As Dr. Dunn’s newspaper published follow-up articles after the first three, the other town newspaper, the Daily News, began publishing articles of a generally defensive nature, backing Estes’s business practices. One example of this was a story carried in the Daily News of April 29 stating that C. H. Mosley declared that he alone, and not Agriculture Department officials in Washington, made decisions concerning grain storage by Billie Sol Estes. (Obviously the department’s new rules, described earlier, granting local officials more autonomy—which Lyndon Johnson had pushed the department to adopt—had recently been received by Mosley.) He also said that no favoritism had been shown to Estes and the government had suffered no loss, and is threatened with none, on the entire grain operation. After that, the rumors, counter rumors, and unfounded gossip sent Pecos into a tailspin, with the town divided into two camps, either for or against Billie Sol Estes. Dr. Dunn was destroyed professionally and financially through a particularly well-orchestrated and sophisticated public relations campaign designed to portray him as the wrongdoer.133 The organizers of the campaign against Dr. Dunn operated secretly behind the scenes and were never revealed, but the methods used were well beyond the resources and skills of Estes. There were, however, many connections, to the Austin law firm of Ed Clark and his Washington benefactor, Lyndon B. Johnson.
A number of FBI agents were assigned the task of investigating Dr. Dunn, who suddenly began receiving numerous calls from Washington, inquiring specifically about the alleged connections between Estes and Johnson. As reported by J. Evetts Haley, “The agent in charge admits[ed] that they ‘had the green light’ from Washington, which meant from Bobby Kennedy and his brother.”134 As would happen again later, when the Bobby Baker case broke wide open in the summer of 1963, there were strong indications as early as May 1962 that the Kennedys were preparing to replace Johnson in 1964. The aforementioned news articles, leading up to the major cover story previously cited in Time magazine, as well as other stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Life magazine, and untold hundreds of other major newspapers and magazines around the country, were causing too much political blowback for the Kennedys; their only problem was how to handle the delicate matter of announcing such a decision without repercussions from Johnson and his friend Hoover.135
Johnson went into hiding for the entire month, winding up at Clint Murchison’s resort and racetrack in California, along with J. Edgar Hoover.136 Johnson refused to take any calls from Estes, who then unsuccessfully attempted to get a loan from Jimmy Hoffa. The pyramid was in full collapse by then. It was at this point that Johnson began trying to deny any involvement with Estes, distancing himself from his close associate in a fashion similar to that he would use with Bobby Baker some eighteen months later, in the middle of his growing scandal. According to an article in The New York Times, “Vice President Johnson has told friends privately that he had never had any dealings or communications with Mr. Estes. Mr. Johnson also has said privately that he met Mr. Estes only once … The Vice President said he wouldn’t know Mr. Estes if he saw him again. It was learned at the Department of Agriculture that when Mr. Estes’ empire collapsed, Mr. Johnson telephoned [Freeman]. He is said to have told Mr. Freeman that he had never heard of Mr. Estes except on the one occasion at his home.”137 It is likely that Johnson believed his own words, despite the lack of any element of truth.
Intimidation of Whistle-Blowers
A midlevel manager in the Agriculture Department, N. Battle Hales, openly charged that the department had shown favoritism toward Estes; Hales had caught on to the Estes scam and was one of the—apparently few—incorruptible staff who thought that Estes should be investigated. For this, he had been suddenly downgraded and shifted to other clerical work, but no one seemed to know where; before he left, he had dropped hints that his outspoken comments caused him to be shunted off to another job in the department and denied further access to the Estes files. Hales’s treatment by Agriculture Department officials led to one of the most unseemly and outrageous assaults on a worker by a federal agency in the annals of human resource management.
