(4 of 10)
Unusually solemn, Lance focused his anger on two of the Senators sitting in judgment in front of him: Abraham Ribicoff. Democratic chairman of the committee, and. more scathingly, Charles Percy, the ranking Republican. As reported in a Labor Day weekend story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Lance noted, the Senators had sent three committee investigators to quiz Billy Lee Campbell, a former vice president of the Calhoun First National Bank, who was serving an eight-year prison term for embezzling nearly $1 million from the bank, mostly during the time that Lance was its president. Campbell had claimed that Lance was "part of the embezzlement. Then Ribicoff and Percy met with Carter at the White House, urged Lance's resignation, and told reporters that new "allegations of illegality" had been raised against Lance.
Lance was on solid grounds of indignation in claiming that Campbell's charge was wholly unsupported by anyone else, that no one on the committee had asked him about the claim before the report reached the press, and that Campbell had consistently told his lawyers, the prosecuting attorneys, and the federal judge who presided over his guilty plea that no one had conspired with him in his thefts. Yet headlines had, indeed, linked Lance with the embezzlement charge—inevitably, considering the Senators' statements.
Still attacking, Lance seemed even more outraged at what he called Percy's "savage" suggestion in a hearing of the Senate committee on Sept. 9 that he might have backdated three checks in early Jan. 1977 in order to obtain improper tax deductions on his 1976 income tax returns. The Budget Director cited headlines linking him to tax fraud on the basis of Percy's statements. Lance convincingly explained that he had written the three checks on Dec. 31, 1976, as dated, but held them until the proceeds from a $250,000 sale of stock on Dec. 30, 1976, had been deposited in his bank. Moreover, he said, the three checks, involving interest payments on loans, had not been deducted on his 1976 tax return. "The knowledge of my innocence, however, does little to lessen the shock and anguish caused me and my family when the charge is published all over the country."
As he concluded his statement, Lance insisted that "I did not ask for this fight, but now that I am in it, I am fighting not only for myself but also our system." And he asked: "Is it part of our American system that a man can be drummed out of government by a series of false charges, half-truths, misrepresentations, innuendoes and the like?" When he finished, the caucus room swelled with applause.
Stung by Lance's attack, Ribicoff and Percy, who several weeks ago had championed his cause, stumbled onto the defensive. They claimed the Campbell allegation had somehow leaked to the Atlanta newspaper; they had not intended to talk to the press at all when they visited the President, but someone on his White House staff had told them they should meet the press waiting at the White House as they emerged from seeing Carter. They had only answered reporters' questions, they said, and had denied that Campbell had given the committee any affidavit, as the Atlanta paper reported. But they had, in fact, confirmed that their investigators had talked to Campbell.