Word: cotton
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...barreled, bolt-action Remington .22 rifle at the balance, stretched a long, bony finger to the trigger, and poked the muzzle doubtfully into his belly. With that vivid gesture, Investigations Subcommittee Chairman McClellan last week voiced his conviction that the death, in June 1961, of Henry Marshall-a Texas cotton-program specialist for the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service whose jurisdiction included Billie Sol Estes' cotton dealings-was murder. Said the Senator sternly: "I don't think it takes many deductions to reach the irrevocable conclusion that no man committed suicide with a weapon like this. He would...
...last week's hearings Marshall, who has been ruled a suicide by Texas authorities, was very much in evidence. Testimony showed that he several times had warned Agriculture Department officials that Billie Sol's wholesale cotton allotment transfers might be illegal. Why had officials been so slow to act on his warning? No answer was forthcoming. First. W. Lewis David. Marshall's onetime boss in Texas, told the committee he had approved Estes' operations-with Marshall's reluctant consent-under a Washington directive that such dealings were to be okayed if the applicant merely certified...
...seemed almost grateful for the week's first scandal. Though there to testify about Estes, he insisted on talking about a new discovery by the Government's General Accounting Office. In 1959 and 1960. the office had found, brokers licensed by the Agriculture Department to purchase surplus cotton for the Government and sell it on the open market had profited illegally by selling $400 million worth to themselves-at prices as much as $20 a bale below market. Cost to the Government: between $12 million and $15 million, by Agriculture's own estimates. Anxious to ease...
...Freeman was trying to lay this burden on Republican doorsteps, another turned up in his lap: two more suspensions of minor Agriculture officials came to light. The men were office managers for the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service-the agency embroiled in Billie Sol's fraudulent cotton-allotment dealings. They were ousted in connection with $28,000 worth of illegal rice-allotment sales in Texas' Brazoria and Matagorda counties over the past three years. Both cotton and rice allotments are valuable, since without them farmers are subject to unprofitably stiff penalties for planting and marketing-but their sale...
...this was hard enough on Freeman, but there was more to come. Just before the hearings ended for the week, two Agriculture Department employees from Oklahoma's Mclntosh County admitted to pocketing $1,640.80 from an Estes agent for helping to arrange cotton-allotment transfers from Oklahoma to Texas. They submitted resignations-but Freeman immediately suspended them, bringing to twelve the number of Agriculture employees he has let go or reprimanded because of links with Estes. All along, Freeman has insisted that doing business with Estes has not cost the Government a dollar. That somewhat misses the point...