TRIALS: Big John at the Bar

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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.)