A Very OK Podcast
Episode 13: “At War With Corruption”
March 15, 2022
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m the executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. And with me, as always, is Dr. Bob Blackburn, the former executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. And we’re just enjoying this beautiful spring weather today. We’ve come off our most recent cold spell that I hope is the last gasp of winter, Bob, because I’m really looking forward to getting out on my kayak again and going hiking again, and doing some of those fun outdoor activities. So, hopefully we’re on. But of course, in Oklahoma, we always have fall, spring, and then winter again, and then spring, so we can’t get our hopes up too much, right?
Dr. Bob Blackburn: And every time someone says to me, oh, isn’t this great weather? Spring is finally here. I’ll never forget my beloved father-in-law, Gene Stevens in Woodward, who grew up in the in Woodward, rural Woodward County in the ’30s. Always, if I would say that, when I saw him, and of course, fathers-in-law, I always like to correct sons-in-law. But, in this case, it was very gentle nudge. And it was always the same when he’d say, oh, Bob, but the April of ’38, we had the worst blizzard ever in western Oklahoma, and he had photographs of 20-foot drifts. And he always would remind me if I mentioned how good the weather was in March, he said, oh, it can still turn on you.
Thompson: Well, we all know those of us who are particularly familiar with Oklahoma that you can never get too complacent because Oklahoma will throw the craziest things to you at the craziest times. And so, yeah, we might as well get that April blizzard. Who knows what’s going to happen.
Blackburn: Could be.
Thompson: Well, we are so glad to be here with you today and to be talking about this topic. We’re going to talk about corruption in Oklahoma. And of course, it’s not a very tasteful, it’s not something that we enjoy talking about, but it is a part of our Oklahoma history. And later on, we’ve got a great guest who’s going to be with us, who is Bill Price. He was the assistant US attorney for the Western District and then later became the US attorney for the Western District, and he prosecuted some of the biggest scandals in Oklahoma history, number one being the Oklahoma County commissioner scandal. And so I can’t wait to talk to him and hear more about what he has to say. But we just want to get into this now, and let’s talk about Oklahoma and politics and what’s going on from statehood on, Bob, that kind of lends itself in some areas to some corruption developing in our state.
Blackburn: Well, Trait, I always like to look at popular culture as a kind of a gauge of what’s happening on the stage of history. And, normally, you start off by asking me what movie.
Thompson: Yeah, that’s true.
Blackburn: So, if I might correct our outline here a little bit, (laughing), but what was happening in the 1970s when Bill Price was operating on that stage of history, and pulling back the curtains on corruption that had always been there, and it was institutionalized. But you had to think of pop culture in the 1970s and what was happening. We were coming out of Watergate in the investigation of the Nixon administration. We start putting up on the pedestal these journalists who are uncovering, investigating, and the movie All the President’s Men with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. It holds up well. I watched it just recently again. And after all these years, and a lot of ’70s movies don’t. They just like money; they disappoint. They’re just not the same. But with that movie, it just still resonates, and I think it inspired people at all levels. Not just the public servants, but the general public, is that, no, we cannot allow this corruption to be part of our institutional structure of government and public service, that we need honest people. And I think that popular culture, movies like that, the same in the ’30s with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington If you’ve never seen that, a classic movie.
Thompson: Yeah, I actually haven’t ever seen that. I feel a little bit ashamed of that.
Blackburn: Oh, Jimmy Stewart was, you know, he was the hero of that generation. Of course, he played Lindbergh and a few others, Glenn Miller. But that movie made his persona as a good guy, wanting to do good things, honest, and was willing to sacrifice his own happiness and his own welfare for the public good. And so you get the get that in popular culture over and over, but especially in the ’70s, it really starts to change public attitudes.
Thompson: Well, we feel like in the ’70s, you know, that there was so much unrest in the middle to late ’60s. And coming out of that, I think people wanted to kind of believe and trust in their government, and the ’70s is really that dividing point where people really begin to not trust their government at all, and to really feel like that they kind of been hoodwinked this whole time and kind of seeing that exposed underbelly. And then you start finding out all of the things that went on, how the public was lied to about the Vietnam War, and what was really going on in the war and what our real motivations were there. And so, that distrust of government really comes into being in the 1970s.
Blackburn: Well, and you just gave a great explanation of why a man named Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, could be elected president. People wanted an outsider, someone who is not tainted with a brush of corruption, who had not been part of the good-old-boy system, was not part of the elite of Yale, that was not part of the Wall Street elite, that was not part of the Beltway elite. He was this outsider who brought all of these pretty amateurish country boys. And it was partly the reason for his failure to be reelected. And he did a lot of great things. But the public wanted an outsider. And so, when Bill Price started those investigations, Bill Burkett, his mentor, started investigations. They had public support. And so, to get back to trying to answer your question, sorry about that delay.
Thompson: Oh, that’s all right.
Blackburn: Detour.
Thompson: I’m learning a lot.
Blackburn: Detour through pop culture is that you really have to go back to the Constitutional Convention of 1906 and 1907 to understand the structure of Oklahoma government and the fact that it was very decentralized. And that was just not the opinion of constitutional lawyers and philosophers. What kind of government do we need? But it reflected Oklahoma at the time. It was a very rural population; 80 to 90% of Oklahomans made their living in rural Oklahoma. Farmers, ranchers, the pace of life was much slower. You didn’t have automobiles. If you wanted to go from point A to B, long-distance, it was by train would have been the best option, if you could afford it. As a rural Oklahoman, a lot of times you couldn’t afford it. But you have this rural culture, and on top of that, you have a dominant strain of really a cultural tradition that comes out of the Scots-Irish.
