eagleton. i'm proud to have him at my side and i'm proud to have been introduced a moment ago by one of the most eloquent and courageous voices in this land, senator ted kennedy. my nomination is all the more precious and that is the gift of the most open political process and all of our political history. it is the sweet harvest of the work of tens of thousands of tireless volunteers, young and old alike, literally funded by hundreds of thousands of small contributors and every part of this nation. [applause] those who lingered on the brink of despair only a short time ago have been brought into this campaign, heart, hand, head and soul, and i have been the beneficiary of the most remarkable political organization in the history of this country. [applause] it is an organization that gives dramatic proof to the power of love and to a faith they can literally move mountains. as yates put it, count were man's glory most begins and ends, and say, my glory was i had such friends. [applause] this is

but tom eagleton was by all standard measurements a good candidate. george mcgovern was the son of a protestant minister from small agriculture state in the north and eagleton was a strong catholic with strong ties to labor. on the key issues, he was certainly in agreement with mcgovern. it looked like a pretty good fit. you have to understand we didn't have any fbi, we didn't have any security agencies available to check anybody out. we assumed tom eagleton had run statewide and won four or five times, as he had, if there were anything that could be used against him it would have been used against him. >> so jules witcover, the eagleton choice, what are you being told about it from the campaign? >> there was no he chatter, because there was no indication there was anything wrong with it. vetting candidates was a very casual sort of thing at the t e time. as frank mankiewicz said in the clip, there wasn't much time to do anything, or any reason, really, not to word for it. >> so you were in sioux falls. you go after the convention you're in sioux fall

but tom eagleton was by all standard measurements a good candidate. george mcgovern was the son of a protestant minister from small agriculture state in the north and eagleton was a strong catholic with strong ties to labor. on the key issues, he was certainly in agreement with mcgovern. it looked like a pretty good fit. you have to understand we didn't have any fbi, we didn't have any security agencies available to check anybody out. we assumed tom eagleton had run statewide and won four or five times, as he had, if there were anything that could be used against him it would have been used against him. >> so jules witcover, the eagleton choice, what are you being told about it from the campaign? >> there was no chatter about it. because there was no indication there was anything wrong with it. vetting candidates was a very casual sort of thing at the time. as frank mankiewicz said in the clip, there wasn't much time to do anything, or any reason, really, not to take eagleton's word for it that he had nothing that would damage the campaign. >> so you