Washington Confidential 23 – Mortimer · Library Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 23Part 2 · THE RIGHT TO PETITION
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 23
Part 2 · THE RIGHT TO PETITION
MortimerEnglish
“Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”--First Amendment to the Constitution.
Don’t you believe it. Congress hamstrung lobbying by requiring practitioners to register. Then it appointed a committee to investigate them. Neither gesture got far. Lobbyists are among the most delightful people in Washington. They are the friends of everybody, including the Congressmen who are “probing” them.
Lobbying is like the Indian rope trick. Everyone talks about it, but no one has ever seen it done. It’s one subject all Congressmen shy from, regardless of party. That’s because there are lobbyists on both sides. You can hardly expect a Congressman to insult a supporter.
Many ex-Congressmen, who can’t bear the thought of returning home after their defeat, remain in Washington as lobbyists. They enjoy an advantage, because, forever after, all ex-Senators and ex-Representatives have the privileges of the floor and the cloak-rooms. They can collar the ones they need while the legislators are in action. Thus, members, who are always aware of the possibility of being lame ducks themselves, keep these pleasant prospects of earning a generous living after retirement open and in good working order.
When you read about lobbying being a $100,000,000 business, don’t believe that, either. Maybe they soak their clients that much, but most of it goes on padded expense accounts. Lobbyists are their own best press-agents. They are more responsible for the hue and cry against lobbying than are the reformers. By making it look more difficult, they can load their take.
Lobbying is as old as Magna Charta, which first granted people the right to petition their sovereign. Ever since, those who wanted something have hired someone to speak up for them. Washington is full of these hucksters. They are about the brightest spot on the glum scene. They spend, entertain, throw wild parties with pretty gals as souvenirs, tip lavishly and keep the hotel and liquor industries going. They are the only cream here in a welter of skimmed milk.
An Act of Congress, of doubtful legality, requires lobbyists to register and divulge the amount and source of their income. Some do, many more don’t. Those who comply are the technical lobbyists--in other words, they are errand boys who merely transmit messages and appeals from their clients to the Congress. Many have no physical contact with Congressmen at all, reaching them through mimeographed propaganda mailed from a Washington office.
But most of those we consider lobbyists are the ones who feel they are not required to register. When we mention anyone in this chapter, we are not inferring that if he is not a registered lobbyist he is breaking the law. We group together for purposes of posing a picture, every Washington lobbyist, fixer, five-percenter, hot-shot lawyer, industrial press agent, and man from Missouri. They are a multitude, especially men from Missouri.
When a really big fix is made, it usually is not handled in Washington at all. The deal is consummated back home, as a quid pro quo for a large campaign donation, after which the county or state chairman sends word through channels to his men in Washington that the matter should be okayed.
Lobbying can be a delightful and well-paid occupation. The mouthpieces of the industrial petitioners are usually charming gentlemen who know how to entertain. Buying an uninstructed Congressman C.O.D. is obsolete. Giving him a high time will do it, and the lobbyist can pocket the money earmarked for bribing and tell his client he passed on the boodle.
Most solons are lonely uprooted rustics. Usually their wives are away, holy frights they are glad to leave back home. These men want to talk and drink with someone. You don’t even have to get them girls, just invite them to a hotel and spend an evening with them. They’ll be so thankful, they’ll do anything you want.
The average big lobbyist doesn’t bother with run-of-the-mill Senators and Representatives, who are in the bag without much trouble. He sets his sights on the key characters like committee chairmen and floor leaders, and even they can be snared at little cost, though naturally to corral a chairman means an even heftier bill to the employer. The procedure used in the case of VIPs is simple and cheap. Each lobbyist is on friendly terms with some local hostess, for whom he does favors or to whom he gives gifts. When he has an especially important deal on, he asks her to invite his prospect to a party. During most of the evening he keeps away from the man he wants to meet, until by a fortuitous accident he is placed next to him at the table. Even then the conversation is kept chatty and frothy. A couple of days later, the lobbyist phones his erstwhile table companion and invites him to a rubber of bridge or a game of golf, and from then on he’s on his own.
