ustxtxb_obs_1986_03_07_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

tributed to rebel aid organizations is Wendell Hobbs of McAllen. He said he “had a long talk” with General Singlaub at the WACL convention in Dallas and has contributed to that organization. “I think I’ve been fairly generous, though not as generous as a Mrs. Garwood. But maybe her resources are a little different than mine, I don’t know.” Hobbs said he is a good friend of McAllen mayor and vegetable grower Othal Brand \(who is a member of the Council for National Policy and has been moving some of his agricultural operations to El Salvador Valley since 1928. “I have been for many years taking care of my investments, and that’s all I do,” he said. Gen. Singlaub was in the McAllen area holding public and private meetings on December 17, but Hobbs said he was unable to attend those meetings. Austin real estate developer Nelson Puett is another man with strong feelings on the Nicaragua issue. “I believe it was a terrible mistake. to let the Russians come into Cuba. Naturally, I’m for keeping them out of Nicaragua.” As far as he can remember, no one has ever repealed the Monroe Doctrine, he said. Asked if he contributes to the U.S. Council for World Freedom, he said, “I think I have. I can’t keep track of all of them. There’s numerous ones one for Afghanistan, one for Angola, one for Latin America. . . .” A host of like-minded business people showed up last fall at WACL’s Freedom Fighters’ Banquet, at a cost of $500 a ticket. Among them were Edward J. Drake, a corporate attorney and member of the CNP who sat at the table with the Hunts, Tarlton “Topsy” King of Corpus Christi, heiress to a sizeable oil fortune, and Scott Parrott, a vicepresident of Parrott Oil Corp. in Dallas. Parrott said in February that he has had contact with several groups that deal with rebels and refugees, “but I’m certainly not going to be the one to tell you which ones.” Parrott said, “It’s just a personal thing, you know, red, white, and blue.” The Thrill of the Jungle TEXANS HAVE always been an independent fighting people,” said Gary Bennett, who talked with the Observer last April at a Waffle House restaurant in Fort Worth. He is an unpretentious man “I never got no college degree,” he said with a thin face and a scruffy beard. He had brought some photographs from his latest trip down to Honduras. “That was our hooch when we were down there,” he Clayton, Steve Schwartz, and Teofilo Archibald Billy Clayton Meets a Contra FORMER SPEAKER of the Texas House Billy Wayne Clayton called a press confer ence February 21 to introduce a Nicaraguan opposition leader who said he had been tortured by the Sandinistas. The Capitol press corps didn’t show up, but Clayton proceeded to conduct his own interview with the Nicaraguan, Teofilo Archibald, a Creole from Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast. “My role is to beg the Senate of the United States that they should not cut the aid for the freedom fighters,” Archibald explained. “Whenever they do that they destroy us.” Archibald said the Sandinistas were against him “because I was one of the leaders of the black people.” He showed what he said were signs of torture: his fingernails were severely damaged as a result of having his nails pulled out by a Cuban advisor to the Nicaraguans while he was in jail more than four years ago, he said. Archibald now supports the United Nicaraguan Opposition and the contra war. “What you are saying in essence,” asked Clayton, “is that if the contras take over the government you’d have a free government, and if the Sandinistas take over you’d have a communist dictatorship?” Archibald assented \(though “in essence” the “So now, though,” pressed Clayton, “the contras have a pretty good organization, don’t they?” Archibald said they did, though there were some military leaders, like Eden Pastora, who had gotten big heads. “He wants all the credit,” said Archibald. “He wants to be Tarzan.” “I was always on the opposite side of Somoza,” Archibald contended. “But Somoza did not do what the Sandinistas do to the people.” Somoza would use “diplomacy” in dealing with the opposition he would, for example, lure an opponent to his side with a government job, Archibald said. “Buy him off, eh?”,said Clayton with a sly grin. “I didn’t know they do politics like that!” Clayton got a good laugh out of that, perhaps remembering his own troubles in 1.980 .when he was indicted \(but not for accepting a hefty “political contribution.” Getting to the heart of the matter, Clayton asked how long it would take for the contras to “clean the country up.” “How much money? To get that thing cleared up because something needs clearin’ up down there.” Archibald commented that it didn’t take the United States very long to do it in Grenada. After pressing a few more questions, Clayton leaned back and said with a sigh, “Well it’s a shame that people can’t live free in the world.” The Nicaraguan’s tour was coordinated by a Washington public relations firm called International Business Communications, which was working for the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, a Washington-based group that is relatively new on the Central America lobbying scene. Steve Schwartz of the IBC said the Endowment “has a lot of contributors out of Texas. That’s why we’re here.” Ellen Garwood of Austin recently told the Observer the Endowment has a few donors in California who have given much more than she has to help the Nicaraguan rebel cause. D.D. 10 MARCH 7, 1986