sexual relationship with Donna Rice last weekend or any other time you were with? That is correct. Do you believe that adultery is...

He says, Senator, have you ever committed adultery? He says, Senator, have you ever committed adultery? Senator Hart looked out at the sea of reporters. No politician had ever publicly been asked that broad, direct a question about his personal behavior. It really just, it shocked the room. We don't know what Gary Hart was thinking in that moment. He did not want to be interviewed on tape. But it's clear that if he said yes or no to that broad of a question,

than his entire married life. Because have you ever committed adultery? That word ever, his entire married life would suddenly be in play. And as far as we know, no other person in his situation in history had ever been asked to drag that much of themselves into the limelight. And on his face, you can see that he knows that this is never going to end. I mean, he knew how many women he'd seen over the years. He could envision them all being paraded through the papers.

He could tell already that there was all this new sort of tabloid press and that the political press was following along that he was never going to be able to talk about his agenda. And Hart stumbled around for a minute and ultimately he says, I don't have to answer that question. That's right. That's right. When I heard that response, I felt it.

I felt it. The tone was such that it felt like defeat. it felt like he is exhausted and he can't take this. And I was offended. I really, in that moment, thought this is just wrong. This has nothing to do with what is necessary to run this country. And I just thought this is not, this, this is not, we're not going to survive. And that moment effectively does him in.

Senator. I have told you the facts. If you don't believe me, there's nothing I can do about it. Senator, Mr. Hart. One second. What are you? Gary Hart is finished as a presidential candidate. Gary Hart's formal campaign is only three weeks old.

There was simply no putting the genie back in the bottle. His appearances yesterday were mob scenes. The Hart campaign has been hammered to its knees. Asking the same questions again and again. Today, after what may be remembered is the most disastrous week, any presidential candidates endured in years. Hart told an aide, let's go home. A couple weeks later, that famous image of Gary Hart, Donna Rice, comes out in the National Enquirer, and that was that.

Yeah, that's that for people my age, like that, that image of Donna Rice sitting in his lap and he's got this shirt on that says monkey business, that's the thing you remember. Yeah. Now, according to Matt By, you can look at this whole story, and particularly Tom Fiedler taking that call, Paul Taylor, asking that question. As this moment when all of these forces, way outside of Gary Hart's control, come together, not taking. just to sink his campaign, but to change political journalism profoundly. But, as with all cultural shifts, there's more than one way to look at this. So just for a gut check, we put the whole story. We're talking about Tom Feidler? Yeah, Tom. Yeah. Fun of this lady. Can we have you introduce yourself? I'm Koki Roberts. But no, who you are, like, part two.

I have six grandchildren. No, no, no, no, no, no. Something in Piari. I'm a political commentator and author. Okay. Koki Roberts believes that, yeah, reporters were interested in character more after Watergate, but it wasn't just that. The thing that's important to keep in mind here is that there were many more women covering candidates at that point than there had been before. There were women on the bus. And in the case of Gary Hart, several of those women had had personal encounters with him. There were times when you'd be in a room where he had hit on every woman in the room. So, this was not somebody that women who were covering campaigns were ignorant of. And the other thing to keep in mind, Robert, is that the whole women's movement did talk quite a bit about the personal is political. And because the way women were treated was something that we thought, and I continue to think, is a good gauge of character. And there was something of a that he treated women like Kleenex.

So we were expanding the universe of what was a major character flaw. So then are you kind of, are you kind of rooting Fiedler on? Oh, absolutely. Finally, somebody's written about it and thank God it's a guy. But as much as you were cheering them on, was there any concern that that was changing the rules of journalism? No. Why? Because the rules of journalism were constantly changing.

as they should. And according to Koki Roberts, this was less about journalism changing than about journalism catching up with the ethics of the time. Look, we elect our presidents based on who they are, not on what policies they stand for. It's different from any other office. The voters need to know as much as they can humanly know about that person. So is there a line for you? Is there a place you won't go in taking the full measure of a candidate? Not for president that I can think of. There's nothing you wouldn't touch. No.

I mean, I'd have to know that it was true. Sure. But no, no. I love that. Leslie Stahl had a slightly different take. She's fabulous, Coki Roberts. I didn't go there. That's interesting.

I just didn't want to. I just didn't want to ask about it. I didn't want to go there. Excuse me. I'm telling you this, even though I covered Watergate and would have asked any number of questions about character, you know, it's open season, fellows. The public needs to know this. But, you know, sex is really a hard place for me to pry. So I agree with it, but I also have my own opinion that.

there's propriety and I'm old-fashioned I guess am I I I don't know I intended quite frankly to come down here this morning and read a short carefully worded political statement this is Gary Hart's statement a few days after that press conference saying that I was withdrawing from the race and then quietly disappear from the stage and then after frankly tossing and turning all night I said to myself hell no. I'm not going to do that because it's not my style and because I'm a proud man

and I'm proud of what I've accomplished. In public life, some things may be interesting, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're important. We're all going to have to seriously question a system for selecting our national leaders that reduces the press of this nation to hunters and presidential candidates to being hunted. Politics in this country take it from me

is on the verge becoming another form of athletic competition or sporting match. We all better do something to make this system work. We're all going to be soon rephrasing Jefferson to say, I tremble for my country when I think we may, in fact, get the kind of leaders we deserve. Now we did reach out to Mr. Hart for comment explaining to him the story we were doing, and he wrote back this response. Thank you for your letter and the invitation to participate in your current story.

Though I did not become president, my life continues to be extraordinarily rich. Perhaps someday someone will tell that story. But for now, I have no interest in revisiting what many consider a turning point for the nation and a few an injustice. I do believe that the full and accurate story of that event remains to be told. Signed, Gary Hart. Very special thanks to Jamie York, RJMy York, and to Joe Trippy. Bye. You can find a link to Matt By's book. All the Truth is Out. The weak politics went tabloid on our website, RadioLab.org. This piece was produced by Simon Adler, and I guess that's pretty much it. Next podcast will be exploring these issues in a totally different context. I'm Chad Abomrod. I'm Robert Crulwich, and we approved this message.

Hi, this is Leslie Stahl. Hey, this is Matt By. I am reading the Reddit. For the Radio Lab show on Gary Hart. Here we go. Message. One. Radio Lab is produced by Jad Abunrad. I'm going to do it again because I don't think I did a bumrad. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Brenna Farrell, David Gable, Dylan Keith, Matt Keelty, Robert Krollwich, Andy Mills, Latif Nasser, Kelsey Padgett, Ari and Wack.

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