And there have been books written about Scots-Irish culture and coming out of the Highlands of Scotland, resisting the imperial forces of London and the English, transplanting that to the fighting Irish island, where the Irish and Scots intermarried. Many of our families, my family, is predominantly Scots-Irish. Well, that rural distrust of a centralized authority. So, among the Scots, we don’t want the people in London telling us what to do. We’re going to hang onto our weapons when they try to take them away. So don’t tell me who can put a gun on my hip. This distrust of people at a distance and wanting to keep government local.
So local government is best in their minds, and in the life of an Oklahoman in 1906, rarely would they get outside of their little village area. So, generally, they would know the people in their valley, their clan, their extended family, the people they did business with, the people they went to school with, and the people their parents went to school with. And so this rural tradition is there, and when the framers gather to create our Constitution, they make the strongest part of all state government at the county commissioner level, and they want to make it direct government. They don’t want an intermediary. They don’t want an executive who is not subject to their opinion, so someone who can be defeated at the next election. And so they make a direct elections of three county commissioners in every county, and so you split up the counties. And of course, the counties were all organized. So anybody living in a county could get to a county seat in one day in a wagon, so 20 miles. So generally, if you look at that and use that 40-50 mile radius, you’re going to find the shape of most counties. Now of course, the few that are larger for various reasons, like Osage County, but typically they’re going to be small, and those rural people want a direct control. They wanted to know who is representing them. They didn’t know who was running for governor from Muskogee or McAlester, but they knew who was running for county commissioner because they were from their valley, from their clans, from their acquaintances, and typically, they wanted them there and would even tolerate a bit of corruption. Because one, you didn’t have the local press going after these county commissioners because they would have been the seats of power.
If you ran for the legislature, first, you had to have the support of your commissioners, because they control votes and where they would build roads and improve roads, where they would support the schools and the teachers and the superintendents. It was this political machine at the local level, and it was both parties, Republican and Democrat. But it really comes out of that rural nature of the state with a tinge of the Scots-Irish culture in this direct local control. We don’t trust the people in Guthrie or the people in Oklahoma City, when it’s moved Oklahoma City in 1910. We don’t trust the people in Washington, DC. We still see that.
Thompson: Oh, yeah.
Blackburn: You know, that federal stimulus. Oh, we don’t want that federal stimulus. But of course, they want their Social Security and their Medicare. But this whole idea of the federal government being from this distant, almost alien environment, we don’t want that in Oklahoma.
Thompson: You know, I always tell people that, you know, the strain of populism still runs through Oklahoma politics, and it is very, very strong. And so you might think, well, we started out as a Democratic state and now we’re a Republican state. But really, that doesn’t even, that’s not really even the big identifying factor. It’s that strain of populism. And as you mentioned, Oklahoma was formed in that time when there was a big distrust of sort of large, centralized authority. And so, we didn’t want the governor to have a power, have a lot of power. And in fact, still today, Oklahoma is a pretty weak-governor state when it comes to the amount of actual direct power that the governor has, and things like the initiative petition and the veto referendum and all of those things that put more power in the hands of the citizens are the direct result of those populist tendencies that we had. So, yeah, you’re right on about that. We did not trust somebody that was in some faraway city or town or in Washington, DC. We wanted to make sure that the people that were closest to us were the people that could exhibit the most power.
Blackburn: Well, and to illustrate the dynamics of this, that’s what the county commissioners set up. There were mainly rural people, rural electorate. Well, times change, of course. In the 1920s, farmers and ranchers struggle. This is really an age when people are not just leaving the farms and going to California, like you might see in John Steinbeck’s novel, but they’re going to cities; Oklahoma City, Tulsa are growing, Muskogee. You get these towns growing, and so you get this urban shift.
And in 1930, let me get this year straight here. In 1932, in the gubernatorial election, a man from Ponca City runs for governor, E. W. Marland. E. W. Marland is not a populist Oklahoma farmer and rancher. He’s a Pennsylvania businessman who had corporate relationships, comes to Oklahoma, starts drilling wells in north central Oklahoma, opens the Three Sands, becomes quite wealthy, creates what we now know as Conoco, and after he loses control of Conoco, he said, hey, I’m going to run for governor. And he is elected. A governor saying, I’m going to bring the New Deal to Oklahoma, which is federal stimulus, federal control, federal red tape. Oklahomans typically had objected to. Finally, they’re willing to look at.
Thompson: Well, “Alfalfa Bill” was not a New Deal fan and not an FDR fan, and so he wanted nothing to do with the New Deal in Oklahoma.
Blackburn: Exactly. And so, Marland—total opposite. You talk about a 300- or 180-degree change from one governor to the next. Going from E.W. to Marland is one of those. I love talking about those two governors just because of that dramatic tension. But Marland knows this is a corrupt system, is that, that direct local nature without accountability, without checks and balances that you have, you’re supposed to have at all levels of government. Like you, as executive director of the OHS, you know, you got the auditor looking, you got people at the Office of Management, or OMES, and looking at what you’re doing. So we have checks and balances. But we really didn’t have it with that county system.
Well, Marland wants to change it, and in 1935, he pulls together enough money and gets the Brookings Institute (sic) to come in and do a study of the structure of state government. And in 1935, it’s released. Any fan of Oklahoma government politics has got to understand that Brookings Institute (sic) report. It’s very revealing. And in looking at the flaws, and one thing that comes out of that is a state police force; is that the governor, the state is so weak in the counties. You have county sheriffs, local law within the villages and towns, and then really no checks and balances there. No authority of the state to go in, and E. W. Marland, with support from the legislature, creates the Oklahoma Highway Patrol in 1937.
Well, let’s back up even a decade earlier, a new governor becomes governor because a corrupt governor is impeached—Jack Walton. Jack Walton should have been impeached on probably 50 counts. He was finally caught on about a dozen. He’s removed from office within a year. Chris, no, that’s his grandson; Martin, M. E. Trapp, Martin Trapp becomes governor for three years. He sees the flaws in the county commissioner, and he sees the flaws in the road systems, for example. And county commissioners had total control over road building up to 1923. But he said, we need good roads. We can get federal grants, again stimulus money from the federal government. People typically were against it. But he said, we’ve got to get it. If we’re going to have a modern state with infrastructure, and we have to do it in a professional way. County commissioners can’t do it. They push through a bill in the legislature, creates what we now know as ODOT, which really doesn’t begin until 1923, with professional engineers with a penny tax or two-penny tax on gasoline to provide the matching funds to get the federal grants.
