ustxtxb_obs_1974_01_18_50_00021-00000_000.pdf

Jaworski defended Your recent article, “Looking at Leon’s Record,” appears at first sight to be at least a detailed if not balanced account of some incidents in Leon Jaworski’s professional life that might bear on his performance as the Watergate special prosecutor. As the public affairs director for the Prosecution Force and a former national political reporter with some interest in Texas politics, I was thus fascinated and horrified. Momentarily, that is; then I discovered that there is less there than meets the eye. As a public information officer, my advice to myself has to be to avoid violating the prudent rule that all cheap shots go unanswered. But as a once and future national reporter, I know that things which appear in the Observer can have a life of their own, and that this piece is likely to end up in the files of many of my former colleagues, unless it is challenged now. So I make the following points: On Nov. 28, Leon Jaworski recused I himself from handling any decisions in the investigation of all allegations arising out of dairy industry contributions to the Nixon campaign. He ordered that all investigations proceed as usual by the same staff that handled the matter under Archibald Cox, and that all decisions in the case be made without his participation. Mr. Jaworski has also recused himself from participating in our investigations and decisions concerning individuals with whom he has had some dealings in the past that might give the appearance of a conflict. None of this is very secret. You would have discovered it if you had contacted any of the reporters covering the dairy case or the special prosecutor. Or you could have picked up the telephone and called us directly. I am the person who made the 2 statement that to his knowledge Mr. Jaworski has never acted directly or indirectly as a conduit for Central Intelligence Agency funds for any purpose, and I continue to believe it. Without the benefit of a personal investigation of the Anderson Foundation’s dealings, I have tried to check conscientiously this allegation which was brought to my attention the day Mr. Jaworski was sworn in. I know of no reason to dispute his memory of this transaction, which is that the grant was presented as one to a bona fide international lawyers group from private, not government, sources that did not wish to be identified. It is my understanding that the funds were advanced by the M.D. Anderson Foundation and then reimbursed by these non-government groups, and that the purpose of the grants has never been disputed: to support the rule of law in all countries outside the United States. In his Communication testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Jaworski went into the subject of these grants in detail, including the names of the prominent lawyers who contacted the foundation for this assistance. 3 Without ever makinga charge, the article suggests that the Anderson Foundation is a shadowy institution that operates on the edges of the law, making secret loans and suspicious transactions. Thus, Mr. Jaworski’s role as a trustee makes him suspect. Do you have any basis for that? None was in your article and frankly, during the period of suspicion that accompanied Mr. Jaworski’s appointment and now seems to have subsided, nobody suggested that his role as a trustee of the Anderson Foundation was anything but praiseworthy. The foundation did make a loan to Mr. Jake Jacobsen and did make money on the loan, which went to support the Texas Medical Center. It makes scores of well-secured loans at current interest rates, as was the Jacobsen loan. 4 The allegations concerning the Office of Economic Opportunity are in some ways the most puzzling in your story. Most ‘ of it is in quotes, presumably meaning that you are not responsible for any falsehoods. But couldn’t you have checked “Who’s Who” and discovered that Leon Jaworski was not head of the Houston Bar Association in 1965, when Mr. Mathis had him in that role applying unsuccessfully for legal services funding and then turning his ire on the competing groups? Mr. Jaworski considers the anecdote about his supposed call to President Johnson an especially malicious falsehood. Leon Jaworski says that he never spoke to Lyndon Johnson about Don Mathis and certainly never asked that he be fired. You say that everything in the story except this incident can be verified. But you accept Mr. Mathis’ word that he advised Mr. Jaworski to let Mathis reshape the grant application because “in light of his position with the bar association I was sure he would not want his name on an illegal application . . . ” You could have verified that the last time Mr. Jaworski held office in the Houston Bar Association was in 1949, not in 1965. Concerning the allegations that the Community Improvement Committee was made campaign contributions without disclosing the sources, Mr. Jaworksi reports that, even though the attorney general found the election commissions unconstitutional, Mr. Jaworski directed the C.I.C. to disclose the contributor’s names, and to his knowledge those names are on file at the city clerk’s and county clerk’s offices. What I object to about your piece is its cynical tone. You owe your readers more than this sort of lopsided report, and you might have made an .effort to get some sense of how Mr. Jaworski was actually doing up here in Washington. It’s really not all that difficult for a reporter acting in good faith. What Mr. Jaworski objects to, if I can get personal for a moment, is the gratuitous falsehood about a supposed alienation between President Johnson and himself. Leon Jaworski cherishes his association with President Johnson. He refused to consider serving in the Johnson administration as a government official but was appointed five times to serve on special commissions, after the date of your reported blow-up between the two men. Again, you might have checked “Who’s Who,” and asked almost anybody in Texas who knew the two men. James S. Doyle, special assistant for public affairs, Watergate Special Prosecution Force, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. We address ourselves to Doyle’s points in the order in which they were made. I. That Jaworksi recused himself from any decisions involving the investigation of the dairy contributions was upsetting news to us, since it does substantially affect the import of our story. We have carefully searched our Jaworski and AMPI files but find no word of this. We read and clip eight Texas newspapers every day: it seems to us unlikely we would have overlooked mention of something that was so key to the story on which we were working at the time. We also subscribe to The New York Times and The Washington Post, however, they arrive anywhere from three to seven days late. Doyle says the announcement was made on Nov. 28: we went to press Dec. 3. We checked \(after receiving Doyle’s been following the dairy case for The Washington Post: he said the Post carried nothing on the Nov. 28 announcement, but he believes the Times had the story inside with a one-column hed. Although we cannot question Doyle’s assertion that “none of this is very secret,” we must question his implication that the information was widely known. A lawyer in Jaworski’s own firm of January 18, 1974 21