Then it all started to come apart.
Coffey and Tamarro had returned from Europe not only anguished by what they had discovered, but outraged, determined that they would do whatever necessary to strip away covers, to follow the lines wherever they might lead, to see that justice was done. They were only too aware that high position often serves as a shield, that power and reputation manage to deflect retribution. And they were now faced with the task of pursuing men who held very high positions, who exuded power and who could cloak themselves in good repute. But they were certain that they would have the backing of Hogan and Aronwald and others and so would be able to break through those formidable barriers, discover and reveal what lay on the other side.
Just before they left the prison in Vienna, Leopold Ledl had casually dropped a bit of information that was potentially as shocking as anything they had heard to that point. He thought they might be interested in knowing, he said, that Ricky Jacobs’s circle spread far beyond the underworld. During the spring of 1971, when the preparations were being made for the meeting in London between Ledl and Jacobs’s American allies to cement the Vatican arrangements, Jacobs had made a trip to Europe to meet with Ledl and personally assure him that everything was moving smoothly. That meeting took place in Munich, at the Bayerischer Hof. When Ledl arrived at the hotel with Maurice Ajzen, the lobby was overflowing with dignitaries. A major international economic conference was in progress and finance ministers from around the world had gathered in Munich to deal with major monetary issues. Ledl and Ajzen threaded their way through the throng toward the elevators, spotted Jacobs just before they reached the bank of the elevators. He was across the lobby, deep in conversation with a tall, immaculately tailored, silver-haired American. Jacobs glanced up, noticed them, beckoned. When they approached, he introduced his companion, not by name but as his financial adviser, a man he could rely on implicitly to steer him in the right direction in financial matters. For about ten minutes, they chatted idly, until the silver-haired man looked at his watch, said he was going to be late for a meeting and hurried off toward a conference room.
Did Ledl know who that American was? Coffey asked.
Ledl did not. He had never been told the man’s name and as the meeting had been accidental and casual, he had never bothered to inquire. But it was obvious to him that the man was a very important government official.
Coffey and Tamarro filed the information in the back of their minds, and in their notes. Several weeks later, Maurice Ajzen was brought to New York to tell his version of the Vatican affair and the other swindles. During those interviews, Coffey and Tamarro, remembering Ledl’s story, asked him about it. He recalled it clearly, confirmed all that Ledl had said. They gathered a stack of photographs of American officals as well as ordinary people, and asked Ajzen to go through it to see if he could identify the silver-haired man. Ajzen studied the photographs, shaking his head, then came upon one and pointed to it, said with absolute conviction, “That is the man. I would know him anywhere. It is a face you cannot forget.”
The photograph was of John B. Connally, Jr., onetime governor of Texas and, at the time of that encounter in the lobby of the Bayerischer Hof, United States secretary of the treasury. Though he had left the cabinet six months before the November elections, he was still one of the nation’s most powerful politicians, called on constantly for advice by President Richard Nixon, considered by some to be the president’s most trusted and relied-upon confidant. And it was no secret that Connally was a man of enormous ambition, that his eyes were fixed on the Oval Office itself and that if he decided to seek it in 1976, he would probably have the blessing of Nixon.
It seemed incredible that Connally might have any relationship with Ricky Jacobs, that such a relationship might be as close as Jacobs had indicated in Connally’s presence, without a denial from Connally to Ledl and Ajzen. But then the whole case had been filled with incredible revelations. Whether the Connally-Jacobs tie, if it indeed existed, had any bearing on the events they were investigating was impossible to know at that moment. They would have to dig to find out. But an investigation of John Connally was not a thing to be undertaken lightly nor something Coffey and Tamarro could initiate on their own. They went to Hogan and Aronwald, spelled out the little they had, the enigma it presented. Both officials agreed that the story and the identification warranted a closer look. Hogan was prepared to turn Coffey loose, but obviously the search fell within the federal jurisdiction. And Aronwald, though holding a high position in the Strike Force, was an agent of the Department of Justice and he knew full well that authorizing an investigation of John Connally was outside his province and would require the approval of his superiors in Washington.
He went to the nation’s capital to seek that authorization from Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. He was, he told Coffey and Tamarro, prepared to argue for that approval, to do battle to win it if that was necessary.
