The Stuff on Wright
Jeffrey, Terence P.
Terence P. Jeffrey THE STUFF ON WRIGHT Old Dirty Paws reaches into oil, shaky banks, belles-lettres, and much, much more. O n the evening of July 7, 1948, on a country road in Parker County,...
...The trail came to a dead end, however, when the cash dropped into Moore's wallet...
...It is without reservation that I now ask the court, on Mr...
...In 1986 he brought the idea to the Fort Worth city council, and a bond issue was put on the November ballot...
...On the other hand, in 1985 Gaubert and his 19-year-old son Michael, a freshman at SMU, donated $14,000 to the "Wright Appreciation Fund...
...asked a voice from the darkness...
...One incident in late 1987 stands out as emblematic of the Wright style...
...Moore's behalf...
...The free condo is another of the questions the Ethics Committee is investigating...
...His idea was to build a "Western theme park" around this would-be body of water...
...The only weapons of vengeance available to them have been provided by the Speaker himself: a political life replete with shadowy dealings, and a Democratic party moved only by partisan loyalty to protect a leader too oily to embrace...
...Of the others, one involves Wright's efforts on behalf of a billionaire Texas oil clan, with whom the Speaker shared some investments...
...Books like his Reflections were exempted from those limits...
...on the outside, the absolute maximum we sold was eighty...
...Before Miller could answer, his visitor drew a .45 caliber pistol and opened fire...
...He even had the daring to compare his small winnings to those taken in by Tip O'Neill for his professionally ghost-written, nationally marketed, $19.95 Man of the House, which was published by Random House last year...
...There is only one bookstore anywhere in the world—Barber's in Fort Worth—that ever regularly stocked Reflections on its shelves...
...At the sentencing, the prosecuting attorney produced an affidavit from Jimmy Hoffa...
...Unlike O'Neill, he was not at all avuncular in persuading his Democratic colleagues to do it his way...
...At the end of the 15-minute voting period, the bill had seemingly lost 206-207...
...Perkins attributed the bulk of his sales to the fact that the Speaker had signed each copy...
...Duncan claimed that Wright did not know Dixon and spoke with Gray on his behalf only because another congressman, whom Duncan would not name, asked the Speaker to do so...
...To this day, the crime has not been solved...
...Wright for her work with Mallick Properties...
...Gaubert," says this fellow Texas good old boy, "liked to go around leaving the impression that he could deliver the Speaker anytime, anywhere, that he had some sort of power over the man...
...According to Russell Lancaster, a Fort Worth city councilman, Beuck and Barnett showed up at a council meeting in early 1986 accompanying an official from the Economic Development Agency...
...The memorandum, signed by City Manager Bob Terrell, describes Billy Bob's contributions to the redevelopment of the Stockyards district and concludes: "This grant is classified as a 'demonstration' grant, so no City match is required...
...Miller collapsed on the lawn with a lead slug embedded below his heart and another in his right leg...
...Triad was the company which owned Billy Bob's Texas, the largest honky tonk in the world, and also the principal concession and landholder in Fort Worth's delapidated Stockyards district...
...In a telephone interview, chief of staff Lynam contested this conclusion...
...His chief legislative aide, John Mack, physically cornered Rep...
...We lose whene'er we fail to seek The beauty cloistered in each fellow man...
...He admitted being in the field, but said that what Coalson mistook for gunshots was actually the twanging of wires as he tacked a campaign poster onto a telephone pole...
...The postal investigation was lost in the political shuffle...
...In 1979, when congressmen were first compelled to file disclosure statements detailing their sources of income, Wright and his wife put together a holding company—Mallightco--in partnership with George Mallick and his wife...
...Mack escorted Chapman to the Speaker's podium, the voting was reopened, Chapman changed his vote, the voting was closed...
...In the quiet recesses of your soul, a still small voice repeats the verdict in almost deafening tones...
...Wright then and now defends this action by pointing out that it was not illegal—at the time...
...Then in August, the Washington Times reported that Jim Wright had written an amendment into the fiscal year 1987 continuing resolution that directed the Army Corps of Engineers to "eliminate Wright's political career has been pocked with ethical and legal near-misses—from which he has always come back smiling...
...Like lives, each sunset is unique (No two've been quite the same since time began...
...Over the next nine years Wright's financial disclosure statements claim that he made between $50,000 and $205,000 from one of these wells...
