PERRY AD DRAWS JUDGE'S REMARKS

AUSTIN - A federal judge featured in a TV ad that tries to link Democrat
Tony Sanchez to drug-money laundering said the commercial from Gov. Rick
Perry takes words "out of context" and expands language in his ruling
beyond "proper boundaries."

I don't understand the point of it," said Senior U.S. District Judge Harry
Lee Hudspeth, named to the federal bench by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

The Austin-based judge said he favors neither candidate in the
gubernatorial race.

Some Republicans, including a former U.S. attorney, said Sanchez didn't
fully cooperate with federal officials who suspected drug profits were run
through border banks including Sanchez's Tesoro Savings and Loan in Laredo.

The partisans pointed partly to a ruling by Hudspeth a " in a case pitting
an El Paso bank against the federal government a " that mentions Tesoro.
The ruling is cited in Perry's ad, which began running statewide Monday.

Sanchez, traveling to a campaign stop in Waco, repeated his insistence that
he and the thrift were cleared of wrongdoing by judges and government
agencies. He said Tesoro officials cooperated as soon as they learned there
was a problem.

The alleged laundering of millions of dollars through Tesoro has been
pounded by Sanchez foes since last year.

But Hudspeth had not been notable until Perry's commercial. In the spot,
Hudspeth's signature flickers on screen as a narrator says: "A federal
judge confirmed Sanchez's bank wired millions of laundered drug money to
Manuel Noriega's Panama."

Hudspeth's ruling states several million dollars were withdrawn from Tesoro
Savings and Loan and transmitted to Panama.

But Hudspeth told the Express-News Monday his ruling "had nothing to do
with Laredo."

"It was taken out of context," Hudspeth said. "Any mention of Laredo or any
other financial institution was strictly tangential" to the case involving
the First City National Bank of El Paso.

Of the commercial, Hudspeth continued: "It's taking a comment peripheral
and tangential to my case and expanding it far beyond its proper boundaries."

Hudspeth said the ad's reference to Noriega was also not from his ruling.
"I don't remember Mr. Noriega coming up in the course of that trial,"
Hudspeth said. "That's just political hyperbole."

Perry spokesman Ray Sullivan said later that the ruling "makes it clear
that Tesoro wired drug money to Panama. That's simply all the ad states."
He said the judge's order "is shown to verify the facts in the ad."

Sullivan said Noriega, the Panamanian strongman serving a 40-year federal
prison sentence on racketeering, drug trafficking and money laundering
charges, "was the head of Panama at that time."

Hudspeth said he would not ask that the ad be changed or withdrawn.

"None of that is any of my concern," he said.

Sanchez has repeatedly said Tesoro was cleared by "three federal agencies
and a federal district judge." The judge ruled officials acted as required
under the law in wiring the money, he repeated Monday.

At a Monday news conference called by Perry's camp, former Justice
Department lawyer Michael Greene and former U.S. attorney Dan Hedges
acknowledged criminal charges were never filed, but they said Sanchez,
chairman of Tesoro's board, could have done more.