Washington Confidential 26 – Mortimer · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 26Part 2 · TERROR FROM TENNESSEE
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 26
Part 2 · TERROR FROM TENNESSEE
MortimerEnglish
The House and the Senate have unlimited power and initiative in one function only--they can investigate anything.
No President can veto a resolution for an investigation or by law curb its activities or its scope. Theoretically, the purpose is to acquire facts on which to base future legislation. Some of the mightiest of our historical moves have sprung from such inquiries. Giants have risen in the course of them. Harry Truman would probably have remained an obscure little nonentity were it not that he became chairman of a comparatively inconsequential Senate body which got to asking questions.
One of the surest ways to grab public attention is for a legislator to propose a resolution for a special investigation. If it passes it is not submitted to a standing committee, but its author is by established custom chosen as its chairman.
This is the story of a special Senatorial investigating committee. In many ways it is typical of such things under the Fair Deal, where politics can strangle this last independent prerogative of Congress.
The central character of this tale is Estes Kefauver, who sprung a Senate motion to investigate crime. Your authors have a personal property right in this venture. For Senator Kefauver had read Chicago Confidential, and what he found there made his hair stand on end. This is no conjecture. His resolution was prompted by what we had discovered and published.
He was sincere, impulsive and ambitious--if you can call a yen to be Vice-President an ambition. He is our friend, and as such we wish him well and, as Americans who know a little more than most of their fellow-citizens about what is going on, we cheered the possibilities of an untrammeled turning of the turf that would show up officially any important portion of the staggering facts for which we risked our lives.
Kefauver began bravely. He realized that he had lightning bolts in both hands; that he not only could become one of the foremost men of his time, but that he could accomplish priceless service to his country. With the infinite power that was his, he could expose and perhaps destroy the Syndicate and the Mafia which rules it, and save us from the creeping, leaping conspiracy of criminals which already in many elements of our life has superseded constituted government.
But he wants to be Vice-President.
At this writing, he is 47; Barkley is 73. Political wisdom would dictate that the second man on the next national Democratic ticket should come from a border state. Kefauver is from Tennessee. He became a headliner when he licked boss Ed Crump. He is of Dutch-American stock and a Protestant.
He has four years more on his Senate term and could be re-elected. But for a national nomination one needs a majority of the delegates at a convention. Delegates are party men, designated by the party.
He had no more than taken his first bold steps when the party went to work on him. No Democrat can fight the Mafia and get anything from most Democrats except obstruction. They are so intimately and intricately interwoven with the underworld plunderworld through all political strata that they must protect it.
Kefauver was too naive to foresee this. He comes from one of the few states where there is no gangsterism except in picayune city and county affairs, and in those the Republicans share the chicken-feed rewards. Kefauver campaigned in a coonskin cap and unhorsed the Memphis machine, which had no great state-wide strength from within and no tie-ups to bring it help from without. But the explosion that followed when his bill passed rocked the whole national party.
Kefauver, in his innocence, had read our book of disclosures, but like thousands of others, he failed to grasp the significance of the political forces which have become integrated with the system, without which it could not have spread, and to which it has contributed and does contribute incalculable money, leadership and votes. It was inconceivable to him that mayors and governors he knew and many of the statesmanlike Senators with whom he mingled, could be beholden to, not to say slaves of, swarthy, sinister men, many of them ex-convicts, who traffic in bodies of women, making and supplying dope-fiends, dealing in extortion, smuggling, bootlegging, hijacking, bribing and murdering in the principal cities and states of the union; that these hyenas were a controlling influence in nominations and elections; that they owned vast commercial and industrial enterprises, labor unions, even some newspapers, and that their pirate hands gripped the steering wheels of enormous financial fleets.
He read it. But he couldn’t believe it. And what he did believe of it he couldn’t digest.
Now he finds himself in the middle of a giant whitewash. He is the chump whose good name is used to shield the key figures of the Mafia and obfuscate their tie-up with the big city Democratic machines. He does not admit it publicly but he is heartbroken.
