The CHAIRMAN. You don't know that, you were not there all the time.

Reverend BRAZIER. When he was out I was there.

The CHAIRMAN. How much time did you spend down there? When he was out, any time the director was out, you were there? Reverend BRAZIER. You misunderstand me.

The CHAIRMAN. What did you say?

Reverend BRAZIER. What I am saying is that all of these youths had a certain responsibility to work under the project director. He was only to help. It is true when the project director may have been absent that they had certain functions to carry out in the center, you understand, but we don't want to get the record mixed up and say these people were directing the project all by themselves.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you this: Apparently you say that when you heard these things, that it was some time when they were not supposed to be on duty, and you were not concerned about that. Right? Reverend BRAZIER. Í did not say that when they were not supposed to be on duty I was not concerned about it. I was very much concerned about it.

The CHAIRMAN. You had concern about it. When this fellow Hairston was arrested you said the newspaper carried a report of it. Reverend BRAZIER. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. On a charge of soliciting to murder.
Reverend BRAZIER. Some kind of charge like that.

The CHAIRMAN. All right, some kind of charge like that. Did it also carry a report that the killing was ordered by Hairston, the killing of a man who was a narcotic peddler and who was trespassing upon the Rangers territory, did it carry that information?

Reverend BRAZIER. It may have, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you read it?

Reverend BRAZIER. I may have.

The CHAIRMAN. This is not long ago.

Reverend BRAZIER. Yes; but listen, Senator, I am saying that I may not have read the same newspaper. All I am saying is I know he was arrested and I know he was arrested for a serious charge.

When you come down to specifics and details, I don't want to say I knew this, I knew that. If you say that is what he was arrested on, I agree with you.

The CHAIRMAN. You were out there close to it.

Reverend BRAZIER. I was not close to anything like that.

The CHAIRMAN. You were right there when all of this happened. Reverend BRAZIER. I was not there. I was in the community, Senator. It is different from being there.

The CHAIRMAN. You admit you were in the community.

Reverend BRAZIER. When that happened I may have been home when that happened.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, Reverend, you know what I am asking you. Reverend BRAZIER. I don't know when that happened. My point is this: I don't know what the newspapers are going to print. I don't know what is going in that record. Therefore, I may seem to be a little edgy. I don't intend to be.

The CHAIRMAN. I don't know what you are edgy about.

Reverend BRAZIER. You said I was right there. I don't know what you mean when you say I was right there.

The CHAIRMAN. I mean that you were in Chicago in that community.

Reverend BRAZIER. If that happened in the daytime I probably was in the community.

The CHAIRMAN. Where were you at night? Were you in the community at night?

Reverend BRAZIER. If it happened on certain nights at night, I was probably at my church.

The CHAIRMAN. Is your church in the community?

Reverend BRAZIER. It is in the community.

The CHAIRMAN. That is still in the community.

Reverend BRAZIER. If it happened on Thursday night I might not have been because I was home on Thursday. That is the only night I have to go home.

The CHAIRMAN. If you want to take this kind of evasive attitude, this is your privilege, but let me say this to you: Here is a man that you were paying $6,500 a year, that rate of pay, as an assistant director, I believe you said he was, who gets not in trouble but gets arrested and put in jail.

I will take your term for it this time.

He gets put in jail on a charge of having some youths murder an alleged marihuana peddler who was trespassing in that community on their territory, on Ranger territory.

Now when that happened did you not have generally these facts about it as being the alleged facts in connection with this killing? Reverend BRAZIER. The only facts I have, Senator, is what I read in the newspapers.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you read what I said here in the newspaper, substantially?

Reverend BRAZIER. I will say, to move on from that, maybe I read that. I am not sure what I read. I knew he was in there for something. Let me say, Senator, just for the record, maybe I read part of that. You are making

The CHAIRMAN. I am not making anything. I don't care which newspaper you read, one of them or none.

Reverend BRAZIER. I read he was put in jail for murder. I may have read what you stated and I may not have. I am not trying to be evasive. Don't make me say I read it when I am not sure I read it.

The CHAIRMAN. I just want to ask you the question. You say that if you read a thing like that connected with one of your men who is assistant director in this project that you would forget it by this time, less than a year ago.

Do you mean to say here now that you have forgotten it if you read it?

Reverend BRAZIER. This is what I am saying, Senator, that I have heard a number of these charges. You asked me what I read in the newspaper. I have heard all of what you are saying over a period of months.

But you asked me specifically about what I read in the newspapers concerning Mr. Hairston's arrest.

The CHAIRMAN. I asked you about the newspaper because you said you read in the newspaper about his being arrested.

Reverend BRAZIER. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. I asked you if you read the rest of this.

Reverend BRAZIER. I may have or I may not have. I am saying I got a lot of this information from word of mouth but I knew about it. The CHAIRMAN. Along about that time did you get the information either from the newspaper or from other sources?

Reverend BRAZIER. I did.

The CHAIRMAN. That I have related.
Reverend BRAZIER. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Now what did you do about it with respect to investigating it to see if there was a marihuana racket going on in this organization?

Reverend BRAZIER. I didn't do anything to investigate that.

The CHAIRMAN. Why? Here is the head of it, a Ranger being charged with it.

Reverend BRAZIER. Let me make this point: You can look on this board. I got three people on here, staff people. We don't have any investigator staff to go out and make an investigation.

The CHAIRMAN. Is that your excuse, you didn't have an investigating staff?

Reverend BRAZIER. That was not our function. Our function was not to go out and investigate everything that happened in the project outside of this project. If something happened in our centers we would investigate it; but it was not our function to go out and try to investigate every detail or every act that somebody made who was in the project.

That was not our function. We had no funds to do that. We had no money to do that.