...His unbending partisanship, his parliamentary machinations, and his intrusions into foreign policy, highlighted by the campaign to defund the Nicaraguan resistance, have elicited an unprecedented antipathy from the minority party...
...No one really believed it...
...T n fact, the specific properties mentioned were the Livestock Exchange Building, the Exhibits Building, a parking lot, and some abandoned cattle pens...
...Not looking, I have lost the chance to view What can't be reproduced again, anew...
...In 1985-86, Wright's campaign committees paid Moore $305,000 for services rendered, and Moore paid Wright $55,600 in book royalties...
...Wright won a half victory: the postal service agreed to postpone the hearing until after the election...
...A lthough Wright says that to this day he has never met Dixon, in 1986 he took a number of flights on an airplane owned by Dixon's S&L...
...Though it is astounding that Barber's bookstore even sold the handful it did, in a telephone interview Mr...
...she said...
...In the brief he presented to the Ethics Committee on June 10, the Speaker argued that no matter what subjective judgments people might want to make about his 55-percent royalty, it did not violate the laws restricting congressmen's outside income...
...The EDA wouldn't budge on this one, either...
...The Speaker's man Duncan justified the oversight later that month, telling the Washington Times that Wright had not only not known who owned the plane he traveled on but was unaware that no one had paid for his seat...
...Joe Bailey and continuing through House Speaker and Vice President "Cactus Jack" Garner and President Lyndon Johnson, Wright never hesitated to use his Washington influence to benefit his friends, relatives, and business partners back in the Lone Star state...
...The Speaker won...
...The wells were nationalized anyway...
...The government also agreed to ask the sentencing judge to incarcerate Moore for no more than six months and to remove from public record the pre-sentencing report which includes all the evidence that had been accumulated concerning Moore's association with Hoffa...
...O n the evening of July 7, 1948, on a country road in Parker County, Texas, a Chevy sedan pulled to a stop in front of an isolated farmhouse...
...Wright did just that...
...The charge was that the Wrights had signed an affidavit in 1947promising to "refrain from using the United States mail for the purpose of conducting or carrying on any alleged lottery," but that Wright's business, the national Trades Day Association, did exactly that...
...Splotched with white-out and poorly typed, it reads: "It is my desire to take this opportunity to lend my personal support to Mr...
...Moore had agreed to pay for the printing of 20,000 copies of the book, to sell them for $5.95, and deliver $3.25 of that sum back to the Speaker...
...and between the Speaker's phone call and March, when Vernon was finally closed down, Dixon cranked out additional millions in bad loans...
...The Fort Worth Star Telegram reported that George Mallick, the Speaker's business partner, was also a partner in Triad Corporation...
...But then Wright beat Lucas—campaigning as a young uncorrupted David, slaying the establishment's pet Goliath—and the Democrats swept the fall elections...
...Triad Corporation owned the parking lot and the Exhibits Building with a $3 million mortgage from Landmark S&L, and held an option on the other properties...
...He's a good old boy, a Southwest wanna-be cowboy, who can, if he needs to, shake off the boots, drop his hat in the vestibule, put on a silk tie, and preach to a born-again congregation with evangelical sincerity...
...Bradshaw won by thirty-nine votes...
...Wright also was paid asalary by Mallick Properties, Mallick's development company, from 1979 to 1985...
...But that still leaves approximately 12,600 copies of Reflections that the Speaker was paid royalties for that weren't sold at Barber's...
...Pieced together by staff aide Matthew Cossolotto from old speeches, sermons, and a poem ("Thoughts on a Mexican Sunset"), it is a 117-page paperback, glued in a binding of oily paper that has something of the same texture as an old telefax or photocopy...
...Wright's assistant chief of staff Phil Duncan told the Washington Times on July 21, 1987, that Wright also spoke to Ed Gray about a planned FSLIC takeover of Vernon S&L, which was operated by Don Dixon, another Dallas real estate developer...
...THE S&LEAZE In September 1986, Jim Wright placed a call to Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) Chairman Edwin Gray to discuss a series of loan foreclosures that the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) was bringing against Craig Hall, a Texas land developer...
...A Fort Worth lobbyist, familiar with the negotiations between Triad and the city, claims that Triad intended an elaborate maneuver in which they would take $8 million from the city, purchase their option on the Livestock Exchange Building, and then sell the building to the city for a profit...