Senate Republicans, seeking an issue, jumped in to support the proposed investigation. Kefauver’s bill at once became a hot potato the Democrats couldn’t drop.
Dave Niles, Bill Boyle, J. Howard McGrath, and Scott Lucas huddled. They found it was too late to sidetrack the proposed investigation; it had to go on, but with “sensible” safeguards. Suggestions that the probe be transferred to other committees were waved aside as impractical; it was necessary to have a front for this and Kefauver was perfect for the job. He is a man of personal honesty, with no embarrassing machine or underworld connections.
The committee was voted, but with the surprising proviso that the Vice President should name the minority party members. This was unprecedented. Minority leaders always choose their own committee members. The purpose of this tactic was to deal Michigan Senator Homer Ferguson, the Republican’s top investigator, out. Membership was limited to five, three Democrats and two Republicans. Thereupon Vice President Barkley followed orders, named two GOPers, one harmless. Both were in the middle of violent primary campaigns, fighting for political survival. It was known they could not spend much time with the committee. Wiley, a good man, is a ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee. He was kept close to that post by the Korean mess. Julius Cahn, Wiley’s intelligent aide, was rendered impotent. And Tobey is more a New Dealer than most Democrats. He got campaign support from the administration, and in payment gratuitously but muddle-headedly blamed gambling in New York on Dewey.
The motor of a Senatorial investigating committee is its counsel and the staff. The members have other duties, must attend other committee meetings, must be on the floor for roll-calls. And they are not usually professional prosecutors. They are at the mercy of their staffs.
That’s when the shenanigans began. Kefauver had no experience with such shenanigans. He didn’t know whom to retain. Tom Murphy, Alger Hiss’ nemesis and later Police Commissioner of New York, was recommended. But Murphy was persona non grata in Washington because he had guts enough not to throw the Hiss prosecution, after he had learned that would please the Attorney General’s office.
Dave Niles told Kefauver to ask Ferdinand Pecora for advice. Pecora, then a Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, was getting by on the reputation of having exposed the money barons of Wall Street in the early 1930’s. Pecora is a thoroughgoing New Dealer and Kefauver is one of the faithful. They failed to tell the man from Tennessee that Pecora is Bronx boss Ed Flynn’s man. Flynn is head of the machine in which Frank Costello is a power. Pecora attended Costello’s celebrated party at the Copacabana nightclub, with half the local bench, a number of jurists who owed their robes to Costello.
Pecora recommended his protégé, Rudolph Halley, of the law firm of Fulton, Walter and Halley, for counsel and Felix Frankfurter phoned to confirm it. Halley had been on the staff of the Truman Committee when Fulton was its chief counsel, so he looked good to Estes as an experienced prober. But Halley had been an attorney for the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, in which it was alleged underworld characters owned stock. Kefauver told your reporters he had heard a rumor Halley might have represented them, and had asked him about it before hiring him. Kefauver looked us in the eyes and stated, “Halley said it wasn’t so. Naturally, I took his word for it.”
After the Kefauver Committee had been functioning some months, Halley admitted to your reporters before witnesses, that he knew there were large underworld holdings in that company, which had been his client. We have a sworn affidavit which reads as follows:
“Mr. Halley stated that the statement in the book Chicago Confidential, to the effect that the underworld syndicate has bundles of stock in the Hudson & Manhattan tubes, was substantially correct; that it was his own personal knowledge, as former counsel for the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, that the underworld owned large blocks of stock in that company.”
After a change in management, Halley was dismissed from the H & M, and went to work for the Kefauver Committee at $120 a week. The new management of the railroad said it had virtually eliminated suspicious stockholders and emasculated shady directors who could not be fired.
Among the investigators hired by the committee were ex-cops, disappointed lawyers and the usual Washington hanger-on-ers, recommended for jobs by influential friends.
Kefauver’s principal source of information about the underworld was what he had read in Chicago Confidential, He knew no more. He asked Mortimer to take a leave of absence from his newspaper and act as paid adviser to the committee. Mortimer accepted, but said that he would take no compensation. Over the weekend, Kefauver withdrew his offer in a telegram in which he blamed other Senators. He said they feared other newspapermen would be offended. That was an alibi, quickly arranged when influential Democrats vetoed the idea. But he took advice from Nat Perlow, editor of the Police Gazette!
