Big John at the Bar

The tall silver-haired man striding down the Washington corridor could have been the sleek candidate for the U.S. presidency that he once seemed destined to become. "Hiya, John B.," said a passer-by with a warm slap on the shoulder. Despite such joviality, John B. Connally, 58, was heading toward U.S. District Judge George L. Hart's courtroom to face trial. The charges: accepting a $10,000 gratuity for influencing President Nixon to increase federal milk-price supports in 1971. Three times Governor of Texas, and Secretary of the Treasury under Nixon, Connally looked tense last week at what may be the last big trial handled by the Watergate special prosecutor's staff.

Footprint Trail. In his opening statement to the jury of seven women and five men (including nine blacks), Prosecutor Jon A. Sale charged that Connally had not only accepted but had actually solicited the money from Lawyer Jake Jacobsen, who was a go-between for the Associated Milk Producers Inc., the nation's largest dairy cooperative. The evidence, claimed Sale, would show that the money "left a trail of footprints ... to Mr. Connally." The prosecution has documented its case with bank records and logs of meetings and phone calls between Jacobsen and his old pal Connally.

Denying all, Defense Attorney Edward Bennett Williams insisted that Jacobsen had actually pocketed the $10,000 himself and then pinned a bum rap on Connally. Jacobsen did that, said Williams, "to extricate himself from his troubles" after he had been indicted in an unrelated savings and loan scandal. Indeed, prosecutors dropped seven fraud charges against Jacobsen after he agreed to plead guilty to one count of offering gratuities and said that he would testify against Connally. Earlier, Jacobsen had testified six times to four other investigative bodies that Connally had not taken money from him.

Thank You. In a scratchy White House tape played at the trial, Connally's persuasive voice was heard urging Nixon to boost the milk-price supports, at least in part to sew up the dairymen's large contributions to his 1972 campaign. After the increases had been granted, Jacobsen testified last week, Connally asked that since the dairy groups had raised big money for politicians, "why don't they raise some for me?" Jacobsen said that he got $10,000 in $100 bills from Bob Lilly, lobbyist for the Associated Milk Producers, and gave half of it to Connally on May 14, 1971, in his office at the Treasury. Connally took the money to his private bathroom, added Jacobsen, presumably to count and hide it, and then said, "Thank you very much." Jacobsen contended that he gave Connally a second $5,000 on Sept. 24,1971, also at the Treasury. (Another witness, one of Connally's former secretaries, verified logs showing that the two men had indeed met on May 14 and Sept. 24,1971.)

In October 1973, Jacobsen went on, when the pair learned that Lilly had told the special prosecutor's office of the payola, they concocted a story that Jacobsen had offered the money to Connally for political candidates but that he had turned it down and the cash had remained in Jacobsen's safe-deposit box at an Austin bank. To make good their story, Jacobsen told the court, Connally gave him $10,000, handing it over in a cigar box. Jacobsen said that he then deposited the money in the Austin safe-deposit box.

Their story, said Jacobsen, began to unravel when Connally remembered that some of the bills he had paid back had been circulated after 1971. (They bore the signature of George Shultz, Connally's successor as Treasury Secretary.) The pair tried to replace them with older bills but, if Jacobsen's story is true, Connally somehow messed up. When

FBI agents opened the safe-deposit box in November 1973, they found 16 bills in the cache that had not been in circulation in 1971. Confronted with this evidence, Jacobsen said, he decided to spill the whole truth.

Jacobsen's clear, forthright testimony did not seem to shake John Connally, who afterward smiled, squeezed hands and moved easily through the crowd outside the court. Which man's confidence was truly justified may be revealed as Jacobsen faces cross-examination this week from fabled, relentless Defense Counsel Williams. Surely he will raise the question of why his client, a man worth millions, would jeopardize his political future for $10,000. And Connally may have something to say about that when he takes the stand, probably next week.

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