In April 1962, a government secretary, Ms. Mary Kimbrough Jones, an employee at the USDA for eleven years, insisted on finding her superior N. Battle Hales and demanded to talk to him; soon, a “doctor” showed up and blocked her exit and shortly had her dragged off to the DC General Hospital as a mental patient. She was stripped of her clothing there and given only a pajama top, then, according to Hales, “left hungry and alone in a room ‘with just a mattress on the floor and possibly a sheet’ … Later, in defense, attendants said that ‘there was no misuse of Mary in any way [emphasis in original]. But when they shut her up they said she ‘became hysterical,’ and when one Dr. Lee Buchanan, ‘of the department’s health unit,’ was sent to check on her, he reported that ‘she screamed and yelled; [and] that he could not deal with her rationally.’ After such a ‘rational’ approach? She was then determined to be ‘a very sick girl, in need of treatment for mental disease’ and hence ‘dangerous to herself and others because of her mental condition.’”138 Hales’s real crime was that he was a commited Kennedy supporter, determined to help Bobby Kennedy clean up America; it soon became apparent that Lyndon Johnson did not like government workers whom he could not count on to do his bidding over either of the Kennedys. His career was effectively over as soon as Lyndon Johnson determined that he had chosen the wrong side.139
Senator John J. Williams of Delaware, who was, as legend had it, “the conscience of the Senate,” found out about the plight of Ms. Jones and protested that she was railroaded to a mental institution because she knew too much’ about the Estes case; he charged that she was ‘guilty of nothing other than refusing to cooperate in covering up the corruption …’ and that Dr. Buchanan had ‘arbitrarily ordered’ her committed to a ‘mental institution.’”140 Her own doctor said that “he had at no time ever detected anything which would even raise the slightest question as to Miss Jones’ sanity.”141 This was not the only time we will encounter the use of such tyrannical methods to control people who would not accede to Lyndon Johnson. The depth of his troubles no doubt caused Johnson extreme frustration, and it is likely that it was during this time, with these key participants, that Johnson’s resolve to proceed with his plan was firmed and the specific actions began taking shape. The man who replaced Battle Hales at the Department of Agriculture, Jack Puterbaugh, was handpicked by Lyndon Johnson for that assignment; Puterbaugh would later be put on the payroll of the Democratic National Committee.142 In November 1963, he would be sent to Dallas to assist in planning the motorcade and making the numerous last-minute changes in the sequence of vehicles, as described in chapter 7. He would ride in the pilot car to ensure that all other logistical details were adhered to, moments before the remaining vehicles followed that car through the streets of Dallas.
It was reported in June 1962, after an assistant state attorney general had obtained the telephone company records, that many calls had been made from Billie Sol Estes’s telephones to Lyndon Johnson and/or Cliff Carter during March 1961: “Three calls had been made to Cliff Carter … He indicated one call had gone to an unlisted number in Washington … One call had been placed from an Estes telephone March 28 to a ‘Mr. Carter’ at Arlington, VA … Mr. Estes had talked six minutes to ‘Mr. Carter.’ … Two calls had been made from Mr. Estes’ telephones in Pecos to Henry Marshall.”143 Johnson had obviously trained his aide to obfuscate, as evidenced by his statement in that report: “Clifton C. Carter, a staff assistant to Vice President Johnson, said today he had received two or three telephone calls from Billie Sol Estes earlier this year, including one the day before Mr. Estes was arrested. ‘I told him I knew nothing about it.’ Mr. Carter said. He said Mr. Estes had asked him to call back if he found out anything. ‘But I did not call back,’ Mr. Carter said. ‘I have no unlisted phone and I have never had one. My phone has always been listed in the Washington directory since I’ve been here.’”144 What he d
id not say was that his boss, Lyndon Johnson, did have an unlisted telephone number.
