ustxtxb_obs_1962_05_19_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

JERRY HOLLEMAN, RALPH YARBOROUGH Bulk of Estes Story Remains To Be Told of the group, the liberalstroubles is the fact that Yarborough was indeed a friend of Billie Sol Estes, that he publicly took favors from him, such as the expense of political barbecues and plane rides and support of his radio programs. The Roof Fell In Of course, until six weeks ago nobody thought anything about this association, since every politician must pass the hat among his supporters and, until the rcof fell in on his castle of cards, Billie Sol Estes was considered a good man to have around, especially in a state where the political climate is such that liberals must huddle together for warmth. Among the most hardworking of the newsmen who are covering the Estes case is Jimmy Banks of the Dallas News. Banks, urged on by his editors, has come up with some solid and valuable contributions to the case and some contributions based strictly on hearsay and gossip. For instance, among the material which Attorney General Wilson made available to ne.vsmen this week was a copy of the interview Asst. Attorney General Les King held on April 9 with Lloyd Stone, formerly a partner in the fertilizer company of Lester-Stone and the first man to sell out to Estes when he began his fantastic campaign to corner the fertilizer market in the Plains area in early 1959. In the interview, King fed Stone ever make a statement in your presence that he had contributed $47,500 to Ralph Yarborough’s campaign?” A. “I thought the figure that I always heard him quote was some $46,000.” Stone went on to say that Estes had made this claim in front of several other employees. Under further questioning by King, Stone said he had never heard Estes claim to have given money to Lyndon Johnson, Will Wilson, or Cong. Rutherford. Q. “You mean the only one he ever mentioned was Ralph Yarborough ?” CLASSIFIED DISTRIBUTORSHIP now open in this locality, for man can contribute part time expanding into full time if desiredservicing motels, hotels, stores, etc. Product has public acceptance with terrific potential. Requirements for distributorship are good transportation and financial ability to carry small inventory. For personal interview in your city, furnish address and phone number. NATIONAL AUTOMATION OF TEXAS 1213 N. Copia St. El Paso, Tex. CORRIEDALE Sheep Foundation Stock. Reg. Rams, Ewes, Spring Lambs. $25, $35, $50 according to age and quality. Gus Eward, Rt. 11, Box 160L, San Antonio, Texas. A. “Yes, in my presence.” This data was gathered before a justice of peace, not in one of the regular courts of inquiry held by Wilson. Wilson carefully told all newsmen that it was pretty flimsy stuff and that they would use it at their own perilbut he left it out for them to use, if they wished. The Dallas News wished to do so, and did. So did some other newspapers, such as the Chicago Tribune. Meanwhile, another assistant attorney general, Winston Crowder, had gathered copious notes full of hearsay about another highly prominent Texas politician, in connection with the Estes case. One rumor, which Crowder said everybody in Hereford was talking about, and which he also heard from Mutt Wheeler, one of Estes’ employes, was to the effect that this prominent politician was a partner in one of Estes’ largest grain storage elevators, the Allied storage. Another bit of hearsay picked up from a West Texas newspaper editor by Crowder was that the prominent politician’s wife had invested in Estes through some of her companies. Some Questions And another piece of hearsay, which Crowder said came from two very reliable grain dealers, was that the prominent politician’s wife’s brother stood surety with the Aetna Insurance Company for Estes’ bond for grain storage. All of this is hearsay, just like the $46,000 busines with Yarborough, but all was recorded in good faith by Crowder and saved for the attorney general’s files. Why wasn’t this also made available to the pressput out in front of them where they could read it and use it, “at their peril,” of course, if they chose? The Observer asked Wilson this question, and he replied that he didn’t even know that Crowder had the data. Wilson told the Observer he thought it was “reprehensible” that the Dallas News’s attorney let that newspaper use it. So far as Yarborough is concerned, the damage is done. Wilson’s staff also illegally, they admit, but innocently, they claim released information regarding telephone calls from Estes’ home to Yarborough and Jerry Holleman, assistant secretary of Labor until his recent resignation. Jack Pride, assistant attorney general in charge