ustxtxb_obs_1975_03_14_50_00009-00000_000.pdf

CORDS iPIAGAZINES I 51 si LAVAcA , AUSTIN; IVAS IN DALLASstto t t 5214 1,5 LONWS LIVig 4535 lit/CI”” A turr Briscoe told reporters that he plans to use the $407,000 left in the Dinner Committee fund to pay off old campaign debts, particularly some of the money he personally loaned the campaign. The governor also said that attorney Reynolds “is in the process of returning” a $15,000 cash gift from Clinton Manges \(see Ohs., possession of the controversial bundle from Manges since last September and he says he’s still trying to return it. Contacted by the Austin daily, Reynolds said he still has the money in his Houston office and “has all kinds of people trying to contact Manges.” “I’m going to get that money back to that bird some way,” he said. The Watergate Special Prosecution Force is looking into the illegal. $50,000 gift Ashland Oil executives made to the Democratic Party at the time Robert ‘ Strauss was national treasurer. The party’s 1970 and ’71 financial reports are being subpoenaed for perusal by a Washington grand jury. Asst. Special Prosecutor Earl Gallus said that the grand jury is probing a possible violation of the disclosure requirements of the Corrupt Practices Act. Strauss, now the Democratic national chairman, has explained that he didn’t know the contribution was illegal when he accepted it. He says he included the Ashland money under un-itemized miscellaneous contributions because he presumed that the oil executives didn’t want Richard Nixon and the Republicans to know the size of their gift to the Democrats. The Minneapolis Tribune toted up all of millionaire H. Ross Perot’s political contributions last year and came up with the hefty sum of $73,000. Almost $15,000 of Perot’s little gifties went to the members of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, the groups that oversee Medicaid and Medicare legislation. Perot’s computer firm, Electronic Data Systems, Inc., has the lion’s share of data processing contracts for Medicare and Medicaid claims nationally. Strangely enough, all but $6,500 of Perot’s contributions were given to candidates after the Nov. 5 general election. Texas congressmen and women of various political stripe received $31,900 from Perot and Milledge A. Hart III, an EDS executive. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen received $3,000 each from Perot and Hart for his presidential campaign. \(Bentsen has set a $3,000 ceiling on individual sometime after the November election; Omar Burleson got $5,000 on Nov. 20; Jim Collins, $2,500 on Oct. 30; Charles Wilson, $2,500 on Dec. 23; Bill Archer, $900 on Dec. 5; John Young, $2,500 on Nov. 20; Wright Patman, $5,000 from Hart on April 29 and $2,500 from Perot on Dec. 2; Tiger Teague, $2,500 on Dec. 4. Burleson, Wilson, and Young had neither Democratic nor Republican opposition. Jordan, Collins, Archer, and Teague had only nominal opposition. And, while we’re on the subject of campaign contributions, some new Southwestern Bell gifts have been turned up. Phone lobbyist Ward K. Wilkinson has admitted that he delivered $1,000 in cash in a brown envelope to Sen. John Tower’s Washington office in 1972. “It was a simple personal contribution by a number of our employees,” explained Jim Patillo, Bell’s new services manager. Wilkinson discussed the contribution during a deposition he gave in the $29.2 million damage suit against Bell by James Ashley and the family of T. 0. Gravitt. But Wilkinson says he can’t identify the company executives who chipped in to contribute to Tower. The contribution was reported by Tower as coming from “employees of Southwestern Bell.” A Bell spokesman told the Associated Press that the money was delivered in $100 bills. After his original nominee to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, William H. Skelton, was busted by Austin Sen. Lloyd Doggett, Supreme Court Chief Justice Joe Greenhill appointed a chicano to the post. The sentiment was right \(Doggett and others were complaining that there were no minority members on the Montemayor, the wrong chicano. Montemayor was Fred Gomez Carrasco’s chief attorney, and when Carrasco tried to break out of Huntsville State Prison, Montemayor acted as a middle-man in negotiations between Carrasco and state prison officials. Carrasco, two of his fellow escapees, and two hostages were killed during the escape attempt \(Obs.., Sept. 6, shootings. Will Gray, attorney for Ignacio Cuevas, the sole inmate in the escape attempt who survived, charged that Montemayor’s appointment would “effectively muzzle and cut off” any information Montemayor might have that could help Cuevas’ defense. The nomination, Gray said, “is an additional step in the continuing conspiracy between the governor, the Texas Department of Corrections, and the Texas Rangers of the Department of Public Safety to cover up the state’s part in the execution of the four \(attempted Kissin’ cousins The Texas Public Employees Association is getting down to gut-lobbying. In a mailing to TPEA members, George Watkins, president of the association, lists all Texas statewide, Washington, and state legislative officials with blanks by their names and asks, “Please tell us how well you know your state officials by marking the blanks beside the names as follows: A close friend; B – friend; C speaking acquaintance; Make no mark by the names of those you do not know.” And what use will be made of this information when it is returned by the members postpaid? “We will at times call on some of our members who are friends and acquaintances of legislators and congressmen, asking that they make personal contact with these officials,” Watkins explained. Two bills by Sens. Oscar Mauzy of Dallas and Babe Schwartz of Galveston, designed to protect folks’ privacy from government “intelligence gathering,” ran into heavy fire from law enforcement officials in committee and have been shipped .to a subcommittee. One of the bills, SB 108, would place restrictions on the type of intelligence the Department of Public Safety could collect restrictions that would presumably prevent such overreaching as that by DPS agent David Dimick, who put together a report on Robert Pomeroy because Pomeroy opposed nuclear power plant construction. DPS Director Col. Wilson Speir doesn’t like March 14, 1975 9