The Future for Jimmy project provided new out-of-school educational supports for over 3,100 District youngsters in its lifetime and brought additional income into families bordering on destitution.

The on-the-job training program works to get jobs for those possessing no skills, for those without any training, for those devoid of hope. In the past 3 years over 800 such Washingtonians have thus found gainful employment for the future. And over the years the league's programs of employment and economic development have done much to pry open jobs for trained as well as untrained blacks.

The Washington Urban League, and I, as its executive director, have been in the midst of change for years. And change is always controversial. I have critics; some have been heard today. Yet, judging from the letters, telegrams, and telephone calls I have received, I am confident that the course of community service I have followed is supported by the vast majority of blacks and whites in this city. Indeed, some of these expressions of support have come from members of the very organizations that spokesmen here today claim to represent.

Within any community there are divisions, philosophical disagreements, that exist between people which cannot be bridged. But I have worked, and am prepared to continue to work, with any group seeking to give all of our citizens a stake in this life and a voice in the decisions which shape their destinies. I will work with anyone seeking to bring gain and unity to our city's populations. But I will not work with those seeking divisiveness. I will never support the destruction of life, property, and hope.

If my nomination to the Vice Chairmanship of the City Council is approved, I will make every effort to insure that my decisions and actions mirror the hopes of those I serve. I will help to make the ordinarily inaudible cries of the anguished heard.

We live in a land rubbed raw by coarse and abrasive hatred, violence, and chaos. We will find ourselves victims of the times if we sit silently by or if we allow loud and angry words to consume our being and obscure the need for constructive action. We have a chance to control what seems to be our fate only as we work selflessly and tirelessly and carefully to create unity and to erase the scars that have disfigured our local and national image.

In some way, I will always be trying to do my part.

I would like to comment, if I might, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee on several things which have been raised here today.

First, it has been said that I am not representative of the community. I would say when I came to the Washington Urban League in 1956, there were fewer than 3,000 members of that organization. Today there are more than 20,000 people who are dues-paying members of the Washington Urban League. We have the largest member constituency of any Urban League in our 94 cities in the country.

We are one of the largest membership organizations in the city. I would also say that 85 percent of this membership is black. Many of these members are people who live in the bowels of the ghettos of this city. Many of these people work every day in many ways in many of the programs that are designed to achieve some change, to achieve a higher quality of life for them.

I challenge anybody who has spoken here today against my nomination to match this kind of support with all of the organizations combined.

With reference to the tax matter, I would like to discuss that briefly, if I might, and if you would bear with me for just a few moments, I would appreciate it.

On April 30, 1965, I received a routine notice to appear at the Canton, Ohio, office of the Internal Revenue Service, on Monday, May 2, at 10:30 a.m., to discuss my 1954 tax returns. I voluntarily appeared at the appointed hour before Agent Robert P. Harper. I took to that conference a miscellaneous collection of personal papers and records for my use in that discussion.

The meeting between Agent Harper and myself proceeded amiably until about 11:45 a.m. of the same date, at which time I informed Mr. Harper that I had a luncheon engagement and would have to leave. At about 11:50 I arose to leave and began to gather my papers to replace them in my portfolio, when Agent Harper pushed my papers to the far side of the desk out of my reach and told me to leave the papers where they were and that we would resume the discussion later in the afternoon.

It was my clear understanding that the papers would not be touched until my return later in the day. I never gave my consent to any representative of the Internal Revenue Service to examine these personal records and papers. It was my understanding that the purpose of the meeting with Agent Harper was to discuss my civil tax liability.

It was a friendly discussion, and I simply sought to determine with Agent Harper's assistance which records and which papers were useful for tax papers. I simply gathered up all of my personal files and took them to the meeting.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you recall whether he said he was a special agent or just a revenue agent?

Mr. TUCKER. No, I do not recall. I am not sure whether he indicated this at all, Mr. Chairman.

At about 11:55 a.m. on May 2 I left the office of Agent Harper and went to a luncheon. About 2:30 p.m. of the same day I was informed by a friend that agents of the Internal Revenue Service had visited him and interrogated him about certain contributions made by me. I immediately returned to the office of Agent Harper and demanded the return of my papers and portfolio, which had been left in his office pending our further examination of them following the luncheon break.