of anti-trust, was in Washington May 2. He had lunch with John Mashek of the Dallas News Washington bureau, and after lunch disclosed to him that he was tracing phone calls from Estes to Washington to the offices of Yarborough, Holleman, Cong. J. T. Rutherford, and the counsel of the National Farm Union. Price released no other names, although there are hundreds of calls on the list. The list of calls is not privileged information and in making it public, Price opened himself to a lawsuit from any of those mentioned, as he admitted to the Observer. But Price and Asst. Attorney General Richard Wells and Wilson himself all said they were sorry they had mentioned Yarborough, but they also refused to release any other names on the phone list. Wilson said that “when we hit the ground out there starting our investigation, we heard rumors about Johnson and Estes everywhere, but we haven’t been able to tie them together.” The Wall Street Journal, in its Friday weekly wire, said: “Rifts widen between Democratic Senator Yarborough and Vice President Johnson. Each hints the other was closer to Estes.” Holleman, who resigned after readily admitting he took a gift of $1,000 from Estes, his friend of 10 years, told the Observer: ‘Own Free Will “I feel I have two very strong points on my side. First, my own disclosure. No one discovered this check. I came forward of my own free will. Secondly, I’ve been around this game long enough to know how to hide this sort of thing if I wanted to hide it. But I didn’t feel there was anything to hide.” Holleman was earning $20,000 a year as undersecretary of labor, which he called “slightly more” than he was earning as head of the AFL-CIO, but he must have been figuring in the AFL-CIO president’s expense account also, for reportedly his salary was only $12,000. When Holleman m o v e d to Washington, he left two houses in Austin, one a rent house, which he was still making payments on, and the other a quite costly home which he was also paying on but trying to sell. For ten months a buyer eluded him and he was paying on both houses, plus renting a big place in a Washington suburb, $300 rent, but $550 “after paying all incidentals,” he said. “People ask,” said Holleman, ” ‘Why can’t a guy get along on $20,000 a year? Why does a guy making that much have to take money from a friend?’ Well, aside from the housing costs I just mentioned, we had it> entertain a great deal. We were expected to. And we were always expected to go to dinners for which the tickets ranged anywhere from $15 to $100. The only place you eat free in Washington is at an embassy. So when Billie Sol offered this, I took it. Check with some of the people up here. It is so common to borrow repeatedly and heavily.” Holleman said Estes’s offer was made at a dinner. He told Billie Sol he was having a hard time meeting financial ends. Billie Sol, a fellow Church of Christ member and confidant of Holleman’s for a decade, offered the $1,000cash or checkto help out, and “I said Because of space limitations, the second installment of Charles Ramsdell’s article, “1E21: A Portentous Year in Texas History,” must be postponed until next week. THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 6 May 19, 1962 make it a check, I’ve nothing to hide,” said Holleman. Oddly, this check is not listed in the Estes financial journal in the Attorney General’s office. Asst. Atty. Gen. Wells says this telling the truth about taking a which is doubtful since he didn’t hesitate to list some others, or account which is kept with books which the attorney general’s office has not yet seen. Wells feels this last is the most likely. Many members of organized labor in Texas claim Holleman was telephoning around from the beginning of the campaign, trying to solicit support for Connally, at the behest of Johnson. And certainly there are many harsh feelings still toward Holleman among liberals who hold him responsible for killing the Democrats of Texas, a liberal organization, by persuading labor not to follow Mrs. Frankie Randolph out of the 1960 state convention into a rump convention. But Holleman’s link with Estes still hurts liberal Democrats, for to the man in the street, Holleman means labor and labor, as he knows, is supporting Don Yarborough. Ralph Yarborough Still beyond taking a handout from an old friend who has proved himself unwise, there is so far little to pin on Holleman. Certainly there is as yet no influence-peddling to be found. Quite the contrary. Estes was one of the biggest employers of bracero labor in West Texas. One entry in his journal reads: “Bracero payroll, cotton picking pay, Oct. 5, 1961, $4,970.00.” But it is generally