Administrative heads and assistants are much more sought after than Senators. They are the ones who receive the deep freezes and their wives, the expensive gifts. In the final analysis, the best contact is a clerk, not a division head. The clerks do the work and make the decisions while their bosses drink cocktails.
Much of the big-time fixing is done by law firms. Many New York outfits maintain offices in Washington. These firms usually have partners belonging to both parties, so they are prepared for any political eventuality.
We would like to introduce you to some of the boys in Washington who can get things done:
First comes to mind an attorney, Charles Patrick Clark. Mr. Clark is a wonder-worker. When others can’t score, Clark is called in. Even Max Truitt, the Vice President’s son-in-law, had trouble getting Franco’s loan, so Clark hit in the pinch and Congress voted it. It may be a coincidence, but Clark was a counsel for the Senatorial Committee Investigating War Frauds when Harry Truman was its chairman.
Part of Clark’s success can be ascribed to the majestic manner in which he entertains. He used to project his parties in Georgetown, but now hosts it in a palatial four-story building near the Mayflower Hotel. It set him back a hundred grand to furnish its interior. The yard was landscaped at a cost of $25,000 more. Clark can muster more pretty girls than anyone else in Washington. You will always find enough of them at his parties. He has two stunners in his office, a blonde and a brunette, who frequently are escorted by his clients and his contacts.
Congressman Buchanan, Pennsylvania Democrat, chairman of the committee investigating lobbying, fell for Clark’s charm. He and his wife visited Clark’s play-place.
Clark is hot-tempered. He recently had a fist fight in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel with Charlie Rogers, handsome former counsel of the committee that nailed John Maragon.
Dan Hanlon, a former law-partner of Democratic National Chairman Bill Boyle, has an office at 1727 Massachusetts Ave., where he handles internal revenue cases with much success. Hanlon is from Missouri. But as Boyle seems to be on the way out so is Hanlon.
The business is intensively departmentalized. Different lawyers have ins in different branches of the government. Persuasion on the Department of Justice is handled by Laughlin Currie, a former Truman appointee, through Tommy “The Cork” Corcoran, a Roosevelt favorite.
Treasury Department matters go through Joe Nunan, former Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who does not practice personally before the Treasury yet, because the law requires ex-employes to wait two years before they may represent clients in bureaus to which they were attached. But his associates are not so hobbled.
Former Senator Burton K. Wheeler is the man to see if you have any trouble with the Interstate Commerce Commission. Wheeler can have anything he wants in Washington. President Truman passed the word along. It was Wheeler who advised Truman not to resign from the Senate at the time of the Pendergast scandal. Harry has been eternally grateful ever since.
The law firm of Thurman Arnold, Abe Fortas and Paul A. Porter has practically everything for its field. All three are prominent ex-New Dealers. Porter’s contact is with the Federal Communications Commission. Arnold, once a trust-buster, now defends trusts. Fortas, onetime stooge of Harold Ickes, is the boy to see for anything in the Department of the Interior. Among the clients of this firm is the Western Union Telegraph Company, for which they are the registered lobbyists. During their plugging for the telegraph monopoly it was brought out under oath that at least one block of 17 percent of its stock was owned by underworld figures. Since then, Western Union was indicted twice in New Jersey for engaging illegally in transmission of racing information, which the Grand Jury investigation indicated was the company’s main source of profit.
The Arnold firm secured $200,000,000 for the Puerto Rican government. It also defended Owen Lattimore against Senator McCarthy’s charges. The boys netted $600,000 last year. Drew Pearson’s daughter is married to Arnold’s son.
Arnold is the playboy of the firm, congenial and convivial.
When Dean Acheson’s law firm swung the $90,000,000 Polish loan, its fee from behind the Iron Curtain was $1,000,000, plus an equal sum for expenses.
Leon Henderson, the social planner who admits he won World War II single-handed, deserves an important place in this chapter. As one of the brain-trust of the “progressive” Americans for Democratic Action, brother Henderson throws the weight of that organization’s supposed voting strength around Washington for the benefit of his private clients. That is, when he is not too busy making a fool of himself with some young blonde on a New York dance floor.