At the first open hearing of the committee, subpenaed gamblers were represented by Morris Shenker, St. Louis lawyer, formerly on the Missouri Democratic committee. As a result of his good work in obtaining campaign donations, Shenker was named by Bill Boyle to the Democratic finance committee. He hastily resigned after the deal was exposed in Lait’s column.
Every effort was made to keep Kefauver concentrated on gambling. Syndicate heads know the nation is not shocked over bookmaking. Whenever witnesses or informers got hot on narcotics, the spine of the Syndicate system, or began to talk about the huge investments of the underworld in legitimate business, they were brushed off. There were rumors of fixes, payoffs and other such skulduggery, though Kefauver was absolutely in the clear. But whenever he was warned such things were happening, Kefauver, a softie at heart, who believes evil of no one, said it was impossible.
Though he promised your reporters his committee would hold open hearings in New York and Chicago before election, at which no punches would be pulled, he folded up like a frightened puppy. After one day in New York, at which no one of importance was questioned, the committee adjourned until after the election, with the statement that Joe Adonis, who had been allegedly sought for 90 days, was unavailable. Your reporters saw Adonis every night at the corner of 50th Street and Broadway while committee investigators were supposed to be searching for him. While the great man-hunt was supposed to be on, Adonis voluntarily surrendered himself to New Jersey authorities who wanted to prosecute him for gambling.
When asked why Costello hadn’t been called before election, a committee spokesman stated “We have nothing to ask Mr. Costello.”
Similar wariness was shown in Chicago. When former police captain Dan Gilbert, who was Jake Arvey’s hand-picked candidate for sheriff of Cook County, was on the stand at a secret hearing, he was questioned about his wealth. Your authors had exposed him as the richest cop in the world, a millionaire. Gilbert’s salary had never topped $9,000 a year, yet he admitted at the closed hearing he owned more than $350,000--which he said he had acquired through “speculation.” The committee dropped it then. Senator Kefauver, in an interview, said, “Captain Gilbert was a forthright witness.” When the Chicago Sun Times, a Democratic New Deal newspaper, got hold of the minutes of the secret hearing and splashed the text on Page 1 a few days before election, Kefauver threatened to hold someone in contempt for the leak. Yet the committee did not explain why this information of public interest had been bottled up before election, and why Gilbert’s bank accounts and securities had not been scrutinized.
Later, Kefauver imperiously “directed” Eugene C. Pulliam, publisher of the Indianapolis Star and News, “to discontinue” publication of a series exposing gambling as revealed by previous committee investigations, under penalty of a contempt citation.
While Estes was threatening other newspapermen with jail, columnist Drew Pearson, his fervent supporter, was permitted to obtain access to secret committee records, including highly confidential income tax returns.
Wherever the committee held hearings, its staff tried to pick on the little guys, fingered as the goats. The procedure in Miami was to put six local Jewish bookmakers out of business. The Mafia was muscling in on them anyway. The dispossessed were scheduled to be closed up so the Chicago Sicilian mob would have clear sailing in Miami as soon as the hullabaloo about the crime investigation blew over next year.
Only half-hearted efforts were made to locate important figures. Where, at any time, any were questioned or threatened with contempt, it was because the situation was so wide open that no cover-up could be attempted without bringing the newspapers down.
At this writing, Harry Russell, Chicago hoodlum, is the only recalcitrant witness brought to trial. He’s a small potato, a Jew taking the rap for the Mafia.
The position of the Committee has been that witnesses could refuse to incriminate themselves only on federal offenses, but that if it was state prosecution they feared, they had no immunity--tenuous reasoning any way you look at it, though many lawyers say it’s legal.
But Kefauver has been letting his enthusiasm get the better of him, and recently stated at an open hearing, “Don’t think we’re going to let you get away with this. We are working closely with local prosecutors and will turn our records over, particularly where anyone defies this committee.”
