Lucianne Goldberg, the book agent who suggested that Linda Tripp record her conversations with Monica Lewinsky, and then took the tapes to the FBI, has had a career of digging up sexual dirt on Democrats. PNS commentator Peter Dale Scott uncovers some of Goldberg's past efforts along these lines, and reveals some intriguing connections. PNS commentator Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

For conspiracy theorists, deep political crises always seem to reveal familiar threads, and Monica-gate is no exception.

For example, White House chief counsel Charles Ruff first moved into the Washington mainstream with Watergate.

More significant, however, is the reappearance of Lucianne Goldberg, a veteran sex snooper, who worked as a spy for Richard Nixon.

Goldberg, who told reporters that she is the one who suggested taping to Linda Tripp, earned a $1000 a week traveling with Democrat George McGovern's entourage during the 1972 presidential campaign, according to Congressional investigators.

The Nixon people "were looking for really dirty stuff . . . who was sleeping with whom, what the Secret Service men were doing with the stewardesses, who was smoking pot on the plane -- that sort of thing," she told the late Anthony Lukas when he interviewed her for his book "Nightmare."

Sixteen years later, Goldberg was involved in another sex and politics controversy as book agent for an expose of Senator Edward Kennedy's behavior at Chappaquidick. The book, by Leo Damore, was originally contracted for by Random House, which later backed out on the grounds that Damore failed to provide direct evidence for his accusations. The book was eventually released by conservative publisher Henry Regnery.

Goldberg 's "cover" story when she traveled with McGovern involved a claim that she was working for North American Newspaper Alliance, a news feature service linked with US intelligence. NANA was founded by Ernest Cuneo, a veteran of the OSS, the CIA's predecessor, and co-owned (in the 1970s) by the brother of a former CIA agent.

And for Kennedy assassination theorists, the NANA connection brings the matter full circle, as the news agency that employed Priscilla Johnson (now Priscilla McMillan) as its Moscow correspondent. While there, she interviewed an obscure American seeking Soviet citizenship, named Lee Harvey Oswald.

Johnson's intelligence connections emerged more clearly after Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Allilueva, defected to the United States. Svetlana stayed at first with Johnson's family on long Island, and Priscilla translated Svetlana's memoir.