The A.D.A. pipeline into the White House is David Garrison Lloyd, assistant general counsel to the President.
Robert Nathan, the CIO economist, who comes up with fantastic suggestions such as that the cost of labor has nothing to do with the final price of the commodity, helps support himself by “economizing” for capitalistic clients trying to borrow dough from the RFC. If they hire him, they usually get it.
Those who shed tears for Louis D. Johnson when he was fired as Secretary of Defense need have no worries about how Louis is going to make a living in the future. He is a partner in the firm of Stepto and Johnson, and he has high connections.
Louis, who put the stigma on five-percenters, is one of the biggest operators on government contracts in town. Incidentally, there’s nothing illegal about five-percenting and the fee is now seven and a half percent--Truman inflation.
Though out of the administration, Johnson is so potent and powerful that failure to retain him is a death warrant on some deals. He specializes in alien property work.
Once again, as during World War II, the lobbyists and five-percenters’ password is “Are You Protected?”
That goes for a lot of things. It means are you protected against the law, against competition? But, mainly, are you protected from your clients?
Too many fixers found themselves double-crossed. After they had delivered, they couldn’t collect.
Now the smart ones won’t unbutton a button until the cash is put up in escrow. Fancy deals are worked out on paper to cover up the shady nature of the real transaction.
One contact man whom it was a pleasure to have lobby you was Howard Hughes’ fat errand boy, Johnny Meyer. Johnny is a prodigal entertainer and check-picker-upper. During the Senatorial investigation into how come Hughes got some government contracts, it was testified that Johnny supplied gifts and gals lavishly. He introduced Brigadier General Elliott Roosevelt to his former wife, Faye Emerson, and picked up the tab for the wedding expenses.
Elliott screamed at the hearing, “You are persecuting me because my name happens to be Roosevelt.” The Republicans who conducted it immediately got cold feet.
Their temerity in hounding Elliott and Johnny was not forgotten. Three years later, the radical lame duck Senator, Claude Pepper, conducted an investigation to try to prove that former committee chairman Brewster had tapped Johnny Meyer’s wires.
If he did, he must have had a good time. We know. We were with Johnny in his Statler suite, and he was with us in ours. His “in” is former Washington Governor Mon Wallgren, who is an old drinking and poker-playing crony of the President. Wallgren has entree at all times to the White House and now holds a Government hand-out job so he can keep his lines and connections in order.
While on the subject of lame ducks, we mustn’t forget Scott Lucas, former Senate Majority leader. He is now ready, willing and able to handle such Washington legal and contact matters as may be brought to the attention of himself and partner, Charles A. Thomas.
Many of the lawyers, lobbyists, fixers, five-percenters, etc., with wires into high places, do not actually practice in Washington, preferring to do their work through correspondents or connections.
One of these is Jake Arvey, the Illinois Democratic boss and associate of Mafia hoodlums, who operates through the Washington office of Louis Johnson. Arvey is the kingpin of the wire-pullers.
Often the extent of a fixer’s ability is overrated. An intermediary needs only to be seen with a big politician to have the word get out that he’s “in.” Then, after spending thousands, a client sometimes gets the idea he’s got to hire another lawyer to do the actual work. Sometimes the fixers themselves turn the actual leg work over to capable attorneys, sit back, and take the credit.
There are many of these bread-and-butter lawyers who accomplish what all the politicians and five-percenters can’t, because they really know the law. For instance, one prominent politico told us that while few tax cases are “fixed” at the Washington level, many a fearful and repentant chiseler has been fleeced by smart operators who told him they were wonder-workers. For results, he recommended two relatively unknown but very successful practitioners, Bert B. Rand, Washington-wise attorney, and Nathan Wechsler, hard-hitting, astute C.P.A., because they had the staff and experience to meet the government on an equal basis.
Similarly, in the field of constitutional law and the intricacies of corporation procedure, and claim work, they look up Loring Black, a former Congressman from Brooklyn, who retired from the House in 1934.