And then we have our modern highway system, Route 66 then comes along 1926. No accident why we get Route 66. It’s what Trapp and the legislature did. And so the dynamics there over those years was a corrupt system enabled by this decentralized system of governance without checks and balances. And if the press is not going to go after it and uncover it, if the locals are not going to object to it, the system just lives, and it breeds, and you have generations of institutionalized problems developing in those years.
Thompson: Well, and in the early 1960s, late 1950s, early 1960s, you get Governor J. Howard Edmondson, who came in and really wanted to address a lot of this corruption. And one of the biggest things he saw was that, of course, Oklahoma was a dry state. We had prohibition on the books until 1959. And the reason that prohibition was repealed in 1959 is because Edmondson finally said, you know what? All of these cops and everybody is looking the other way, and everybody’s on the take on this thing. Either we’re going to enforce the law, or we’re not. Edmondson started cracking down and enforcing the law, and everybody went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! We wanted our alcohol! Stop messing with us. And that’s what leads, in 1959, to prohibition being repealed.
Blackburn: That’s right. Good story. And he also took on county commissioners and the push back there. We had a speaker of the House at the time, Edmondson was the first governor since Haskell who did not get to choose his own speaker of the House. That had been the tradition is that when a new governor is in, and he gets to say, this is who I want as your speaker, and of course, with a supermajority of Democrats in the legislature and Democratic governors until Henry Bellmon, they said, okay, well, that’s changed with Edmondson. Edmondson makes so many enemies in local government, in the legislature that J. D. McCarty can become the speaker who’s part of the good old boy system. And Edmondson is pretty ineffective the last couple of years of his administration, even gives up the governorship to be appointed a US senator when Robert S. Kerr dies. So, he bails out, knowing that he can’t be very effective in this system.
Thompson: In 1958, the legislature published what was called the Sandlin Report, and it analyzed the purchasing practices and all 77 counties. And these were some of the findings of the report: that commissioners were not meeting as boards as they were required to do by law; that supplies cost up to 25% more than their marketplace; competitive bidding laws were not followed; supplies were purchased but not delivered; money for roads and bridges was diverted to private property and to charitable organizations. And the report said, “We believe the system in its present form invites the unscrupulous to take advantage of it and that too many times it has been a spawning ground for corruption and misuse of funds.” Now, this is in 1958. This is a full 20 years before the county commissioner scandal would break wide open.
Blackburn: Well, at the same time, we talked about J. Howard Edmondson, and to me, repeal— that gets the banner headlines. But he did two things. He really pushed for two reforms of pushing back and saying, we got to do something about the system. One was the merit system. In Oklahoma, senators hired state employees. So, if there was a state employee in Noble County, the senator approved that. So you have a decentralized system with local control, county commissioners, the senator, and the rep in those areas are little fiefdoms, no checks and balances. So that was passed by the legislature during Edmondson’s first year. And then secondly, central purchasing. Before 1959, we had no central purchasing in Oklahoma. Every agency could hire their own people. They could purchase their own goods, and there was no checks and balances there.
And generally, the state auditor was part of the good-old-boy system. Was there because he had the support of enough people at the local level. He’s not going to rock the boat, or she, at that time, it was a he. The press in those local communities are part of the good old boy system, because who they support is probably going to be elected county commissioner, or legislator, or senator, or mayor. And so they’re not going to rock the boat. And so what Edmondson was trying to do was really create a system of checks and balances with transparency. And he suffered in the latter years of his administration because he was that kind of reform-minded person, just like E.W. Marland was, Trapp to a degree, at least on transportation. And a few other governors tried to do it, but just really never could pull it off. And so we still had a fairly decentralized system, as you say today, but even less centralized in the 1970s.
Thompson: In 1964, the Oklahoma Public Expenditures Council reported that 71 of the state’s 77 counties routinely violated state purchasing laws. And so, as we’re trailing from the 1960s and we’re moving into the 1970s, things are starting to catch up. Watergate really, like we talked about before, really kind of spurs that notion of wanting to take on county corruption. And we get into 1978, there was a woman named Mrs. Billy McCartney, a Stephens County homemaker, who really got tired of the condition of the roads and the bridges in her area, and decided to get a petition together to look into county purchasing practices. And this really becomes the tip of the spear for this county commissioner scandal to break wide open. And what they, the state auditor’s office turned to the feds, and they asked Bill Price, who was with the US Attorney’s Office, to come in and start investigating.
And they, for the next several years, they go through this really complicated scheme. They set up an undercover company that’s a dummy company that’s operated by the feds to try and get people. And Bill will say, he says in the book At War With Corruption that it wasn’t all that successful except for the fact that when they had someone that was getting someone on tape, they would use that dummy company to say, hey, this is, you guys need to be aware of this. But these county commissioners had been doing this, many of them admitted, since before statehood. This had been the practice is they would go through, and they would skim off the top because they believe, because of their low salaries or because of, you know, whatever reason, that they were owed this money. And it was such a common practice that many of them didn’t even question it when they came into office. And so they had this fake company, there was a woman, and I’m going to look up her name. Her name was Dorothy Griffin. And Dorothy Griffin was one of the, quote unquote, suppliers to these county commissioners. And the feds were able to get to her and to put her on wiretap.
