Some Circulatory Problems

Striding back and forth across the Washington courtroom, lacing his low, even voice at ripe moments with sarcasm and incredulity, Defense Counsel Edward Bennett Williams bored away at the witness in 5 1/2 relentless hours of crossexamination. The target of Williams' searching volley of questions was Attorney Jake Jacobsen, principal accuser of Williams' distinguished client: John B. Connally, 58, three times Governor of Texas and former Secretary of the Treasury. Connally stands charged with accepting a $10,000 gratuity from Jacobsen as a payoff for influencing President Nixon to increase federal milk price supports in 1971.

Jacobsen has testified that he gave Connally the $10,000 in two $5,000 installments in 1971 on behalf of Associated Milk Producers, Inc., the nation's largest dairy cooperative and a big contributor to Nixon's 1972 campaign. When it appeared that federal investigators were about to discover the gift, Jacobsen said, the pair agreed to formulate a false story that the money had remained in Jacobsen's safe-deposit box in an Austin, Texas, bank. On Oct. 29, 1973, said Jacobsen, Connally gave him $10,000 back, which Jacobsen placed in the safe-deposit box. But it was not the original $10,000, and, according to Jacobsen, Connally grew anxious that some of the bills had been circulated after 1971. Connally gave him yet another $10,000 on Nov. 25, 1973, Jacobsen told the court, to replace the first bun dle, but FBI agents discovered that it contained 16 bills with serial numbers that had not been in circulation in 1971. That disclosure caused Jacobsen to make a deal with prosecutors and agree to testify against Connally.

Without frontally assaulting any of Jacobsen's claims, Williams managed to wrest a damaging series of admissions from him. Williams asked Jacobsen to go through the 280 bills that made up the first $10,000 for those bearing the signature of George Shultz, Connally's successor as Treasury Secretary, and 49 of them did. If Jacobsen's story is true, it seems puzzling indeed that Connally blundered by including so many Shultz bills. The purpose of the alleged exercise, after all, was to make it seem the money had been in Jacobsen's safe-deposit box all along. Under Williams' tough crossexamination, Jacobsen also acknowledged that Associated Milk Producers Lobbyist Bob Lilly had given him a third $5,000 for Connally, but that he had no "firm recollection" of actually having passed the money on; that he had told investigative bodies on several occasions that Connally had taken no money from him; and that he had once written Connally a letter warmly expressing gratitude for Connally's friendship and kindness. Williams even charged that Jacobsen had once agreed to give evidence against President Lyndon B. Johnson, whom Jacobsen served as legal counsel from 1965 to 1967, in a case Williams did not name. Jacobsen denied the accusation, and the matter was dropped.

Chief Prosecutor Frank Tuerkheimer, heading up the Watergate special prosecutor's team, then called twelve U.S. Federal Reserve Bank officials to verify that the bills that made up the second $10,000 that FBI agents confiscated from Jacobsen could have been in circulation by Oct. 29, 1973. In carefully elaborate questioning, however, Williams established that they might also not have been. So elaborate did the testimony bearing on monetary circulation become that even U.S. District Judge George Hart expressed bewilderment, saying at one point to Tuerkheimer, "I guess you and Mr. Williams know what you are doing. I don't." On that far from secure note, the Government rested its case, and the defense will have its turn this week.

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