In the meantime, Estes struggled to contain the damage, meeting with the chief executives of the companies that were involved in his deals—Commercial Solvents, Walter E. Heller and Company of Chicago, and Pacific Finance, during the latter part of March. On Thursday, March 29, 1962, Estes and three associates were charged with fraud. During the next few weeks, as Estes scrambled to put a defensive plan together with his lawyers, the extreme reactions of his mentor became more and more obvious to him. First, his chief accountant was interviewed by the FBI a few days after this, on April 2; he was then immediately killed, and his body found two days later. There were many panicked calls between Washington DC, and Austin and Pecos, Texas, in the next few weeks as Estes, Clark, and Johnson grappled with the now-explosive scandal that threatened to bring down the vice president, who was now being closely watched by John and Robert Kennedy. Any effort of Johnson’s to see his friend and collaborator Billie Sol directly would only hasten the implosion, so he needed some alternate way to personally visit with his unscrupulous business associate and regain control of a volatile situation. In fact, Johnson was stuck in Washington and being monitored by his nemesis, Bobby Kennedy, who Johnson imagined was somehow behind the whole crumbling affair. Fortune smiled on Lyndon shortly thereafter, when one of his friends, Mayor Tom Miller of Austin, died.
On April 30, 1962, Vice President Johnson flew down to Austin for the funeral in a military jet. But before returning to Washington, the jet was ordered to be flown on a side trip to Midland, Texas, where it was parked away from the terminal and closely guarded by the Secret Service. Johnson never left the plane, but two men were escorted to it and stayed for one hour before the airplane took off again for Dallas, where, unfortunately for Lyndon, it made the news because the aircraft skidded off the runway on its landing, causing the hapless Johnson to have to return to Washington by commercial flight. When reporters tried to get the Midland airport records of the stopover, they were told that the records of that day’s flights had been sealed by government order.145
The two men surreptitiously visiting Johnson’s airplane that evening were Billie Sol Estes and one of his lawyers.146 There was, of course, no record made of the discussions between Johnson and Estes at this secret meeting, but it is safe to assume that Johnson would have been anxious to assure that his friend Billie Sol would keep his mouth shut and make sure that Johnson’s name would be kept out of the growing scandal. The facts of the overall situation at this time suggest that the discussion might have touched on the following:
• The need for Estes to keep quiet. His refusal to talk about any of his activities, in fact, caused the investigations to practically come to a halt. Billie Sol Estes later claimed that Johnson had promised him that “if I wouldn’t talk, I would not go to jail.”147 Given their mutual secrets, Estes had to consider also that his own life could be endangered if he crossed Johnson.
• Getting Estes a good lawyer. Lyndon Johnson’s special criminal lawyer, John Cofer, who had represented him in the election fraud scandal in 1948, and who had gotten his hit man, Mac Wallace, out of jail in 1952, was assigned to Estes. Cofer was an attorney employed by Ed Clark’s law firm in Austin, who was, behind the scenes, managing the entire defense effort on behalf of Lyndon Johnson, including the PR campaign aimed at discrediting Dr. Dunn.148 It was undoubtedly John Cofer who met with Johnson and Estes on the airplane in Midland.
• Keeping his closest associates silent as well. One of them had already been eliminated, just four weeks previous to this meeting. George Krutilek had been murdered immediately after talking to the FBI on April 2, 1962, and others would follow, partly for the purpose of simply reminding Estes of the need to keep quiet. Krutilek had been Estes’s chief accountant, the one man besides Estes who could have unraveled the immense fraud that had developed over several years. The body of George Krutilek was proof enough to Estes that Johnson was serious, and if he fell out of line, the same fate would await him.
By May 1962, the pressure on Estes had continued mounting, but he continued to resist talking about any of it. Although he thought that his connections and his lawyer would get him an acquittal, Johnson, Clark, and Cofer knew they could not let that happen because the gregarious Billie Sol might then lose his incentive not to talk, and of course, he knew way too much to risk that. If he were convicted and spent at least a few years in prison, he would not only learn how not to talk, but, as a convict, his word would also lack the credibility that would otherwise be the case in the future.149
At this point, the FBI (briefly and inexplicably, given Johnson’s close relationship with Hoover) turned its investigation toward Vice President Johnson. It wanted to know the circumstances of the 1961 airplane crash on his ranch (sixteen months prior), including the three separate transfers of ownership of the plane that took place during the week after the crash. The investigators had evidently been routinely assigned by their supervisors to look into these issues that ran so closely into Johnson’s turf; if J. Edgar Hoover had been aware of it beforehand, it is unlikely the investigation would have taken this turn against his old friend and neighbor of nineteen years.
