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Staff memorandum__

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William J. Casey, dated March 19, enclosing statement of personnal, professional, business, and financial activities.

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Williams, Harrison A., Jr., U.S. Senator from the State of New Jersey, exchange of letters with the SEC.

Thornton & Co., table showing transactions on the Chicago Stock Exchange

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NOMINATION OF WILLIAM J. CASEY

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1971

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING AND URBAN AFFAIRS, Washington, D.C. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m. in room 5302, New Senate Office Building, Senator John Sparkman presiding. Present: Senators Sparkman, Proxmire, McIntyre, Gambrell, Tower, Bennett, Roth, Brock, and Taft.

Also present: Senators Javits and Buckley of New York.
The CHAIRMAN. Let the committee come to order, please.

We are meeting this morning for the purpose of considering quite a number of nominations. It could take a long time. I believe we have a total of 13 on the list for this morning. I hope it will not take too long. We have had a rule at different times in the past that on calling on any Senator at any time we would limit the first round to 10 minutes. If any Senator does not get to finish his questioning within that time, we can return to him later.

Our first witness this morning is Mr. Casey.

Mr. William J. Casey, of New York, has been nominated by the President to fill a very important office, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

We have with us this morning the Senators from New York, Senator Javits and Senator Buckley. We welcome them to the committee for the purpose of presenting their distinguished constituent.

Senator Javits, we will be very glad to hear from you at this time. Senator JAVITS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, first let me thank you on behalf of our State for having such a prompt hearing on Mr. Casey. This is very helpful and we are very pleased.

The CHAIRMAN. You used to serve on this committee. You know we act promptly on everything.

Senator JAVITS. I know that the committee has a wonderful reputation, and as the chairman knows, I have the utmost regard for him and the other members.

Mr. Chairman, I have a particular personal pleasure in commending Bill Casey to the committee. I have known him for 20 years. He is a law partner of a man who at one time was a Republican national chairman and is very well known to me, a very good friend of mine, Len Hall. So I have known Bill Casey personally, socially, professionally. It is not usual that one can say that of a man who is named for a high office.

He has many things to commend him. To me, Mr. Chairman, the thing that distinguishes him the most is that he is not only a lawyer

whose reputation was made in the tax field, but also one who has dug deeply into the professional aspects of the law. He has written and published a great deal on the subject, and he has also let his activities go into the corporate finance and corporate policy field in a very estimable and distinguished way.

Also, he has an extensive business experience as chairman of the board with publishing houses like the Research Institute and PrenticeHall. He has done a good deal of publishing as trustee of Fordham University, of the Good Counsel College, and of Catholic Charities, and he is a member of the Brookings Institution's Advisory Committee on Presidential Selection Studies.

Another thing that commends him to me tremendously is his willingness to undertake Government jobs which fall within his particular competence.

He served in the war in the OSS, and as assistant to Dave Bruce, that we all know so well and favorably. But he has also been on task forces for tax policy in behalf of the President in recent years. And I had the privilege of seeing him through a somewhat touchy situation when he was confirmed as a member of this General Advisory Committee on Arms Control by the Foreign Relations Committee, upon which the chairman serves as well.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, he is very active in an organization in which I place great store. He is the president of the International Rescue Committee which deals with the problems of refugees, largely political persecutees. It is an organization in which I am very active myself, and reflects great credit upon his sense of what is important in terms of our country and in terms of the world, and in terms of morality. So that I wish to commend very highly Mr. Casey to the committee. And, Mr. Chairman, while I have the floor, as it were, may I just say a word to be inserted at the appropriate place on behalf of Donald Regan, chairman of Merrill Lynch, who is up for confirmation as a member of the Board of Governors of the Securities and Investors Protection Association. Mr. Regan is a New Yorker. I know him very well personally and by reputation. He is most uniquely fitted for the post for which he will be considered by the committee, probably as well-fitted as anybody could be from Wall Street in character and standing. I commend him most highly to the committee.

Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Javits.

Senator Buckley, we are very glad to have you here for the first time.

Senator BUCKLEY. Thank you very much.

I appreciate the opportunity to join Senator Javits in wholeheartedly recommending Mr. William J. Casey for membership on the Securities and Exchange Commission. As Senator Javits has suggested, he is an eminent lawyer who has nevertheless found time to serve his country with distinction in a number of important capacities. I may just touch on some of these.

During 1943 and 1944 when he was only 30 years of age he served as assistant to Mr. Bruce in coordinating the activities of the French resistance in support of the Allied landings in Normandy and liberation of France.

He was also instrumental in helping to launch the Marshall Plan in 1948, and subsequently he has served as Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Research Institute of America, which is a subsidiary of Prentice-Hall.

He has authored and edited a broad spectrum of publications on legal, tax, financial publications which have commanded broad respect and acclimation.

