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Nixon campaign
expected
$2 million
from dairymen
By GEORGE LARDNER JR.
<C) 1973, The Washington Post
WASHINGTON—The White House expected—and ap
parently had been promised—$2 million in campaign
contributions from the milk producers whom the Nixon
administration favored in 1971 with a controversial
increase in milk support prices.
According to a long-secret White House memo, the
dairy farm industry made an original “commitment” of
$2 million for the President’s re-election effort.
The memo also shows that top white house aides and
fund-raisers were still hoping to collect $1 million from
dairy co-op representatives even after the filing of a
lawsuit charging that a political payoff had been made.
Dated Feb. 1. 1972, the memo was written by former
White House aide Gordon Strachan to then-White House
chief of staff H R Haldeman.
By then, the three dairy co-ops that won the increase in
price supports the previous spring had given total of
$332,500 for Nixon’s campaign, most of it to dummy
committees secretly organized on Nixon’s behalf
As a result of those contributions, Ralph Nader and
several consumer groups filed suit in federal court here
on Jan. 24. 1972. demanding a rollback of the govern
ment’s milk price supports.
They charged that the support price had been raised in
return for donations to the President’s campaign.
I he grow ing publicity about the milk money evidently
bothered Herbert KaJmbach, then the president's
personal lawyer and secretly one of his chief fund-rais
ers. “Kalmbach is very concerned about his involve
ment in the milk producers situation,” Strachan
reported to Haldeman in the Feb. 1 memo.
Strachan then alluded to Harold Nelson, who was then
in the process of bowing out as general manager of
Associated Milk Producers Inc.. (AMPI), the biggest
dairy co-op involved, and Jake Jacobsen, a onetime
White House aide in the Johnson administration who was
then an attorney for AMPI
“He (Kalmbach) believes that Jacobsen and Nelson
will deliver though they have cut the original 2,000
commitment back to 1.000,” Strachan wrote. Strachan’s
lawyer said the figures undoubtedy represented 2
million and 1 million dollars. Strachan himself told the
Senate Watergate Committee last July 23: “On almost
all of the memoranda that I wrote to Mr Haldeman, I
would leave off the last three zeroes, because usually the
figures that we were dealing with were very, very
large."
At the times Strachan’s memo was written AMPI, a
mushrooming “super co-op’’ with more than 40,000
member farms in 20 states, had given $202,500 to Nixon’s
campaign through its political arm, the Trust for
Agricultural and Political Education (TAPE).
Two other co-ops, Mid-America Dairymen Inc., and
Dairymen Inc., had contributed $65,000 each through
their political arms.
The first donations started with $10,000 from TAPE on
March 22, 1971, the day before Nixon met at the White
House with more than a dozen representatives of the
Milk lias some tin rr<f for every body
three co-ops who were then lobbying intensively for
higher price supports.
Secretary of Agriculture Clifford Hardin had ruled on
March 12 that no increase was justified He reversed
himself on March 25. two days after the White House
meeting, and announced a price support increase of 27
cents a hundred weight.
Dairy co-op leaders have said the decision added
roughly 500 to 700 million dollars to the income of dairy
farmers.
In his memo to Haldeman some 10 months later,
Strachan reported that “Kalmbach’s concern” about
further involvement centered around press disclosures
of an earlier, secret White House funding operation from
the basement of a Washington townhouse for 1970 GOP
Senate candidates.
Kalmbach, in any event, continued the fund-raising
effort at a meeting in Los Angeles two days later, on
Feb 3,1972. Others at the session were several members
of Kalmbach’s California law firm, along with Nelson,
Jacobsen, and George Mehren, a former assistant
secretary of agriculture in the Johnson administration
who was just taking over as AMPI’s new general
manager.
“He wanted a certain amount in February, a certain
amount in March, a certain amount before April 7 (the
effective date of a stiff new federal campaign financing
disclosure law), and a certain amount to show on the
record after that,” Mehren said.
According to Mehren, Kalmbach also proposed setting
up 50 real committees, state committees, to receive the
money.
“I said no, I wouldn’t do it,” Mehren said. As new
general manager of AMPI and, as he puts it, “a known
Democrat, he said he had had enough of such devices.
But he said he did not flatly rule out any campaign
contributions at all.
The two other co-ops. Dairymen Inc. and Mid-Ameri
can Dairymen Inc., eventually gave $95,000 more in
recorded contributions for the President’s campaign.
AMPI, however, gave nothing. Kalmbach withdrew the
request. Mehren said, at a second meeting in Washing
ton. Mehren said Kalmbach offered no reasons and he
didn’t ask for any.
“He said they were no longer interested in any
contributions from TAPE,” Mehren said. ‘‘I was
happy.”
Mehren and another AMPI spokesman disclaimed any
knowledge of a $2 million commitment by the co-ops or
by AMPI alone before they took over. “But I’m not
saying there wasn’t one,” Mehren added.
In this issue...
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triumphs and learn of its fall.
Gourmets on holiday may wish to detour around
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you got there before the golden arches, you might not
have found much anyway.
What role did the CIA play in the Chilean coup? Tran
scripts of secret Congressional hearings give an in
dication.
The Huskies managed to hold Oregon’s Don Reynolds to
small yardage — in this case by grabbing his face mask.
But they didn’t stop anything else as the Ducks rolled to
an incredible 58-4 win.