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When I first met Dick Thornburgh in 1971, I was one of a small group of graduate students at Carnegie Mellon. We were working under a federal grant to develop a computer model for more effectively allocating law enforcement funds for Allegheny County.
In our 20s, idealists about government, none of us were fans of the conservative Nixon administration then in power. Thornburgh was a Republican recently appointed by Nixon as U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania. He was rumored to be politically ambitious. We weren’t sure what to expect when he walked into our classroom.