Aronwald was not warmly received by Kleindienst or anyone else in the administration. Richard Nixon might have won reelection in a massive landslide. He might be starting his second term on a high note with an outward display of supreme confidence. But there were signs that his strength was not as solid and his hold on power as unassailable as he pretended.
Watergate was in the air. The administration was trying to dismiss the spreading rumors as mere speculation with little significance. But the evidence was mounting that it was something much more serious. The burglars might have pleaded guilty to the break-in, but the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine and other publications were charging a direct link between them and the White House, were saying that the burglars had been promised financial support and other rewards if they kept their mouths shut and pleaded guilty. And it was not just the press that had begun to discern unplumbed depths in the Watergate affair. The Senate had authorized hearings into it and other charges of political espionage and sabotage during the 1972 campaign, and Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina had been named to chair those hearings.
But Watergate was only the most public of the scandals beginning to batter the administration in what should have been its most triumphant moments. There were growing revelations about massive illegal contributions to the 1972 Nixon campaign, contributions that had been given reluctantly and only under the pressure of reprisals if they were not made. There were loud whispers about the reason why the administration had decided to drop an antitrust action against International Telephone and Telegraph Company, and that when the truth finally came out, among those who would be tarnished by that affair would be Kleindienst, Connally and other powerful men in government. And the stories that had arisen the previous fall about Vice-President Spiro Agnew being the recipient of bribes from Maryland contractors and others continued to spread despite administration claims that they were unfounded and a smear on the vice-president’s reputation.
The last thing the administration needed at that moment, then, was to turn loose a couple of good and determined investigators to uncover yet another tale of corruption and scandal. And it especially did not need to turn them loose on John Connally at a time when the president was coming more and more to rely on him so implicitly.
So, it was a chastened Aronwald who returned to New York. There would be no investigation of John Connally. Coffey and Tamarro were told: “You are to forget you ever heard the name John Connally in connection with this case. You are not to pursue this line of investigation. You have nothing. You will get nothing. You are not to look for anything. And that’s an order.”
There was little they could do but obey. But they did take one small step on their own just to satisfy their curiosity. They did some checking, learned that Connally had indeed been in Munich on the day Ledl and Ajzen said they met him with Jacobs. They could go no further and so, reluctantly, they dropped the matter there.
Still, the doubts remained, and there was much speculation as to what they might have uncovered had they been given the free rein they had sought and needed. As the months passed, and the power of John Connally became more and more evident, Coffey’s curiosity became mixed with cynicism and bitterness. He became convinced that for Connally, as related to this investigation, power and position had indeed served as a shield. For, in the embattled White House, the Watergate affair growing ever more serious, Connally had emerged as the man who was devising Nixon’s strategy for meeting the charges. He was the strongest voice urging the president to stonewall, even to turn the Watergate tapes into a massive bonfire. So close had Connally come to the top that later in the year, when the stories about Spiro Agnew turned out to be true, and the vice-president was forced to resign in disgrace, Connally was Nixon’s initial choice to succeed to the vice-presidency; only strong Congressional opposition compelled Nixon to drop that proposed nomination and turn instead to Gerald Ford.
Coffey’s suspicion that he might have unearthed something had he been permitted grew, and his skepticism deepened, as the Watergate and related investigations bared the involvement of the former secretary of the treasury in the dropping of the antitrust case against IT&T. And it grew even more when Connally was indicted on charges that he had accepted $10,000 in bribes from the nation’s largest dairy cooperative, the Associated Milk Producers, Inc., to use his influence to help raise the federal milk price-supports. The charges were buttressed in one way or another by officials of all twelve of the nation’s Federal Reserve regional banks. But Connally was later acquitted because, some jurors said, the government had failed to produce any independent eyewitnesses to the payoff.
So, Connally’s involvement with Ricky Jacobs remains an enigma. It is possible that if Coffey and Tamarro had been permitted to follow the leads supplied by Ledl and Ajzen, they might have discovered that the meeting in the Bayerischer Hof had been a casual one with no significance. But they were not permitted to go along that trail, and so were prevented from once and for all allaying all doubts about the nature of John Connally’s involvement.