ustxtxb_obs_1962_05_26_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

HOUSTON Both liberals and conservatives in Houston contended this week that “right-wing extremists” have gained control of the leadership of the Harris County Democratic Party. S. W. Garrison, a precinct committeeman who supported “moderate conservative” Walter G. Sterling for secretary of the county party executive committee, warned that the party is being led by extremists and said his group is working “so that more reasonable conservatives may get in control again and do the best possible job for Harris County.” John Crossland, a veteran leader of the Democratic liberals, echoed Garrison’s charge about “extreme right-wingers” and said a number of Republicans and Constitution Party members are included in the Harris County delegation to the state convention in September. Among the groups which Crossland said are influencing executive committee leadership are “Freedom-in Action, Texans for America, Committee for Constitutional Government, the Constitution Educational League, the National Indignation Convention, and the Minute Women.” Fred Gray of Diamond Alkali Company, who was chairman of the committee that named the delegates to the state convention, Compromise On Padre WASHINGTON The House interior affairs subcommittee this week approved a 74-mile national seashore area bill on Padre Island. The measure now goes to the full interior committee. The bill is a compromise between Sen. Ralph Yarborough’s full 88-mile proposal and one introduced in the House for a 65mile park. Cong. Joe Kilgore of McAllen and John Young of Corpus Christi offered the House bill. Yarborough’s 88-mile measure has already been approved by the Senate. The subcommittee reached its compromise by using the southern limit proposed in the House bill and adding nine miles to the northern limit. Yarborough has taken the stand that the 88-mile length should not be compromised. A shorter version, he has said, would be at the behest of private land developers on the island. Big Savings On BUSINESS CARDS Absolutely the lowest prices in America on beautiful highquality business cards! Raised letters look and feel like real engraving! Ideal for businessmen, professional people, salesmen or just plain folks who know and value the prestige that a fine business card gives you. Simply jot down what you want printed on your cards and rush to us for amazing 48-hour postpaid service. Include your remittance of only $3.89 per thousand one-color cards, or $4.89 per thousand two-color cards. \(Colors are black, blue, No C.O.D.’s, please. Accuracy and satisfaction fully guaranteed Order now from NEW STUDIOS, INC. P.O. Box 472-E Brownwood, Texas joined outgoing county party chairman Joel Coolidge in some spirited counter-attacks. The real difference between the conservatives and liberals in the party, Gray said, is that the conservatives “have no hesitancy about taking a loyalty oath to our country but are very much opposed to taking it to any party.” The reverse, he said, is true of the liberals. “If we do some checking,” Gray argued, “we might find that some former members of the Socialist Party are now in the Democratic Party .. . If they are, I naturally presume they are in the liberal wing.” Crossland had cited Mrs. H. W. Cullen, controversial school board member, and Robert Nesmith as members of the state delegation. “The newspapers have reported Mrs. Cullen’s activities in the Republican Party and Nesmith’s activities in the Constitution Party,” Crossland said. “Yet both are on the Democratic delegation, along with Fred Gray, who is well known for his Republican activities.” Crossland said it was “noteworthy” that well-known conservatives supporting John Connally and Price Daniel were excluded from the delegation to the state convention. “On the other hand, it is noteworthy that Hall Timanus and George Carlton are again in good standing by this group’s renaming them as delegates, although they are well known for not supporting the Democratic nominees or the party platform.” Timanus and Charlton were removed by the state Democratic convention in 1960 as nominees for presidential electors because they refused to agree to support the presidential nominee. Mrs. Cullen was elected auditor of the Republican Women’s Club in 1960. But at the time, she said, that organization was not affiliated with the Republican Party. Nesmith who the Constitution Party candidate for Congress from the Eighth District in 1960. Gray and the others now controlling the Harris County Democratic Party, Crossland accused, are “basically not Democrats. They have no loyalty to the Democratic Party. They are simply using it as a convenient instrument for the dissemination of reactionary propaganda and viewpoints in order to promote the right-wing organizations that many of them belong to.” Gray, confirEing that Neismith was the Constitution Party candidate in 1960, said it was his understanding that “practically all of the Constitution Party members went out and joined the Democratic Party.” Coolidge, who was defeated for county party chairman by liberal Bill Kilgarlin, defended the Harris County delegation to the state convention and said it has as good a chance as any big-city delegation to be seated at the El Paso convention. “It is my understanding,” he said, “that none of the other metropolitan counties, with the exception of Bexar, have bound their delegations under oath to support all Democratic nominees.” Strongly denying that the county organization is now controlled by right-wing extremists, Coolidge said that quite the opposite is the case, and the party is now being run from the “grassroots.” THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 2 May 26, 1962 Curious Suicide Is Probed AUSTIN The Houston pathologist who examined the exhumed body of Henry Marshall, the USDA official who some believe first found out about Billie Sol Estes’ cotton allotment manipulations, said at week’s end it looked like murder but it could be suicide. Dr. J. A. Jachimcyzk told Judge John Barron in Franklin that no bullet entered Marshall from the back as he had originally reported. But the pathologist found evidence of head wounds and said he believes any one of three bullets \(Marshall was shot five him. The Marshall case was only the most bizarre in the dramatic and still tangled events surrounding Estes. Marshall was the man in charge of ASCS activities in Texas when he was found dead in June of 1961. Peace Justice Lee Farmer returned a verdict of suicide, but when the Estes case got bigger a grand jury was impaneled for a close study of the death. The jury has recessed until Monday. Elsewhere on the Estes front this week: Estes himself spent about 20 minutes on the stand at a creditors’ hearing in El Paso and took the Fifth Amendment so often he wouldn’t even answer what his occupation was. Over a hundred creditors filed claims in the millions of dollars, and federal judge R. Ewing Thomason said credit. ors