John Hill for the State of Texas

Notes

Notes Chapter 1. Riding Sharpstown to Victory 1. Deaton, Year They Threw the Rascals Out, 4, 10–13; Katz, Shadow on the Alamo , 6–7; Kinch and Proctor, Texas Under a Cloud, 24–26, 32–36. The Sharpstown scandal was extensively reported in these three contemporary books by two Austin journalists (Deaton and Kinch) who covered the events and a Washington investigative journalist (Katz). None of the officeholders or Sharp wrote about their involvement. Former state attorney general Waggoner Carr wrote a book with Austin author Jack Keever about his successful challenge of federal indictments growing out of the scandal: Waggoner Carr: Not Guilty! (Austin: Shoal Creek Publishers, 1977). Sharp’s lawyer in the years preceding the bank legislation was Will Wilson, who switched to the Republican Party in the mid-1960s after serving as attorney general and a state Supreme Court justice as a Democrat. He was rewarded with the No. 3 job in President Nixon’s Justice Department. Wilson contends, in a memoir he left for publication at the time of his death in June 2006, that he was notified three days before the scandal broke that Nixon was planning to nominate him to the Supreme Court of the United States but that he was hounded out of office by San Antonio’s Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez, the House Banking Committee chairman, who claimed that Wilson instigated the federal investigations leading to the Sharpstown scandal. Wilson blames Gonzalez ’s ploy on Lyndon Johnson, one of Wilson’s longtime political enemies. Wilson resigned October 15, 1971, six weeks after Wilson’s boss, Attorney General John Mitchell, is heard on a White House tape recording telling Nixon they needed to decide whether to “toss him [Wilson] to the wolves and, uh, get him out of here” (quoted in Barnes, Barn Burning, 209–10). 2. “Sharp Turned ‘Homey’ Ways into Empire,” Dallas Morning News, Feb. 7, 1971. 3. Katz, Shadow on the Alamo, 59–64; Kinch and Proctor, Texas Under a Cloud, 32–33, 38–40, 44–51. 4. Katz, Shadow on the Alamo, 65. 5. Ibid., 64–67; Kinch and Proctor, Texas Under a Cloud, 28–32. 6. Katz, Shadow on the Alamo, 62; Kinch and Proctor, Texas Under a Cloud, 41–42. 7. “Independent Wallace Wins Presidency Fight,” Daily Texan, Apr. 7, 1944. 8. Deaton, Year They Threw the Rascals Out, 4. 9. In his memoir, Barnes cites White House tapes of Nixon talking about the scandal with Attorney General John Mitchell and Connally, among other sources, as confirmation of his belief that the federal government’s probe grew from a (224) Notes to Pages 8–18 Nixon-led search for political dirt on Barnes to derail his meteoric political rise and thereby help the Republican Party overcome the suffocating LBJ-Connally Democratic Party dominance of Texas politics during the 1960s (Barnes, Barn Burning, 209–10, 215, 218). 10. Interview with Lynn Taylor, Jan. 30, 2006 (unless noted otherwise, all interviews were conducted by Ernie Stromberger in Austin, Tex.). 11. “Labor Stays Out of Governor’s Race,” Dallas Morning News, Mar. 5, 1972. 12. Deaton, Year They Threw the Rascals Out, 30–40. 13. “Action Watchword of Hill/Martin’s Style Attacked,” Dallas Times Herald, Apr. 19, 1972. 14. “Hill Charges Martin Is Linked to Sharp,” Dallas Morning News, Mar. 14, 1972. 15. “Hill Makes Strong Pitch for Attorney General Job,” Dallas Times Herald, Mar. 15, 1972. 16. Deaton, Year They Threw the Rascals Out, 17–18. 17. Ibid., 33. Barnes’s memoir also quotes Anthony Farris, the U.S. attorney who negotiated the plea bargain that assessed minor punishment for Sharp in return for a promise to testify, as telling a Barnes friend ten years later that Sharp never should have been offered immunity by the Justice Department, that the deal was “politically motivated” (Barnes, Barn Burning, 217–18). 18. Deaton, Year They Threw the Rascals Out, 36. 19. “Hill Scores ‘Affirmative Harm,’” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Mar. 19, 1972. 20. “Hill Promises Legal Leadership,” Dallas Morning News, Apr. 4, 1972. 21. “Candidate Hill Reveals Holdings,” Dallas Morning News, Apr. 18, 1972. 22. “Crawford Martin,” Dallas Morning News, Apr. 23, 1972. 23. “Air Crash Fatal to 34 Is Studied,” New York Times, Oct. 1, 1959. 24. “Suit’s Outcome Due to Fix Blame in Electra Crashes,” Dallas Morning News, Feb. 20, 1962. 25. “Jury Awards Housewife $250,000 in Crash Suit,” Dallas Morning News, Apr. 11, 1962. 26. “84 Killed in Crash near Corsicana,” Dallas Morning News, May...