The WITNESS. I am aware of it from the conversation with my predecessor and a letter contained in my files; yes, sir.

Mr. JONES. He said he had been advised it would only cost $411 to send this.

The WITNESS. Yes, sir.

Mr. JONES. That is the statement he made on the floor, although as I said I had contacted the Western Union and that is why our statements were not right. However, just trying to use the record here, Mr. Ayres says that he did send the telegram, but he thought it was only going to cost $411. Then he also stated that he had been reimbursed by some of the Members who felt that the information was worth $10 to them. The thing I cannot understand is at the time that this message was sent, I was advised by somebody in the Western Union office over the telephone that the rate charged on each one of these 435 duplicate messages delivered within the House or on Capitol Hill was the same as if it had been 435 separate individual messages of the same number of words sent from New York City down to Capitol Hill. Is that your understanding?

The WITNESS. Except for the part I believe the rates between New York and Washington would be greater. Each message is handled as a separate message. It is transmitted as a separate message.

Mr. JONES. Although they are duplicates and they could be duplicated right here in Capitol Hill in the Western Union office and that is the way they probably are and are delivered to the offices in the Capitol. None of these messages were delivered outside of the House Office Buildings or the Capitol, were they?

The WITNESS. No, sir.

Mr. JONES. They were all delivered to the offices of the Members. The WITNESS. As far as I know; yes, sir. Mr. JONES. Let us be sure about this now. At the time I was told that the rate from New York City to my office in the Rayburn Office Building was the same as the rate from the Western Union office in the Longworth Building, I believe it is, to the Rayburn Building; that the rate was the same from New York as it was locally. Was that correct at the time?

The WITNESS. I am not sure, Mr. Jones. I would have to check. I do not have the rates in my head.

Mr. JONES. The reason it sticks with me, I was told that over the telephone. I can understand that your rates have to be approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission.

The WITNESS. The FCC.

Mr. JONES. That is what I meant, the FCC has charge of that. Anyway, they are approved and your tariffs are all approved. The WITNESS. Yes, sir.

Mr. JONES. I am frank to tell you this, I have been looking for some way to get the FCC to see that they are certainly not being very conscious of saving the Government some money when they approve a tariff which is the same for 435 individual messages from New York as it would be sending 435 identical messages on Capitol Hill. I am going to try to get it changed. I have not been able to get much help. I feel we have wasted an awful lot of money with Western Union because of these practices that they have followed.

This is not the first time I have brought this up. I am sorry that Mr. Ayres is not here, because his letter to Mr. Hays is inconsistent with the statements that were made in the Congressional Record at the time. But I imagine we will have an opportunity to take that later when Congress reconvenes in January. That is all I have. Mr. HAYS. I have one further question. Is there such a thing as a book rate telegram?

up

The WITNESS. No, sir; the charge is the same for a book of 560 as for 1 single message or 560 messages.

Mr. HAYS. Was there ever a time when there was a book rate which was cheaper?

The WITNESS. There may have been, but if it was, it was before my time.

Mr. HAYS. Why would you use that term "book rate"? It is a common term.

The WITNESS. Yes, sir; the reason for that is that you are sending the same text to many people and you only have to record the text one time.

Mr. JONES. Would the gentleman yield for a question there?
Mr. HAYS. Yes.

Mr. JONES. There is an exception to that and that is on your press rate on a message that is sent as a book message. The press rate is much less than the rate that you charge the Members of Congress for sending book rate messages. The fact is that it is about a third of the cost. Isn't that correct?

The WITNESS. We are talking about two different things. We are taling about press messages and public messages and they are entirely two different things.

Mr. JONES. Well, if anything, it would take more time to send messages to newspapers than it would be to send messages to Members of Congress; is that correct?

The WITNESS. Well, it depends on a lot of factors. You just can't, I don't think you can just flatly say this.

As I understand it, if I may, the press rate was established when it was because of the volume of press that you received from the press people, and this was the reason for the press rate. Now you only have occasional messages of this nature, large books like this. These are the exception and not the rule. You frequently have small, what we call small books, where you have maybe 10 or 20 messages to various people announcing the death of someone or something of that nature. But each one of these book messages must be transmitted as a separate message. Each one of these messages, such as this one, originated in our main office downtown and they were transmitted over our lines into the various offices up on the Hill.

