James
Evetts Haley was born in Belton, Texas, on 5th July, 1901. His father,
John Alva Haley, ran a hardware business and hotel in Midland, Texas.
Haley
worked as a rancher and as a young man competed at local rodeos. After
graduating from West Texas Normal College he was appointed field secretary
of the Panhandle Plains Historical Society and began interviewing
pioneers. Later he returned to college where he completed his thesis
on Texas cattle trails.
In
1929 Haley published The XIT Ranch of Texas
and the Early Days of the Llano Estacado. Haley was accused
of libel and in 1931 the book was withdrawn and he was forced to pay
the plaintiffs $17,500 to settle all pending claims.
Over the next few months
he published articles in the Southwestern
Historical Quarterly, Southwest
Review, Ranch Romances,
Nature, Cattleman
and the Panhandle-Plains Historical Review.
His book Charles Goodnight: Cowman and
Plainsman, was published in 1936.
Haley held strong right-wing
views and was an opponent of Franklin
D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. A
member of the Democratic Party Haley
became chairman of the Jeffersonian Democrats of Texas
In 1937 Haley became manager
of the Zeebar Cattle Company in Arizona. He also purchased a small
ranch of his own in Hutchinson County. He later managed the Atarque
and Clochintoh Ranches in New Mexico. He continued to write and George
W. Littlefield, Texan was published in 1943. This was followed
by Charles Schreiner (1944), Jeff
Milton, A Good Man with a Gun (1948) and Fort
Concho and the Texas Frontier (1952).
In 1956 Haley tried to
become governor of Texas. He advocated segregation
and an end to federal price controls on natural gas. His main rival
was George
Parr.
During the campaign Haley went to Parr's office and told him: "Mr.
Parr, I'm J. Evetts Haley, and I'm running for governor of Texas.
If I'm elected, it will be my pleasure to lock you up." Haley
was easily defeated.
When Lyndon
B. Johnson
became president
Haley published A Texan Looks at Lyndon.
It was a best seller and it is claimed that in Texas only the Bible
outsold Haley's book in 1964. In
the book Haley attempted to expose Johnson's corrupt political activities.
This included a detailed look at the relationship between Johnson
and Billy
Sol Estes.
Haley pointed out that three men who could have provided evidence
in court against Estes, George
Krutilek,
Harold Orr and Howard Pratt, all died of carbon monoxide poisoning
from car engines.
Haley also suggested that
Johnson might have been responsible for the death of John
F. Kennedy:
"Johnson wanted power and with all his knowledge of political
strategy and his proven control of Congress, he could see wider horizons
of power as Vice-President than as Senate Majority Leader. In effect,
by presiding over the Senate, he could now conceive himself as virtually
filling both high and important positions - and he was not far from
wrong. Finally, as Victor Lasky pointed out, Johnson had nursed a
lifetime dream to be President. As Majority leader he never could
have made it. But as Vice-president fate could always intervene."
Other books by Haley include
The Alamo Mission Bell, The
Flamboyant Judge, Life on the
Texas Range, What a World of Wonder
and Rough Times -Tough Fiber: A Fragmentary
Family Chronicle.
James
Evetts Haley died in Midland on 9th October, 1995, and was buried
in Moffat Cemetery, Bell County, Texas.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
J.
Evetts Haley, A Texan Looks at Lyndon (1964)
When
the count from the run-off election was in. Parr had delivered for
Lyndon. But though he had dallied in sending his returns while Lyndon
kept in close touch by telephone, it finally turned out that they
had closed their own count prematurely. Stevenson was ahead by 113
votes.
Johnson made another frantic
telephone call to Parr, who indicated that he might pick up what they
needed in Precinct 13 at Alice. Thereupon his henchmen "recanvassed
the returns," reporting on September 3 the "corrected"
total of 202 additional votes for Johnson and one for Stevenson. Thus
Lyndon went into the lead by 87 votes out of nearly a million actually
cast.
(2)
J.
Evetts Haley, A Texan Looks at Lyndon (1964)
At mid-afternoon
on October 22, 1951, thirty-year old "Mac" Wallace drove
up to the Pitch and Putt course, walked in on "Doug" Kinser
at the keeper's house and shot him dead. Wallace fled, but was caught,
indicted for murder with "malice aforethought," and released
on $30,000 bond. Strangely, no counsel appeared for him at first;
only William E. Carroll, "a university friend," who somehow
arranged the bond - later reduced to $10,000; while Carroll refused
to say who the counsel would be.
