Forty Years Ago This Week: Colorado U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, D-CD1, and Kentucky Democratic U.S. Sen. Walter Huddleston filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the Department of State and Justice. The request came on the heels of suspected refugee and immigration policy violations by the two agencies.

Schroeder told The Colorado Statesman that Reagan administration Secretary of State Alexander Haig had written several letters to Attorney General William French Smith, advising Smith to “presume that anyone coming out of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam is a refugee.”

“To assure fair public discussion of the matter,” Schroeder said, “we have requested all cablegrams, telegrams, letters and memos which discuss the allegations.”

As a member of the House Judiciary subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and International Law, Schroeder said she had paid special attention to the the correspondence between Haig and Smith.

Huddleston had submitted evidence to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proving that the State Department had pressured Immigration and Naturalization Service to accept thousands of Southeast Asian immigrants as “political refugees.”

“Some of those immigrants are economic,” Schroeder said, “not political refugees.”

Twenty Years Ago: President George W. Bush stopped in Denver as a part of his Heartland tour to attend a fundraiser for U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard and Gov. Bill Owens.

“There’s no finer governor in the United States than Bill Owens,” Bush said at the $1,000 per-plate dinner at the Adam’s Mark Hotel. “And Jeb Bush isn’t all bad.”

Between the $25,000 per-person reception and the dinner Republicans raked in over $1.5 million in campaign funds.

While well-heeled Republicans were dining with Bush, Rick Stanley, who was running for the Libertarian Party’s nomination for U.S. Senate, said he was seriously considering suing the Rocky Mountain News for libel.

Stanley said that it was libelous for the newspaper to print statements including, “Tom Strickland is the ONLY declared opponent to Sen. Wayne Allard.”

As the only announced Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate, Stanley said, “The party is 100% certain to nominate me. I have wherewithal.”

On July 31, Stanley said, he’d filed his FEC Statement of Candidacy, opened a campaign bank account, and had faxed copies of the documents to all metro Denver media sources – including the Rocky Mountain News.

While The Denver Post, NPR and the Associated Press had all published brief articles acknowledging Stanley’s candidacy, the Rocky Mountain News repeatedly referenced Strickland as “the only opponent” to Allard.

On Aug. 14, Stanley organized a protest drawing 175 supporters outside Rocky Mountain News’s building with signs that read: “The Rocky Mountain News LIES.”

Stanley said another protest had been scheduled and that he was seriously considering a libel lawsuit.

“It would cite a little-known precedent,” Stanley said, “making published remarks excluding one from a group to which one legitimately belongs [Senate candidates] defamatory. We’re looking into it now. Nobody’s made any decision. We are consulting with several lawyers about it.”

This wasn’t the first time Rocky Mountain News had drawn the ire of Libertarians. In Oct. 2000, it had published its Voters Guide without any mention of what had amounted to a record number of Libertarian candidates.

“If a lawsuit is filed, it might become a class-action suit naming several national media outlets and their local affiliates for common journalistic practices such as rounding vote goals in three-way races to make it appear that the Libertarian received no votes,” Stanley said.

With a self-calculated 35,000 supporters, Stanley estimated that he’d need at least 600,000 votes to win.

“On’y 565,000 to go,” he said.

Rachael Wright is the author of the Captain Savva Mystery series, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing writer to Colorado Politics and The Gazette.