Why a troubled VP bid has us recalling a bizarre 1980 Scientology extortion attempt
In the last few days, major media outlets like New York magazine, Newsweek, Business Insider, and the Economic Times have pondered the possibility that former President Donald Trump has buyer’s remorse over JD Vance and might move to replace the Ohio senator as his running mate.
We’re not here to debate that: Vance may turn out to be a terrific VP candidate who helps Trump win election in November for all we know. But the suggestion that Vance might be replaced after only a brief time on the ticket is naturally drawing parallels to the most infamous example of that happening in the past: The 18-day candidacy of Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton as George McGovern’s running mate in the 1972 presidential campaign.
McGovern was about to be nominated at the Democratic Party’s convention that summer in Miami, where he assumed he’d be able to talk Ted Kennedy into being his running mate. But Kennedy turned him down. With the convention about to start, McGovern quickly canvassed other likely figures, hoping to get an old-guard figure who would help with voters who were nervous about McGovern’s rise as an insurgent candidate. Eagleton appeared to be a good fit: He was a liberal Democrat and an anti-abortion Catholic who had risen fast after being elected Missouri’s youngest-ever district attorney in St. Louis. And like McGovern, Eagleton had spoken out against the Vietnam War.
After a short chat, Eagleton accepted McGovern’s offer to be his running mate, and there wasn’t time for a comprehensive background investigation by the McGovern campaign. But soon after the convention, revelations about Eagleton torpedoed his candidacy: Namely, that he had suffered from depression, and had been treated for it with electroconvulsive treatments. And in the context of the Cold War, there were questions raised about Eagleton’s capacity to have the finger on the button given his background.
Initially, McGovern stood by his running mate, but pressure quickly built up in the press, and only 18 days after he was named the VP nominee, Eagleton held a press conference in Washington and announced that he was stepping down. McGovern went on to be trounced by incumbent President Richard Nixon in the general election. And that failure to vet a candidate has haunted political campaigns ever since.
Given the statements by JD Vance that have been dug up by the media in recent days, you can see why some press observers are wondering if the Trump campaign did its homework, and if they’re facing a similar McGovern-Eagleton moment.
But we’re interested in Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton here at the Underground Bunker for another reason. After that debacle in 1972, Eagleton was returned by Missouri voters to the Senate in 1974. And then, six years later, he prepared to run again. But there was a very strange complication.
On August 4, 1980, the day before the Missouri Democratic Party primary, which he expected to win, Eagleton held a press conference and made a bizarre statement: He was being blackmailed by his own niece, Elizabeth “Libby” Eagleton Weigand, who was threatening to release negative information about him unless he gave her $220,000 to buy her out of the Eagleton family pipe-fitting business. And the real reason she wanted the money, Eagleton said, was to turn it over to the Church of Scientology.
A day earlier, on August 3, Libby Weigand and her attorney, Stephen Poludniak, were arrested by the FBI, which had been monitoring their extortion attempt.
“One of the major reasons I went public was because of my knowledge of the Church of Scientology and the past criminal activities of some of its national leaders,” Eagleton told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after the press conference, and he was referring, of course, to the convictions of eleven top Scientology officials in the Snow White Program prosecutions that had just recently taken place. And among the documents seized in that case were Scientology dossiers on politicians — including Eagleton.
Eagleton and his brother Mark had set up trusts to control their late father’s pipe-fitting business so it paid their children allowances, but Libby, the daughter of Mark Eagleton (who by this time was incapacitated), wanted to sell her shares for a bigger payday, which she valued at $220,000. By the company’s bylaws, those shares could only be purchased inside the family, and Eagleton refused. So, to pressure her uncle to buy her shares, she and her attorney, Poludniak, threatened to release letters that supposedly contained information that Eagleton was bisexual. The letters, however, had no signatures or dates, and the FBI considered them hoaxes. When Libby and Poludniak showed up for a meeting to trade the papers for a check from Eagleton’s lawyer, the FBI was watching and stepped in to arrest them. After a trial, both were convicted of extortion and conspiracy. (Poludniak fell on his sword, claiming that he had dreamed up the caper, and was sentenced to 4 years. Libby was given an indeterminate sentence and presumably served no time in prison.)
Scientology spokesmen repeatedly denied that the church had any part in the matter, but Eagleton said he was certain that his niece would turn over any money she got out of him to the church. It was also interesting that Libby’s Scientologist husband, Scott Weigand, was related to one of the Snow White defendants, Richard Weigand.
While his niece was facing trial and sentencing, Thomas Eagleton was re-elected to the Senate in November 1980, but by a smaller margin than had been expected. He served out the six-year term, but then didn’t run for re-election in 1986. Eagleton returned to Missouri after his tenure in the Senate and continued to be active as a commentator and educator. He died in 2007.
Libby Weigand, it’s interesting to note, continued her dedication to Scientology. According to Scientology’s own published records, she is not only an OT 8 Scientologist, but she completed courses at least as recently as 2015 (and now as Libby Regan after remarrying).
What a fascinating, if brief, episode of Scientology and politics colliding.
And more than 40 years later, we can say we absolutely agree with Thomas Eagleton: If his niece had gotten her paws on that money, there’s no doubt at all that she would have immediately forked it over to Scientology!
We want to thank our friend Esther Schindler for reminding us of this strange episode in Scientology history some months ago, and our newspaper archives researcher for hunting down great clips on it.
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Wow, quite a story and interesting to me. In 1980 I was a very active Scientologist and I didn’t have a clue this was going on. Nor did any other Scientology public that I knew. The organization was and still is skilled at gaslighting its members and keeping bad new away from it’s dedicated followers.
I wonder how OSA agent Janet Weigand is related to the Weigands?
It took me 32 years from that newsworthy political incident in 1980 for me to wake up to the fact I had been manipulated and like Libby had given all my money to the cult. The mindset of us cherch members was that nothing was more important than going up “The Bridge to total freedom(fiefdom).”
It almost destroyed me and its killed many others. Thanks Tony for bringing another piece of relevant history into the present day context. Your article also brings up a good question to ask. Does anyone have any information on who Scientology wants to win the presidency?
That was a very interesting story. That happened one year before I got involved in Scientology in 1981. It's unfortunate that the internet didn't begin until the early 90s. If we had the technology a few decades earlier with so much information available, the cult of Scientology likely wouldn't have expanded so far. It likely wouldn't even exist today. If I had the information available to me in 1981 I wouldn't have gotten involved. To this day I'm kicking myself for not coming to my senses until 1988 when I finally turned my back on Scientology.