Mr. JONES. They couldn't be transmitted over lines into private offices. Private offices don't have any lines.

The WITNESS. I said into our office, meaning the Western Union office on the Hill.

Mr. JONES. In other words, this message was delivered to the Western Union office on the Hill, was sent downtown and downtown sent it back to you in the office in which it originated first?

The WITNESS. Well, if I understand it correctly, and I have nothing to verify this, this is just what I have been told by several different

people, that this was telephoned to our main office on 14th, in Washington, and it was then transmitted out of our main office up to our offices here on the Hill and they were delivered by messenger.

Mr. JONES. Now, since we are getting into this, how about, can you tell us what the mechanical process is of making 434 additional copies from the original? How is that done?

The WITNESS. Well, it depends on exactly how we are handling it and where they are going. But we have as an example in our main office downtown, if we are going to send them up from there by messenger boy, we have a special, what we call a book machine, where we have 10 transmitters and 10 printers, and it prints out 10 at a time, 75 words per minute, and then it goes on to the next 10 and prints them out. But if we send them up here on the Hill direct from our office or from any other office in the country, they come in on the printer here, they come into our office, the main office in Washington in a perforated printed tape and we merely switch it up to our office here on the Hill.

Mr. JONES. How-when they tell you to send the message to all Members of Congress, or all Members of the House of Representatives, Where do you get that list from, or, How do you keep the list up to date?

The WITNESS. I believe we get it up here initially. We get it when the Congress convenes, we get a list and we keep it up to date as it goes along.

Mr. JONES. In other words, if there were vacancies in the Congress at the time, would your office have any record of that, so instead of sending 435 messages, would you send a lesser number depending on the number of vacancies that exist in the Congress at the time? The WITNESS. We may not, we may not.

Mr. JONES. I see. That is all. Thank you.

Mr. HAYS. Mr. Dickinson.

Mr. DICKINSON. No, sir.

Mr. HAYS. Mr. Nedzi.

Mr. NEDZI. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Mr. Steinhauer, on the telegram is a time, 12:14. Can you tell us what that means?

The WITNESS. That is the time if I may look at it to be surethis is the time I believe it was received in the office here on the Hill. Mr. NEDZI. That is the time it was received?

The WITNESS. This particular one, yes.

Mr. HAYS. Could I interrupt you there and ask you to yield?

This one to Mr. Burelson has a time 11:46.

The WITNESS. You see, they vary, because each one of them comes in separately.

Mr. HAYS. Each one comes in separately and has a different time? The WITNESS. Yes.

Mr. NEDZI. Do your records disclose when the first one came in? The WITNESS. No, sir; they do not. My predecessor obtained this from Mr. Jones, as I understand it, the one that I have.

Mr. NEDZI. Would you have any estimate as to when it would have come in? The point of my question is that Mr. Ayres states in his letter he wanted messenger service by 8 a.m. Now, how soon do you have to get items to be delivered by 8 a.m., if they are to be delivered by 8 a.m.?

The WITNESS. Normally our overnight service in a night letter would suffice, in a case like that.

Mr. NEDZI. And what is the night letter rate?

The WITNESS. I don't know that offhand.

Mr. NEDZI. Generally speaking.

The WITNESS. As I recall, it is about two-thirds of the normal rate. Mr. NEDZI. So it would be roughly $1,300, $1,400 less than what

The WITNESS. I would say in that area.

Mr. NEDZI. Less than what the Government paid for this message? The WITNESS. Yes.

Mr. NEDZI. I have no further questions.

Mr. HAYS. Mr. Devine?

Mr. DEVINE. No, no questions.

Mr. HAYS. In other words, if the person who called this in specified night letter, could they have specified a delivery time the next morning on it?

The WITNESS. Actually, normally our night letters are not delivered before 9 a.m., but I am sure in most cases up here on the Hill that they are delivered before that time.

Mr. HAYS. Well, at this point I would like to insert Mr. Ayres' letter into the record. I think it ought to go in at this point.

Hon. WAYNE L. HAYS,

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES,
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
Washington, D.C., December 17, 1966.