Though no comment appeared in the papers, the mob lawyers knew he had played into their hands. He might have made the contempt stick before; now, however, since he himself has stated he’s acting as an agent for the states--though unofficial--it’s a million to one not one recalcitrant witness will be convicted.
The only state in which the committee got tough before election was Pennsylvania, where the municipal machines are Republican. In New York, boss Flynn and Tammany were unmolested, and the onus was put on Dewey for having tolerated gambling in Saratoga. There was no mention that when Lehman, F.D.R.’s “good right arm,” was governor, gambling was just as wide open there, and more so.
One of your reporters remembers seeing a limousine with New York State license Number 1 parked under the portico of Piping Rock, a notorious and expensive Saratoga gambling joint run by Luciano. That was Governor Lehman’s car. It is possible his chauffeur was inside playing dominoes.
But the strategy of the Democratic brain-trust miscarried. People in New York knew Costello was running the town and trying to get control of the state, even when the Senate committee, with all its power and money, fiddled and twiddled. Chicagoans knew the Fischettis and Capones, Boss Arvey, Dan Gilbert and Senator Scott Lucas were political bedfellows, which charge was aired daily in the papers during the 1950 campaign.
Wherever the committee gave the Democrats a clean bill, the people rebelled and kicked them out, most frequently on just that issue. But, where the committee had tried to show the underworld is tied up with Republicans, as in Pennsylvania, the GOP scored a great victory.
The two Democratic members of the committee, in addition to Kefauver, are Lester Hunt, of Wyoming, and Herbert O’Conor of Maryland. Where Hunt comes from, “crime” means cattle-rustling and claim-jumping. O’Conor, however, is the Democratic leader of the Maryland organization, which is in cahoots with one of the tightest and biggest Mafia concentrations in the country. Not only were no hearings held in Maryland before election, but Kefauver refused to send investigators into Prince Georges County, described heretofore as one of the most vicious crime spots of the country, even when citizens implored him to.
Instead of cracking down on murderers, procurers and dope-peddlers, the committee wasted time, money and effort on an investigation of comics. An effort was made to label the strips as the chief cause of America’s crimes.
The Senate investigating committee has, through ignorance or by design, been playing directly into the hands of the Mafia. Most Syndicate key figures no longer have anything personally to do with gambling, except as bankers and protectors. Gambling is a seasonal business and investigations and clean-ups are discounted in advance, like rain in baseball economy and warm weather in Sun Valley. These catastrophes are averaged off over a long period. The computations contemplate temporary droughts at the street level. Except for a few who will go to the can for a few months and be paid for their time, nothing is disturbed. Bookmakers still take bets right outside the Senate committee room.
If no gambling casinos run in Miami this winter they will next winter. Meanwhile, those who want to gamble will fly to Havana, where the same mob operates the wheels and crap games. Anyway, you can still bet on the nags in Miami, clean-up or no. At this writing, at least two fully equipped casinos are operating in the area.
But while the committee was grabbing front pages with its gambling exposures, the big boys were immune in the affairs that really matter to them, like manipulation of the stock market, black marketing, smuggling, counterfeiting, dope and other forms of profitable deviltry, the proceeds of which they invest in real estate and securities, so that as of now, the crime cartel is more potent in the money marts of the world than all the highbinders so long hissed at, the “international bankers.”
After Col. George White, Commr. Anslinger’s ace investigator, on loan to the Committee, was withdrawn, Scott Lucas high-pressured Truman to penalize White. White had turned up evidence that beat Lucas in Illinois.
Purposely or not, Halley even helped the giggling gangsters get rid of the few rivals who remained. Few Sicilians got a going-over; but the heat was turned on the handful of Jewish and Irish cheaters who survived.
Personally, Kefauver is a delightful and appealing personage, tall, a former football-player with the charm of an F.D.R. and the fine, delicate features of a Woodrow Wilson. He may well be your next Vice President. After that--well, any American boy with no such start could be. His friends kid him and accuse him of saying “Good morning, Mr. President” every morning when he looks in the mirror as he shaves. Kefauver frowns at this. He says, “The Chief in the White House will get sore.”
