IN theory it is clean and simple: campaigns have traditionally been privately financed; people or groups with cash to spare donate to the candidate or party of their choice. In practice it is often dirty and complicated: big money is solicited or offered with outrageous strings attached. Rarely has the taint of scandal been as strong as it is this year, and our cover story this week takes a nationwide look at the givers and takers, the mechanics and motives, the quid and the quo of modern campaign financing.

Though campaign funds come from everywhere, Washington is the central point of accounting--or non-accounting. There the sensitive, secretive nature of political financing in this election year puts a strain on journalistic patience, stamina--and eyes. "You feel like a dentist touching a raw nerve," says Correspondent Hays Gorey. "One Republican source and friend, hearing the proposed topic for an interview, said, Tm going to hang up now.' I promised not to mention the Watergate, and he gave me two minutes." Corey's colleague, Simmons Fentress, found the McGovern people more willing to talk about the delicate matter of money. Still, he says, it "is not the kind of story where one person or three or even three dozen will tell you what you want to know. So you work up bits and pieces."

Correspondent Samuel Iker pursued such bits not in interviews but in thousands of pages of reported contributions. He found nearly 1,400 pages listing donations to one campaign committee for one Senate candidate. "Trying to pin down where the big political money comes from is an Excedrin-size headache," says Iker. "Peering at page after page of microfilmed reports makes your eyeballs spin like a slot machine. Little men with sledgehammers pound away at your temples."

Iker endured nonetheless, and his findings contributed to the story written by Associate Editor Ed Magnuson, the author of 33 previous TIME covers. "Perhaps the hardest part of writing this story was keeping my own indignation in check," says Magnuson. "I'm outraged when someone jumps the line in front of a theater; the big campaign contributors are jumping the line on a national scale."

Magnuson's introduction to political financing came 23 years ago, during his undergraduate days at the University of Minnesota. As a special project for a course in political science, he spent an academic year closely following one candidate for the Minnesota legislature. "Over many months," Magnuson recalls, "I watched the pressures on him mount from special-interest groups and potential contributors." As a reporter and writer, Magnuson has been able to watch many other politicians since then. "Nothing seems to have changed," he concludes, "except that the money and the potential reward for both donor and recipient have grown greater."

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