Mr. HAYS. Without objection, the counsel will read the message. Mr. TAYLER. On a Western Union telegram form, dated 1965, July 21, 12:14 a.m., this particular copy is addressed to Hon. Paul C. Jones personal delivery only, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.:

Please check the Congressional Record and read carefully the remarks of the Honorable Al Quie. He was able finally to get a list of the people Sergeant Shriver has hired as consultants and advisers to him in connection with the so-called AntiPoverty Program. Suggest you review the list in the Congressional Record very carefully. You may find a constitutent or a newspaper friend or someone who has been placed in a position to build his own political machine to run against you. If you have further questions regarding the 400 advisers and consultants, some of whom are being paid more than you, please call me at 5231. Furthermore, suggests you be on the Floor tomorrow to hear my explanation and to listen to our colleague, Congressman Buchanan discuss his amendment in connection with the church-state issue. Thank you. Congressman Ayre.

By Mr. TAYLER:

Q. Now, sir, do you have with you any record that indicates any other persons to whom that message was sent, if any?

A. No, I do not.

Q. Do you know, however, how many copies of that message were sent?

A. It is my understanding that the message was sent to each Member of the House, 435 Members.

Q. Did there come a time when Western Union submitted a bill to the Congress for the sending of that telegram, which is Steinhauer exhibit No. 1?

A. Yes. The bill was submitted originally in July of 1965.

Q. Do you have a copy of that bill with you?

A. No; I do not.

Q. I am going to show you a bill on Western Union billing form addressed to the Minority, House of Representatives, Education and Labor Committee, period ended September 1965. Under charges, it simply bears the figures 4,136.85. I ask you if you can identify that as the bill for the telegram that you just produced and identified? A. Yes, sir, I have a copy of this bill.

Q. You have a copy of that bill in your file?

A. Yes; I have.

Q. How do you relate that particular bill with the telegram that you have identified?

A. By taking the message itself and applying the telegram charges which were in effect at that time, multiplying the result by 435 you arrive at the figure of $4,136.85.

Q. There is not any other way you can relate the bill to the message, say, by some code number or symbol?

A. No, sir; there is not.

Q. Could you be a little more explicit in how you made the computation? For example, have you examined the telegraphic message at my request and computed how much it would cost to send that at the time it was sent, 435 copies, locally?

A. That is correct.

Q. What was the charge per telegram?

A. $9.51 per message.

Q. Then you multiplied that $9.51 by 435 and you arrived at the figure on the bill?

A. That is correct.

Mr. TAYLER. May that be marked "Steinhauer Exhibit No. 2," just the bill portion. It is attached to a voucher.

(The above referred to document was marked "Steinhauer Exhibit 2" and received in evidence.)

By Mr. TAYLER:

Q. How did it come about that the bill for that telegram, which was sent to 435 Members of Congress, was billed to the Education and Labor Committee of the House.

A. I understand from my predecessor that the bill was originally rendered in July to Congressman Ayres and at his request it was rerendered to the House of Representatives, Education and Labor Committee, in the month of September 1965.

Q. Are you saying that the original billing for this amount of $4,136.85 was made to Congressman Ayres personally?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. And that thereafter as a result of a complaint made by the Congressman the billing was changed to the Education and Labor Committee?

A. I do not think that I would phrase it in that manner.

Q. You phrase it in your own words, sir. I do not mean to put words in your mouth, certainly.

A. What happened is that we, of course, rendered the bill in the normal manner, which was to the Representative personally or to his personal congressional account. At his request, he requested us to rerender the bill to the House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee.

Q. Do you know whether the request from the Congressman to change the billing was made in writing or was it oral?

A. As I understand it from my people who handled this, it was made orally to our collection and credits manager.

Q. His name was Griggs?

A. No; the fellow who handled this was Bill Kaiser.

Q. How do you spell his name?

A. K-a-i-s-e-r.

Q. Is he still with Western Union locally?

A. Yes.

Q. How did you learn this, from Mr. Kaiser?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you know who it was that made the request for the change in the billing to Mr. Kaiser? Was it Mr. Ayres himself, or someone on his staff?

A. If my recollection is correct, he told me it was either a Miss or Mrs. Baker of his staff.

Q. As a result of the requested change of the billing, was the billing changed?

A. Yes; it was.

You

Q. Did whoever handle the transaction at the time indicate on any of your records that an adjustment had been made in the billing? A. Yes, sir. They did this on our customer's ledger sheet. see, we do not normally carry an account for them, for the House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee, so this was penned in and here you see what appears to be an "Adu," but it should be an "Adj," indicating it covers an adjustment.

Q. That "Adu" which you say should be "Adj" appears in the second column of the ledger sheet, the column being headed "Amount of discount No. 2."

A. That is correct.

Q. Go ahead and describe what that initial represents on your

records.

A. In column 2 it appears to be an "Adu" which should be an "Adj," indicating an adjustment, that this charge came from an adjustment of some nature. Then in column 3, is the month that the adjustment was made and column 4 is the charge of the adjustment. Q. I notice that the amount, $4,136.85, in column 4 is stricken. Why is that? Does that indicate payment?

A. Yes, sir; it indicates the payment. You will note in column 6, it shows the date the payment was received and in column 7 the amount of the credit.

Q. Payment received from the Education and Labor Committee. A. This I can only assume, sir.

Q. The bill sent to Education and Labor was paid on October 27, the date indicated.

A. Yes, sir.

Mr. TAYLER. May that be marked "Steinhauer No. 3"?

(The above-referred-to document was marked "Steinhauer Exhibit 3" and received in evidence.)

Mr. TAYLER. May a copy be admitted so that he can take the original with him?

Mr. HAYS. Yes.

By Mr. TAYLER:

Q. Mr. Steinhauer, I am going to read to you now from a letter which has been marked, although not yet admitted in the record, as "Ayres' Exhibit No. 1," a letter from Representative Ayres to Representative Wayne L. Hays, chairman, Special Subcommittee on Contracts, dated December 17, 1966. I am only going to read to you the part that is pertinent to this line of inquiry:

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.

Now, sir, having heard that statement in Mr. Ayres' letter, do you have any knowledge as to whether or not Mr. Ayres-or is there anything in your records to indicate that originally Mr. Ayres asked that this message, which was sent by telegram, was to be delivered to 435 Members of the House by hand instead of being sent by wire?

A. I have nothing in the record to indicate that; no.

Q. Were you aware of this claim by Mr. Ayres before you came here today?

A. I was aware of the claim; yes, sir.

Q. I mean that he had not authorized or instructed Western Union to send a telegram to each Member of the House but rather he had instructed you to hand-carry the message?

A. I assumed in the message that it says personal delivery only and that is what he may have intended by that, which is that we have our messengers hand-carry these to each one of the Members of the House, to their offices direct.

Q. Does personal delivery only mean that the message goes by telegraph but then the message as it is transcribed is then delivered rather than phoned?

A. That is correct.

Q. In other words, you did not have any information about Mr. Ayres' position in this matter as I have just indicated to you so you could make further inquiry before you came here today?

A. I did make an inquiry thinking that possibly what he might have had in mind was our errand service whereby we deliver small parcels or something of this nature. But normally the customer in such a case prepares these and just hands them to our messenger for delivery.

Q. Let us take a hypothetical case. Let us assume that Mr. Ayres had this particular message typed up in 435 copies and he wanted the message hand-carried to 435 Members of the House, would Western Union provide such service on request?

A. Yes, sir.