Hoover in Miami

A headline in the Daily News, Manhattan tabloid, screamed to the Friday evening crowds last week:

PLOT TO KILL HOOVER!

Excited purchasers, expecting to read of swart, bomb-laden assassins waiting on Miami housetops for Mr. Hoover's appearance, were soon relieved. What apparently had happened was as follows:

On Jan. 12, ten days before the Hoover arrival in Miami, police went to the Coral Gables Kennel Club and arrested Restaurant Cashier Willis Callahan, Dancing Teacher Thomas Mulligan, Tailorman Jacob B. Sommers. They were charged with "conspiring to do bodily injury to the person of Herbert Hoover and by threats and intimidation to prevent him from taking office as President of the U. S." Three days later they were arraigned, placed under $10,000 bail, which they could not raise. Then the prosecutor, Assistant U. S. Attorney Louis S. Joel, delayed the hearing while he looked for "missing" witnesses. The trio remained in jail while Mr. Hoover was received in Miami, while he proceeded to Belle Isle, while he embarked on a fishing trip (see p. 10).

It was not until two days after the Hoover arrival that the hearing was held. Prosecutor Joel could not produce the witnesses he desired. Those witnesses who were present gave feeble testimony. Long before the Hoover arrival Tailorman Sommers had called Mr. Hoover a "nigger- lover," adding that he "ought to be killed," that "if he comes to Miami he will be killed." Cashier Callahan had boasted: "Someone should bump him off. . . . I wouldn't be afraid to do it myself if he came to Miami."

But no overt act could be established. It was all picayune, absurd. The trio was released, though not without Secret Service men in train.

P: Mr. Hoover received another visitor and another Cabinet rumor was dispelled. This caller was U. S. Ambassador to Mexico Dwight Whitney Morrow. He had come to Belle Isle after a rest cure at Nassau. The short, chipper Ambassador, oft-mentioned as possible Hoover Secretary of State, talked for two hours with the President-Elect. Then he all but told newsmen that Mr. Hoover preferred to keep him in Mexico, where the sedative Morrow influence has been worthy and unprecedented.

One significant rumor came from Mr. Hoover. Newsmen asked him whether he would see President-Reject Smith. To the query the President-Elect replied: "By all means I should be glad if Governor Smith has the time to call. I should be most happy to see him."

P: The Hoover party left its island headquarters and motored 35 miles southward on the mainland to Angel Fish Creek. Two days of deep-sea fishing off the Florida Keys were in prospect. Though the actual angling would be done from small boats, two yachts served as living and sleeping quarters. One was the Amitie, owned by Capitalist Joseph H. Adams whose Belle Isle home, adjoining the Penney estate, shelters the Hoover press entourage. The other was the Saunterer, owned by Banker Jeremiah Milbank of Manhattan, Eastern Republican Treasurer during the cam paign. Banker Milbank was on board.