One young fellow who can do more for you in Washington with less fanfare doesn’t make it his business. He is Hal Korda, onetime newspaperman, who has many powerful friends on both sides. When the Dems found out he knew Republicans, and vice versa, they began to use him as a channel to square things they didn’t want to talk about directly to each other, and he secured campaign contributions for both.
Many members of Congress lobby, legitimately, for their own communities, or the industries thereof, or for public organizations in which they have a deep interest.
For instance, Joseph Rider Farrington, the delegate from the Territory of Hawaii, who holds a seat in the House but no vote there, has been foremost in the fight to secure statehood for the Islands. Farrington has labored mightily in that cause, and could show the professionals a thing or two. If Hawaii ever achieves statehood, Farrington can take the bow.
Incidental to that great libertarian campaign, Farrington also plugs the produce and products of the Territory and is its chief booster for tourism. His office in the Old House Building resembles a cross between a steamship agency and a Chamber of Commerce.
On the other hand, Henry Latham, one of the three Republicans in the House from the City of New York--if you count Javits a Republican--is a strong and sincere booster for the Navy. Were it not for his “lobbying” in committee, we would have no Marine Corps today.
Latham, a Navy officer in World War II, did not know he had been run for Congress or elected until his ship went into a South Pacific coaling station two months after the 1944 elections. He has been reelected ever since.
He spotted the joker which would have wiped out the Marine Corps in the administration Defense reorganization measure and tied the bill up until the Devil Dogs were assured of being more than a mere “police force.”
Acey Caraway, finance director of the Democratic National Committee and longtime pillar of that body, is opening an office for “consultation” in the LaSalle Building. Acey, often referred to as the “junior Jim Farley,” probably knows more Democratic rank-and-filers than anyone else in the party.
Among the law firms which have had the most success in lucrative immigration matters is the New York one in which Rep. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., is a partner.
Thomas Shoemaker, a former Commissioner of Immigration, also shows remarkable results in such cases.
New York’s left-wing New Deal Republican Congressman Jacob K. Javits is a partner in Javits and Javits, 1025 Connecticut Avenue. Several immigration matters have been settled successfully by them.
Wholly apart from such legal practices, the current price for bringing in a rich refugee who can’t make the quota or other entry requirements is $75,000. This is split between three Senators and/or Representatives, to sponsor so-called “private” bills.
These bills are always passed, because the three interested members buttonhole other Congressmen, who themselves need support to pass their own private bills. That is called “Congressional courtesy.”
An embarrassing incident happened recently when President Truman vetoed one such bill, after the 75 Gs had been passed and spent.
The Vice President’s son-in-law, Max Truitt, lobbies for American flag steamship lines, and has had conspicuous success in obtaining government handouts. He is effective also for the Kansas City wheat pit, a favorite whipping boy of the administration he’s married into.
Lobbying before the Maritime Administration is dream business. It had 17 billion dollars’ worth of ships to sell after the war.
Much of this government property found its way into the hands of the right people, who floated their purchases, if not their ships, by borrowing from the government, then immediately reselling at double or triple to corporations they organized.
In addition, these purchasers charged off hundreds of thousands against their income taxes for expenses, on transactions which they frequently went into with no more than a few thousand dollars to start with.
Truitt is the most active in the ship field and is registered as a ship lobbyist with Congress.
The firm of the late Secretary of State Stettinius also dabbled in Maritime Administration work. His associate was handsome ex-Congressman Joe Casey, of Massachusetts.
One of the most up-and-coming of the lawyers with “inside” connections is Margaret Truman’s “date,” Marvin Braverman. It is doubtful whether he has much influence, but people are beginning to credit him with it, and he is no chump. He is taking advantage of the publicity.
Braverman is related to Harry Hershfield, the radio wit and cartoonist. And if his small talk is anything like Harry’s, we don’t blame Margaret for liking him. Because Harry is the funniest man alive.
Former Housing Administrator Wilson Wyatt, a roaring Fair Dealer, is lobbying for big interests to repeal war-time taxes as well as for the Dominican Republic dictatorship.