But there were three ways that suppliers and county commissioners worked together to be able to skim off the top, and the most common form of corruption involved the 10% kickbacks. And basically what would happen there is companies, suppliers would inflate their costs to such a degree to be able to cover these 10% kickbacks that would then go back to the county commissioners. The second is what’s called the “blue sky” deals, and the blue sky deals were what’s called the 50-50s. And basically, the 50-50 deals were there were no supplies being delivered. Fake invoices were created that the supplier, the fake supplier, would get 50, the county commissioner would get 50, and then, there was a saying goes, you get 50, I get 50, and the county gets, the word is screwed. But screwed wasn’t the word that they used in the book. So I’ll just leave that to your imagination. And then there were also negotiated kickbacks on heavy equipment rentals. So if they had to build a road, if they had to do a major construction project, the group renting the equipment would give a kickback to the county commissioners. And so those were the three main ways that the county commissioners were skimming off the top. And this was so prevalent that it was happening in the vast majority of Oklahoma’s 77 counties across the state.
Blackburn: Yeah, and it had become so institutionalized. It took an incremental long-term effort to root that out. The IRS was involved in all of this. The FBI was involved. The US Attorney’s Office was involved. And it took years to really try to change that culture and then to keep, you know, when people talk about the corruption in a place like Ukraine or corruption in China, or Russia, or wherever it is, it can become institutionalized so easily. But it takes a long time to root that out and to change and to get the right people to say, I’m willing to be a public servant without the corruption, and I’m going to fight it, and I’m going to be transparent. It almost takes sometimes a generation or two to recover from things like that.
Thompson: Here’s a pretty incredible statement that I plucked out of the book, but it said that the old timers, the old county commissioners, would confess that 50% of the materials didn’t ever exist, going all the way back to statehood. I mean, and that’s just an astounding statement to me. And how much money did the State of Oklahoma lose in terms of the roads that could have been built, the bridges that could have been done, and the way that the citizens could have been taken care of because of this level of graft. It’s just astounding to me.
Blackburn: You know, and if you think about the lack of infrastructure, you know, we now talk about infrastructure is really building hope for the future, that we will have room to grow, and prosper, and change, and adapt, and all that lost infrastructure. You can see the toll, not just ethically and morally, on the character of any community, but you see the impact on lack of economic development as well.
Thompson: Well, this scandal not only made state news, national news, international news, it’s one of the biggest scandals to happen in state history, certainly. And, it was just, it’s incredible now. And I think I’m glad we’re doing this podcast because I think it’s kind of fallen out of the zeitgeist a little bit. I think people, as time has gone by and of course, we’re approaching now 50 years since the scandal happened, that it kind of gets out of the public consciousness a little bit. And I think people need to understand and realize the kind of corruption that happened, and of course, we still need to be, as many safeguards as we still have today, there are still weaknesses in our state government systems. And from time to time, we see newspaper stories and stories on TV about where there still is corruption at the county level, and the city level, and at the state level.
Blackburn: Most recently, our state auditor, Cindy Byrd, released a report on a private company taking advantage of lack of specific laws on charter schools.
Thompson: Right.
Blackburn: And so, we still see that happening, but fortunately, now we have enough people like Cindy Byrd and others willing to step up and say, you know, I’m going to go after this, even though I might pay for it personally and politically. But it’s the right thing to do, and that’s the sort of public servant we need. Well, Bob, I really think this is a good opportunity to bring Bill Price into our conversation and talk to him about his role in confronting this corruption and helping to bring it down.
Blackburn: I think you’re right, and I’ve known Bill for 30 years. I knew Bill Burkett, his mentor. In fact, Bill Burkett’s collections are here in the History Center, and and hopefully, Bill’s will be as well. But he talked to me about this book project about five or six years ago. I remember we met at the art museum cafe, talked about it, and he was looking for a historian who could really make sense of all of this, put it into context, and I recommended Michael Hightower, and others were recommending Michael, I found out since, at the same time, but he finally, Michael Hightower finally decided he was going to dig into this. And the book is very well written. It’s an amazing story of one person’s public service and commitment to uncovering corruption. And that’s what we have in this book. And so I’m looking forward to listening to Bill’s stories today.
Thompson: Well, let’s do it. Well, everyone, we have a special treat today. We are going to be interviewing Bill Price. And Bill Price has a fascinating history with this topic that we’re talking about with corruption in Oklahoma. And I will just go ahead and read his bio, and then we’ll bring him into the conversation. Bill was born and raised and now lives in Oklahoma City with his wife, Mary. He has two daughters and a son. He received his bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University in 1970 and his juris doctorate from the University of Oklahoma in 1973. He started as an assistant to Judge Alfred P. Murrah before becoming assistant US attorney in the Western District of Oklahoma from 1975 to 1982, and the US attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma from 1982 to 1989. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the Outstanding Assistant US Attorney for 1977, ’78, and ’79; commendations of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Internal Revenue Service, and the Inspector General of Health and Human Services; the United States Department of Justice Special Achievement Award for his prosecution of the county commissioner corruption scandal, which was the largest political corruption case in the nation’s history. In 1998, Bill was the Republican nominee for governor.
In 2021, a biography of his life entitled At War With Corruption was published, and the author of the book, Michael Hightower, called him the biggest corruption-buster in Oklahoma history. And Bill, it is a pleasure for us to have you in to the podcast today. Welcome.
Bill Price: It’s a pleasure to be here.
Thompson: Well, we would love to just get into talking about your career and how you came to be as the assistant US attorney and then the US attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma. So talk a little bit about your growing up years, and then how you work your way from Georgetown and University of Oklahoma into your career.
Price: It started even earlier than that. As a teenager, I drove GT G. T. Blankenship’s bus around the state of Oklahoma, and his big issue was the Supreme Court scandal. And then I was head of a teenage Republican group that Al Snipes used to defeat J. D. McCarty, who was the most corrupt speaker of the House. He was more powerful than the governor. And then I was at Georgetown, and then, in fact, with Bill Clinton. I have a number of stories on Bill in the student council there at Georgetown, and then returned to Oklahoma, was in private practice a little bit before Burkett appointed me an assistant US attorney. And the first case I worked on was David Hall.
