Sid Williams Richardson
was born on 25th April, 1891, in Athens, Texas. After a brief stay
at Baylor University he left in 1912 to become a salesman for an oil-well
supply company. In 1919 he established his own oil company in Fort
Worth. At first this was a highly successful venture and he became
a prosperous businessman. However, in 1921 the oil market collapsed
and he lost most of his fortune.
In 1933 Richardson established
the Keystone oil-field in Winkler County. This was a profitable venture
and he rapidly expanded his oil business. Richardson also invested
in three large cattle ranches. In 1936 Richardson purchased St. Joseph's
Island off the Texas coast.
Richardson was also an
avid art collector. He was particularly keen on the work of Frederic
Remington and Charles M. Russell.
These paintings can now be seen at the Sid
Richardson Museum.
In the late 1940s, Richardson
and another Texas oil mogul, Clint
Murchison, met
J.
Edgar Hoover,
the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
It was the start of a long friendship. Later, Bobby
Baker claimed that. "Murchison owned a piece of Hoover. Rich
people always try to put their money with the sheriff, because they're
looking for protection. Hoover was the personification of law and
order and officially against gangsters and everything, so it was a
plus for a rich man to be identified with him. That's why men like
Murchison made it their business to let everyone know Hoover was their
friend. You can do a lot of illegal things if the head lawman is your
buddy."
In July, 1947, he established
the Sid W. Richardson Foundation.
He used this organization to provide money to churches, hospitals
and schools in Texas. By this time Richardson was one of the richest
men in the United States. It is estimated he
was worth $800 million and he became known as the "bachelor billionaire".
Richardson had originally
been a supporter of the Democratic
Party and was
associated with a group of right-wing politicians that included Dwight
Eisenhower, Richard
B. Russell, Robert
Kerr,
Sam
Rayburn and Lyndon
B. Johnson.
However, in 1952 he became a supporter of Dwight
Eisenhower. He joined forces with Clint
Murchison and
J.
Edgar Hoover
to mount a smear campaign
against Adlai
Stevenson, the
Democratic candidate for the
presidency.
When Dwight
Eisenhower won the presidency, Richardson suggested he employed
his friend, Robert Anderson, president
of the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, to become Secretary
of the Navy. Eisenhower agreed to this suggestion. Later, Anderson
became Secretary of the Treasury (1957-61). In this post he introduced
legislation beneficial to the oil industry.
In 1954 Richardson joined
forces with Clint
Murchison and
Robert Ralph Young in order to takeover the New York Central Railroad.
This involved buying 800,000 shares worth $20 million. Richardson
also owned the Texas State Network (a radio and television organization)
and the Texas City Refining Company.
Sid Richardson died of
a heart attack on 30th September, 1959, at his home in St Joseph's
Island. He was buried at Athens, Texas.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Anthony
Summers, The
Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1993)
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)
Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President (1967)
Anderson's
powerful influence over Lyndon Johnson, and the position Anderson
was marked to play in directing the financial policies of the Johnson
administration, were both known and predictable from the beginning.
They have been intimate allies for thirty years of politics in Texas
and Washington. They were especially intimate in the creation of
an oil program which, without much public awareness, had developed
to a controversial crisis that was effectively quashed only by Kennedy's
death.
The seed
of that program was really planted, more than a quarter of a century
ago, on a passenger train clacking through the night. There are
several accounts of what happened, but one goes this way: oil millionaire
Sid Richardson, and President Roosevelt's son Elliott, and Bill
Kittrell, a kind of prodigy of Sam Rayburn's and a well-known man
about Texas, were keeping each other company on a trip to Washington.
But the conversation was beginning to droop, so Richardson sent
Kittrell into the chair car to scout for a fourth for a round of
bridge. By and by Kittrell came back with a young Army colonel in
tow, an open-faced fellow by the name of Dwight Eisenhower.
From the
train trip developed a strong friendship between Eisenhower and
Richardson; after the war, when Eisenhower was being rushed by both
political parties, his Texas oil pal showed up in Paris to tell
him that if he ever did get into politics he could count on plenty
of Richardson money.
Exactly
what generosity Richardson showed has never been more than wildly
hinted at, but it apparently was enough to make Eisenhower moderately
grateful. When Richardson and other Texas oil men recommended Robert
Anderson, Eisenhower named him Secretary of the Navy. The importance
of this to Texas oil men is a matter of almost comical stress. Anderson,
a resident of landlocked Fort Worth, knew nothing of naval affairs
before he got the post, but that hardly matters; all he needed to
know was that Texas is the largest oil-producing state and that
the Navy is the largest consumer of oil as well as leaser of valuable
lands to favored oil firms. From this producer-consumer relationship
things work out rather naturally, and it was this elementary knowledge
that later made John Connally (who had for several years, through
the good offices of his mentor Lyndon Johnson, been serving as Sid
Richardson's attorney and who later became executor of the Richardson
estate) and Fred Korth, also residents of Fort Worth, such able
secretaries of the Navy, by Texas standards...
Eisenhower,
on the urging of Richardson and Lyndon Johnson, named him to the
office of Secretary of Treasury, and on June 21 (1957), ten days
after selling his gift oil property, Anderson was free and clear
to tell the Senate Finance Committee that he held no property that
would conflict with his interest in the cabinet post.
A few weeks
later Anderson was appointed to a cabinet committee to "study"
the oil import situation; out of this study came the present-day
program which benefits the major oil companies, the international
oil giants primarily, by about one billion dollars a year.
Although
Standard of Indiana, one of the companies involved in Anderson's
million-dollar windfall, used the resulting import program to great
success, moving in a few years from a company with no foreign holdings
to one of the largest overseas oil explorers, there was nothing
illegal in this mutual benefit. Anderson could be charged with nothing
more than poor taste.
Nor was
Anderson held solely responsible for the oil import program's formula;
not at all. Industry insiders believed-and their beliefs were printed
in industry publications-that equally influential in the shaping
of the program were Lyndon Johnson and his ally in all things pertaining
to oil industry legislation, the late Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma.
Kerr, an owner of the Kerr-McGee Oil Company, did very well under
the new oil program, but his attitude toward conflict of interest
was singularly easygoing. "Hell," he once remarked, "if
everyone abstained on grounds of personal interest, I doubt if you
could get a quorum in the U.S. Senate on any subject."
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