Editing Roger Stone (section)

==Biography==
Stone was born on August 27, 1952, in Norwalk, Connecticut, to Gloria Rose (Corbo) and Roger J. Stone. He grew up in Lewisboro, New York, in a family of Hungarian and Italian descent. His mother was a small-town reporter, his father a well driller and business owner. He has described his family as middle-class, blue-collar Catholics.

Stone said that as an elementary school student in 1960, he broke into politics to further John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign: "I remember going through the cafeteria line and telling every kid that Nixon was in favor of school on Saturdays ... It was my first political trick."

Stone's political career began in earnest on the 1972 Nixon campaign (notably as a member of the [[Committee for the Re-Election of the President]]), with activities such as contributing money to a possible rival of Nixon in the name of the Young Socialist Alliance – then slipping the receipt to the Manchester Union-Leader. He also hired a spy in the Hubert Humphrey campaign who became Humphrey's driver. According to Stone, during the day he was officially a scheduler in the Nixon campaign, but "By night, I'm trafficking in the black arts. Nixon's people were obsessed with intelligence." Stone maintains he never did anything illegal during Watergate. The Richard Nixon Foundation later clarified that Stone had been a 20-year-old junior scheduler on the campaign, and that to characterize Stone as one of Nixon's aides or advisers was a "gross misstatement".

After Nixon won the 1972 presidential election, Stone worked for the administration in the Office of Economic Opportunity. After Nixon resigned, Stone went to work for Bob Dole, but was later fired after columnist Jack Anderson publicly identified Stone as a Nixon 'dirty trickster'.

In 1975, Stone helped found the National Conservative Political Action Committee, a New Right organization that helped to pioneer independent expenditure political advertising.

In 1976, he worked in Ronald Reagan's campaign for U.S. President. In 1977, at age 24, Stone won the presidency of the Young Republicans in a campaign managed by his friend Paul Manafort; they had compiled a dossier for each of the 800 delegates that gathered, which they called "whip books".