Arizona republican., 1910-05-15
| sTEN0GRAPHER'S STORY
Followed By a Copy of Draft By Attorney Gen eral of Interior Depart ment On Which Letter of Sept. 13 Was Based


 assistant attorney general of the in terior department. of which Richard A Ballinger is the head. did in fact prepare a draft of letter addressed to Secretary Ballinger. and in such 1 form and phrase that it might have been adopted verbatim and signed by [ the president as MT. Taft's exonera- ton of the secrtary from the charges 1 of L. R. Glavis. and authorizing the
 dismissal of Glavis from his position of special agent of the interior de-
 pertinent.
 This draft. by Mir. Lawler, was de ! livered this afternoon to the Baiiin- ger Pinchot committee and ordered spread upon the records of the inves- tigation. A careful comparison of the
 Lawler draft with the letter of the president shows that. in fact. MT. | Taft did adopt practically verbatim two short paragraphs of Lawler's lan- guage The substance of the two documents are otherwise dissimilar.
 The subject is on every tongue to-
 night in Washington. where almost every man. woman and child is bit terly Ballinger or Pinchot partisan. The thing came to a head today in i the publication of d statement at tributed to Frederick Kerby, one of the stenographers iE the office of Mir Ballinger in which Kerby related at ] length the circumstances under which. he alleged. the Lawler draft had been prepared. Kerby asserted further that all preliminary drafts used in the l ,.at of leff fer hnrne1 1 in a gratc in the interior department
 at the suggestion and under the su- | pervision of Don A. Carr, Ballinger's $ present secretary
 Almost simultaneously with the publication of the Kcrby statement Attorney General Wickersham sent the Bailinger- Pinchot committee a
 CODY of the Lawler draft, accompa-
 nied by letter to Chairman Nelson, ' in which Mir. Wickersham declared that the document had been ,over- ! looked in sending the papers requi- sitioned by the committee at the re- quest of Attorney Brandeis.
 ] The publication of the Kerby state ment evoked from the White House ] a statement declaring that there was absolutely no foundation for the statement" that the presidents letter
 of September 13. 1909, was substan- tially prepared for the presidents sig nature by Assistant Attorney General IawIer, and asserting uncquivocally ] that "the president dictated his letter personally. as a result of his own in- vestigation of the records and his consideration of the documents and 1 papers in his possession at the time
 and upon the report of the attorney
 general"
 Mir. Wickersham alluded to the
 practice, common in the government idcpaTtments, of subordinates prepar- | ing letters and documents for the con-
 sideration of their superiors. and their use by them in whole or in part as
 they might see fit.
 1 Attorney General Wickersham de-
 clared that it was quite obvious that I.awler did not prepare the letter signed by President Taft
 1 The Lawler document is very much larger than the entire Taft letter and deals exclusively with the Alaskan
 coal claims. while only about half of
 the Taft letter refers to the Glavis charges. the balance relating to the
 forestry controversy, to which Lawler hardly refers at all. The Lawler draft totals upwards of 5000 words and the presidents letter about $500.
 | q made the facts public because
 had decided that loyalty to MT. Bal finger did not justify disloyalty to the
 country" said Frederick M. kerby
 tonight He added that in view of
 what he had heard of snake killing,
 he assumed that he would be dis missed from the interior department
 If the secretary of the interior be- Ilieves my statements of facts" he lcontinued. "calls for my separation Ifrom the service. it is up to him. ldlave only stated the facts. He has said that he wants the publication of all facts I have only made my contribution to what he failed to make
 public
 'I have had personal assurance from
 others than those to whom l gave
 the information that they would dc 1.-the best they could for me in case Twas 1ismissed' He declined to say from whom he received this assur-
 ance.
 "Notwithstanding considerable pres
 sure from newspaper men," he said l'I decided to not make the story public, believing the proper course Twas to wait until I should be called
 as witness, but the attitude of tho 1 committee in practically shutting of,