Texan oil
moguls Clint Murchison and Sid Richardson... had assets in excess
of $700 million, not counting as much again in untapped oil reserves.
Recognizing
Edgar's influence as a national figure, the oilmen had started cultivating
him in the late forties - inviting him to Texas as a houseguest,
taking him on hunting expeditions. Edgar's relations with them were
to go far beyond what was proper for a Director of the FBI. And
although the Murchison milieu was infested with organized crime
figures, Edgar considered him "one of my closest friends."
"Money,"
the millionaire used to say, "is like manure. If you spread
it around, it does a lot of good." Murchison and his Texas
friends spread a great deal of dollar manure on the political terrain.
They had
traditionally been conservative supporters of the Democratic Party
- until the presidency of Harry Truman. He enraged oil men by publicly
denouncing their tax privileges, and by vetoing bills that would
have brought them even greater wealth. Murchison habitually spelled
Truman's name with a small t, to show how little he thought of him.
Murchison's
political instincts were of the far, far Right. He was a fervent
supporter of states' rights, reportedly funded the anti- Semitic
press and was a primary source of money for the American Nazi Party
and its leader, Lincoln Rockwell, who considered Edgar "our
kind of people.'
During the
Truman years, musing in private about the perfect political lineup,
Edgar had named Murchison and Richardson as ideal candidates for
high office - or at least as financial backers for politicians to
his liking. Murchison had been obliging ever since. He threw money
at Edgar's friend Joe McCarthy, placed airplanes at the Senator's
disposal and promised him support "to the bitter end."
(2)
Peter
Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993)
The Hunts
and the Murchisons present the images of different versions of right-wing
politics, with the Hunts allied to opponents of Washington, particularly
when they were supporting southern resisters to integration, and
the Murchisons playing their connections to Washington, Johnson,
and Hoover, for all they were worth. Nelson Bunker Hunt was behind
the hostile ad that confronted Kennedy in the November 22 edition
of the Dallas Morning News.
(3)
Joachim
Joesten,
How Kennedy Was Killed (1968)
When Chief Justice Warren and other members of the
Commission on June 7, 1964, interviewed Ruby at the Dallas County
jail. General Counsel Rankin told Ruby:
There was
a story that you were sitting in your Carousel Club with Mr. (Bernard)
Weissman, Officer Tippit, and another man who has been called a
rich oil man, at one time shortly before the assassination. Can
you tell us anything about that?'
To which
Ruby replied with a counter-question: 'Who was the rich oil man?'
After that,
unbelievably, the subject was dropped. Apparently, Messrs. Warren
and Rankin felt they were getting too warm. Ruby's reaction indicated
that he was ready to talk since he had nothing to lose. But the
Commission members
weren't looking for the truth. They shied away from it, as from
the plague. And so the topic was quickly shifted. Ruby
never got a second chance to answer 'yes' or 'no' to the vitally
important question of whether such a meeting was held. Yet his surprise
reaction, which so put off Messrs. Warren and Rankin that they quickly
changed the subject, indicates that the story of that meeting is
true...
(4)
Lee Israel, Kilgallen
(1979)
Under
the headline NEW DOROTHY KILGALLEN EXCLUSIVE - TALE OF "RICH
OIL MAN" AT RUBY CLUB - Dorothy
printed Mark's secret testimony. But his testimony implicated a
trio at the Carousel: Ruby, Tippit, and Weissman.
Reexamining the transcript of Ruby's testimony before the commission,
she noticed that the questions posed to him concerned not a trio,
but a quartet. Earl Warren, in his questioning, informed Ruby that
Lane had said: "In your Carousel Club you and Weisman (sic)
and Tippit... and a rich oil man had an interview or conversation
for an hour or two."
Dorothy,
who did not have access yet to the complete Warren Report, had to
deduce:
"The
mention of the "rich oil man" by Chief Justice Warren
would indicate then, that the Commission was informed of the meeting
by a source other than Mr. Lane, and that this second source provided
the name of a fourth party - the oil man. If that is not the case,
if the Commission had only Mr. Lane's testimony to go on, it would
appear that the oil man was "invented" by the investigators.
And it is difficult to imagine the Commission doing any such thing.
The introduction
of the rich oil man into the questioning effectively discombobulated
the already-confused Jack Ruby.