Clark Clifford, the President’s former legal adviser and ghost-writer, is not starving in private practice, either.
Clifford says he “doesn’t need law books.” He uses the Mayflower Hotel menu instead.
Another law firm with great influence is Fulton, Walter and Halley, with offices over the Occidental Restaurant. Hugh Fulton was chief counsel for the Truman Committee. Rudolph Halley was on the staff. The firm has done handily representing Howard Hughes, owner of TWA. As special counsel for the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, between New York City and suburban New Jersey, they secured a 50-percent fare increase from the ICC. In our book Chicago Confidential, we said that the underworld had large blocks of stock in the Hudson and Manhattan. Since then Halley, who was the counsel of the road, confirmed our statement, reluctantly, and we have affidavits to prove it.
A law degree is not always necessary to a successful contact man. Some of the most prosperous in Washington bill themselves as press agents. There is, for instance, a little man from Missouri, Victor Messall, who dresses like a race-track follower and has his walls plastered with pictures of the President. Messall was a beaver on the President’s Senatorial campaigns. Later he was on his secretarial staff in the Senate. He has testified under oath that he has so many clients he can’t remember them all. A witness charged before the Kefauver Committee he had given Messall $1500 to help him to get sugar-points illegally from the OPA during the war. The chairman of the committee was a Democrat. The counsel was the aforementioned lawyer for the Truman committee, Rudolph Halley. The subject was suddenly dropped.
Another who bills himself as a press agent and is blossoming into a power which some call sinister because of his connections, is a former newspaperman, Dave Charnay, who runs a publicity firm in New York and Washington, Allied Syndicate. Charnay is a long-time friend of Frank Costello, reputed king of the underworld, and has done public relations for Rep. F. D. Roosevelt, Jr., and Manhattan Borough President Robert F. Wagner, Jr., son of the author of the Labor Act.
During the administration of Mayor LaGuardia, when gangsters were ordered out of New York night clubs, Charnay, then still employed as a reporter for the New York News, was made “president” of the famous Copacabana at a salary of $500 a week. Charnay was known as Costello’s press agent.
Among other clients, his publicity firm represents John L. Lewis’ United Mine Workers, at a reputed annual fee of $175,000. Those who may seem mystified at his range of clients, may be surprised to learn that Lewis, though he doesn’t know it, is a prisoner of the Mafia. It started many years ago, when the United Mine Workers imported Sicilian sluggers from the big cities. With this “in,” the mob bosses began to cast greedy eyes on the colossal fortune owned by the mine union. The Mafia’s policy is never to replace present management if it can take over a flourishing concern. The infiltration went on under Lewis’ nose, yet the beetle-browed egomaniac does not know he no longer is the boss of the United Mine Workers. The boys let him think he is. Last year, the Mine Workers tried to take over New York’s taxi industry, with an abortive strike in which Mafia associates took a part. Charnay’s firm handled the strikers’ publicity.
Charnay now has a pipeline directly to the White House, through the close personal friendship between John L. Lewis and Dr. John Steelman, assistant to the President. Some months ago, on his retirement as Secretary of the Navy, John L. Sullivan joined Charnay’s firm as chairman of the board, but he resigned to practice law. Paul H. Griffith, assistant Secretary of Defense until he was replaced by Anna Rosenberg a few months ago, is now a vice-president of the company.
Charnay had a pleasant luncheon tête-à-tête with Kefauver counsel Halley, before the crime committee began its hearings, and offered to work for it without pay.
Another interesting lobbyist is Samuel Haines, whose contract with the hotel and cafe industry to try to get a reduction in the 20 percent amusement-tax was on a sliding scale, his fee to be determined by the degree of eventual tax reduction. The tax wasn’t cut, but he got $46,000. Haines entertained Senators and Representatives in a playroom at his home, where he had slot-machines, reverse-rigged so the players always won.