conceded that when the recent obligatory pay increase for bracero labor \(-up to the United States Department of Labor, Holleman was the man most responsible for it. The resulting blow to Estes pocketbook could hardly be termed favoritism. Many of the newsmen who have stayed closest to the Estes story from the beginning agree that probably the meatiest area for development lies in the condubt of the U.S.D.A. through all this. Cotton allotments are not supposed to be saleable. They are supposed to be attached to the land. But Estes found out about the provision in U.S.D.A. regulations that if land is condemned for a lake or a highway or something of that sortthe farmer can, within a given time, transfer his cotton allotment to another farm which he plans to buy. Estes sent his men into areas where farmers were being uprooted by eminent domain with his proposition: Buy land from him in Reeves County \(Estes’ home Then, if they would transfer their allotment to that land, he would lease it back from them for $50 an acre. In other words, what it came to was, they rented him their cotton allotment for $50 an acre. In that fashion, he transferred 3,000 acres of cotton allotment to Reeves County last year to become the nation’s largest borrowedallotment farmer. Henry Marshall, the Agriculture Stabilization Committee official with the most power in this program, was found dead under such mysterious circumstances just as the investigation of Estes’ activities was launched that, with the recent flurry of publicity attending the year-old death, the federal district court in Bryan has decided to re-open the case and hold a hearing Monday. Wilson also points to the fact that Estes had built extravagantly in grain storage facilities. At the time he was arrested, he had storage facilities for more than 80 million bushels, yet he had only about 45 million in storage. Where did he expect to get the grain to fill the rest? Wilson asks. From more favoritism on the part of U.S.D.A.? Billie Sol once told a business associate, “A wise man is the man who can fight a battle without getting splattered with blood.” That $1,700 Billie was so thickly splattered from head to toe this week that he had lost his appeal as an academic political problem. But some of his friends and associates were wiping themselves off with all the aplomb they could muster, and the wisest were choosing the towel of candor. This, it seemed, was the choice Yarborough had made as he volunteered to testify before the Senate sub-committee investigating the case. Questioned by newsmen about the $1,700 Estes gave him to support his radio programs, Yarborough said, he took it and was glad to get it because Estes offered it with no strings attached. Yarborough said the radio program, broadcast weekly since Jan. 1, 1959, had cost him a total of $24,400. As Washington columnists for Texas’ more conservative newspapers began to suggest that ‘it was Yarborough, not Johnson, who had won appointment for Holleman, Yarborough fought back with this explanation: He said he had recommended Lee Williams of Austin for the undersecretaryship; he said he didn’t even know Holleman had applied for it or was even under consideration until his appointment was announced. For Williams, he wrote letters of recommendation to Goldberg, Kennedy and Larry O’Brien, one of Kennedy’s aides. Williams is a special assistant to Bob Goodwin, director of the Bureau of Employment Security in the Labor Department. B.S. ‘Remember 1952′ Sirs: The battle cry of the real Democrats in Texas should now be “Remember 1952”. Ten years is not too long for us to recall Governor Shivers’ leading Democratic machinery in Texas lock, stock and barrel into the Republican camp. We should remember when the Democratic Party headquarters lost contact with their officials in Texas. Telephone calls were unanswered, campaign material destroyed. I certainly remember 1952, when a young lawyer and Marine Corps veteran named Don Yarborough drove with me to Dallas to offer our services to Mr. Sam Rayburn, as he struggled to get a delayed make-shift campaign off the ground from a small suite in the Adolphus Hotel. Now we are in 1962and we read the Houston Post editorial explaining Connally’s savvy campaign in that he has the best brains of the old Shivers organization behind him, either overtly or covertly. This is something to reflect on, particularly by the usually dependable and discerning Democrats of Central and South Texas, because 1964 is not far away. Paul E. Daugherty, 1973 West Gray, Houston. Jack Kennedy was willing to debate Dick Nixon. was willing to debate Elonitarborough \(Swilling to debate why won’t JOHN CONNALLY DEBATE?