Word: solness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...anyone had any doubt left that the sprawling, messy Department of Agriculture needs a thorough overhauling, it was dispelled last week. Billie Sol Estes may be the farm program's biggest bad boy to date, but it became obvious that he has plenty of company. So far. the FBI has used 452 special agents from 46 cities in its Estes investigation, at a cost of $236,200; congressional investigations are expected to cost another halfmillion. But scandal was piling on scandal with such regularity that the price to the taxpayer of investigating them all might yet become a scandal...
...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...
...department. South Dakota's crusty Republican Senator Karl Mundt, a member of the McClellan committee, complained that an Agriculture Department check of his correspondence with the department had inspired Democrats in his home state to ask Freeman for evidence of any connection between Mundt and Billie Sol. Growled Mundt to Minnesotan Freeman: "In the plain Midwestern language that we both understand. I ask you to put up or shut up! If you have any evidence, bring it out on the record and don't give it to a favored newsman." Freeman shrugged off the complaint: "There...
...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. The real tragedy of the Billie Sol Estes affair is that he was able to corrupt so many Agriculture Department employees. The two suspended Oklahomans were small potatoes, but the potato digging is not nearly over yet. And ol' Billie Sol himself is yet to be heard from...
...material relevant to the Estes case, said Kamerick, subcommittee investigators found papers in no fewer than 16 Agriculture Department offices. Said he wearily: "I must say at this point that we are not sure yet that we have all the documents in the Department of Agriculture pertinent to Billie Sol Estes." In his specific comments on the Estes case, Kamerick singled out Under Secretary Charles Murphy as the official who overruled a decision to cancel Billie Sol's 1961 cotton allotments-which had been obtained from farmers through land trans actions carried out in evident violation of a legal...