Suite 8F Group
The Suite 8F Group, also referred to as the 8F Crowd, was a network of politically active businessman in Texas from the 1930s into the 1960s.[1] The name comes from the room in the Lamar Hotel in Houston, Texas where they held their meetings.[1] The room was reported to have been permanently rented to and paid by Brown and Root.[1]
According to Texas Monthly, the 8F Crowd had gained "unequaled influence in state and national government" after the end World War II when George R. Brown, Gus Wortham, and Charles Francis of Vinson & Elkins founded Texas Eastern.[1] The group was reported to exercise leverage over Big Oil.[1] The 8F Crowd had connections to various media outlets including the Houston Chronicle, the Houston Post, television station KPRC, and radio stations KPRC and KTRK-TV#History.[1]
Membership
The following individuals are reported to have been members to the Suite 8F Group:
- George and Herman Brown, co-founders of Brown and Root[1]
- Jesse H. Jones, owner of Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post[1]
- James A. Elkins[1]
- Gus Wortham[1]
- Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States[1]
- Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives[1]
- John Connally, Governor of Texas[1]
- Walter Mischer[1]
- James Abercrombie of the Cameron Iron Works
- Hugh Roy Cullen of Quintana Petroleum
- Texas Governor William Hobby
- William Vinson, Great Southern Life Insurance
- Morgan J. Davis, of Humble Oil
- Albert Thomas, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Defense
- Alvin Wirtz, Thomas Corcoran, Homer Thornberry and Edward Clark, were four lawyers who also worked closely with the Suite 8F Group.
Suite 8F helped to coordinate the political activities of other right-wing politicians and businessmen based in the South; these included Robert B. Anderson, president of the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, Secretary of the Navy and Secretary of the Treasury; Robert Kerr of Kerr-McGee Oil Industries; Billie Sol Estes, an entrepreneur in the cotton industry; Glenn McCarthy of McCarthy Oil and Gas Company; Earl E. T. Smith, of U.S. Sugar Corporation; Fred Korth, Continental National Bank and Navy Secretary; Ross Sterling of Humble Oil; Texas oil magnates Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison, Sr., H. L. Hunt of Placid Oil; Eugene B. Germany (Mustang Oil Company), David Harold Byrd, chairman of Byrd Oil Corporation; Lawrence D. Bell, of Bell Helicopter; William D. Pawley (business interests in Cuba), Senators George Smathers, Richard Russell, James Eastland, Benjamin Everett Jordan; and lobbyists Fred Black and Bobby Baker, also affiliated with the Serve-U Corporation.
References
- Dan Briody, The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money