In addition to his distinguished legal career he currently serves our country as a member of the General Advisory Committee on Arms Control, having been confirmed by the Senate for this important post just 2 years ago.

Mr. Casey is also a member of the Presidential Task Force on International Development, president of the International Rescue Committee, whose activities are also endorsed.

In sum, Mr. Casey is a highly motivated, intelligent and distinguished gentleman. I believe that he will exhibit the same faithfulness and diligence and perseverance as a member of the Securities. and Exchange Commission as he has in all of his business, legal, and philanthropic activities in which he has been engaged during his very notable private and public career.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Buckley.

Mr. Casey, we are very glad to have you before us and we are particularly pleased to have these very fine recommendations that have been given by your Senators.

We have a biographical sketch which will be printed in the record at this point.

(The biographical sketch follows:)

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF WILLIAM J. CASEY

William J. Casey is a partner in the New York law firm of Hall, Casey, Dickler & Howley and the Washington law firm of Scribner, Hall, Casey, Thornburg & Thompson.

He is also:

Member of the General Advisory Committee on Arms Control.

Member of Presidential Task Force on International Development. Report filed March 1970.

President of the International Rescue Committee.

Chairman of the Board of the Long Island Association (President 1968–70). Trustee of Fordham University, Good Counsel College, Catholic Charities. Member of The Brookings Institution's Advisory Committee on Presidential Selection Studies.

As Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Research Institute of America (1939-50) and Institute for Business Planning, a subsidiary of Prentice-Hall (1955 to date), Mr. Casey has authored and edited a broad spectrum of publications on legal, tax, financial and economic subjects.

In 1943-44, he served as assistant to David Bruce in coordinating the activities of the French Resistance in support of the Allied landings in Normandy and liberation of France.

In 1944-45, he was Chief of O.S.S. intelligence operations in the European Theatre.

In 1948, he worked on the launching of the Marshall Plan in Europe.

Mr. Casey served on the Nixon Task Force on tax policy in 1968, as special tax counsel for the Senate Small Business Committee in 1950, lectured at New York University, Institute on Federal Taxation, from 1946-62 and for the Practising Law Institute from 1950-64.

Mr. Casey, born in New York in 1913, graduated from Fordham in 1934 and received his law degree from St. John's Law School in 1937. He lives with his wife, Sophia, and his daughter, Bernadette, in Roslyn Harbor, Long Island, New York.

The CHAIRMAN. I shall ask you these more or less formal questions and then leave it up to my colleagues to question you on any matters that they may think material.

As I have told you previously, we would expect you to get clearance on the question as to any conflict of interest and to file a financial statement with the committee. Mr. Casey has filed that financial statement and it is available here, and as I explained to you, Mr. Casey, it is available to the members of this committee only in this committee room, and when they have seen it to their satisfaction, then it is sealed and filed away in a locked safe where it will remain during the time. that you hold this office and for 1 year thereafter. Then it will be destroyed, or if you want it for posterity, we will return it to you.

Now I also have a letter from Mr. Casey in which he explains-he assured me when he talked with me about it--he did hold a good many securities investments of different kinds. He said he would make a satisfactory arrangement, first of all, terminating his connection with two law firms, one in Washington and one in New York; and that also the investments and properties that he holds, some are held in trust for members of his family, would be put into, I suppose, what we might call a blind trust.

This will be made a part of the record and any of the members of the committee that want to read it and of course in the course of our hearing this morning may do so. (See letter to Senator Sparkman, dated February 9 at p. 103.)

Now I will ask you this question, Mr. Casey: After you do these things, will you have any holding, any property or any interests that would in your opinion constitute a conflict of interest with the holding of this position?

Mr. CASEY. No, sir; I looked into this very carefully and I disposed of all interests which, as I see it, might bring me in conflict with the policies and the regulations of the Commission, and I reviewed this with counsel for the Commission who has, I believe, written a letter to you, Mr. Chairman. He doesn't believe that my holdings are in conflict.

The CHAIRMAN. I believe you told me you had discussed it with the General Counsel of the Securities Commission.

Mr. CASEY. Yes, I have.

The CHAIRMAN. And he told you that when this was done, you would be completely cleared so far as this position was concerned? Mr. CASEY. Yes, he did.

The CHAIRMAN. And I notice, too, that in your letter you say that in adjustments that may be made while you are in that office, other than purchase of U.S. bonds, would be carefully scrutinized and handled in such a way that it would not in any way conflict with your operation of this job.

Mr. CASEY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I will say this about Mr. Casey. He is not a newcomer to Capitol Hill. He served here on Capitol Hill-it doesn't seem so long, but it has been a good many years ago. Mr. Casey was connected with the Senate Small Business Committee at the time that Kenneth Wherry was chairman of the Senate Small Business Committee. I am not so sure but what you may have held over even after we reconstituted the committee and I became chairman.

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