...After signing on with Barnett, Beuck started talking up the idea of damming Marine Creek—which runs through the Billy Bob property—making it into a recreational lake...
...Texas Ranger who investigated the case for twenty-five years and is not too proud to admit he never got his man...
...Neither Wright nor the DCCC listed the air travel or the yacht chartering on their Thoughts on a Mexican Sunset I stood and watched the sun descend To ocean's rim past Acapulco Bay And felt I must be nature's friend Thus entertained in such a regal way (To take it in one almost had to pray...
...he was too dumb to matter to a guy like Wright...
...On March 24, 1975, two days before Moore was due to be sentenced, Jim Wright sat down at a typewriter and wrote the judge a letter on his official congressional letterhead...
...Since January 1987, when he stepped into Tip O'Neill's cavernous shoes, the national press has been tracing Wright's footsteps with greater attention to the sort of mud he leaves behind...
...Lancaster told the Washington Times he had never heard of the grant before the meeting, and supported his claim by producing a January 21, 1986 memorandum from the mayor's office...
...On November 1, 1984, a few days before the House majority leader took 100 percent of the vote in an uncontested election, Carlos Moore's Madison Publishing Company brought out its first book...
...Although the funds have been made available, the City must still follow the normal application process in order to receive them...
...Between 1985 and 1987, Moore came by the store three or four times to drop off a dozen or so copies of the book...
...I never could find anything to tie to him...
...Lynam produced a letter from Fort Worth Mayor Bob Bolen dated September 17, 1985, which thanks Wright for his previous support of the Stockyards development, and reminds him that "we do, however, need the continued involvement of the Federal Government...
...But for some reason, in October Gray called back the Speakerto-be...
...In 1971, when President Nixon commuted Hoffa's sentence, Moore resigned the position and returned to Fort Worth, where he reportedly went into private business...
...In his brief to the committee, the Speaker claims that in dealing directly with FHLBB Chairman Ed Gray, he was "clearly acting as a 'go-between' for some constituents who were being treated unfairly...
...So on March 18, they made a deal: If Moore would plead guilty to one count of tax evasion for $32,000 embezzled in 1970, the government would refrain from prosecuting him for any "use (or misuse) of the funds of the Teamsters' Union Political Organization...
...That li'l paperback thing...
...Moore's behalf, to take into consideration the obvious value to us all of Mr...
...The memorandum describes an unofficial meeting with a group of Fort Worth city council members that included Mayor Bolen but not Republican councilman Russell Lancaster, who had been critical of the grants...
...Both Wright and Mallick claimed that the arrangement was partial compensation to Mrs...
...How did Jimmy Hoffa's bagman become Jim Wright's publisher...
...Revelations arising from three scandals in particular now threaten to put an early end to his speakership...
...The next year Wright wrote another $7.5 million EDA grant for the Stockyards development into the final draft of the continuing resolution...
...And no clamorous overplay of noisy self-justification can silence it...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 23...
...Wright responded the next day with his own ad celebrating the "Southern tradition of segregation...
...Larue Perkins, the wife of Barber's owner Brian Perkins, expressed befuddlement upon hearing that the book had earned Jim Wright more than $55,000 in royalties...
...But in 1973 he returned to Washington, this time to work not for the Teamsters, but for the government...
...Farmer's refusal to sanction the EDA grants in this turnover foiled the deal...
...In 1986, the Fort Worth Star Telegram interviewed George Roach, a Terence P Jeffrey, an editorial writer at the Washington Times, has been investigating the Jim Wright affair since June 1987...
...The final two regard the composition, publication, and sale of the Speaker's unusual memoirs...
...Each moment's change brought new delight As color blends from pink to gold to grey Rent clouds with hues new to my sight...
...Four years later, not yet thirty-two years old, he decided to run against Wingate Lucas, the Fort Worth Democratic establishment's happy incumbent congressman...
...One charge, generated by confusing language on the Speaker's financial disclosure statements, has already been more or less dropped...
...William Carlos Moore...
...The mayor's letter, however, was not an application for an EDA grant, and was sent without the knowledge of the city council...
...He apologized for his earlier intransigence and said that he had removed the Westwood's conservator and would work a deal with Hall...
...As many in Fort Worth interpreted it, Jim Wright had found the money to build Bill Beuck's lake...
