Washington Confidential 22 – Mortimer · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 22Part 2 · STRIPED PANTS
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 22
Part 2 · STRIPED PANTS
MortimerEnglish
Elsewhere, men who wear them bury the dead; here, most of those who wear them are dead but not buried.
The decadence of the diplomats ran parallel with the fadeout of society, though not for the same causes. Continental and cosmopolitan life on Embassy Row was a war casualty.
The democratization and bolshevization of Europe turned their extra-territorial domains here into tawdry outhouses reflecting monarchies and empires riddled into busted republics and dictatorships, either scrabbling for the necessities of life or committed to the political policy of shabby proletarianism.
The kings are no longer king. The courts of Vienna, Berlin, Moscow, Madrid, Rome, and of the giddy little Balkan states are now the headquarters of Labor Parties and worse. The crowned heads of England, The Netherlands and the Scandinavian kingdoms are kept figureheads. Diplomatic display is a sin against poverty and the world rash for unilateral social and economic status.
There is not an embassy in Washington which does not cost far more than it did 20 years ago. That is because they have become workhouses where the press of international business is sordid and tremendous. Gone are the Thursday and Friday open-house hospitalities and grand balls in Technicolor, animated by gowns and costumes and uniforms of galaxies of all nations.
“These are difficult and different days,” the deans of diplomacy sigh.
The old spirit has vanished not only from the governments, but from their representatives, who are living close to the vest, hoarding precious American dollars against revolution or overturn by popular vote of their countries. Ambassadors and Ministers are salting away what they can skim off in Black Belt real estate, farms and U. S. securities. Some go much further. They are actual dealers in American goods which they can procure and can send home free of import duty to their countries. At the same time they blackmarket merchandise here, where they can buy liquor, cigarettes, cosmetics and other excised products free of internal revenue tax. For the best whiskey and champagne they pay $13 a case.
During Prohibition, a small Central American legation was actively in the rum-running business, importing huge quantities under diplomatic immunity, then reselling to Jack Cunningham, a local bootlegger. One day rival gangsters caught up with Cunningham in an alley in I Street, and there he was knocked off. The killing was hushed up. It would have involved too many untouchables.
These business opportunities and the degree of austerity which is still light as compared with most of the globe--all of it except Canada and South America--have made Washington the choice diplomatic plum, in place of London and its Court of St. James’.
The diplomats here are timid, precise and industrious. They are fearful of a false step which might mean recall, for here they are saving against eventual retirement. But their caution cannot withstand their greed and some smuggle dope in via their sealed and search-proof official pouches. They have discovered the glories of the American installment plan and buy not only land and houses, but cars and mechanical gadgets unobtainable at home. If they are transferred they rent out their properties here, which, in the only currency still reasonably dependable, makes them rich wherever they go, even into exile.
Another factor which helps reduce the gaiety and glamor of Washington diplomatic life is the competing diplomatic corps accredited to the United Nations, in New York. It is gradually getting the ace publicity breaks.
The question of sex looms big on the agenda of every ambassador. He prefers all his aides married, with wives in residence, so they will create no scandal. Many of the younger members of the various staffs, with modest jobs and salaries, are bachelors. These men are usually forbidden, under pain of being sent home, to fool around with women in Washington. Their chiefs, from time to time, order them to go to New York “to have a party.”
If the press of business is too great to allow for long weekends, when the ambassador notes that the young men on his staff are getting hot britches he sends them to Baltimore, where they are unknown and nothing is barred.
Ambassadors, themselves, and senior diplomats with roving eyes, are taken care of by the Protocol Division of the State Department, which also handles the sex problems of visiting foreign brass. That’s a job for specialists. There are so few girls in Washington glamorous enough to satisfy VIPs. Sometimes it is not politic to have them associate with local talent anyway, because of its tieups. So the State Department has compiled a list of amiable New York models, willing to come to Washington to spend a night with a foreign dignitary. They get $200 a night and expenses, from “contingent funds” coming out of the pockets of the American tax-payers. They are provided on an ancient reciprocity custom, in exchange for girls supplied to American junketeers who flit abroad.