At this time Agent Harper refused to return my papers and informed me that he was acting on the orders of his superior. I then went with Agent Harper to an adjoining office of the Internal Revenue Service and met a person identified as his superior officer and as the individual who informed Agent Harper that he was not to return my papers.

I again demanded return of my papers, since I had not yet decided which papers were useful for tax purposes. Both Agent Harper and his superior officer again refused to deliver my papers to me.

I did not consider the matter important because I simply was trying to determine what, if any, tax liability there was. It was my impres sion that there was none. I did not pursue the matter at all until a few days or weeks-I am not sure which-later I happened to mention the incident to an attorney friend, at which time he sought and received return of my papers.

Following that, I paid no further attention to the matter, except in the weeks which followed I received visits from Internal Revenue officials who did at that time identify themselves as from a special unit of some nature. I am not sure what unit it was, but it didn't mean anything at all to me. It simply meant it was people who were discussing my taxes. I know this happens frequently.

I cooperated with them in every way, and that is a matter of record. I discussed with them all matters. I saw no need to have legal counsel because I did not feel there was any problem which involved legal counsel.

After that, I left the country in 1955, in early July, on a mission to India for the Department of State, where I was on a lecture tour for 3 months. During the course of my absence one of my associates from the Canton Urban League said that the Internal Revenue people were still coming around. For what purpose, I did not know.

Upon my return to Canton, Ohio, I got in touch with them to determine the status of the tax situation. I was then in consultation with the same attorney friend, who advised it might be well to secure the support of another counsel familiar with tax matters. He brought into the situation a friend, who then worked with Internal Revenue officials, where, on both sides, as a common matter, where they were trying to determine if there was any tax liability, some things where the Internal Revenue Service felt I owed taxes, they changed their minds about that, so there was an adjustment. There was what I guess amounts to a settlement conference some few months later, which I attended.

Attending with me in that settlement conference was the attorney friend and the other friend, the attorney whom he engaged, together with officials of Internal Revenue. They had checked my tax returns back from the time I ever started paying taxes, and they came up with what they regarded as a tax liability of around $1,661. I was charged with this, plus interest, and penalties.

All of this was immediately paid within a matter of days. I considered the matter completely closed.

Some months later I received a form from Internal Revenue, in which I was asked to sign in order that the matter might be kept open. I gathered there was something with reference to the statute of limitations involved.

I consulted my attorney friend. He advised me to sign.

For a couple of years later, I received about the same time of the year a similar form, and I signed it and returned them. I saw no reason to do otherwise.

One day out of the blue, I received a telephone call from a Washington news reporter saying that I had been indicted in Ohio for overstatement of tax deductions. At that point I called my attorney friend, who had no knowledge that this was happening, and he was as surprised and as shocked as I was.

Senator PROUTY. May I interrupt, Mr. Tucker? This was after you had paid whatever the Internal Revenue Service claimed you owed? Mr. TUCKER. This was about 2 years after. I had paid the taxes and penalties. It was about 2 years later when I learned on a Friday morning that I had been indicted in Cleveland, Ohio.

I immediately called my attorney friend. He didn't know what the situation was, but he investigated it.

I went to Cleveland, Ohio, on my own at the time, at a time arranged for the indictment. We then engaged a firm in Cleveland, Ohio, to handle the tax matter. I think perhaps up to this point it had all been treated rather casually.

In one of his briefs to the judge, the firm which we engaged said that there were several levels of consultation along the way with reference to a criminal matter where I was not represented, and had I been represented, his brief states, that he believes very firmly that there would never have been an indictment. But that was the case. I would like to say that there was never any charge of unreported income. It was based on two things, what they regarded as overstatement of contributions and overstatement of medical expenses. The overstatement of contributions was simply based upon an effort on my part to try to reconstruct through the years what contributions I had made, to see what records I had had, and also based upon diaries which I keep. I keep a diary of my activities in the normal course of my work.

I had gone back through those diaries and pulled from those diaries contributions and things that I had made from time to time. This, I gather, was not admissible as evidence since they were not official legal documents.

On the matter of the medical expenses, I had claimed medical expenses for an ailing father who had been ailing for years and for whose expenses I was responsible; for a sister with a large family, who herself had had several illnesses.