...another concerns his free use of a condominium owned by a business partner who could have benefited from legislation moved by the Speaker in 1985-86...
...The company's most lucrative venture is selling loose gemstones...
...But after the story appeared in the Star Telegram, Mallick began charging the Wrights a $21 per diem for the nights they actually slept in the condominium...
...Ballistic tests performed on a handgun confiscated from Wright's home proved that it was not the murder weapon, and investigators fruitlessly shifted their attentions elsewhere...
...Roach said that "[Wright] was clear...
...Wright denied the story...
...They could prove that he had deposited the money in a Crofton, Maryland checking account, that he had written checks on that account to the Union Travel Associates of Washington, D.C., and that this travel agency had kickedthe money back to Moore...
...In 1967, before Jimmy Hoffa went to jail, he made William Carlos Moore, one of Jim Wright's oldest friends, the national director of DRIVE PAC, the Teamsters' political organization...
...In late June, the Post Office Department filed a complaint against Wright and his father alleging that they had masterminded "a scheme for obtaining money through the mails...
...The House Ethics Committee is now investigating whether the Speaker put unwarranted pressure on the FHLBB on either Dixon's or Gaubert's behalf...
...the Speaker's staff put them in touch with Carlos Moore—whom Mrs...
...It was Jim Wright's now-famous Reflections of a Public Man...
...Tony Coelho, as the finance co-chairman of the DCCC...
...Wright's defense was not to deny that he and his father had been running a "scheme for obtaining money through the mails" that worked very much like a lottery, but that such activity was not actually illegal and that the call for an investigation was politically motivated...
...In a few minutes Mack, who is sometimes derisively called Mack the Knife because of his 1973 conviction for having slashed a woman, beaten her with a hammer, and left her to bleed in an automobile, somehow found a way to convince Chapman that he really should support the $12 billion tax hike...
...We knew he was good at raising campaign money and selling houses, but he didn't know anything about running a savings and loan...
...These are the stories behind the charges: THE OIL MAN In early 1979, Richard Montcrief, a Texas oil magnate and long-time friend of Wright's, asked the House majority leader to join him and other members of the Montcrief family in a natural gas well being sunk in East Texas...
...Estimates on the cost of cleaning up the nation's insolvent thrifts were already climbing toward $40 billion...
...They also were defaulting on a $3 million loan that had been taken out to finance improvements at Billy Bob's and were sinking rapidly toward bankruptcy...
...In a June 22, 1987 interview with the New York Times, William Black, an FHLBB attorney who investigated the massive insolvency problems in the Texas thrift industry, claimed that in the late fall of 1986 and into the winter of 1987 the Speaker made a series of calls to Graytrying to get him to reconsider bringing a suit against Thomas Gaubert, the principal owner of the Independent American S&L of Dallas...
...The House was voting on a $12 billion tax bill that the Speaker had pushed...
...The Wall Street Journal reported in May that Carlos Moore's old employer, the Teamsters' DRIVE PAC, had purchased 1,000 copies of the book, as did John C. White, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee...
...Some Republicans feel not merely disenfranchised, but mocked in their disformity...
...Mr...
...There was one other area where the Speaker finally buckled to media pressure and changed his relationship with George Mallick...
...Eugene Miller, a candidate for the local seat in the state assembly, stepped out his door to see who'd come calling...
...You know...
...Two days before the election, Wright's surviving opponent, a mild-mannered teacher named Floyd Bradshaw, ran an advertisement in the local newspaper condemning . . . Communism...
...THE PUBLISHER Between 1976 and 1987, Jim Wright's campaign committees paid Carlos Moore approximately $656,000 for services ranging from printing "auto stickers and yard signs" to "political consultations...
...Beuck became the chairman of "Triad Corporation...
...The Washington Times reported that Bill Beuck, the titular head of Triad Corporation, made (with his wife) an $11,000 contribution to Wright's campaign and had helped H. Ross Perot, Jr...
...In 1980, his financial disclosure statements revealed that he had already made between $5,000 and $15,000 on the deal and that his investment in the well was valued between $15,000 and $50,000...
...secure federal grants through Wright's intercession...
...Jim Wright was not alone in seeking clemency for Moore...
...But in the weeks immediately after Miller's murder, subtle distinctions like guilt and innocence were lost on Parker County voters...
