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Show 124 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER Terrell made so bold as to inquire how Lyons had secured this bit of news. "Well, I'll tell you," said Lyons. "I have an old friend on the Rules Committee. He and I were raised in the same town. He likes to talk with me, but it doesn't look too good for me to be visiting him in his office. I'm from California, and if I went to see him, Watkins and the others would start yelling that he was hob- nobbing with a California lobbyist. He wouldn't want that to happen, and neither would we. He sits in those Rules Committee meetings for hours, and the facilities in there aren't too good. "The committee had a meeting about the Upper Basin bill this morning. I figured he would have to come out some time, so I waited down the hall a little way, near a door marked 'Gentlemen.' After a couple of hours, here he came. It just happened I was washing my hands when he came in." Lyons accepted the task of "leaking" his information so that it would reach Senator Watkins. "I know he got it, because I could hear him scream even though I was outside the Senate Office Building," Lyons reported. Word soon came that the Upper Basin senators had suddenly revised their program. They would not wait for the House to pass HR. 4449, but would begin hearings on S. 1555, the Senate version of the project bill, on June 28th. |
