not chosen a dynamic attorney, this committee would have been as
innocuous as most others. As it was, it uncovered plenty that should
have rocked the nation and shocked the Congress. It was no fault of
Davis or Hyman I. Fischbach, committee counsel, that it did not. But
Congress, as expected, ignored the report and skipped the record.
Davis and Fischbach came up with suggestions--some far-reaching--for
a reorganization of the District police, court system and method of
prosecution. But to guarantee that nothing would be done about it
the Democratic leadership put road-blocks in the Committee’s path.
Nevertheless it is now before the Congress. It will go the same route
others have, or establish a precedent.
Fischbach, with many years’ experience conducting such investigations
for other Congressional committees, turned out what a committee counsel
should be--in happy contrast to the sad picture of the Kefauver group
which was operating at the same time. No one could see him getting
far with his beggarly budget. It hardly allowed for an office staff,
let alone investigators. But Fischbach hired John Woog, a 27-year-old
war veteran and member of the New York bar, as chief investigator
and practically the whole staff. Working 18 to 20 hours a day they
uncovered enough rottenness, funny business and stupidity to fill more
than 1200 closely printed pages of terrifying testimony.
When Fischbach started stepping on some sacred toes the ceiling fell
in. Rumors were whispered around the House Office Building that
Fischbach would be canned. Plenty of Congressmen were a-tremble;
Fischbach was getting too hot. One who tried to throw a barrier in
his way was Representative Wayne L. Hays, a Democrat from Ohio, whose
Congressional district includes tributary territory dominated by the
Akron and Youngstown mob which is ruled by Frank and Tony Milano,
cited before the Kefauver Committee as organizers of the infamous
Mayfield Road gang, Ohio branch of the Mafia. Hays tried to hold up
money for the committee unless Fischbach were fired. He was joined by
Mrs. Mary Norton, who retired at the end of the 81st Congress, and who
represented Hudson County, New Jersey, and was sent to Washington by
the notorious Boss Hague. She did not stand for re-election after Hague
was run out of Jersey politics.
Another who opposed Fischbach was Edna Flannery Kelly, of Brooklyn,
who was chosen by the Democratic leadership to spearhead the campaign.
Mrs. Kelly, who serves by grace of Irwin Steingut, minority leader of
the New York State Assembly, has been an errand girl for the Brooklyn
bosses ever since her election to Congress.
Mrs. Kelly’s reluctance to expose crime in the District may be
understandable to New Yorkers who know that among her constituents are
some of the most evil gangsters who ever slit a throat or lived off the
proceeds of a prostitute.
These three button-holed other Democratic Congressmen and said they
were opposed to Fischbach because, as a New Yorker, he should have
been cleared through the New York County Democratic Committee. That
Committee’s other name is Tammany Hall. To Davis the mere mention of
Tammany Hall is like defaming the Stars and Bars. Lack of Tammany
endorsement was the highest recommendation. On such little things is
history made.
It still remains for the Congress to follow the Davis recommendations.
Meanwhile, all the law-breakers who hid while he was probing slid back
into business as soon as the “probe” was over.
Few solons really want home rule, not even Northern New Deal
Congressmen who scream for it because the Negro press does.
Most of the members shirk the committee meetings, because while
membership gives them great prestige locally, it means nothing
nationally or to their constituents. The District Committee is
a “minor” one, and membership on it does not count against the
legislator’s allowed minimum of committee appointments.
Few remain on it for long, and assignment to it is, in a manner, in the
way of punishment. First-timers, especially in the Senate, are hazed
that way.
A typical majority member of the House District Committee is
Representative Arthur G. Klein, of New York City’s 19th district. We
give him to you not because he is the most active or prominent, but
because he is closest to our home. His district begins a block away.
Klein, an exasperating and annoying pleader for left-wing causes, has
been on the public payroll for 16 of his 46 years, the first six spent
on the legal staff of the S.E.C. He has been in Congress since 1941.
Klein’s district, which runs between the Bowery and the East River,
below 40th St., contains not only the worst slums in New York, but
some of the newest and finest housing developments, as well as large
hunks of the city’s financial district. He promoted the former for his
constituents at the expense of the latter.