Kefauver’s main weakness is that he is a Don Quixote for “causes” (except FEPC), has too much energy and tries to do too many things. He is on almost every regular and special committee it is possible for a Senator to make, so hasn’t time to do justice to any. He is in modest circumstances, cannot be bought or bribed, though he could have had millions to throw the investigation--as it is being thrown anyway. Many believe some of that money went elsewhere, without his knowledge.
An employe of the committee, whose name will not be divulged by us, disgusted by what went on, unburdened himself. He said “a fix was made in Miami” to relieve a certain wanted hoodlum from testifying; and that another deal was put over in Chicago to protect some of the most important Mafistas. A fund was raised in Hollywood to choke off disclosures.
One investigator had as a chief recommendation, other than brief service with the F.B.I., that he had been a cop in a mid-Western city. With this background he was sent in to “bust” the mob in New York, a job that many District Attorneys couldn’t do. He knew so little of New York that he had to ask how to get to Times Square.
This investigator, “unable” to find Joe Adonis during a 90-day search, was very diligent when it came to finding himself a new, high-paying job. During the course of an investigation into mob control of legitimate business, it was testified that one Bill Giglio, now under indictment on a tax rap, had “muscled” into a sugar and candy company during the last war, and that as a result of such activities he now owned a research and development laboratory, the entire output of which was being sold to a large and respected chemical corporation.
While going over Giglio’s books the Kefauver man naturally had occasion to call on the large corporation, and he ingratiated himself with its officers, who were not called to testify in Washington. The result was that, right smack in the middle of the Kefauver investigations, this dick quit to head up the plant-security set-up of the big corporation, which now has a lot of war contracts.
But the payoff is that, a couple of years ago, before the Kefauver Committee was thought of, the same fellow was in charge of security at a Long Island plant making restricted military products. There it was discovered that the future Kefauver agent was protecting the bookmakers in the plant, and he was booted out after the F.B.I. was tipped off. The book at this plant was operated by Joe Adonis. Kefauver was so informed, but did not fire his agent.
Federal and state enforcement agencies are squawking that the mob is getting access to confidential files through leaks in the committee.
But if the committee had wanted to probe, the goods were in reach. Individuals all over the country sought to put facts in its hands. Whenever possible, those who managed the investigations looked the other way.
Bill Drury, the honest Chicago ex-police captain, who was slain by gunmen last September, might have been alive now were it not for this committee. We were in constant communication with Drury, in fact Jack Lait received a letter from him in New York the morning after he was assassinated. Almost his last act was mailing it. When the committee first got under way, your authors suggested to Kefauver that he hire Drury and his partner, Captain Tom Connelly, as investigators. These men knew more first-hand about the underworld than almost anyone alive. Counsel Halley interposed. He told us the men were not “reliable,” because they had been fired from the Chicago police force. That was their chief recommendation to us. They had been rooked out of the crookedest force in the country because they were fearless, honest and untouchable.
We told Kefauver the only way he could convince us his investigation was on the up-and-up was to hire these men. He promised us he would. That was in July, 1950.
Meanwhile, Drury and Connelly sought to contact Kefauver, failing which they tried to get in touch with Halley and the chief investigator of the committee. They hated the mob so hotly, they offered to work for nothing, though they were poor men. Had Drury been retained as an investigator, he’d still be living. No cop has ever been killed except in actual combat. The underworld never murders a policeman who is going about his business. But an ex-cop--yoho.
A lot of misinformation has been published about what preceded the actual assassination, last September 25. After his death, committee employes realized they would have to explain Drury’s frequent phone calls. A story was dreamed up in Chicago to the effect that Drury was seeking “protection” and that Halley, after a couple of weeks’ consideration, had agreed to arrange for it. That runs for the end book. Drury never asked anyone for protection. He was the bravest man we ever knew. He often traveled without a gun, but the mobsters feared his fists more than bullets. We spoke to him a few days before he died. He was not frightened. He was angry. He told us he had been trying to contact committee investigators for weeks to give them information. He said that ever since he had outlined to them what he was prepared to prove he got brushed off when he called again.