When the
report was released, it was clear that no testimony was given by
any of the 552 witnesses about a rich oil man. Either there was
a significant omission in the report of the Warren Commission, or
the oil man was part of the unofficial corpus of information to
which Warren was privy, or Dorothy's thesis - however "difficult
to imagine" - was correct.
(5)
Madeleine
Brown,
interviewed
on the television programme, A Current Affair (24th
February, 1992)
On Thursday
night, Nov. 21, 1963, the last evening prior to Camelot's demise,
I attended a social at Clint Murchison's home. It was my understanding
that the event was scheduled as a tribute honoring his long time
friend, J. Edgar Hoover (whom Murchison had first met decades earlier
through President William Howard Taft), and his companion, Clyde
Tolson. Val Imm, the society editor for the now-defunct Dallas Times
Herald, unwittingly documented one of the most significant gatherings
in American history. The impressive guest
list included John McCloy, Richard Nixon, George Brown, R. L. Thornton,
H. L. Hunt and a host of others from the 8F group. The jovial party
was just breaking up when Lyndon made an unscheduled visit. I was
the most surprised by his appearance since Jesse had not mentioned
anything about Lyndon's coming to Clint's. With Lyndon's hectic
schedule, I never dreamed he could attend the big party. After all,
he had arrived in Dallas on Tuesday to attend the Pepsi-Cola convention.
Tension filled the room upon his arrival. The group immediately
went behind closed doors. A short time later Lyndon, anxious and
red-faced, reappeared I knew how secretly Lyndon operated. Therefore
I said nothing... not even that I was happy to see him. Squeezing
my hand so hard, it felt crushed from the pressure, he spoke with
a grating whisper, a quiet growl, into my ear, not a love message,
but one I'll always remember: "After tomorrow those goddamn
Kennedys will never embarrass me again - that's no threat - that's
a promise."
(6)
Gary
Mack published an account of Madeleine Brown's story on 14th
May, 1997.
Madeleine
(Brown) has claimed over the years that she attended a party at
Clint Murchison’s house the night before the assassination
and LBJ, Hoover and Nixon were there. The party story, without
LBJ, first came from Penn Jones in Forgive My Grief. In
that version, the un-credited source was a black chauffeur whom
Jones didn’t identify, and the explanation Jones gave was
that it was the last chance to decide whether or not to kill JFK.
Of course, Hoover used only top FBI agents for transportation
and in the FBI of 1963, none were black. Actually, there is no
confirmation for a party at Murchison’s. I asked Peter O’Donnell
because Madeleine claimed he was there, too. Peter said there
was no party. Madeleine even said there was a story about it in
the Dallas Times Herald some months later (which makes no sense),
but she had not been able to find it. Val Imm (Society Editor
of the Dallas Times Herald) told Bob Porter (of the Sixth Floor
Museum at Dealey Plaza staff) recently she had no memory of such
an event and even looked through her notes - in vain.
Could
LBJ have been at a Murchison party? No. LBJ was seen and photographed
in the Houston Coliseum with JFK at a dinner and speech. They
flew out around 10pm and arrived at Carswell (Air Force Base in
northwest Fort Worth) at 11:07 Thursday night. Their motorcade
to the Hotel Texas arrived about 11:50 and LBJ was again photographed.
He stayed in the Will Rogers suite on the 13th floor and Manchester
(William Manchester - author of The Death of a President) says
he was up late. Could Nixon have been at Murchison’s party?
No. Tony Zoppi (Entertainment Editor of The Dallas Morning News)
and Don Safran (Entertainment Editor of the Dallas Times Herald)
saw Nixon at the Empire Room at the Statler-Hilton. He walked
in with Joan Crawford (Movie actress). Robert Clary (of Hogan’s
Heroes fame) stopped his show to point them out, saying “.
. . either you like him or you don’t.” Zoppi thought
that was in poor taste, but Safran said Nixon laughed. Zoppi’s
deadline was 11pm, so he stayed until 10:30 or 10:45 and Nixon
was still there.
(7)
Jennifer Floyd Engel, Harvey
Bright, Star-Telegram (12th December, 2004)
The man
who sold the Cowboys to Jerry Jones, thus precipitating the firing
of coach Tom Landry, died Saturday.
Harvey R.
"Bum" Bright died in Dallas after a long illness. He was
84 and had been under hospice care.
Bright,
who was on the list of Texas' most wealthy individuals for decades,
was the second owner of the Cowboys, as well as being a longtime
and well-known benefactor of Texas A&M.