have six months to file claims. Estes presently owes 500 people and companies a total of around $38 million. In Washington, the McClellan Senate subcommittee kicked off what promises to be a stormy and protracted investigation by questioning behind closed doors N. Battle Hales, the civil servant who has charged the Agriculture Department showed favoritism to Estes, and Walter C. Berger, former high-ranking USDA executive in the GOP administration who is now a board member of Commercial Solvents. The secret sessions are preliminaries to open hearings. Federal investigators in Washington disclosed they have learned Estes may have millions stored away in Switzerland and Brazil. Reliable sources say they may never be able to reach Estes’ foreign fortune because Swiss law forbids the disclosure of information about foreign deposits. Estes is free under bond. The immigration service has put transportation firms on notice they will be penalized if they transport the financier out of the country. The Justice Department went further, issuing Estes an “order of departure control” warning him not to go away. Meanwhile, Cong. J. T. Rutherford, maintaining his “conscience is clear,” disclosed details of his receipt last January of a $1,500 check from Estes. And the New York Herald-Tribune reported “political contacts” in Washington that investigators are probing the nature of several phone calls Estes made during a short period in January to resigned assistant labor secretary Jerry Holleman and Lyndon Johnson aide Cliff Carter. The calls, an investigator said, may be aired in the McClellan hearings. \(Continued From Page torious individual. Had I known that previously, I probably would have refused the check . . . I point that out because all of us engaged in politics have that problem to solve. It is almost an unsolvable one when we are dealing with money during a campaign.” Said Kefauver: “We need no reassurance of the character and integrity of Ralph Yarborough. We know him; we have worked with him; we have watched him in his devoted service to the people of Texas and the people of the United States. His record speaks for itself. It needs no defense.” ‘Not Beholden Claiming guilt-by-association in the Post editorial, Yarborough wrote in the published letter: “Go burn your incense before Joe McCarthy’s imageyou owe him an apology for having opposed him.” He said it was “common public knowledge” in Texas that he solicited money for his radio broadcast, by friends and by newspaper advertisement. Contending the Post “feigned shock” that he had a radio fund, he said transcripts of his weekly broadcasts were sent to the Post news desk and the Senate press gallery. “Following my election to the Senate in 1958, it was apparent to me that if I were to be able to keep my constituents informed in Texas, I would have to resort to the radio to do so, because I could nc% depend on the newspapers in Texas to do the job for me.” Of the 125 daily papers in the state, he said, not over seven ever endorsed him for public office in any one race, and only one from the 12 metropolitan centers has ever supported him. Without naming the papers involved, Yarborough blasted two Texas chains. One of them, he said, had instructed its reporters never to file a story with his name in it unless it was “derogatory.” Another had given instructions that his name was to be removed from syndicated stories and columns out of Washington. This practice, he said, has been followed “religiously” for years. “Neither I, nor the Democratic Party has found it possible to screen contributors with a lie detector, or look in a crystal ball to see how they turn cut in the future.” Yarborough said he has “long felt that all political contributions, as well as income of any type,” to public officials should be made public by law. “However, so long as a segment of the. press continues in a frenzy to impute ‘guilt by association’ to anyone who ever knew Billie Sol Estes, I see no reason why these ether innocent persons who contributed to my radio fund should be dragged into the Estes case.” He said he “rejects as puerile and weak slander any hint, suggestion, or subtle slur that I am beholden to anyone, big contributor or small, honest man or one who turns out dishonest. I feel my votes over the last five years are proof of the truth of my statement. You, or anybody else who hints that I improperly used one bit of power of my office for Mr. Estes lies. “If the Senate is composed of the band of weaklings contemplated by your editorial owned by whoever made a campaign contribution, then God help this Republic.” Mundt Charges Earlier in the week, South Dakota Republican Karl Mundt said Yarborough and Cong. Slick Rutherford were involved in a meeting with Estes and Agricul ture Department officials, in which cancellation of Estes’ cotton allotments was revoked. In a three-hour interview with the Houston Post’s Felton West in Washington, Yarborough said, “No candidate for public office can know what every man’s potential for the future is and say, ” ‘I’m just going to take contributions from those who pan out good in the future.’ ” He said he had not known Estes was in trouble until late March, after the Pecos Independent’s series. Yarborough told West the only opinion he expressed at the meeting cited by Mundt was that Estes and other landowners should have a chance to prove the cotton allotment sales were bonafide. Estes, Yarborough says, contributed $5,255 to his several campaigns and $1,700 to his radio program. He says he thinks Estes may have contributed $1,500 to different fund-raising dinners, bringing his total campaign conl tributions to “under $7,000.” Yarborough used one of Estes’ private planes in his 1954 campaign for governor. LBJ Foresees WASHINGTON Vice President Lyndon Johnson this week took an apparent swing at Democratic leadership in the Senate for failing to stymie a Southern filibuster and pass legislation outlawing discriminatory use of voter literacy tests. Addressing a national community leaders’ conference on equal employment opportunities, . Johnson departed from a prepared text to describe the hard-working, round-the-clock S en at e efforts under his leadership in 1960 which led to a civil rights bill. He added: “And we didn’t quit at 5 o’clock, and we didn’t lay off Saturdays. We stayed right at it and we passed a bill.” Senate majority leader Mike night and Saturday sessions during the three weeks that Southern senators talked down the literacy measure. The measure was subsequently abandoned when votes to cut off debate failed. The delegates, about half of them Negroes, gave Johnson a standing ovation after his speech. Johnson, chairman of the President’s committee on equal employment opportunities, urged labor, industry, and local communities to wage an all-out fight to end racial discrimination in employment. Promising full co-operation, he predicted, “During the first four years of President Kennedy’s administration we will make more