This privilege is avidly utilized by American Senators, Congressmen and other officials, and is one reason why so many find it necessary so often to fly to Europe, Asia and South America at government expense. One prominent Republican solon, who never cheats in Washington, was shown such a good time by a French babe supplied by the Quai d’Orsay, he ended up in a Paris hospital for five days and has been a sick man ever since.
When the State Department procures women for foreign dignitaries, they are given security and VD tests. It is easy to see how delicate diplomatic relations might be ruptured by a microcosmic thunderclap.
Many embassies have their own “company- and party-girl” lists. They do not always want the State Department to know what they are doing. There’s a girl named Mary Karrica, 1471 M Street, NW, who furnishes them to the diplomatic corps.
One of the major problems of such dialectics for the State Department’s bright boys arises when a visiting notable plans to tour the country and doesn’t plan to sleep alone. Protocol then makes contacts through local police departments, which are expected to know the best call-house madames in their own towns.
When the young Shah of Persia visited America a couple of years ago, the State Department had no trouble furnishing desirable girls for him in Hollywood and Chicago; but in New York, where he wanted a blonde that night, they had to get him a Powers model. Apparently his majesty liked it, because the next day he gave her an emerald worth $20,000. The guy from the State Department who told us about this sighed, “But the bitch still took our $200!”
Years ago, when Italo Balbo made his triumphal tour of the country, he turned his nose up at showgals and screen stars. The Italian air ace insisted on one from the Social Register. The Navy was in charge of entertaining him. Some of its younger attachés dug up a semi-society babe from Chicago, who was willing to take a fling with the Italian aviator. The Navy had no dough for the purpose, so the young officers chipped in $300 to buy her a watch, and told her it was from Balbo. Now a graying middle-aged woman, she still prizes the watch “given to her by the dashing Italian.”
Most foreigners are discreet. Little rough stuff seeps out of the embassies. The Washington newspapers cover Embassy Row--there are two--16th Street and Massachusetts Avenue--but usually give their readers stories about cocktail parties, dances and weddings, instead of snappy copy.
Being confidential reporters we did not go through the front doors. What we know is mostly backstairs buzz, out of the kitchens and garages of the following embassies:
ARGENTINA--The Embassy, at 1815 Q Street, provided Washington with one of its liveliest tidbits. The real lowdown has not been divulged before. We got this out of confidential Congressional files, where the information was testified to under oath.
Nina Lund, niece of ex-Senator White, of Maine, was one of Washington’s loveliest and most popular dishes. Her husband, Nathaniel Lautrelle, a local department store executive, suspected her frequent absences from home were not to go to the beauty parlor, so he and three men, whom he engaged, followed her to 3030 O Street, NW. Those with Lautrelle were Lt. Joseph Shimon, wire-tap expert of the Metropolitan Police who was recently under Congressional investigation; Joseph Mercurio, a dope addict and locksmith, and James Karas, former Pinkerton agent, who now operates the flower-shop in the Mayflower Hotel. Mercurio sprung the lock on Apartment 2 and the four entered. They found Nina and an Argentine Ambassador naked.
Shimon got five grand for his service. Lautrelle and Nina got a divorce. The Ambassador, sent here originally because Eva Peron fancied him, went back to Argentina for consultation.
But they have something else to occupy their minds these days. Many employes and upper attachés of the Argentine Embassy are feathering their futures by shipping electric refrigerators home, packed as personal household furniture.
This is simple, as it is not unusual for diplomats to buy enough personal furniture in the country of their station to furnish their homes. Hundreds of refrigerators can be packed into such cases, and each so smuggled brings a premium of $100 in American currency, worth ten times that in Argentine currency black markets.
BRAZIL--Hospitality in the Embassy, at 3000 Massachusetts Avenue, is in the best old-fashioned tradition. The Ambassador, Mauricio Nabuco, is a bachelor. His hostess is his sister, Carolina.