Thompson: That’s quite an entry into being a assistant US attorney. That’s a big case to work on.
Price: I was third chair. I wrote briefs, rather than put on witnesses.
Blackburn: Bill, before we get to those actual cases where you are involved as a prosecutor, first, your interest in public service, obviously, you’ve really become a public servant. Over the years, you’ve served the community trying to establish the norms that we accept as a community. So, talk about your interest in public service, whether it was family or just you or mentors, and then a little bit about the late Bill Burkett, one of my good friends. We have his collections here in the History Center. And Bill was a good community leader from Woodward County, and know all of the Burkett kids, some of whom are in the judiciary now, but talk about the public service and then your relationship with Bill, how you got to know him.
Price: Well, my family on my father’s side, the grandparents, came in on the run in Dewey County. And so my dad was raised in northwestern Oklahoma and worked his way through high school, college, medical school, and became chief of surgery in Oklahoma City at Mercy Hospital. He wasn’t necessarily that political, but at this time, the politics were so corrupt, not only the Supreme Court taking bribes, but the legislature. You had J. D. McCarty and others receiving sacks of tens of thousands of dollars and passing it out to the legislature. And then you had the governor, David Hall. It was incredibly corrupt. And I would find that when I campaign for various people that, especially if they were rural Oklahoma, they’d say, I don’t believe in any of this. So I don’t vote because they’re all corrupt. And they were right. The county commissioner scandal revealed almost all the county commissioners, all but five or ten, were corrupt, and that’s out of 77 counties and three county commissioners. And this is while they knew they were under investigation for two or three years, and there were headlines about the Stephens County investigation grand jury occurring in 1978.
Thompson: So, before we get into the county commissioner scandal, let’s talk about that first case that you worked on when you came into the US Attorney’s Office, and that was the David Hall case. And I think for those of us who are listening, who may not be as familiar with Governor Hall. A lot of times he gets credit for really putting a lot of work into roads and bridges construction in the state of Oklahoma, which had kind of lagged behind. And then, he gets credit also for education reforms and education spending. But there was kind of a darker side to that, too. And there was some scandal going on in his administration, and he ended up being indicted and serving a prison term. So why don’t you go back and take us? And this is quite a first case for you to have. Take us back to those days, and can you talk to us a little bit about some of the specifics of that case?
Price: Well, in the Hall case itself, was a guy named Doc Taylor wanted to sell his retirement plan to the state of Oklahoma. And he had to approach David Hall and Rogers, who was head of that committee, about doing it. And Rogers went to the FBI, and then that led to him being wired against David Hall. But this had been going on for years. David Hall was taking bribes from everybody doing the construction in the Capitol. And that was an IRS case that was slowly going through the system for two years. And Burkett was so frustrated that it hadn’t moved enough, and then this John Rogers case appeared.
Thompson: Who was secretary of state; it wasn’t some random guy. He was secretary of state for the State of Oklahoma.
Price: Absolutely. And it really showed. It was interesting. I prosecuted later on a whole bunch of the IRS cases, you know, you’d have contractors that he would have picking up his $40,000 in campaign contributions. And so I would interview with all his top aides on a basis of the next year or two, and what they all said was interesting. They said that he when he was DA, he was honest, but when he ran first for governor and ran number five or number six in the Democratic primary, he was honest. And then he changed. He figured out that the way to get elected in Oklahoma was to sell the office to everybody in the world. And that’s really disturbing that people decide that they have to be dishonest in order to get ahead, and that’s what happened. This was one, this was the tip of the iceberg of enormous corruption that was going on.
Thompson: This is the early 1970s in Oklahoma, and as I dove into your into the book and was reading about this, it was a fairly complex scheme where he would have, it was kind of pay-to-play for contractors. Contractors wanted state jobs. So he would essentially go through this laundering-type scheme where he would give his bills, his personal bills to contractors, and then they would take out money orders, and they would kind of spread it all over town and kind of funnel it around into finally where I guess they thought it wouldn’t lead back to him.
But he really got in trouble with the John Rogers issue where he tried to, it was the pension board, right, where he tried to basically take a bribe of $50,000 and wanted John Rogers to help facilitate that, because John Rogers was on the pension board at the time, and they were the people who were with the investment company in Dallas wanted to invest pension funds, and they needed that approval, and so pretty complicated scheme that they were working here. But it seems like the big downfall is the more you involve people in your scheme, the more chances you have a chance of getting caught.
Price: Well, and I agree with Bill Burkett, 99% of his analysis of the case, and I was in on every interview. And the one thing I differ on is he seemed to be a little more benign toward John Rogers. I think John Rogers had been corrupt and had married—he had been divorced— and married a woman that was very religious and very honest. And I heard her whispering to him, if you don’t tell everything, I’ll leave you. And that told me a lot about what had happened to John Rogers. And when David Hall approached him about splitting the $50,000, I think what happened is he went back to his wife, and he was a changed man. And I don’t think David Hall was stupid enough to think that John Rogers was honest. He thought he was corrupt, and he didn’t realize he had changed.
Thompson: Now there’s another twist with John Rogers. His father was the state auditor, correct?
Price: Yes.
Thompson: So there’s that little aspect. You talk about the incestual nature of Oklahoma government back in those days.
Price: Everybody named Rogers. And, you know, it was part of the defense to say that John Rogers did this because of his father, questionable practices of his father: ghost employees. That wasn’t the case. He did it because, I think he did it because of his new wife that he had just married six months before.
Thompson: In the book, you mentioned, it talks about the case. I say you, but it’s about you. But Michael Hightower wrote the book, but it mentions the case of US v. Hoffa and how important that case was for to allow consensual wiretapping. Now, I’m a neophyte in this whole world of espionage, but can you talk about why that was important for making this case break open?