...T im Wright's next major ethics conflict did not come until 1977 when, as House majority leader and Tip O'Neill's heir apparent, he saw his power and influence in the Congress become greater than anyone's save his Irish Bostonian mentor's...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 21 flood damage in the historical stockyards along Tony's Creek and Marine Creek...
...The Perkinses, who take pride in the fact that Barber's stocks more "Texana" and local interest books than any other bookstore in the area, claim that they first learned about Reflections of a Public Man when a customer came in asking about it...
...When asked about this memo, Wright's chief of staff, Marshall Lynam, denied that the Speaker had worked directly with Bill Beuck, George Mallick, or anyone else at Triad to secure the grants...
...In the long run, however, the Speaker may lose...
...That just doesn't sound right...
...Unmoved, the judge gave Moore six months in the federal pen...
...Gaubert was not unknown to Wright...
...In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Gray characterized it somewhat differently, claiming that Wright had tried to pressure him into firing Joe Selby, the regulatory officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank in Dallas...
...Montcrief had invested $130 million in oil wells in Israeli-occupied Sinai and was fearful that following the Camp David Accords, the Egyptian government would nationalize his property...
...What made these deals so interesting was that after they had been set, Jim Wright personally lobbied Egyptian President Anwar Sadat on Richard Montcrief's behalf...
...His lawyers petitioned the postal service to cancel the hearing because they claimed, first, that "the violation of an affidavit, even if proven, is not an offense," and second, that "the appearance of newspapermen so soon after formal filing [of the complaint] is not only unusual but smacks of an attempt on the part of persons unknown in the government service to maliciously and wantonly smear" Jim Wright...
...Wright told the paper that the arrangement was "not a gift," and therefore violated no ethics standard...
...Perkins describes as a "hail-fellow-well-met sort of man...
...At the same time, his political career has been pocked with ethical and legal near-misses—from which he has always come back smiling...
...And in 1986 Gaubert worked with Wright's ally, Rep...
...Just so, we ought to pause and drink The loveliness in each of nature's days, And not allow one sun to sink Unseen, unsung, its power to amaze Unnoted...
...Bill Beuck, like Mallick, had been brought in to help Barnett find financing to develop his land...
...Mallick told the Star Telegram that he had a deal with Billy Bob Barnett, the nightclub eponym: if Mallick could find $100 million in financing to develop Barnett's Stockyards land, and adjacent land for which Barnett held options, Barnett would give Mallick a share of the development...
...It failed...
...As Perot told the Washington Times, Beuck had a reputation for being "great at economic development...
...The most damning thing about the Speaker's book, however, is the book itself...
...In 1950, two years after losing his state assembly seat, he ran for the mayorship of Weatherford, his home town, and won...
...Six months after that, having done his time, Carlos Moore began working for Jim Wright as a campaign contractor...
...On March 27, the day after Sadat and Begin signed the accords in Washington, the House majority leader confronted the Egyptian president at the Capitol and handed him a letter pleading Montcrief's case...
...More than a third of this money was for something called "professional services...
...The Speaker is probably correct as to the legality of his little deal with Carlos Moore, but if he ever pauses to consider the ethics of the thing someone should refer him to page 84: "Nobody has to tell you...
...Nonetheless, he was sure it was a "left-winger," a Communist "henchman"--a claim which some imaginative locals later interpreted as pointing a finger at Miller's principal opponent, incumbent Assemblyman Jim Wright...
...The affidavit confirmed that Moore had unselfishly created and disbursed a slush fund at Hoffa's direction, that Moore had not used any of the money for his own enrichment, and that every single dime had been illegally paid out to politicians...
...In a brief submitted to the Ethics Committee this June, Wright demurely claims that it "was entirely natural and proper for me, as Congressman for the 12th District of Texas, to assist my constituent, Richard Montcrief...
...The question has more political sex appeal than the others raised about the Speaker's ethics, and it may prove more damaging to his credibility...
...Perkins brought each shipment over to the Speaker's office at the Fort Worth Federal Building and several weeks later they would be returned inscribed by Jim Wright...
...Perkins's deal with Moore was to sell the books for $6.95 apiece, returning 60 percent of that, or $4.17, to Madison Printing Company...
...The Speaker denies it...
...Wright signed on and it proved to be a profitable move...