The Ambassador is one of Washington’s best hosts. He constantly entertains at large formal affairs and at intimate gatherings to which statesmen, musicians and poets are invited. No scandal attaches to the Ambassador, but he likes to have pretty women around him. Maybe that’s why he entertains so much. One 18-year old cutie told us, “Oh, the old guy is harmless.”
CHINA--There’s little gaiety as we write, in the Embassy at 3225 Woodley Road. But things were not always so. As witness:
Congressman Hale, of Maine (Rep.), is a short, white-haired, pompous gent, heavy with dignity. Not long ago he attended a formal affair at the Chinese Embassy.
Suddenly a woman came up behind him and “goosed” him. The legislator’s dignity exploded with a scream. He turned around to confront his tormentor. The embarrassed lady apologized. “Oh--I’m sorry--I thought you were someone else!”
A good-looking, well-knit young man, employed by one of the government agencies, was showering in the bathroom of the YMCA, where he lived, some years ago.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw another man in the room, but thought nothing of it, as the bathroom is public.
When he came out of the shower the other was fixedly staring at him. Our friend grew embarrassed, and was not especially put at ease by the other’s appearance. He was an elderly Oriental.
Our friend inquired what was doing. The Oriental, in a singsong voice, replied:
“You like go bed with rich Chinee lady?”
The chap was going to bop the guy, but first he tried to find out what it was all about It developed that a high-placed woman in the Embassy liked American boys, sent her servant to recruit them in places like the Y, after having them looked over. What a switch on the oldie about “Is it true what they say about Chinese women?”
The son of a famous Protestant clergyman worked for the Maritime Commission, where he became friendly with the commercial attachés of many countries. He found some would take loot. This troubled him. He discussed it with an older man who had a desk in the same office.
This older fellow used to run errands for Lepke and Gurrah and their famed Murder, Inc. After Bill O’Dwyer destroyed the ring, he got a job with Uncle Sam.
He advised the young fellow to grab what he could while the grabbing was good. So the minister’s son became the bagman for several embassies.
About this time the Chinese bought some gunboats and let out word they were in the market for repairs in American shipyards. The yards were in a post-war depression, needed business. Immediately, representatives called at the Chinese embassy. An official there, who spoke better English than most of us, mumbled in pidgin and routed all inquiries to “the young man in the Maritime Commission, in whom we have implicit faith.”
The young fellow collected more than half a million in cash as the go-between, then beat it with the loot.
DENMARK--Ambassador Henrick de Kauffman and his family are so proper it hurts. The Embassy, at 2839 Woodland Drive, is like a morgue.
EGYPT--They are still laughing at this at 2301 Massachusetts Avenue. An Egyptian officer came to Washington recently on a buying mission. His embassy bespoke the American authorities to give him the A-1 treatment, the best. The Navy boys took him to Charleston to see the ships and set him up in style. The visitor wanted a blonde. But he was black, and Charleston is down South. This posed a problem. They finally found a woman, but had to take her in through the back door.
The Egyptian was insulted. He returned home without buying.
FRANCE--No Parisian spice about the Henri Bonnets; however, there is no doubt the wife of a very exalted member of the staff is a Communist drop and transmission belt.
Mme. Bonnet has family connections interested in the sale of Lanson champagne. Important friends and guests pose with her, popping a bottle of the labeled bubble-water.
Latest to fall for the publicity gag were Averell Harriman and his wife, photographed with Mme. Bonnet while opening a bottle of the champagne. It got into all the papers.
GREAT BRITAIN--The embassy, at 3100 Massachusetts Avenue, under the Right Honorable Sir Oliver Shewell Franks, Knight Commander of the Bath, C.B.E., and Lady Franks is as dull and austere as England itself. But a former British Ambassador had as his lover his Russian valet.
ICELAND--Plenty of problems at the Icelandic legation. Lovely Margret Thors, debutante daughter of Minister Thor Thors, got too friendly with thrice-divorced Blaine Clark, Washington playboy, so Ma and Pa packed her off to Iceland, where Clark couldn’t follow without a visa, which the old man wouldn’t give. Margret promised to be a good girl and was permitted to return, but has to behave.
