Melons & Malfeasance

Even before Under Secretary of Agriculture Charles Murphy had a chance to speak for himself, six Democratic Senators, like so many John Aldens, leaped up to defend him. Oregon's Wayne Morse went so far as to solicit an opinion from Harry Truman. Said Morse: "Mr. Truman authorized me to say on the floor of the Senate this afternoon that he knows Charles Murphy to be an honest man through and through." Murphy could only be grateful for such testimonials. Throughout nine weeks of hearings by a Senate subcommittee, past and present Agriculture Department underlings had fingered him as the official responsible for decisions that helped make Billie Sol Estes a scandal.

When he finally appeared before the committee, headed by Arkansas' voice-of-doom Senator John McClellan, Murphy acquitted himself fairly well. He seemed at least to convince most of the Senators that he was honest, if indecisive.

Against charges that he had shown "favoritism" toward Billie Sol, Murphy vowed that he had only met the fellow once in his life. Moreover, the only gift he had ever received from Estes was a couple of crates of cantaloupes. Upon receiving them, Murphy said, he sent Estes a little letter of thanks for the "mighty good cantaloupes"--and politely suggested that there should be no more such shipments, in order "to avoid all possibilities of misunderstanding or difficulty." The Senators were much more interested in possible malfeasance than in melons. They sought the answers to two basic questions:

1) Why had Murphy, after canceling Billie Sol's cotton-acreage allotments upon advice of Agriculture Department officials, later suspended the order?

2) Why, after reports questioning Billie Sol's operations, had Murphy approved Estes' appointment to the Agriculture Department's Cotton Advisory Committee?

Steadily and stolidly, Murphy defended himself. Yes, he agreed, he had been responsible for the Estes decisions. But he had merely been trying to be fair; after all, any U.S. citizen is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yes, he had at one time canceled Billie Sol's cotton-allotment transactions. But then, after urgings from Texas' Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough and Representative J. T. Rutherford, Murphy suspended the cancellation in order to reconsider the legal merits of the tangled affair. Why? Well, there was the possibility that Estes may have only made an "honest mistake." This explanation did not seem to convince Republican Subcommittee Member Karl Mundt of South Dakota, who grumbled that Murphy's actions amounted to "trying to find a way out for Mr. Estes." Said Murphy: "You can call it indecisiveness if you want, Senator. We call it 'due process' down where I work." Retorted Mundt: "Sounds more like 'undue process.' "

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