Chairman, Special Subcommittee on Contracts,
House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.

DEAR WAYNE: In reply to your letter of December 14, 1966, requesting my presence at a hearing scheduled for 10:30 a.m., December 19, 1966, I regret that I cannot be present.

I am listing below a statement of facts, as per your request, relative to the expenditure of $4,136.85 from the Committee on Education and Labor to Western Union.

During the deliberation on the Authorization Bill for the Office of Economic Opportunity several Members of Congress called to the attention of the Education and Labor Committec as a whole, and to me personally, that a number of people were on the so-called Anti-Poverty payroll at high salaries and were actively working against sitting Members in their primary contests.

After much difficulty a list of these high priced consultants and employees were made available to the Committee. In view of the lateness of the hour in the debate we felt every member should be apprised of the names that were to appear in the Congressional Record.

The evening before the names were to appear in the Record a memo was dictated and a Clerk was instructed to have Western Union, through their messenger service, deliver a copy of same to every House Member before 8:00 a.m. the following morning. Western Union instead of providing messenger service sent straight wires to every member. On learning what they had done I complained bitterly and held up payment trying to get them to admit their error. When they refused, the bill was paid from funds allocated for Committee business. Although the message probably could have gotten across to the Members for less money it proved to be a good investment to the taxpayers as hundreds of $50.00 a day, and up, consultants were dismissed as a direct result of the Committee's exposure of their activities.

Although I realize, Wayne, that this may not fall under your direct jurisdiction you might want to take a look at the prices charged by Western Union to deliver wires that never leave Capitol Hill.

Thank you for allowing me to make these factual observations.

Your Colleague.

BILL AYRES.

(The above-referred-to document was received in evidence.)

Mr. TAYLER. Mr. Chairman, may the following pages of the Congressional Record also be admitted into the record at the appropriate place; namely, pages 16997, 16959, 16960, of the proceedings in debates of the House in the 89th Congress, particularly the remarks of Representative Ayres, of Ohio, Representative Gibbons, of Florida, and Representative Jones of Missouri on those pages regarding the telegram in question.

Mr. HAYS. Without objection, they may be entered.

I suspect the proper place to have them would be before the examination or just after the witness was sworn.

Would you think so, Paul?

Off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. JONES. The remarks that I made in the Record which appear on 16997 should have appeared on page 16941, because they were the first remarks that were made that day in the House of Representatives, under the 1-minute rule. And consequently, reference to these remarks which appear on pages 16959 and 16960 appear to be out of order because you don't know what they are talking about until you get over to page 16997.

Mr. TAYLER. That is why I designated the highest numbered page first for insertion in the record, to keep the proper chronological order. Mr. HAYS. It seems to me the proper place to put these is right at this point after Mr. Jones' explanation. And unless there is instructions afterward, without objection they will appear at that point. Mr. DEVINE. I don't have any objection to their appearance, but I do question the propriety of rearranging the order of the Congressional Record. I mean the Record speaks for itself. You want to move some from the back and something to the front, in the order that it was said on the floor of the House

Mr. HAYS. No. I suspect they had better appear in order and Mr. Jones' explanation of why they are in that order can appear just preceding it.

Mr. JONES. I am not contentious about that at all, Sam. What I am trying to do—this is a good example of what happens

Mr. DEVINE. I have no objection to them appearing in the report. Mr. HAYS. His statement explains it. So let them appear in their regular order. Without objection, they will appear at this point in the record.

[At page 16997:]

TELEGRAM WASTES TAXPAYERS' MONEY

(Mr. Jones of Missouri asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. JONES of Missouri. Mr. Speaker, I hate to be critical of some of my colleagues, but in view of a thing that happened today I cannot keep quiet any longer. I received this telegram here and I presume other Members of the House received. similar telegrams. I have inquired of several Members, and it seems it probably went to every Member of Congress. The only reason I am taking this time is to remind the Members what this telegram costs. It is 140 words. I checked with the telegraph company and the rates are the first 15 words cost $1.20, the next 125 words cost 62 cents each, and plus a 10-percent tax. So each telegram sent cost $10.25. Multiply that by 435 Members and