Price: That was a 5–4 decision. If you notice, political corruption wasn’t prosecuted before Hoffa because you never had tape of conversations with political leaders and one-on-one, you know, he said, she said, doesn’t work in court. You have to prove it beyond reasonable doubt, and being able to take a consensual wire is essential. And you never, you know, it’s fine to require all kinds of stuff for a wiretap. But if one party consents to the conversation, it’s really, you know, it’s not private. And that was a 5–4 decision, and that made all the difference in the world throughout the country on the prosecution of political corruption.
Thompson: One of the interesting things is that Governor Hall was not convicted until after he was out of office, after he termed out in 19, or he actually was trying to run for governor, and he wasn’t successful after 1975, but he maintained his innocence. What was his basis for maintaining his innocence?
Price: It just absolutely astounds me how you could go against... those tapes were just so incriminating. And even Mooney turned on him and had really no reason to make up anything. But Mooney was the contact between David Hall and Doc Taylor, and he had gone to law school with David Hall, and they had had some kind of rapport. So it’s just, he denies, denies, denies what is obvious. And we interviewed, you know, in the course of time, all kinds of contractors, all kinds of aides of the governor, and they all said the same thing: he was totally corrupt.
Thompson: Bob, you had, David Hall came back to Oklahoma after being out of the state for quite a few years, ever since he got out of prison. What was that experience like, and what was the event? Because it was here at the History Center, and I believe it was because of, centennial exhibition on the governors. Can you talk a little about that?
Blackburn: Right. In 2006, we decided for the centennial year, we were doing an exhibit about public service and governors, and going all the way back to Charles Haskell and all the way forward to Brad Henry, who was governor at the time. And I didn’t want to deal with issues like corruption and impeachment. So we decided to do it on the willingness to be a public servant, running the races, relying on friends and family, expanding your level of support, running the campaigns, and then being elected governor. Then I stopped the story on each governor. Well, I decided I wanted to interview the seven living governors of the time. We were talking about Bill Burkett. Well, he was best friends with Henry Bellmon, and Henry was still alive at the time, and Henry wanted to be part of it. And so, I interviewed all seven governors, and that included David Hall.
I reached out to David, who was in San Diego area at the time. He agreed to an interview. So he was in town visiting a cousin, and he had never made a public appearance in Oklahoma since going to jail, and I interviewed him. We included him in the exhibit, and then when it came down to the opening ceremonies, we decided we would have all seven governors, and I would be at the head of the oculus there in the Devon, and introduce them, governor and first lady. And we had 1,200 people show up for that event, and David, of course, had never been to a public event since, and Jo, his wife, refused to come back to Oklahoma. But Jo came with David, and it was one of those surreal moments is that the audience welcomed David Hall with kind of open arms. It was an odd experience.
And George Nigh was my protocol director at the time. George and I have been friends since I was a teenager, and George helped me on how to introduce and all of that, and each of the governors had a chance to come out, but one thing David did, he understood the press, and I told him, I said, David, the press is going to want to surround you. And I’ve got these other governors that I don’t want to feel like they’re neglected in all of this. And I said, would you mind if you do a press conference the next morning to talk to the press, give them a chance, know they’re going to get one-on-one. That way, they look at all the governors. He agreed. And the next morning, press conference there, all the press was lined up. Had like six TV cameras and all the print journals, back when the newspaper still had a lot of correspondents for Capitol. And, he was late. I kept, oh, where’s the governor? Where’s the governor? I look up, and he motions to me. So I go, governor, he said, I want to have a picture taken with all of the press. And you know, what you’re dealing with, Bill, is that you’re prosecuting person who was just full of charisma. You know, if you’re in a room with David Hall, you noticed him. He kind of stood out, and tall man, handsome, and articulate. And he said, I want a picture with all of the press. I said, really? Okay. So I go back to the press. I say Governor Hall wants to take a picture with all of you. They jump up, run over. He greets them one-on-one, and then really affected that press conference with that personal charisma. So I can see how he would have been moving through the halls of power, making these connections. And even with, you know, the corruption there, he was a pretty effective governor in a lot of ways, and the press responded that day. That was one of those days that you never forget in public service.
Price: That’s what makes him so dangerous, is that he was, he did have charisma, and he could have been vice president or president. He was considered those kind of things if he hadn’t been selling the office, and selling the office isn’t a minor thing. It pervades his term as governor. One story that one of the defendants actually said, they were trying a kind of quasi-bribe defense: that these were tax-deductible because we bought his favor and therefore, it was a business expense to pay his campaign contributions. There was a $40,000 bill that this guy paid and deducted as a business expense. And what he said was that he and a couple partners had bought a building near the Capitol and Hall filled it up with state employees. And then, once it was filled up, he sold it for an inflated cost to an out-of-state group. And Hall pulled all the employees out of the building and, you know, if you can imagine the cost of putting everybody in a building and then pulling everybody out of a building. That just is atrocious, and that was almost the defense, was it was a business expense because he was willing to do this for his friends.
Thompson: Well, let’s move on now, and we get into the late 1970s, and we have the county commissioner scandal. And in 1978, Mrs. Billy McCartney, who was a homemaker in Stephens County, got fed up with the condition of the roads and bridges in Stephens County, which Duncan is the main city there in Stephens County. And she started a petition drive to look into the county purchasing practices and to get a grand jury to investigate. And so that’s where all this starts in 1978. And so, Bill, let’s talk about this because this is probably, I’m going to say, the largest political scandal in state history, unless you know of another one.
Price: Well, in the nation’s history, and still is the largest political corruption case in American history. And really, the most important thing wasn’t that we convicted 230 county commissioners and suppliers. The important thing was that what people told us was since statehood, half the material bought by the county commissioners in Oklahoma was non-existent; didn’t exist. And the other half was 10% kickbacks, which cost the county 40% in higher costs. That is a devastating blow to Oklahoma and the billions of dollars of delayed financing for roads and bridges throughout this state.