IRAQ--As we write, Abdullah Ibraham Bakar, Iraqui minister, has a headache. That’s because Cham Chum Sesi was arrested for murder in his basement room of the Iraq Chancellory, 2205 Massachusetts Avenue. Muhmud Rodani, chief janitor, had been stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife. Sesi told police he killed the janitor because he had made repeated improper advances to him. The diplomatic set talked about a lovers’ quarrel there when a new homo came from Iraq.
NORWAY--The dean of the Washington Diplomatic Corps is Ambassador Wilhelm Munthe de Morgenstierne. The Norwegian Embassy, 3401 Massachusetts Avenue, generates no gossip.
SAUDI ARABIA--This country is orthodox Mohammedan, goes in big for polygamy. The Ambassador, Sheikh Asad Al-Faquih, had no desire to insult America by bringing extra wives with him, was afraid to affront his wives by choosing one and leaving the others at home. The result is there are no women in the Embassy at 2800 Woodland Drive, or in the homes of any of the attachés. When they want parties, they go to New York, or to the State Department, where Protocol provides.
SPAIN--America and Spain long exchanged no ambassadors. Don Eduardo Propper de Callejon, Spanish Minister, was nominally in charge of the Embassy. The wily Spaniards got around having no ambassador here by sending Don Jose de Lequerica, former Foreign Minister, as “Inspector General of all Spanish Embassies in the Western Hemisphere.” However, the farthest he got from Washington since 1947 was Cuba.
Lequerica is a personality kid and a lobby genius. He entertains lavishly. His conniving paid off with the Spanish loan, and in time with full recognition. Ambassador Lequerica had cultivated the law firm of Sullivan, Cromwell and Dulles, until the 1948 election returns were in and Dulles was out--as potential Secretary of State. He switched to Max Truitt, son-in-law of Vice President Barkley. Smart guy.
Minister Propper de Callejon is married to an English Rothschild and is as proper as his name.
SWEDEN--Ambassador and Mrs. Erik Boehman are no exception to the rule that all Scandinavian embassies are tame and respectable. Theirs, at 3900 Nebraska Avenue, is.
TURKEY--The Turkish Ambassador, Feridun Cemal Erkin, insists on decorum in his Embassy at 1606 23rd Street. Turks there put on gloves and are fully clothed when they go to bed with their wives, an Orthodox Mohammedan custom.
UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS--The Russians used to be the big spenders. Parties in the great white Embassy at 1125 16th Street were Washington’s most brilliant affairs. Invitations were eagerly sought after. The Russian government paid all expenses of the Ambassador and his staff, even bridge losses. The Russkies were terrific gamblers and few locals could go along in games with them. Once when a Washington businessman was asked to play bridge at 25 cents a point he pleaded, “I’m only a capitalist, not a proletarian.”
There was always plenty of food and liquor in the Red retreat. All members of the local press corps were remembered with presents, especially beluga caviar. But now the Russians don’t go out except to official functions, and that goes for their satellites, too. And they travel only in pairs, one to spy on the other.
The Russians and their slave states bring their own females from abroad, because they’re afraid to trust American women, Communist ones included, any more. In the good old days, the consecrated American left-wingers used to go to the Soviet Embassy, where they proved their party loyalty by getting in the hay with the men from Moscow. After many frightened American Reds got religion and betrayed the cause, Soviet diplomats were forbidden to Ostermoor with American women. This did not cause too much hardship, because most American Communist women are no dream-girls; even the Russians shrank from them.
Almost every member of the embassy set has a wife or a concubine posing as a wife with him. In Russian Naval Headquarters, a few handsome young orderlies are being used. There are said to be few homosexuals in Russia, where perversion is strictly punished, except for “Kremlin and world revolution.”
As one humorist remarked, “There are no fags in Russia, because they like goats; but where can they find goats in Washington?”
As a further check on their own people, members of the Soviet Embassy staff are not permitted to live alone. Even couples must share apartments with others.