A mysterious man about town is Dave Gordon, always seen with beautiful dames. Gordon is a close friend of Nate Lichtauer. Lichtauer is a shadowy enigma. Little is known about him. But this is to tell you he engineers the juiciest deals. (“Juice” is the capital slang for political pull.) Lichtauer is a collector for the Democratic National Committee. He makes the arrangements. When the contributions come through, he passes the word to Dave Niles, in the White House, who pulls the proper strings.
One of Lichtauer’s closest associates is Milton Kronheim, another mystery man. He used to be in the bail-bond business in Washington and went surety for gamblers. He is now the city’s biggest and richest wholesale liquor dealer. He is in on everything. He once peeled off 250 bills--$1,000 bills--to pay an OPA assessment, then put the balance of the still impressive roll back in his pocket.
He is close to General Vaughan and John Maragon, and thick with Jake Arvey, Chicago Democratic boss, friend and apologist for Al Capone’s cousin, Charlie Fischetti, king of the Chicago underworld. Kronheim’s son was recently made a Municipal Court judge in Washington. Truman nominated Kronheim’s lawyer, “Jiggs” Donahue to be District Commissioner. And Kronheim supplies the White House liquor.
One to watch as a power is a Boston lawyer, Paul T. Smith. He got that way because he and Dave Niles ran a forum in Boston called Ford’s Lyceum, a sort of left-wing Chatauqua in which Frankfurter had a powerful say. When Police Chief Barrett was under Congressional pressure, Niles and Smith interceded.
It was through the connections he made with dreamers and schemers like Harry Hopkins, who used to lecture for him, that Niles moved himself into the White House under Roosevelt and has remained under Truman, the only man Harry dared not fire. Niles, whose hand turns up in everything, may be the real ruler of the country.
Anyway, when attorney Smith gets a case with a Washington angle, he phones the White House. He usually gets what he wants.
Niles still operates Ford’s, spends every weekend, from Thursday to Monday, in Boston. Niles’ hatchet man is Donald Dawson, of Missouri, formerly with the RFC, now White House Liaison Officer in charge of personnel. He is the last word on all federal nominations and appointments, but his word is Niles’.
A couple of weeks before this went to press we saw Dawson lunching at the Statler with General Vaughan and Johnny Maragon.
If the impression was conveyed that after Maragon’s conviction and denial on appeal that the pet five-percenter was out of action, you were so wrong. Up to this writing, Maragon has never served a day in jail, and he probably never will. News about Maragon is a scarce commodity in Washington, and bum steers are handed newspapermen. It was publicly reported that Maragon was ill and in the hospital of a Federal prison. The White House intimate had not spent one minute in jail. Maragon, the crooked fixer, is still in business and still has entree to the White House. The wise guys know that if he is ever punished, it will be perfunctory, because Maragon took the rap for a lot of way-ups and what he could tell would rock America. He is still being taken care of so he will never need to shine shoes again. If he isn’t pardoned by the time this comes out, it’s in the works.
From time to time, socialites and even foreign noblemen who need the jack lobby for it. A successful contact man is Baron Constantine von Stackelburg, once with the World Bank. He and his beautiful wife host lavish at-homes for the benefit of such interests as the Florida citrus fruit industry.
Clients of lobbyists are divided into four groups. You may disregard the inspired baloney that they all represent the capitalists. Only a small fraction do.
The others who employ lobbyists are (1) Labor unions, farm federations and left-wing pressure groups; (2) nonprofit and nonpolitical organizations such as the Red Cross, American Legion, Elks, Knights of Columbus, etc., and (3) government bureaus.
The most powerful lobby in history was for the Anti-Saloon League.
By far the mightiest since then, at least until Senator Taft’s overwhelming victory, were lobbies of the labor unions. By tradition and shaded reporting the representatives of the money barons are villains; but the labor boys are more vicious and intolerable. And they don’t spend or entertain, which is even more heinous. The money charged against the unions for legislative purposes goes mostly to supply dames and hootch for visiting union chiefs.
The American Federation of Labor crowd hangs out at the Hamilton Hotel, where all the choice ringside tables in the supper club are reserved nightly for them. A stable of fillies is available to send up to the rooms of the dignitaries who dilute their champagne with the tears they spill for the sans-culottes.