Also in it is Manhattan’s downtown Mafia stronghold--parts of Little
Italy--whose voters sent him to Congress and demand favors in return.
Operating in his district is New York’s most evil and notorious
fairy-haunt, the disgusting 181 Club, at that address on Second Ave.,
where every cabaret law and ordinance on the books is fractured
nightly. This profitable venture is overseen by Alan Bono, a cousin of
Joe Adonis, and a contributor to Klein’s campaign funds.
Former Congresswoman Norton served 10 of her 26 years in Washington on
the District Committee. At this writing she has strong backing for the
about-to-be vacant post of District Commissioner and may so be named
before this reaches print.
Even when not a member of the committee, Mrs. Norton always had a
soft spot in her heart for it, and frequently interested herself in
District affairs, being given a respectful hearing because of “the
woman’s angle.”
But Mrs. Norton was and is and always has been a creature of Boss
Hague, one of the most corrupt and thievingest municipal overlords
in the world. At this moment the Hudson County grand jury is working
overtime grinding out indictments against ex-officials appointed by him.
Many Hague specialties were exported to Washington during her tenure as
mayor ex officio, among them a high tax-rate, municipal corruption and
official protection for gamblers.
Mrs. Norton’s home town, Jersey City, was, until last year, the
national clearing house for the laying off of horse bets from all over
the country.
While she was in Congress, Hague was the absentee chief magistrate of
Washington.
33. WIRETAPPERS, SNOOPS AND SPIES
After you’ve exchanged conversation with a number of Washingtonians,
you wonder what made them decidedly different from others. Then it
dawns on you. They are whisperers.
They all seem consciously afraid that they may be overheard. That marks
them even in casual conversations, and when they utter secrets they
are theatrically overcautious. These are acquired habits, not without
foundation. All mankind has a common weakness for spreading gossip.
Most people can retail only minutiae. But in Washington, matters that
may rock the world are entrusted, or pass through the hands of, those
who otherwise would have little to tell beyond back-fence piddle.
Furthermore, for one to say his wires are tapped is a mark of self
importance.
The capital is overrun by snoops and spies, not only using every
cloak-and-dagger device for foreign transmission, but assigned and
trained to catch and report inter-bureau information, rumors included.
An observation at a dinner table by a member of Congress or an
executive may cause an uproar in Moscow, London or Calcutta. Or it may
bring a midnight huddle in a cabinet department or the President’s
sound-proofed den.
You meet almost no one of any importance who converses at ease. The
thinnest statement or flattest opinion can be amplified and multiplied.
If it escapes an official listening post, it may reach a columnist,
which is worse.
There has been considerable furor on the subject of Washington
wiretapping.
That is a topic which every seasoned editor has learned to recognize as
having extraordinary human interest appeal. The phone is such a common,
yet tricky instrument, that kitchenmaids who have affairs with delivery
boys shiver with horrible fears that their big secrets are being
tapped. And this is not confined to small people. In Washington such
suspicions are justified.
Many mentally connect wiretapping with the F.B.I. The two have been
joined in recurrent publicity. Deliberate left-wing propaganda has
exaggerated and exploited the notion. The F.B.I. uses this method,
as does any other efficient police force. But emphasis thereon is
disproportionate. The practice is widespread with only a modicum of
use in criminal investigation. The F.B.I. itself makes a daily check
against cut-ins on its own wires, including J. Edgar Hoover’s own
private lines. He and his bureau are Enemy No. 1 to the Reds and all
their sycophants and sympathizers, the only man in the country who
called the shots on the Communist situation since the beginning. And
as the eyes and ears of the Department of Justice, the G-men handle
dynamite affecting interests from car thieves to disloyal U.S. employes
to chairmen of the boards of trusts.
Tapping F.B.I. wires is not a profitable career. The bureau knows
all the tricks. New electronic developments now make it possible to
intrude on some communications without physical contact with the wire.
No instruments can detect such espionage. This is a hazard beyond
mechanical defense.