I paid these expenses, and I claimed them on my records. I realized later that I was not entitled to deductions because they were not legally dependents.

I did not contest the case, and perhaps it was an unwise decision on my part, because I did not want to embarrass my family or myself in any way further because there had been embarrassment enough. Since I felt that based upon what I knew had been honest, perhaps naive behavior on my part, I did not feel that any judge or jury would send me to prison. So, I chose to let the matter rest on its merits, so I pleaded nolo contendere.

I went into court. I was there 2 or 3 minutes in the case of the sentencing, and that was the situation.

I have never been late in the payment of taxes. I have never had any income that was unreported. I have never had a tax lien or any other kind of lien against me.

I would say that it is a situation which to me is something completely foreign to anything in my background or anything in my family background, because I was naive in the way of legal affairs. Perhaps because I did not immediately seek legal counsel, I found myself the victim of a technical situation. I have been sorry for it, most unhappy about it. It has caused me many awkward hours and many days of pain and much personal suffering. I hope that my record of service before and since is one that justifies public confidence in me.

I have always tried to serve with integrity. I have always tried to be a person of good character, and I have deep concern for people everywhere and a great love for this community and country. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Tucker.

At this point in the record I will offer a memorandum prepared in the case in which you were defended by Mr. Drayan Fink before

the court.

(The memorandum referred to follows:)

U.S. DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF
OHIO, EASTERN DIVISON-CASE NO. 22589

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, PLAINTIFF

v.

STERLING TUCKER, DEFENDANT

MEMORANDUM OF DEFENDANT

The purpose of the subject Memorandum is to lay before the Court prior to the trial of the subject case a general outline of the issues involved in the subject case. Together with a brief picture of the background of the defendant in the hope that, after consideration of the same, a pre-trial conference may be held between all parties concerned with the further hope that a just decision in the subject case may be reached, in the interests of both parties and in the interests of obtaining justice; and that the same may be done as expeditiously as possible.

THE INDICTMENT

The defendant, Sterling Tucker, was indicted on four counts of violation of the Internal Revenue Code, T 26, Sections 145 (b) and 7201, United States Code. The first count of the indictment charges that this defendant in his tax return filed May 10, 1952, was charged with tax evasion for the year 1951 in the total amount of $203.94. In the second count, the defendant is charged with tax evasion in the total amount of $402.43 for the year 1952. In the third count, the defendant is charged with tax evasion for the year 1953 in the total amount of $550.24. In the fourth count, the defendant is charged with tax evasion for the year 1954 in the total amount of $504.85.

These constitute the counts and the amounts of taxes allegedly evaded by this defendant. The total amount of the same for all four years is $1,661.46, all of which alleged taxes due have been paid to the Internal Revenue Service, together with a fifty per cent fraud penalty (50%) thereon, and together with all interest due, so that as of this moment there is not one single penny due and owing to the United States from this defendant.

DISCUSSION OF FACTS AND LAW

If ever a case was de minimis, certainly the figures relied upon in the indictment itself so indicate. Furthermore the indictment itself clearly sets forth that there was no understatement of income whatsoever-a most rare circumstance for a charge of criminal evasion of taxes. Rare indeed is it that a taxpayer is ever charged with tax evasion where there is no understatement of income as in the present case. Logically it follows, why, then, an indictment? The basis for the subject case as alleged is that this defendant overstated his deductions for charitable and medical expenses, and that said alleged overstatement of deductions resulted in a wilfull evasion.

The indictment in itself says: "Sterling Tucker . . . did wilfully and knowingly attempt to evade and defeat a large part of the income tax due and owing by him and his wife to the United States." (emphasis ours)

A mere reading of the indictment indicates that certainly the same cannot on its face be accurate.

This Court, I am sure, is familiar with the very famous case of United States v. George M. Cohan, 39 F. (2d) 540, which case has been followed by the courts of our land in over five hundred cases since its pronouncement. This case provides the simple proposition that, where deductible expenses, such as in the case at bar, cannot be verified, where there is some evidence that at least some of the same have been made, an arbitrary percentage thereof shall be legally allowed as deductions. In fact, not even civil fraud, much less criminal fraud or evasion, could even be charged or claimed.