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Two years ago, a couple of reporters on Columnist Jack Anderson's staff encountered Liz while investigating the affairs of Hays and his close friend, Congressman Gray. Liz, then working for Gray, phoned one of the reporters, Bob Owens, to arrange a meeting in the National Gallery of Art. At that rendezvous, she carried a hidden tape recorder. On it she recorded Owens asking her to open up Gray's confidential files to him. Later, Anderson said he considered Owens' request to have been improper. But the tape also contains a soft pass from Liz to Owens. Said she: "You know, you're kind of cute. If you weren't a spy, I might go out with you."
In a draft of her forthcoming "novel" (see box next page), Ray tells a similar story. In her account, she sicced Anderson onto a Congressman because she was mad at him for exploiting her. Remorseful, she confessed to the Congressman. Instead of being enraged, he saw this as a way of trapping Anderson. He set Liz up with the recorder, got her to entice the newsman into making compromising statements, then played them back to Anderson. At least in the draft of the book, Anderson called off his investigators. The real Anderson story played out differently: he wrote several items criticizing Gray.
Changing the Lock. In the swirl of last week's scandal, Wayne Hays was struggling to hold on to his chairmanships. Besides the Congressional Democratic Campaign Committee, he also heads the supremely important House Administration Committee. He has used that power to control pay raises for all congressional staff members and Congressmen's allowances for travel, telephone, postage and other items.
Speaker Carl Albert summoned Hays last Wednesday to discuss the chairman's future. "I will handle this," Albert had told party lieutenants. But Albert was in an awkward position. The Speaker himself had often been seen accompanying young women around town. Moreover, his home district back in Oklahoma was in an uproar over TIME'S story (June 7) about reports that Liz Ray and other women had participated in orgies in the "Board of Education," a Capitol hideaway assigned to Albert. Said Albert: "If that's true, I've never heard of it, and I don't believe it."
Late last week, in the midst of an interview with TIME Correspondent Neil MacNeil, Albert summoned a top aide, asked who had keys to the room, and ordered the lock changed. As for his own activities, Albert said: "Me? I haven't been to bed with a girl this year. I'm 68 years old." The following day, Albert had a statement delivered to newsmen announcing his "irreversible" decision to step down after 30 years in Congress and six as Speaker.
In the meeting between Hays and Albert, Hays said that he was working on a plan to resolve his problems until he could "vindicate" himself. He gave no details, but Albert went along. Said the Speaker: "As long as you're doing that, that's fine." Moreover, Albert said that he would advocate no action against Hays by the House Democratic caucus so as not to "prejudice" the case.