The Democratic Chicago Sun-Times charged categorically that Drury was rubbed out because someone on the Kefauver Committee “leaked” to the mobsters what Drury said he had the goods on. He told us his investigations implicated someone on the committee’s staff.
A few days after the murder, Kefauver phoned us long distance to tell us to get all our records and correspondence concerning Drury together as he was going to subpena us at once, in an effort to solve the cowardly crime. That was October 1, 1950. As these words were being typed in February, 1951, the subpena remained unserved and the assassination unpunished.
On the other hand, Lait and Mortimer were under considerable pressure from important personages, Republicans as well as Democrats, “to lay off Halley,” and place the blame for the miscarriage of the Kefauver committee on the chairman instead of on his staff. We refused to be bought, bribed, threatened or intimidated.
By resolution, the original life of the committee was until February 28, but it is probable that additional hearings will be authorized for March.
The plan, as this went to press, was to save all the fireworks for a final blow-out in New York, at which the glamor pusses of the underworld, such as Virginia Hill, dubbed by us “Mafia Rose,” would be called for the publicity value. Virginia was served with much hullabaloo in September, but was saved six months to hypo the last act. Frank Costello was also slated to be called if he “cared to talk.”
The big boys have brazenly stood on their “constitutional rights” on the advice of high-priced counsel who assured them their chances against conviction on contempt, which is a misdemeanor punishable by a year in a Federal “country club,” were about a hundred to one.
It was decided by the Mafia Grand Council that if things got too hot, Costello would have to be the goat. He has been getting too much publicity for the conservative rulers of the Unione, who still live in cold-water tenements with fat old-country wives.
They resent the airs put on by the glamor-boy hoods, who, they feel, and with some justification, are putting the finger of the law on the syndicate.
One Mafia faction is for going further. In the event the spotlight hits Costello his number is up. He has so been told by Tony Ricci, alias Goebels, who manages many such things.
We have not seen it, nor have we any confidential information about the contents of the committee’s final report, but we are willing to bet it will be along these lines:
1) There is crime.
2) No political party has the monopoly on it.
3) There seems to be a Mafia.
4) Gamblers should pay their income tax.
5) Kids should go to Sunday school.
6) Communities should appoint Crime Prevention Societies.
7) Because of the international situation, let’s forget it and call the whole thing off.
The plight of honest Senator Kefauver is not unique. Wherever possible, the underworld uses such characters to do their dirty work. They fall for it, probably because dreamers and social planners are gullible, not practical like their more conservative brethren. That’s why political bosses frequently back them and surprise semi-suspicious suckers who think they know things.
For instance, when the late Boss Kelly of Chicago, one of the most ruthless thieves who ever lived, thought he saw the handwriting on the wall, he nominated good men to run for Governor and Senator. At no time after Adlai Stevenson went to Springfield and Professor Paul Douglas got to Washington did these Utopians ever open their mouths or do anything, or even complain about the iniquities in Chicago, though we told plenty and a lot of other dirt wasn’t confidential.
He hand-picked as his successor Martin Kennelly, a mild old bachelor who didn’t know when it was Wednesday. This was a “businessmen’s candidate.” The mob and their Democratic sidekicks gave him the business.
Kefauver even has a soft spot for accused Commies. He was one of the seven Senators to vote against the McCarran Bill, which Marcantonio opposed in the House. Douglas, who didn’t have guts enough to vote no, because that would have imperiled Lucas’ chance in Illinois, did hop in to uphold the President’s veto.
The only Senator running for reelection who opposed the McCarran Bill all the way was Lehman, a ticket-mate of mob-backed Pecora and Lynch, an old codger of eminent respectability and Wall Street millions, who is and always was “safe”--he’s too wrapped up in Park Avenue dignity and too flattered by public honors to see or understand that with his silk-gloved hands he pulls hot chestnuts out of the oven for the dirtiest crooks, traitors and political plotters in the land.