The United Mine Workers frequent the Carlton.
The CIO also played at the Carlton until a Negro delegate was barred. Most of the boys quit in a huff, and moved across 16th St. to the equally tony Hay-Adams, where Negroes are also barred.
Many labor unions are represented by female lobbyists, and some of these will turn a trick in the hay if that helps the sacred cause. The labor broads still don’t run as homely as some of the Congressmen’s wives. For unions and other such pressure cookers do not usually offer money, call-girls or liquor. They threaten to withhold votes back at home.
As soon as a freshman Congressman checks in, the union harpies make a grab for him. One whom we know, a Republican elected to fill an unexpired seat in a Democratic district, received a visit from a couple of union goons the first day he moved into his office. They gave him orders how to vote on a pending measure. Congressman John Saylor, who is six feet four, grabbed them by the necks and walked them to the wall, where he showed them his certificate of election.
“I thought I read my name here, not yours,” he said. Then he threw them out.
One of the most indefatigable female lobbyists is the daughter of former Senator Burt Wheeler. Though her father cleans up representing robber barons, her client is the left-wing United Electrical Workers Union. Congressmen report she’s a pest who coaxes with a smile, and if that doesn’t work, she threatens.
Old-timers in Congress will tell you about the dame lobbyist who represented some milk producers. She was a handsome woman, so voluptuously built that they referred to her as “Elsie the Cow.” Her lobbying career ended in 1937, when she was caught in a hotel room with a Congressman.
For all practical purposes, lobbyists representing unions and minority groups do not often buttonhole Congressmen directly. Dave Niles handles all labor and left-wing angles, and arranges for the votes and rewards or punishments.
Anna Rosenberg, friend of Niles, former New Dealer, practiced industrial relations successfully until her appointment as Assistant Secretary of Defense.
Lobbyists for government bureaus often double as unpaid fixers for pressure groups, using government funds. Entertainments of Congressmen by State Department officials at cocktail parties are referred to as “smokers.”
Sometimes pressure group lobbyists receive government favors and privileges denied the less favored. An intensive lobby was conducted against the Mundt-Ferguson anti-Communist bill by a former senatorial employe who was not registered as a lobbyist.
He is Palmer Webber, who was staff director in 1943 for Sen. Pepper (D) of Florida, and chief economic adviser in 1944 to Sen. Kilgore (D) of West Virginia. Webber bore down on his Senate contacts from a rent-free office in the Library of Congress. How he got it free nobody knows.
For two years Webber held a job as “legislative correspondent” on Capitol Hill for the Federation for World Government. Records in the office of the secretary of the Senate show Webber was not registered as a lobbyist for the federation and the organization is not registered to conduct a lobby. In addition to his arduous efforts to defeat the anti-Communist measure and his work for the federation, Webber was a demon, worked for votes for passage of the fair employment practices bill.
Webber was transferred by the World Government Federation from Washington to New York “to do research.” The shift was for “political reasons.”
He is an errand boy for the Lawyers Guild, which the House Un-American Activities Committee cited as a “front” organization. It has also been active in another “cause” sponsored by Webber--the drive for an investigation of the F.B.I.
In 1947, Webber, a Ph.D., conducted a class in political philosophy at the King Smith school, where the democratic form of government was smeared to GI and other students.
A reporter attended Webber’s class on May 27, 1947, when Senator Pepper was a guest. A woman student referred to J. Edgar Hoover as the American Gestapo head and declared the Catholic church was leading a crusade for war.
A woman in the audience, a secretary to a Republican Senator from the Midwest, jumped up and shouted, “Thank God for the F.B.I.”
Webber was arrested in Charlottesville, Va., for distributing Communist Party literature. Police records show he paid a forfeit rather than fight the case.
He was at one time a research director for the CIO Political Action Committee in Washington and in 1948 was a paid director in charge of activities of the leftist Progressive party in 11 southern states.