We said everyone in Washington lives in constant fear and dread of
being overheard, even if the subject matter is of importance to no
one. It becomes habit. Congressmen and officials are cagey when they
talk on the phone, though after a few minutes of cryptic conversation
they forget and loosen up. When you visit the average office holder
in his sanctum he steers you away from the walls, then speaks in an
undertone. In your hotel room his eyes wander around the walls,
searching for “bugs” which can pick up and record every sound.
Wiretapping is a merry indoor sport in Washington, engaged in by dozens
of agencies--public and private.
When the White House wants to know what’s going on it employs Secret
Service experts. They ferret out information about the President’s
political enemies, inside and outside the government. It is filed
away for future reference to be used for retaliation or guidance.
Some Democratic Senators and Congressmen use Congressional committee
wiretappers. Investigators get the dope on political enemies in
Washington and back home. Administration leaders tried desperately to
“get” Senator McCarthy and no method was beneath them. Minority party
members, deprived of the services of official wiretappers, hire private
detective agencies. Kefauver complained his committee’s wires were
being tapped.
Many cabinet officers and other high officials usually have their own
intelligence services for spying on associates, the opposition, Hoover,
and even on the President himself.
Foremost among these administrative intelligence sections are those of
the Department of State, Treasury, Defense, and the Post Office, with
its sureshot inspectors.
Oscar Chapman, Secretary of the Interior, has a fine intelligence,
headed by Mike Reilly, former chief of the White House Secret Service.
The political cross currents are such that at any time five or six
sets of wiretappers, each unaware of what the other is doing, may be
listening in on a subject’s wires; while the subject may have his own
dicks listening in on the principals whose agents are cutting in on his
conversation.
Like lobbying, wiretapping is an insidious system used by everyone,
acknowledged by no one, so Congress shrinks from delving deeply into it.
Communists recently forced the issue into the open, as they did with
lobbying, both of which they use extravagantly. The Senate came up with
a weak-kneed investigation of wiretapping. Senator Claude “Red” Pepper,
of Florida, already a lame duck, was appointed to head the committee.
Pepper tried to slant the hearings to make it appear the only
wiretappers in Washington were Republican leaders. He named Senator
Owen Brewster of Maine as the goat. About all the investigation
brought out was that the Metropolitan Police Force is a chief offender.
Police Lieutenant Joseph W. Shimon, the cops’ expert, admitted he
did some outside work on these lines for private clients and for
Congressional committees. Senator Brewster said he paid Shimon’s
expenses to investigate a man who, Brewster thought, was “shadowing”
him. It turned out also that Shimon was paid to tap Howard Hughes’
wires when that eccentric nabob was probed in connection with his
wartime airplane contracts.
After the Senate committee spent a lot of time and money investigating
wiretapping, its counsel, Gerhard Van Arkel, who also wants to be
District Commissioner, made a brilliant discovery. He said the group
already had proved its chief point, namely, “There is a good deal of
wiretapping going on in Washington and it is difficult to act against
the practice under present law.”
Foreign government operatives compile volumes on the words of our
officials, as well as from embassies and snoopers of other foreign
countries. Wiretappers do not expect to garner much direct information,
but they winnow a thousand talks for one bit that will compromise the
object of the tap and make him vulnerable to power pressure.
Lobbyists and labor unions get the goods on people they need. And
government wiretappers often listen in on them.
Add to all this private intrigue, suspicious husbands and wives, and
you have an industry.
Because Washington is federal property, its telephone setup is governed
by the Federal Communications Commission. FCC rules forbid unauthorized
listening in on phone calls. U.S. law makes it a crime to divulge such
information. Evidence secured by wiretapping may not be used in federal
courts. Supreme Court Justice Holmes decreed it “a dirty business.” The
strict rules hamper legitimate law enforcement officers, but do not
hinder those snooping secrets for blackmail or political pressure.
In many other states, New York especially, any evidence, obtained
legally or illegally, is admissible in court, though the detective
who breaks the law to land it may be prosecuted, but never is. He’s
decorated, instead.
New York law is liberal in extending the right to local peace officers
to tap wires by judicial sanction, ex parte, for specific inquiries,
never refused. Federal agents working on cases in New York and other
such states usually tie up with local cops and prosecute in local
courts, because the Feds are restrained in their own. In the District
there is no local law, so the authorities are handcuffed.
