Sen. Larry Craig's interview with Matt Lauer

Elected to the senate in 1990, over the years Larry Craig became a fixture there, and in Republican politics. He was a powerful force on senate committees, a solid family values conservative who in 1999 publicly deplored President Bill Clinton's involvement with Monica Lewinsky:

(Sen. Craig on Meet the Press)
It's a bad boy Bill Clinton, you're a naughty boy. The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy, I'm going to speak out for the citizens of my state who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.

Earlier this year when Mitt Romney announced his run for president, he named Senator Craig co-chair of his campaign in Idaho.

But in October 2006, eight months before the senator's arrest in Minneapolis, old rumors began swirling again.

A gay activist named Mike Rogers, who makes it his business to "out" conservative politicians, wrote in his blog that he'd interviewed several men who'd had sex with Senator Larry Craig.

Larry Craig: I call it gladiator politics. Put the politician in the arena and beat him until he's dead and let the crowd cheer. And that's really tragic because we've watched this and certainly with the gay community, a fair number of them have become very militant.
Matt Lauer: When you heard this-- that this report had come out on this blog and that some major media outlets were picking it up, what were you thinking?
Larry Craig: Well, I responded to it by saying-- this is a blog. He has no facts. It is simply not true. Many papers ran that. And that was the end of it. The local daily here did not.
Matt Lauer: And you're talking about the Idaho statesman.

Prompted by those allegations on the Web site, reporters from the paper spent months delving into the rumors about Larry Craig's sex life. On May 14, they interviewed the senator and his wife.

Matt Lauer: They had a laundry list of accusations. There was a guy back when you were president of your college fraternity who said you came onto him; that there was a rumor you were discharged from the National Guard because you were gay. And that there was a guy who says you cruised him, whatever that means-- a store in Boise.
Larry Craig: I was president of a fraternity. I had to make tough choices sometimes about leadership roles. There was a young man who was bounced from our fraternity for getting involved in drugs. I believe that was the gentleman. He was not very happy with Larry Craig and the leadership role that I had to play.
Matt Lauer: So-- vendetta? That was a little bit of--
Larry Craig: It-- it's very possible that that was a vendetta.
Matt Lauer: How about the National Guard?
Larry Craig: The National Guard-- I have a medical discharged based on my feet.
Suzanne Craig: And the man in the store, this is a small town. When you go into a store and somebody looks up and recognizes you, we smile at them. If you didn't, then you'd hear, "Senator Craig, he, you know, he ignored me," or something like that.
Larry Craig: My wife and I went to that store that day to buy shoes because we were going to take a rafting trip. We were there together.

And there was another allegation-- this one centering on a men's room at a train station. The newspaper reporters played an explicit audio tape on which an unidentified man claimed he'd had sex with Craig a few years earlier, at Union Station in Washington, D.C.

Suzanne Craig: I was feeling violated, because they came in here and brought this almost pornographic audio tape. And played it in our home. And I knew immediately it was not the truth. Because the description he gave of Larry in some areas that only I might know about were wrong, on three counts.
Larry Craig: It came after 10 months of their reporter traveling the country, calling over 300 of our friends, using this rumor almost as an advocate saying, "Don't you hear this? Don't you believe it's true?" He became an active spreader of a false rumor. He took my picture and traveled the gay bars in Washington saying, "Have you seen this man? Do you know this man?"
Suzanne Craig: This-- the whole thing was so incredibly personal, emotional. And I know what kind of sacrifices the family's made to help him and support him in that. And here's somebody sitting there because there was a blogger that said something. And he's trying to make something of nothing instead of talking about the good things.
Matt Lauer: What was your mood after that interview?
Larry Craig: Well, there was a feeling of relief-- that I certainly hoped I'd made the case that I think both Suzanne and I did, that they were chasing rumor, false rumor and innuendo, and that they had not found anything. There was just nothing out there.

But that was all about to change.