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Show 174 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER sit here and listen to the same old thing over and over and over again. Murdock thought it was a good time to adjourn the hearing for the day. April 2, 1949 Murdock sought to accede to Lemke's request, but he was not entirely in command of the case. Behind the scenes McFarland was giving orders, and McFarland liked the emotional pleas, believing they would be just as effective as technical testimony. There were on the committee a number of congressmen from reclamation states who could be counted on to be friendly to Arizona, and they did not care what the record contained. Their minds were already made up. Thus, before calling Arizona legal and engineering witnesses (which included those from the Reclamation Bureau), Murdock was obliged first to let Walter Bimson, president of the Valley National Bank of Phoenix, take the stand. The bank was the largest financial institution in the state, and Bimson was one of the state's leading tycoons. His first charge was that the Colorado River contro- versy had been invented by a small group of California politicians, lawyers and engineers "who have a vested interest in not getting it settled." 233 Next Bimson asserted that Arizona's quarrel was not really with Cali- fornia cities but with the Imperial Valley. It would soon become apparent that a new phase of Arizona's strategy involved a concentrated attack on the Imperial Valley, even though it was only one of several California agencies strenuously opposing the project. The script called for Bimson to open the firing. Bimson did, but neither he nor following Arizona witnesses would mention that the Imperial Valley's water rights |