Wiretapping is rarely used to procure actual evidence. Judges and
juries don’t like it. But eavesdropping alerts officers and then
they go after collateral evidence and don’t reveal where the tipoff
originated.
Instead of developing more stringent legislation which is what the
Communists, who break every law, want, the radical-sponsored Pepper
investigation failed so miserably that many Congressmen agreed the
government should have more power to protect itself by means of
wiretapping. The Department of Justice is sponsoring a bill to permit,
under some circumstances, the use of evidence in court so obtained;
to be accepted after a Federal Judge issues an order on application
of government intelligence agencies, and to sanction such agencies to
engage in wiretapping directly, not for court evidence, subject to
approval by the Attorney General.
Many sober observers feel that to forbid the F.B.I. any reasonable
means for counteracting treason and espionage is childish prudery, and
that its bitter opponents are not in good faith.
You hear a lot from pinks and phony progressives that the nation’s
capital is a police state where no man is free to utter his thoughts.
But most of the spying is done not for legitimate government sources,
but is privately sponsored by politicians, office-holders or subversive
and inimical interests. Washington is no OGPU camp. Most of the
work done in the headquarters of federal investigative agencies is
administrative. They decentralize their field work. The Washington
offices of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the Alcoholic Tax Unit and
several others are branches of the Baltimore division and report to the
superintendent there.
The Washington field office of the F.B.I. is as remote and as
independent from the director as, for instance, the ones in New York,
Chicago and Los Angeles, and like them is run by an agent-in-charge,
through regular channels like out-of-town offices, via Clyde A. Tolson,
the skillful associate director, and brainy assistant directors Mickey
Ladd, Hugh Clegg, Lou Nichols, Dick Glavin, Rolf Harbo, Al Rosen and
Stan Tracy before Hoover handles any matter.
The agent-in-charge of the Washington field office has as much
authority and autonomy and is as locally independent as Ed Scheidt and
his assistant, Bill Whelan, in New York; George McSwain in Chicago, and
Dick Hood in L.A., all solid and seasoned chiefs of ability, integrity
and patriotism.
The same lefties who are moaning about Washington being a police state
recently tried to slip a fast one over, to make it so, and at the
expense of embarrassing and possibly destroying the F.B.I.
When the House Committee Investigating Crime and Law Enforcement in
the District was drawing up its report, certain sources tried to
sneak a sleeper into it, recommending that the F.B.I. be given final
responsibility for policing the city of Washington.
We have determined that the suggestion was made to sub-committee
Chairman Davis by District Attorney Fay who said he concurred in it
with Peyton Ford, an Assistant Attorney General, with a long record of
sympathy for “progressive” causes. Informed observers wonder if Ford,
who helped whitewash Amerasia, was acting for higher-ups out to “get”
J. Edgar Hoover.
The plan was to slip this through into legislation. That would mean the
end of the F.B.I. as we know it. It would then become a city police
force. Its organization would be disrupted, as was the Treasury during
Prohibition. It would have to take on thousands of new agents, waste
time with drunks, whores, policy-slip peddlers and punks, and meanwhile
it would have to take the odium for the conditions portrayed in this
book, which go deeper than mere failure of police.
In recent years it has become the fashion in the movie industry to
produce whodunit pictures about detective agencies of the Federal
government. The Hollywood geniuses think they have covered all but they
missed plenty.
(Note: In all cases their duties are regulated and catalogued by
statute. None, including the F.B.I., is a genuine and general secret
police force--such as Scotland Yard.
Generally speaking, their powers and duties are in one of four
categories.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation “investigates.”
The Postal Inspectors “inspect.”
The Treasury Agents “enforce.”
The Secret Service “protects”--the President and the currency.)
The Narcotics Bureau is covered elsewhere in some detail; but this
is as good a place as any to assure you that Federal cops are human
beings, not machines assembled to turn out convictions. A principal
function of the Narcotics Bureau is to combat the dope evil, not to
imprison its victims. This was demonstrated when a famed Hollywood
movie star went on the junk. The Bureau, in checking prescriptions,
found she was in the hands of a quack who was ruining her life.