...Wright was subpoenaed to appear before a postal investigator in Washington the day of the Texas primary...
...Perkins elaborated: "In the whole run of that book, over three years, at the minimum we sold forty books...
...his attacker escaped in the Chevy...
...Orson Swindle, the hard-nosed former POW who directs the EDA, exchanged fire with Jim Wright, but held the line on disbursing grants that totally bypassed the competitive processes legally outlined in the Public Works and Economic Development Act...
...The rest of the month the House majority leader and his wife stored their furniture and clothes in the condo free of charge...
...Because of a cutback in the size of the original grant—which had not been disbursed—by the spring of 1987, the EDA was holding $11.8 million, nearly ten percent of its annual public works grants authority, which could go no place but the Fort Worth Stockyards...
...Soon after Miller's murder a neighboring farmer named J. A. Coalson claimed that he had seen Jim Wright in a nearby field practicing with a pistol...
...By early 1975, federal investigators realized that Moore would just as soon go to jail as reveal the final destination of the slush fund money...
...Although House rules specifically state that members must reveal the "underlying assets" of all holding companies on their financial disclosure statement, for six years as House majority leader and one as Speaker, Jim Wright simply ignored the rule...
...This time, suffering financial hardship resulting from failed business ventures and alimony payments to his first wife—whom he had discarded in 1972—Wright used $48,000 in campaign contributions to pay off personal debts, and then withdrew another $48,000 to 20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 pay the income taxes on the first...
...At the same time Wright was talking with Ed Gray about Gaubert problems, he was fighting to kill a bill that would pump a $15 billion recapitalization into the tottering FSLIC...
...THE STOCKYARDS In 1985-86, Wright used amendments tacked onto the budget appropriations for the Army Corps of Engineers and the Economic Development Administration to funnel $26.8 million into the development of the Fort Worth Stockyards district...
...The government had evidence that Moore had skimmed more than $90,000 from DRIVE PAC between 1968 and 1970...
...On June 10, the six Democrats andsix Republicans on the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (also known as the Ethics Committee) voted unanimously to investigate six charges that the Speaker violated House rules or ethical standards, the first such investigation of a sitting speaker in American history...
...He continued to draw income from the deal until 1987 when he sold his interest for between $15,000 and $50,000...
...Four months later, Jimmy Hoffa disappeared...
...Still, this was not enough for Moore and his new boss...
...But rather than record the vote, Wright suspended the proceedings...
...Jim Chapman, a moderate-to-conservative Democrat from Sam Rayburn's old district, who with great financial assistance from Wright's friends and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) had just barely scraped past a Republican challenger in a special election in 1985...
...In the 1984 election cycle, when Jim Wright ran unopposed in both the primary and general elections, and paid no money in campaign staff salaries, he paid Carlos Moore $68,000...
...In September 1985, the Fort Worth Star Telegram revealed that during 1979-85, Wright and his wife had lived rent-free first in a Mallick-owned apartment, then in a Mallick-owned luxury condominium...
...I am aware of the basic factors and circumstances concerning the matter before your honor today and it is in the face of this knowledge that I write to you on Mr...
...On March 11, 1987, the Fort Worth Star Telegram published a story further tying the Speaker's business partner, George Mallick, to the EDA grants, reporting that the Fort Worth City Council was forming a corporation to loan the grants to Mallick as seed money for a 20,000-seat amphitheater to be built on the property Triad held an option for...
...The very same year Tip O'Neill was pushing through new ethics laws that would limit the outside income congressmen could earn through honoraria and would make it illegal for congressmen to convert campaign funds to personal use...
...Stephanie Nall contributed research to this article...
...Wright says now that he is bewildered that people would draw a connection between his investments with the Montcriefs and his efforts to save their Sinai oil wells...
...The deal revealed, more than anything else, that within the soul of Jim Wright, the majority leader, there still lurked the entrepreneurial heart that put him in trouble with the Post Office Department back in 1954...
...This time as the Democratic primary approached, Wright's activities attracted the attention of federal investigators...
...But the colorful drama of the Stockyards grants drew attention to Jim Wright's unorthodox partnership with Triad financier George Mallick...
...In June, the New York Times found another 1,000-copy man in Gene Payte, a Fort Worth developer, who claimed that he knew it was illegal just to give money to the Speaker so he bought his book instead...
...To capture all the things they had to say, I would have had to start on yesterday...