The CHAIRMAN. If this is the way you want to leave the record, all right. But here you are, a minister, at the head of a great project, a great program, and you undertake to put on a program here which is supposed to aid these gang members, the youth that are in these gangs. The leader, the president, of the largest gang, last fall shortly after the program started, after he had been on the payroll for some 3 or 4 months, gets arrested, charged with murder or soliciting to murder, with the facts being reported either in the press or from other sources that he solicited three youths to go out and kill a man allegedly in the marihuana racket, a marihuana peddler, for trespassing upon the Rangers' territory.

Now you read those facts or they came to you.

Reverend BRAZIER. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. And you say you did nothing to investigate whether it was true or not?

Reverend BRAZIER. That was a police function to investigate whether it was true or not.

The CHAIRMAN. Sure, it was a police function. But you had not enough interest in it to have anybody try to investigate, to find out if this organization, the Rangers, and their leaders whom you had employed, were engaged in that sort of conduct.

Reverend BRAZIER. Whom would I have to investigate?
The CHAIRMAN. That is your end.

Reverend BRAZIER. Let me make a point. I have three staff people. The CHAIRMAN. Did you tell any one of them to investigate? Reverend BRAZIER. How can they investigate? They are not investigators. These people are not trained investigators. How can they investigate what the police can't investigate?

The CHAIRMAN. Is that the way you want to leave this record? Reverend BRAZIER. We had no method, we had no funds, we had no people trained to investigate murder. How could we?

The CHAIRMAN. You said you investigated these other things and found they were not true.

Reverend BRAZIER. What other things?

The CHAIRMAN. Didn't you say you investigated the complaints about kickbacks and you found it was not true?

Reverend BRAZIER. I didn't say we investigated complaints about kickbacks.

The CHAIRMAN. What did you say you were investigating? Reverend BRAZIER. I said we investigated complaints about our people forcing youths to drop out of school.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you investigate that?

Reverend BRAZIER. We did.

The CHAIRMAN. How did you do that?

Reverend BRAZIER. We sent letters to the principals and asked all of the principals if they knew of anyone in our school who was a member of their school and should not be in our project, to let us know. The CHAIRMAN. How did they know who was in your project? Reverend BRAZIER. Didn't some principal give you an affidavit that we had some people in our project that was in his school?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

How would all of them know?

Reverend BRAZIER. Senator, I don't know how they would all know. We were trying to find a way to try

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think that is the best way to go about it? Reverend BRAZIER. We wrote them another letter. They told us we are going to answer this letter one more time and we are not going to answer any more.

We wrote them on more than one occasion. We had a limited staff. If we had to send these people out to investigate all the things we would not have had any supervision in those centers at all.

Senator HARRIS. Could I ask a question on that same point?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Senator HARRIS. Was this fellow Hairston on the project payroll at the time he was arrested?

Reverend BRAZIER. Now Mr. Duffy says he was. I am not going to argue with Mr. Duffy on that point. All I am saying is that Mr. Hairston in my office-now he could not have been in jail because he was in my office when he said, "I resign."

Maybe it was a day or two later that the administrative procedure caught up with his resignation, I don't know. But verbally he resigned. I gave orders to cut him off the payroll.

It may have been the same day or the day before but to my knowledge Mr. Hairston resigned from the project before he was arrested. Senator HARRIS. Was he then taken off the payroll after he was arrested?

Reverend BRAZIER. Immediately. When we read in the newspaper he was arrested we immediately suspended him.

The CHAIRMAN. It was after the arrest that he got suspended? Reverend BRAZIER. Senator McClellan, you are not listening to what I was saying.

The CHAIRMAN. I listened.

Reverend BRAZIER. I don't think you are comprehending what I am saying.

What I am saying is this: That the man came into my office, Mr. Chairman, and said, "I resign." We did not suspend him.

Senator MUNDT. Did he give any reasons for resigning?

Reverend BRAZIER. No, he didn't.

Senator MUNDT. He said, "I resign."

Reverend BRAZIER. "I resign."

Senator MUNDT. You did not ask him any questions?

Reverend BRAZIER. I did. I said why?

Senator MUNDT. He didn't say?

Reverend BRAZIER. He said, "I resign." That is all. In fact, I didn't want him to resign, Senator Mundt, because I felt he was a valuable man in helping us to do something with these youth.

I am not saying he was an angel. I am saying that we wanted to utilize his ability to help us transform youth. This was an experimental program. I was concerned as to why he was resigning. Senator MUNDT. That is understandable.

Reverend BRAZIER. But he didn't say to me.

Senator MUNDT. He said, "I resign."

Reverend BRAZIER. I don't say he stood there and said, "I resign." There may have been some conversation but he never told me why. Senator MUNDT. No reason at all?

Reverend BRAZIER. Never gave me any reason.

Senator MUNDT. This was after he had been in jail, or before?
Reverend BRAZIER. This was before.

Senator MUNDT. You said you suspended him right after.

Reverend BRAZIER. No, we suspend anybody who goes to jail. We didn't have to suspend him because he resigned.

Senator MUNDT. You said, "As soon as I read it in the newspaper we suspended him.”

Reverend BRAZIER. Maybe I said it but the fact is that he resigned and that is all there was to that. Maybe my memory is playing tricks

on me.

Senator MUNDT. It could have been possible he resigned after he was in jail?

Reverend BRAZIER. It couldn't have been possible. My memory is not playing those kind of tricks on me. The man was standing beside my desk when he said, "I resign." He said specifically would I appoint his brother to take his place.

Senator MUNDT. Isn't he out on bail?

Reverend BRAZIER. Who?

Senator MUNDT. Hairston.

Reverend BRAZIER. I imagine he is now.

Senator MUNDT. He was convicted and out on bail and had an appeal.

Reverend BRAZIER. Yes.