Commissioner Anslinger made a trip to Hollywood to plead with the head
of her studio to give her a year off, so she could go to a sanitarium
for a cure. She had two pictures in the works and the studio factotum
demurred. He mentioned her contract, said the company had millions
invested in the films. He “couldn’t possibly see my way clear.”
Anslinger warned him she would collapse and the company would lose an
asset worth even more. The young woman was being kept alive during the
day on benzedrine. Afternoons the doctor tapered her off on secanol.
After work she was dosed with morphine. The inevitable eventuated. She
blew up completely, tried suicide, was hospitalized and suspended.
Then the government stepped in and gave her the cure. Now she is
dehabituated and rehabilitated.
The Intelligence Unit uncovered the huge tax fraud that sent Henry
Lustig, former owner of New York’s Longchamps Restaurant chain, to the
pen. Many stories are told on how the prosecution began, including the
apocryphal one that Henry Morgenthau, then Secretary of the Treasury,
was forced to stand in line and wait for a table in a Miami cafe when
Lustig was ushered in ahead of him; Morgenthau asked who the man was,
exploded and ordered the Feds to get him.
But the real story is this: The New York hideaway office of the unit
is at 253 Broadway. There’s a Longchamps Restaurant in the basement.
Federal agents don’t earn enough to afford its fancy prices. They
usually lunch in a counter-joint around the corner. But one day it
rained. Some agents were tied up on a big case, didn’t have time to
wait, so they ducked down in the elevator.
Many Wall Street financiers lunch there regularly, have tables reserved
and waiting. The only empty one had a “reserved” sign, but the
Intelligence boys grabbed it over the protest of the hostess. When the
millionaires arrived they had to wait. They fumed. Lustig was there. He
shouted, “Why did you let those bums take that table?”
Service to the “bums” was cut off. They wondered whether the
imperious Lustig’s returns were clean, whether he wasn’t the sort
of individualist who would probably steal. They checked. He had
sequestered $5,000,000 in unreported hatcheck money.
When the Intelligence Unit, nicknamed “The U-Boats,” sent Atlantic City
boss Nocky Johnson to the can, they got him by counting the towels sent
to the laundry by the local cat-houses. This established the intake of
the madames, and their kickbacks upstairs.
The Intelligence Unit has been working on the hidden holdings of the
Mafia for years. When evidence in hand is collated, 30 of the most
important hoodlums will trade in their tailor-mades for prison denim.
There’s terrific pressure from higher-ups to stop the forthcoming
prosecution. Only orders from the President or Attorney General will do
it.
Sometimes Intelligence runs into amusing situations like the case of
the rich Chinese and the blonde model. He was a wealthy importer,
named Hsieh, in America on a diplomatic passport as the representative
of the Bank of China. Nationalist Hsieh fell for Marion Saunders, a
sensational slick chick with platinum hair, from Indiana. It became a
terrific romance. Cafe socialites kidded that he bought her a new mink
coat every day.
The Treasury heard about the dough he was lavishing on her. They
looked him up, discovered that as a nonresident alien he was exempt
from American income taxes. But Mr. Hsieh had forgotten gift taxes.
Under the law the donor, not the recipient, is liable for payment--25
percent. The Feds tracked down gifts aggregating $1,000,000--the
untraced value was far higher. Mr. Hsieh was soaked $540,000--tax plus
fines. He was allowed to pay in three installments. He pulled out a
roll of bills and peeled off 180 G-notes for the down payment.
Some months later, Hsieh and Marion were married. Ginmill habitués said
he married her to get his dough back. That couldn’t be so, because
one day, last year, the _Queen Mary_ came in with $2,000,000 in gold
consigned to him. It was landed under guard of six armed Chinese, toted
off in steel-lined limousines.
Which reminds us of the story never told before, too good to keep.
One of the benches in Lafayette Square, gathering place of the faggots,
across from the White House, is wired up. You ought to hear some of the
gay conversations. We did. Then we squirted penicillin in our ears.
PART THREE
THE ESCAPE
(_Confidential!_)
34. THE TUESDAY-TO-THURSDAY SET