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Facing the music: there''s no question that record producer Michael Morales--Dan''s brother--tried to blackmail the Tony Sanchez campaign. But was he really acting alone? (Reporter: the state of our state).

Article Excerpt
"HI, I'M MR. SMITH. WENDEL Smith calling again," said the calm voice leaving a voice-mail message at the Austin campaign headquarters of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez. It was early October 2002, and the man had been calling for several days, trying to reach campaign manager Glenn Smith, claiming he had important information about Sanchez, the Laredo businessman who was spending $60 million of his own money in an attempt to unseat republican incumbent Rick Perry. "Imperative that I speak to you the next few days here," the man said politely. "Thanks very much. Good day."

Glenn Smith had never heard of Wendel Smith. In that last month of the already brutal, bare-knuckle campaign, the Sanchez operation was desperately trying to figure out how to win voters away from Perry, and Glenn didn't exactly have time to return calls from strangers. But Wendel was not going away. After his calls went unreturned, he faxed Glenn a letter, which began, "In case you did not know, there will most likely be an eleventh hour leak to the media of a story." He went on to write that a woman was preparing to go public with an allegation that Sanchez had assaulted her more than thirty years ago in San Antonio, when he was a law student at St. Mary's University and she was an undergraduate at Incarnate Word College. "She (and the story) are said to be VERY credible," Wendel declared in his fax. "The characters, places and dates all check out.... I believe it will put questions to your candidate that are unanswerable."

Then he concluded: "I find myself in the position to keep the other side from obtaining the story and therefore the witness. I can have it delivered to you unseen, thereby averting disaster. As I am risking my professional career by squelching this story, I wish to be paid a consulting fee.... Very truly yours, Wendel Smith."

What happened next can only be described as one of the strangest-oh, all right, squirrelliest-scandals in Texas political history, one that would lead to an FBI investigation, phone taps and traces, a sealed search warrant, and finally, the bewildering revelation in January that "Wendel Smith" was actually Michael Morales, the forty-year-old brother of Dan Morales, the former state attorney general who ran an acrimonious race against Sanchez in the Democratic gubernatorial primary last spring. The FBI's case was so open-and-shut against Michael, a San Antonio music producer who won a Grammy in 2002 for his work on an album of tejano music, that before a federal grand jury had even gotten the chance to review the charges made against him, he agreed to plead guilty to communicating an extortion threat.

He should have also pleaded guilty to colossal stupidity. In the faxes and the...