Thompson: Yeah, and let’s not gloss over the fact you said 230 convictions, right?
Price: Yes.
Thompson: And how much money do you estimate?
Price: It’s in the billions. You know, you have to compute what loss there was to the State of Oklahoma and since statehood...
Thompson: So think of something of that magnitude. And the point I want to make is that we’re still recovering from that, even today, in the 21st century, in the year 2022, as we sit here, as a state, we are still recovering from that.
Blackburn: Lack of infrastructure. Yes, it’s still a problem today.
Price: Absolutely. And every state that had our system of county government, which are three full-time county commissioners, and they tend to divide up the county into three units, is equally corrupt. Throughout the South, you had our system of county government. In Kansas, in contrast, they had a county manager system. And what suppliers would tell us is that 95% of their business in Kansas was honest, and 95% of their business right across the line in Oklahoma was corrupt. And it was because the county manager was appointed by a part-time county commissioner. A lot cheaper for the county to pay one person rather than three. And you’d have your part-time, you know, your banker, your farmer, you know, any number of people that meet together as legislative body and a check and balance on they appoint an executive, and 90% of the time, the county manager had, in smaller counties, had a road engineering degree. Now, in urban counties, they need much more of a business, have an MBA or something like that. But the system had checks and balances to it, kind of like the federal system. But our system in Oklahoma was not, it was just ripe for corruption. And every state that we, the FBI and myself, spoke to tons of FBI agents and assistant US attorneys throughout the country, and every state that had our system was equally corrupt.
Thompson: There were essentially, the three county commissioners had fiefdoms. They were able to pretty much control all the purchasing, all of the contracts that were road contracts, bridge contracts, construction contracts that were in their area, and nobody wanted to cross them. And in fact, what I read in preparing for this is that J. Howard Edmondson had tried to, and it pretty much ruined him as far as his political career goes.
Price: Absolutely. He was kind of the John F. Kennedy of Oklahoma, and he was a very popular governor. And J. D. McCarty and their friends of county commissioners destroyed his agenda. The county commissioners were the third rail of Oklahoma politics. You did not cross them. Today, you can debate that school superintendents have that position. But in rural Oklahoma, they were king, and many of them became legislators. Now, I’m convinced that the current county commissioners are honest, and many of them try to work with one another. Just the fear factor will last for a while. But the wastefulness and inefficiency of this kind of county commissioner structure is still going on.
Thompson: This was a situation where these practices have been going on since pre-statehood, where county commissioners would get kickbacks, 10% kickbacks, or they would do the blue deals, which was the 50-50.
Price: Blue sky.
Thompson: The blue sky deals where there was actually no material that was being delivered. And as new county commissioners would come into the role, they were sort of, they couldn’t really buck it because everybody was sort of playing under these rules of the game where you had to be on the take and you didn’t want to arouse suspicion or anything else, and so this was baked into the pie in Oklahoma county commission politics.
Price: Well, they could buck it, but their argument was that it wouldn’t lower the price because they’re paying kickbacks, as let’s say 60 county commissioners, and if two don’t take the kickback, you’re not gonna lower your price for those two. So they give a rationale, but we included in every indictment the oath of office of the county commissioner.
I noticed this on David Hall, one of the few notes that I passed to Burkett was ask him about his oath of office. The oath of office of county commissioner just says repeatedly, I won’t take money. I won’t take kickbacks of any kind, shape, or form, and that was the oath of office of the governor. And we included that in that it showed that this wasn’t insignificant. This was basically they’re violating their oath of office.
Thompson: You all, how you prosecuted this case and went about gathering evidence was pretty fascinating. You set up a fake company to try to lure in some of these suppliers and some of these county commissioners who were working with it. You had a woman who was a supposed supplier who was your informant working with you and recording some of these conversations. And I even had to laugh at some of her more unconventional methods of getting confessions. And then you also ended up with a man named Mr. Moore, I believe, who was helping you, who was a county commissioner. Correct?
Price: We had incredibly skilled FBI and IRS criminal division agents. And you’re right, with Stephens County, it was headlines, and that’s what I’m referring to, the argument that they didn’t know it was wrong. When you see a headline every day about Stephens County, you know the FBI is investigating; you’ve got no excuses, really. And we had an undercover company, but it wasn’t successful. They figured out real quickly this was FBI ruse. In fact, we used the FBI company as a arguing point that Dorothy Griffin would warn them of the FBI company and decrease her credibility.
But what was amazing is that when we got into Texas, northeastern part of Texas, they were even more corrupt than Oklahoma. They did 50-50s because they didn’t have the publicity of Stephens County. And so there was a news media that showed the map of Texas, and the prices had dropped significantly in northeastern Texas. But in every county beyond that, they had stayed the same. What does that tell you about the degree of corruption?
Thompson: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. The prices after the scandal and after these people started going to jail, and you guys started getting convictions, prices for materials went down 20 to 25%.
Price: And then they went down 40%. The first tranche was 20 to 25%, but the second one, it ended up being 40% cheaper prices. And if you were investigating today, in any state in the South, including Oklahoma, just compare the prices to Kansas, and that will tell you whether it’s coming back or not.
Thompson: What was the result of this, in terms of the legislature’s response to all of your activities? And how did the legislature come back and try to shore this up to prevent this kind of corruption from happening?
Price: Well, they did pass some things that required the clerk to sign off on purchases. It’s more difficult now to probably do a 50-50 or blue sky deal. But it’s still totally possible to do the 10 percents. And what they didn’t check, and what they didn’t do, is pass what I call county option, which is allowing the county to choose their system of county government. Every city and town in Oklahoma is able to choose their system. They can have a county manager. They can have a strong mayor. They can have, there’s a number of options for cities, but there’s none for counties. And that is the best, you know, we testified, Frank Keating and I, about a year or so ago to a committee about county option, and county commissioners were just enraged because they’d lose their job, and a county manager.
