The Press: The Spy on the Train

The campaign pace not only confined reporters to covering the speeches. It also prevented the men running the show from maintaining a proper guard against ringers. Thus last week a dark-haired volunteer worker from the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington had little trouble infiltrating the Goldwater Special train. Posing as a freelance writer, Moira O’Connor, 23, managed twice to distribute copies of an anti-Goldwater broadside the full length of the train, missing only the candidate’s car.

Exposed as a spy, and the agent of a California Democratic prankster named Richard Tuck, Miss O’Connor was put off the train in Parkersburg, W. Va., only ten hours after boarding. But however simple-minded her mission might have been, campaign newsmen, on a starvation diet of steaks and oratory, jumped at the chance to report it. In front-page stories around the U.S., they gave the Democrats’ girl spy a far better ride than she had got on the Goldwater Special.