"He
bled and died maroon," former Cowboys director of player personnel
Gil Brandt said Saturday. "The Cowboys were something he did
for the community, but his first love was Texas A&M."
Bright was
chairman of the A&M Board of Regents in 1982, when he was responsible
for hiring Jackie Sherrill as the Aggies' football coach, at the
time making Sherrill the highest-paid coach in college football.
He bought
the Cowboys from original owner Clint Murchison two years later
and sold the team to Jones in 1989.
"When
the Cowboys thing came up, he was so worried they were going elsewhere,"
said former Texas A&M football coach R.C. Slocum, a good friend
of Bright's. "Buying the Cowboys was a business deal, but a
big part of it was also keeping the Cowboys in Texas."
Slocum described
Bright as being "an awesome man. He was a man's man."
To that
end, before selling the Cowboys to Jones in 1989, Bright offered
to tell Landry he was fired as the team's coach, so as not to leave
that to Jones.
Bright was
owner of the Cowboys for the final five seasons of Landry's coaching
tenure, but the team's record had declined. Jones, upon buying the
team, brought in Jimmy Johnson as coach and told Landry of that
decision a day after the sale had been completed.
Jones was
not available for comment Saturday, but the Cowboys released a statement.
"Mr.
Bright was a great Texan and an important member of the Dallas Cowboys
family," spokesman Rich Dalrymple said in the statement. "The
thoughts and prayers of our organization will be with the Bright
family in the days and weeks to come."
When reached
at the Bright residence in Dallas, a family spokesman said family
members would have no comment Saturday night.
Bright's
association with the Cowboys began when Murchison began having financial
and health problems in the early 1980s and asked general manager
Tex Schramm to quietly find a buyer for the team.
In late
1983, Schramm was directed toward Bright, whose influence on A&M
athletics and state politics was already visible. The sale was approved
by NFL owners on March 19, 1984, and the deal was completed two
months later.
Bright led
a group of 11 investors, including Schramm, that paid $63 million
for the team -- including the 30-acre tract of land in Valley Ranch
where the team headquarters were relocated in 1985 -- and $20 million
for the Texas Stadium lease.
At the time,
Bright was the largest stockholder in Dallas' largest bank, RepublicBank.
He had been chief fund-raiser in Republican Bill Clements' Texas
gubernatorial campaigns.
Like Murchison,
Bright assured Schramm he would be a hands-off owner, naming Schramm
"designated managing partner" of the team.
In Bright's
time as owner, the Cowboys had a 46-44 record, winning only one
division title (1985) and no playoff games. In 1984, his first year
with the team, Dallas missed the playoffs for the first time in
10 years and only the second time in 19 years.
After the
Cowboys sank to 3-13 in 1988 and with Landry's coaching future regularly
questioned, Bright -- whose financial clout had been diminished
by a national crisis in the savings and loan market -- began searching
for a buyer.
Jones emerged
to buy the team and the stadium from Bright and his group for close
to $150 million.
News of
the sale broke on Feb. 23, 1989, and the bombshell was that Jones
was bringing in former Arkansas teammate Jimmy Johnson as coach.
Johnson had coached the University of Miami to a national championship.
That meant
the end of an era. Landry would no longer be "the only coach
the Cowboys have ever had."
Bright was
born in Muskogee, Okla., in 1920. When his father saw the baby wrapped
in blankets, he thought he looked like "a little railroad bum."
The nickname stuck.
In high
school, Bright played football at Highland Park. After a brief career
in the oil fields as a "grunt," then as a roughneck, he
enrolled at Texas A&M in 1939 and received his degree in petroleum
engineering in 1943. He immediately was inducted into the Army and
served in Europe during World War II. He left the Army as a captain
in early 1946.
Bright remained
close to A&M throughout his life. As chairman of the university's
Board of Regents, he orchestrated a public search for a new football
coach before Tom Wilson officially was fired after the 1981 season.
That led to luring Sherrill away from the University of Pittsburgh.
Bright served
as chairman of the Corps of Cadets Endowment Campaign at A&M.
In 1997, he made an unrestricted endowment of $25 million to A&M,
the largest gift of its type in the university's history at that
point.
As recently
as two years ago, Bright donated $5 million toward a capital campaign
to improve facilities for A&M's athletes. That helped create
the Bright Center.