...As a second option, Mayor Bolen and company suggested that the city could use part of the $11.8 million in EDA money for $5 million the city was required to put up to qualify for the $15 million Jim Wright had set aside for "flood control...
...Farmer informed the mayor that this was impossible because "there would be a natural suspicion that the use of grant funds for property acquisition would be a 'bailout' of the private developer and the banks holding the mortgages on these properties...
...He thought Washington worked like a Texas real estate deal...
...As Wright ascended toward the speakership, his power and arrogance grew in equal measure...
...According to Phil Duncan, Wright's assistant chief of staff, Gray refused to do anything to interfere with the actions of the FSLIC conservator running Westwood Savings and Loan, the thrift that was foreclosing on Hall...
...Wright has since admitted that Texas lobbyist Leslie Berkowitz also bought 1,000 copies, that the Teamsters actually bought 2,000 copies, and that the New England Life Insurance Company took $2,000 worth...
...Is this Eugene Miller...
...IN& 22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 Federal Election Commission-required "debts and obligations" until their use was revealed last June in the American Banker...
...They announced to a startled council that good old Jim Wright had secured a $4.5 million grant (later reduced to $4.3 million) for the Fort Worth Stockyards, but that the money could not be paid out until the city carried through on the formalities of actually applying to the EDA for the grant...
...The suit alleged that Gaubert had fraudulently mismanaged the thrift...
...and another his dealings with the Federal Home Loan Bank Board on behalf of two insolvent Texas thrifts...
...Moore's continued presence in our communities...
...Also, in 1985-6 the DCCC used a yacht—the refurbished sister ship of the former presidential yacht Sequoia—for a series of campaign fundraisers...
...and in a Texas tradition dating back to Sen...
...Even this sum was ludicrously small...
...Later that night, dying in the local hospital, Miller could not identify his assassin...
...He found it amusing that Willie Mays could get a better price for his autograph without even throwing in his book...
...I thought how often in my life, Preoccupied with busy things to do, I've missed the glory now so rife...
...Finally this March, he amended the statements to reveal Mallightco's holding...
...And we had them all signed by the Speaker himself...
...Also in early 1979, Monty Montcrief (Richard's father) asked Jim Wright if he would like to invest in two additional oil wells...
...And even though Wright magnanimously showed up to donate blood, as the challenger's pulse beat down to nothing, so did the incumbent's chances for re-election...
...At the meeting the mayor and his cohorts first suggested that some of the $11.8 million being held by the EDA could be used to buy "several of the facilities at the Stockyards from the private owners...
...One prominent figure in the Texas thrift industry who doesn't believe Wright has done anything wrong in his dealings with the FHLBB attributes all of the Speaker's problems in the savings and loan scandals to Gaubert's fast-talking wheeling and dealing...
...It is my opinion that his character and his value to his community is far above the average...
...But an August 6, 1987 memorandumfrom Hugh Farmer, the Texas regional director of the EDA, put an even stranger spin on the three grants...
...THE FRIEND How did Jimmy Hoffa's bagman become Jim Wright's publisher...
...God unthanked for pinks and greys...
...That li'l thing...
...We couldn't have sold more than forty or so copies...
...Under pressure from the White House, the Speaker finally acquiesced to an $11 billion compromise recapitalization for the FSLIC...
...We ought to try to see it if we can...
...seerCerCerer'..0=1" From Reflections of a Public Man, by Jim Wright, Madison Publishing Company, 1984, $5.95 paper...
...He joined Jim Wright's staff as an aide assigned to the National Commission on Water Quality...
...The inclusion of this allocation is the direct result of Triad Corporation working closely with Congressman Jim Wright's office...
...On July 1, the DCCC meekly forked over $48,150 for the yacht and plane chartering to the FSLIC, which had finally taken control of Vernon...
...They contacted the Speaker's regional office...
...T im Wright has the manner of a Lyndon Baines Johnson and the luck of a Richard Nixon...
...Before saying goodbye, Gray implored Wright to give him a call anytime he heard complaints about the Federal Home Loan Bank Board...
...While Moore toiled with the future House Speaker to protect the quality of American drinking water, federal investigators were looking into his activities on behalf of Jimmy Hoffa...
...Gray, for his part, agreed to postpone the takeover...
Vol. 21 • August 1988 • No. 8