Clark assigned one of his firm’s top attorneys, Don Thomas, to handle the FBI’s inquiry because it was Thomas who had erred, in his haste to cover up Johnson’s under-the-table theft of the airplane through a purchase contract (that had been intended only as a pro forma document “for the record” by the supposed seller—oilman John W. Mecom—who was merely loaning it to Johnson) that had required him to procure the hull insurance. In order to correct the records for the insurance claim (which was undoubtedly still another fraud, given the ambiguous ownership issues which were then uncovered), the ownership needed to be transferred into one of Johnson’s entities. Thomas had initially assigned it to the “campaign funds” laundering company Brazos-Tenth Street Corporation, which was not then publicly known or even talked about. According to Haley, “When the campaign was over and Mecom demanded the return of his plane, Lyndon replied that he wanted to buy it. Mecom protested vigorously, reminding Lyndon that there was really no agreement to sell, [it was] just a campaign trick for Lyndon’s protection. Lyndon is said to have retorted that they had signed a contract, that he was standing on his option, and that he was going to buy the plane. And he did.”150 Don Thomas was in the middle of his FBI deposition “when a phone call conveniently interrupted. The agents were ordered to leave. The testimony was suspended, never to be completed.”151 Whether the interview was cancelled directly by Director Hoover or any of his assistants, there was little doubt about the true origin of the order to suspend the investigation.
On May 7, 1962, Secretary Freeman, now coming under pressure from his own people in the Agriculture Department, admitted that Henry Marshall had been a “key figure” in the investigation of the affairs of Billie Sol Estes, specifically in the fraudulent cotton allotments.152 Secretary Freeman admitted that the murder case was cloudy since many of the facts died with Marshall. In addition to acknowledging Marshall’s work, the department confirmed its significance by assessing a fine of $544,162.71 against Estes for the fraudulent allotments.153 At his press conference, a reporter asked Freeman if he knew Estes personally. The secretary shrugged helplessly and admitted that he had met Estes once, briefly “when Estes was paying one of many visits to Agriculture Department headquarters in Washington. Said Freeman, ‘I might recognize him in pictures.’ Then he mustered up a bit of bitter humor: ‘I’m sure I’ll never forget the name.’ The newsmen laughed.”154
By now, President Kennedy was following the case closely, even taking administration credit for having broken it. Texas Attorney General Wilson reacted to this claim, arguing that the Agriculture Department had not even cooperated with their investigation and accused it of having a “defensive attitude,” further claiming that it even refused to reveal why certain department officials believed he (Marshall) had been murdered.1
55 According to a report in The New York Times, on June 20, 1962, the Estes attorney from Ed Clark’s law firm, John Cofer, “charged that … the president and attorney general had made it impossible for the grand jury to be unbiased” because they had already pronounced Estes guilty before he was tried.156 As noted by author Mark North, “The schism between LBJ and President Kennedy can only be growing with rhetoric such as this.”157 Bobby Baker gave some insight into the widening chasm between the president and vice president in 1962: “I was leaving the Oval Office after the conference with the President [when] JFK said to me in a hearty and jovial manner, ‘Bobby, how about this damned Texas tycoon, what’s his name? Billie Sol Estes? Is he a pal of yours?’ I sensed that the President was on a fishing expedition, attempting to find out what I might know of any connections between his vice-president and the Texas wheeler-dealer who’d just been charged with any number of crimes.”158
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