The Russians have been getting special kid-gloving in Washington since 1933, when the Embassy became the fashionable place to go. At Teheran, Stalin asked President Roosevelt for permission to set up a shortwave radio transmitter in the U. S. to enable his boys to contact Moscow directly. Roosevelt sent a memo to General Marshall, instructing him to cooperate. Marshall wrote back that the law absolutely forbade any foreign government to maintain a transmitter in this country. F. D. R. penciled across it, “Do it anyway.”
Consequently, an entire wing of the Pentagon was turned over to the Commies, where they sent over a million words a week. The President ordered Military Intelligence not to try to break the Russian code, but some officers took their oath to defend the Constitution literally, and overrode the President without his knowledge. As these words are being written, thugs of the NKVD are sitting 24 hours a day with ear-phones and transmitters in Russian Naval and Military headquarters at Massachusetts Avenue and Kalorama Road.
When an embassy wife isn’t worrying about a change in government at home, which may mean the recall of her husband, she’s worrying about getting her daughter properly married. A lot of the debutantes of the embassy set are beginning to get American ideas after attending American schools. The foreign aristocrats don’t like it.
Embassy wives have rarely been known to fool around. On the whole, embassy children behave themselves. When they don’t, they get packed off to schools in their own countries.
With the exception of the Iron Curtain diplomatic slums, there is considerable camaraderie among attachés of the various embassies, though usually on equal strata. They go dancing in the hotels, visit at each other’s homes, ride and play golf together. Some time ago, an attempt was made to start a United Nations Club at R and 19th Streets, by Meredith Howard, who is the twin sister of Mrs. Teddy Hays. Hays, a big Democrat and White House intimate, is assistant to Federal Security Administrator Oscar Ewing, the socialized-medicine man. The idea was to get younger members of the embassies together, but it blew up when Miss Howard left town with no public explanation.
When it comes to con games, the diplomats and foreign missions could show Yellow Kid Weil something.
Washington and New York are constantly being dazzled by members of foreign missions who come here talking about purchases in hundreds of millions (the dough to be put up by Uncle Sam).
Salesmen, sure-thing boys and big executives turn on every tap to entertain the foreigners and grab their business.
Girls are provided, expensive gifts are passed, and plenty of money changes hands. Then, suddenly, the mission packs up, leaves without buying, says it can’t find what it wants.
Cooks and butlers in every Washington embassy get kickbacks from the merchants. Groceries, meats and other household goods are overpriced on a regular scale for the embassies, with a rebate going monthly to the aforementioned functionaries.
Lower-echelon foreigners have their wild parties in the Washington field offices of the United Nations. There is no central installation of the international body in the capital, but offices are spread out around the town.
One of the principal places for after-work revelry is in the U.N. offices in the Longfellow Building, on Connecticut Avenue, where booze and babes are available every day after five.
Employes of the embassies, foreign missions and the U.N. and such carry special cards which exempt them from the payment of all U.S. taxes such as DC sales, Federal amusement tax, etc. They are, of course, exempt from income tax, too.
It’s a racket in Washington to borrow a friend’s card when making any expensive purchase like a mink coat, where the sales and luxury tax swindle comes to 22 per cent by this means.
A racket begun in UNRRA and now going on in other foreign aid organizations is engaged in by top administration figures and important diplomats:
Most of the durable goods aid sent abroad goes with the proviso that it must be resold in the currency of the country to which it is consigned, and the money must be used to provide local home relief, such as food, clothes, etc.
So the way it works is this: The embassy wangles a shipment of, shall we say, locomotives. They arrive in the country of destination. They are then duly and dutifully resold in the currency of the country. But the law doesn’t say for how much.
Some locomotives were sold in Greece for 10 drachmas each. The drachma runs about 1,000 to the dollar. The local poor get the ten drachmas. The local political bosses, gangsters and crooked diplomats split the resale profits with their opposite numbers in America.
That’s big racketeering. A couple of Washington sisters have a petty, but profitable one. They operate a so-called Embassy social list and charge chumps to get on it, dangling invites to diplomatic balls as the bait, which they obtain from legation employes for a “cut.”
Some fall for it. Our confidential advice is, don’t pay. You can crash almost any Embassy party--but who wants to?