Blackburn: Well-paying jobs, in rural Oklahoma, especially.
Price: Exactly. And it would benefit rural Oklahoma tremendously, but it means that they lose their jobs. And that was not politically, unless the public realizes the cost, the counterweight is enormous.
Thompson: Well, go ahead, Bob.
Blackburn: Bill, of course, public opinion is always important to a prosecutor, whether you’re federal, state, tribal, and at the time, fortunately for us in Oklahoma and the nation, we had come out of this of the Watergate scandals. The national press was being applauded for uncovering that, you know. All the President’s Men became a movie with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. But in Oklahoma, we had kind of an upstart TV station at KOCO-TV that really latched on to covering what you were doing with these investigations. In dealing with the press, did you see that as an advantage that they were willing to go in and kind of shake things up and report fairly and accurately? What was your experience with the press during all this?
Price: Oh, it was great. They were extremely supportive. And the people in Oklahoma; we never had a problem with the jury. Someone reported that, you know, one of the people under indictment had been, one of the commissioners, had been reelected. And, you know, they were pointing this out, saying it shows people don’t care. I called the FBI agent in that area, and he said, I voted for him! And I said, why? Because the other guy was a former county commissioner that was even more corrupt, and this way, we’ll be able to convict him, and the governor could appoint an honest guy.
So, you know, there’s another story that I sent over an assistant to try one in the east, and it was Charlie Waters, and I called him, and he said, it’s going great in the trial, but I’m worried as can be. And I said, why? He said, I went to this little Slick’s, this little restaurant, and there was Gene Stipe in the middle, the defense attorney, surrounded by the jury. And Gene spilled something on his tie, and a juror came over and wiped it off! And he said, I’m real pessimistic after that. Do you know that jury convicted Gene Stipe’s client of all 66 counts? So, in the bad times for the good old boys, Holloway did an analysis of public opinion in Oklahoma, and this really is partly generated by the press. And it was more intolerant of corruption than the average state, by far, and so we never had problems with juries. We never had problems. The press was very supportive.
Thompson: And I want to point out too, one of the things that I find fascinating is it was really one woman who got this kicked off, who just got fed up with the things, the situation that was in her street and her neighborhood. And to me, that’s a great lesson that never doubt the power that you have as one impassioned citizen, to be able to petition your government to be able to get something done. Now, I’m sure it’s not always easy, and it’s not always the most convenient thing to do. But you had a lady who said, you know what? Enough is enough, and broke open Stephens County, and then broke it open for a massive scandal across the state, and civic involvement is so important.
Price: She started the ball rolling. Stephens County grand jury, you know, later tapes were revealed that the suppliers would get together and talk about the 10 different local county grand juries that they had all lied to and gotten away with it. So we had the auditor/inspector’s office coming to me and to the FBI and saying, we’ve given up, we can’t prove the crimes. We know they’re going on in Stephens County, but we’re at a log jam, and that’s what really got our attention. And we began the undercover company that didn’t work.
But the real break was just a chance remark in which someone mixed up a name, and caused me to know that the IRS, which had a Chinese wall between them and the US Attorney’s Office at the time, was investigating county commissioners and having them go to Dorothy Griffin and confront her between her invoices and her taxes. That’s the weak spot of this whole system. If you’re a supplier, and I’m a county commissioner, and you split a 50-50, you’re getting 100% taxes from the county, and you’re having to pay the county commissioner 50%. You don’t make any money. You have to have a backup phony invoice supplier in order to show cost of goods sold to be able to point to and say that’s where I got this lumber that didn’t exist. And it was really true throughout the country. These backup invoice suppliers would be essential to this scheme.
Thompson: Well, friends, I just want to encourage you. There is so much more to this story than we could even get to today, and the nuances and the details are just fascinating. I want to encourage you all: go get the book At War With Corruption. It is by Michael J. Hightower, and it is a fascinating read. Go find it at your library. Go buy it off Amazon or some of our wonderful local bookstores. But you’re going to want to go and read this story. And Bill, we just can’t thank you enough for coming and sharing some of your personal recollections of these important times in Oklahoma’s history.
Price: It’s my pleasure. It’s really important that we remember the lessons of history.
Blackburn: It is. And then I want to add, Bill, your career shows that in public service, we need good people running for the right reasons, and good government is offered by good people. And we need folks who really want to serve the community, do the right thing, and you’re one of those. Thanks for your service.
Price: Thank you.
Thompson: Thank you.
Thompson: Well, Bob, what a fascinating conversation with Bill. I am so thrilled that he came on the podcast. And actually, what was such a, kind of a funny story is, we’ve had guests on all of our podcast that we started. Bill is actually the first person who asked to be on the podcast, so I don’t know if that means we’re growing up and getting, you know, more respect out there. But we’re so thrilled that he came on, and I can’t recommend the book At War With Corruption enough. Folks, you’re going to love it. I really I really recommend that you dive into it.
Blackburn: Well, and too, as I said there to Bill near the end, I’m glad we could have this conversation and really encourage people to go into public service, whether it’s working at the Oklahoma Historical Society, or an elected official, or serving on a school board. As I say in all my leadership speeches, people make history with the decisions they make, and if we have people making decisions for the right reasons, with total transparency, within a system of checks and balances, we are going to get good leadership, whether it’s at the government level, the private sector. And a community should be judged by that level of leadership. And I think that we have people like Bill in Oklahoma who have proven to be good leaders.
Thompson: Well, as Oklahomans, we owe him a debt of gratitude. And to all of his fellow attorneys and folks who worked on these cases, because he saved us taxpayer dollars. He’s restored some moral integrity to many of these offices, and so we are very thankful for the role that he’s played in Oklahoma history. Okay, folks. Well, that’s been a great show, and we will look forward to talking to you in our next episode. Hope you all have a great day. You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org, and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
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