Strangely too, District
Attorney Bob Long called in a psychiatrist. Wallace, arrogant throughout
the hearing, refused to see him. Still with no attorney, but with
his "University friend" contending he was being held "without
cause," and with bond posted, District Judge Charles A. Betts
issued a writ of habeas corpus and released him.
He was brought to trial
in the 98th District Court of Travis County before Judge Betts, with
John Cofer, Johnson's every ready and able lawyer in times of trouble,
and Polk Shelton, as attorneys for the defense. Cofer was not unduly
searching hi his examination of jurors, but qualified each on his
attitude toward the "suspended sentence law".
The case went to trial.
District Attorney Bob Long - notwithstanding the identity of the car,
a bloody shirt and a cartridge of the same caliber as used in the
shooting, found in Wallace's possession, and witnesses who heard the
shots and saw the departure of a man who fit Wallace's description
- described it as "a near perfect murder."
Wallace did not take the
stand. No evidence was presented to suggest cause or extenuating circumstances.
Cofer simply filed a brief, one-page motion for an instructed verdict,
pleading that there was no evidence upon which the State could "legally
base a judgment of guilt." Long said nothing whatever in rebuttal.
After less than two hours of testimony which was shut off so "abruptly"
that it "left the packed courtroom with jaws ajar." Long
urged the jury to "punish punish Wallace in whatever degree you
can agree upon."
Thus after one of the
briefest and most perfunctory trials of a prominent murder case on
record, even in Texas, the jury nonetheless found, March 27, 1952,
that Wallace was, as charged, guilty "of murder with malice aforethought."
Its penalty, a five-year suspended sentence - for murder in the first
degree.
Long was on his way out
of the courtroom while the verdict was being read. His staff seemed
"dumbfounded," but his own comment to the press was no less
strange than his action: "You win cases and you lose them...
usually everything happens for the best." Somewhat understandable,
therefore, was the comment of The Austin Statesman that this
case, "marked from the start to finish by the unusual,"
had left the people of Austin shocked and "quizzical.''
(3)
J.
Evetts Haley, A Texan Looks at Lyndon (1964)
On the
night of April 4, 1962, at the western end of Texas, a ranchman came
upon the body of George Krutilek in the sandhills near the town of
Clint, slumped in his car with a hose from his exhaust stuck in the
window. He had been dead for several days, and the El Paso County
pathologist, Dr. Frederick Bornstein , held that he certainly did
not die from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Krutilek was a forty-nine-year
old certified public accountant who had undergone secret grilling
by FBI agents on April 2, the day after Billie Sol Estes' arrest.
. . . Krutilek had worked for Estes and had been the recipient of
his favors, but he was never seen or heard of again after the FBI
grilling until his badly decomposed body was found.
(4)
J.
Evetts Haley, A Texan Looks at Lyndon (1964)
Johnson
wanted power and with all his knowledge of political strategy and
his proven control of Congress, he could see wider horizons of power
as Vice-president than as Senate Majority Leader. In effect, by presiding
over the Senate, he could now conceive himself as virtually filling
both high and important positions - and he was not far from wrong.
Finally, as Victor Lasky pointed out, Johnson had nursed a lifetime
dream to be President. As Majority leader he never could have made
it. But as Vice-president fate could always intervene.
(5)
Joachim
Joesten, The Dark Side of Lyndon
Baines Johnson (1968)
Haley's
book may not be a masterpiece in the strictly scholarly sense, and
it is certainly not a bible of my political creed, but as source material
it is invaluable. For the author is not only a fellow-countryman of
Lyndon B. Johnson, but an insider of Texas politics and an old political
pro in his own right. A self-styled 'Jeffersonian Democrat' and conservative,
Haley has been for years active in regional politics and in 1956 he
unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Governor.
That this biography of
Lyndon B. Johnson is coloured to a considerable extent by bitterness
at his own failure in the political game, as well as by an ingrained
dislike of the Rooseveltian tradition (which, alas, also produced
LBJ) and a generally ultraconservative stance, I do not doubt. Still,
even after making generous allowance for possible exaggeration due
to these factors, there remains in his book so much well-documented
fact that it cannot possibly be bypassed by anyone seeking enlightenment
about the dark recesses of the Johnson story.
The principal merit of
Haley's A Texan looks at Lyndon lies in exploring those parts of Johnson's
past that have been most zealously kept from view by the official
biographers. In particular, the author relates in great and obviously
authentic detail how Lyndon B. Johnson got started on his long and
crooked road to the White House through a fraudulent vote.
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