The Peavy Puzzle

THE PEAVY TAPES, WHICH revealed the former school board member as an obscenity-spewing bigot, raise several interesting questions. The first is social and political: How did this bilious bozo get elected in the first place? But the other questions are just as tantalizing. Who was responsible for the illegal wiretaps found on Peavy’s telephone? Who had a motive to tape, transcribe, possibly alter (says Peavy), and then mail the epithet-strewn conversations to board members?



The mystery has spawned an interesting rumor in law enforcement circles. Ready? Okay. The Dallas police are called to investigate a possible wiretap on Peavy’s phone. They find evidence of both an illegal and a legal wiretap- the latter put there by FBI agents scrutinizing Peavy’s possible conflict of interest in insurance decisions made by the school board.



So, rather than step on federal bigfeet, Dallas police quickly band the whole thing over to the FBI. A few weeks later, Peavy is driven from office in well-deserved (and well-designed! disgrace, thus becoming the only man ever to resign from the Dallas school board after saying “goddamned little niggers” on tape. He is ultimately cleared in the insurance investigation, a pyrrhic victory.



Now comes the part that’s really hard to explain: If-if-all this happened, how did the tape get from the FBI (or the cops) into the hands of the Peavy-haters? We’ll keep listening-to sources, of course.