Senate's Prisoner

In his customary striped trousers, cutaway and broad-brimmed black felt hat, Chesley W. Jurney, the Senate's portly Sergeant-at-Arms, strolled one day last week up to the Senate Press Gallery. Jauntily twirling his cane, he boomed to the assembled newshawks: "Here's a statement from Bill MacCracken, boys. I just put him in jail."

Bill MacCracken was William Patterson MacCracken Jr., 48, onetime (1926-29) Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, secretary of the American Bar Association, aviation lawyer-lobbyist. Last year the Senate charged him with permitting destruction of papers which it had subpoenaed for its airmail investigation, cited him for contempt. Itching for a fight with his old enemy the Senate, famed Lawyer Frank J. Hogan (see p. 16) volunteered to defend Mr. MacCracken without compensation, had him play hide & seek with Sergeant Jurney (TIME, Feb. 12, 1934 et seq.). After the Senate had tried and sentenced his client to ten days in jail, Lawyer Hogan appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which last month refused to void the sentence.

Home for lunch one day last week, Sergeant Jurney answered the telephone, heard Mr. MacCracken offer to meet him at the District of Columbia jail at 3:45 that afternoon. Sergeant Jurney was there on the dot, but not Mr. MacCracken. He drove up at 4 p. m., explaining that he had started out without knowing just where the jail was, lost his way. Lugging well-labeled suitcases, he marched inside the dingy red building, was searched and fingerprinted. Past the cell-block where ordinary jailbirds are cooped he was led into the mess hall reserved for "short-termers," then into the short-termers' dormitory. Next morning he took up his duties as file clerk. His jailer announced that he would be allowed outdoors "twice a week," could entertain visitors in the basement on Sunday night.

Refusing to see newshawks, Prisoner MacCracken rested on a prepared statement which vigorously protested his innocence, laid full responsibility for permitting destruction of the papers on his partner, Frederic P. Lee. In the Senate, Vermont's Republican Warren Robinson Austin almost started a party fight by taking up MacCracken's protest. In the House, Texas' voluble William Doddridge McFarlane introduced a resolution demanding that Prisoner MacCracken either resign from the Government's National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics or be impeached.

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