but i had known hart and strother earlier in the '80s.ognized his name when i started hearing about the story earlier this year. >> so, the basic kernel of your reporting, lee atwater who had worked for george h.w. bush, on his deathbed as he's making up -- atoning for his sins and talking about wrongs he had committed in his career, on his deathbed he confesses he concocted this whole plot. he tells his counterpart from the 1988 campaign, this man mr. strother who worked on the heart campaign tells him he did it. but raymond strother doesn't pass this information on himself for another couple of decades. >> right. i think it is important to recognize, this is all in the realm of contingent history. one of the reasons that raymond strother didn't tell his close friend, the person he worked for, gary hart, back in 1991 when the dying lee atwater spoke with him, he realized there wouldn't be any proof. atwater died soon after he talked with him. hart had moved on to other pursuits in life and he thought this might just cause him more pain t

it wasn't a conversation, strother said when i spoke with him recently. wasn't any bless pleasant. it was like he was working down a checklist. what he wanted to say the episode that triggered gary hart's withdrawal from the race which became known as the monkey business affair, it had been a trap. strothers says, quote, i thought there was something fishy about the whole thing from the very beginning. lee told me that he had set up the whole monkey business deal. i did it, he told me. i fixed hart. strother's conversation with atwater happened in 1991. he mainly kept the news to himself. as the years went by, he discreetly mentioned the conversation to some journalists and other colleagues, but not to gary hart. quote, i probably should have told him at the time. it was judgment call, and i didn't see the point in involving him in another controversy. but late last year, strother learned that the prostate cancer he had been treated for a dozen years ago had returned and spread, and that he might not have long to live. strother began traveling to see peop