Another who lobbies against anti-Communist bills, and is openly so registered, is former Democratic Congressman Jerry J. O’Connell, of Montana.
Utilizing his privileges of the floor, as an ex-Representative, O’Connell strides into the House and Senate while they are in session, and delivers advice, orders and inspiration to left-wing Congressmen, and threats to others.
When the Senate was debating the Communist control bill in an all night session last September, O’Connell took up a station at the Senate door with a reporter from the Daily Worker, and without any pretense of disguise, dictated the unsuccessful opposition’s floor strategy.
But listen to the hue and cry when a manufacturer’s lobbyist buys a Coca Cola for a Congressman.
Being a government lobbyist can produce desirable advantages, especially for a Marshall Plan press agent.
A survey reveals that the Economic Cooperation Administration information office has been giving several of its employes free visits to Europe and the Middle East. Robert Mullen, director of ECA information, toured Europe. He mapped a $7,500 ’round-the-world trip, but postponed a visit to the Orient when the bullets began to fly.
Mullen sent an heiress to the J. P. Morgan banking fortune to London for a convention of clubwomen--to get new propaganda material on the Marshall plan to influence American clubwomen. He sent an inexperienced youth, hired as a “picture expert,” to Paris and London, to see the sights and get new pictures for propaganda purposes here.
Though ECA has 73 American press employes in Paris alone, and 56 in 16 other Marshall Plan missions in Europe, plus 222 Europeans on these staffs, ECA sent a former woman reporter to Paris to get “human interest” stories for a clubwoman propaganda pamphlet.
The ECA press information office in Paris has a chief who gets about $20,000 a year in salary and expense money, has highly paid former reporters on his staff, but the ECA here sent a man from Washington to show a group of editors about Europe. Several others went to Europe on similar assignments.
Mullen has 48 on his Washington staff, drawing a total of $280,000 a year. Among these are the Morgan heiress, an ex-bullfighter, the daughter of a symphony conductor and a score of graduates from defunct war agencies. He separated a noted Negro Air Force pilot, who achieved some success as an author, from his Washington staff and dispatched him to Formosa at $15,000 a year to direct Marshall plan press information there.
The American press agents for ECA will draw $673,000 in salaries this year.
Congress gets around sporadically to investigating the lobbying “evil.” The latest “crusade” was conducted by leftish Congressman Frank Buchanan, who muddled the issue so much, no one knows what happened, except that the National Association of Manufacturers emerged the villain. Congressmen don’t hanker to expose lobbies, even if they’re on the other side. When the investigation was first voted by the House, Buchanan wanted to give the appropriation back, an unprecedented departure where committee chairmen always yell for more. Buchanan tried to handcuff the lawyers engaged to conduct the investigation, though both were good Democrats and good Fair Dealers. But they were also honest. Lou Little, of Pittsburgh, a co-counsel, quit broken-hearted. Counsel Benedict Fitzgerald, of Greenfield, Mass., a whiz of a prober, was not even allowed to write the report. Buchanan refused to swear in some witnesses; if they lied it would not constitute perjury. When counsel called attention to that, he angrily shut them up.
The real brains of the investigation into lobbying was Lucien Hilmer, committee staff director. He is regarded as a left-wing lawyer. When George Shaw Wheeler was fired from the government for consorting with Communists, Hilmer appeared as his lawyer and beat the case. Two years later, as an economist with the U. S. Army in Czechoslovakia, Wheeler vindicated the Civil Service Commission when he moved in on Berlin Red headquarters. He announced he was a Communist and always had been one. Hilmer shares a law office with John F. Davis, who represented Alger Hiss before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Hilmer had worked under Max Lowenthal on the old Wheeler Committee.
And did we remember to tell you that the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce has an office on 16th St., across the road from the Russian Embassy? Both pressure groups have displayed amazing influence in Washington.
INSIDE STUFF: The law requiring lobbyists to register is used as a racket by some. They advertise in trade papers: “Lobbyist, registered with the Congress of the United States,” then sell prospective chumps the idea they are “licensed” to lobby. Anybody may file his name and set up his own “cause.”
