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Lance's contention that such a loose overdraft policy was common in small country banks has been challenged by Comptroller Heimann and questioned by other bankers, including those in the rural South. There, overdrafts are frequent enough—within limits. A.E. Kelly, president of Alabama's Bank of Brewton (pop. 6,700), explained: "We've got a few good customers, substantial citizens you might say, we let run up overdrafts around $100, $200, and we figure they are entitled to just an open note to that much money. But we charge 'em interest." The size of the Lance overdrafts aroused the most anger among bankers. Said the president of a Chicago bank: "I would expect that if bank examiners walked in and found me with the overdrafts Mr. Lance had, I would go to jail." The Justice Department had decided not to prosecute Lance for his campaign committee's overdrafts. But the closing of that case by John Stokes, the former U.S. Attorney in Atlanta, was protested at the Senate hearings early last week by three of his former aides. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jeffrey Bogart, Robert McKnight and Glenna Stone all charged that Stokes had closed the case before it had been fully investigated. All three said they thought they were developing a prosecutable case against Lance—and even now urged that the Justice Department reopen the investigation.
Bank Airplane Lance contended that after he became president of N.B.G. in 1975, he had been given carte blanche to use a Beechcraft plane owned by the bank in any way he saw fit. He said that his ambitious expansion plans for the bank required extensive travel, and it was virtually impossible to separate personal and business use of the plane. Even when on vacation, he insisted, he was constantly conducting his own campaign to give the bank "a personality image" and bring in new business.
Yet, using information supplied by Lance to the Comptroller, Percy showed that many of the some 1,300 trips made by the plane in the two years Lance was the bank's president seemed to have no solid connection with bank business and thus might involve income tax and other violations of law.
Percy noted that Lance had used the plane to attend University of Georgia football games, carry prominent Democrats to a Carter campaign kickoff rally in Warm Springs, Ga., and take numerous trips to his vacation home in Sea Island, Ga. Lance claimed he worked on or promoted bank business on most of these trips and that his bank sponsored a TV show devoted to Georgia football and wanted to retain that relationship. In most cases the bank was not reimbursed by Lance for such travel. The matter remained a serious one for Lance, if only because the Justice Department has opened an investigation into it, at the urging of Comptroller Heimann. However unlikely, any indictment of Lance would be a blow fatal to his job-survival chances.