Investigation by Headlines

On his head a straw hat, on his arm a stick, in his breast pocket a handkerchief, at his throat a red cravat with large white polka dots, the chief police officer of the U. S. Senate last week set out upon a manhunt. Last year Sergeant-at-Arms Chesley W. Jurney tracked down through a fairyland of misadventures Lawyer-Lobbyist William P. MacCracken, one-time Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, helped to have him jailed for ten days for contempt of the Senate (TIME, Feb. 12, 1934, et seq.). Now Sleuth Jurney, on behalf of his Senatorial masters, was out to hijack a prize utility lobby witness captured by rival House investigators. Flanked by two deputies, Sergeant Jurney plunked himself in the rear seat of an official Senate limousine. Three newshawks scrambled in with them. Behind, in a dozen other cars and taxicabs, came more newshawks and photographers. The chase was on, the chase for elusive Howard Colwell ("Pimpernel") Hopson, roly-poly boss of the much besooted Associated Gas & Electric System.

Surprise Ending. First visit of Sergeant Jurney and his entourage was to the Mayflower Hotel suite of Hopson Lawyer William A. Hill. There was no answer to their knock and the manager opened the room to prove it empty. As they left the hotel a newshawk spotted Mr. Hill telephoning in a booth. In full cry the pack swept across the lobby, carrying curious bystanders with them. The embarrassed lawyer retreated into the bar, where he accepted a contempt citation from Mr. Jurney, said he did not know where his client was but when they met would tell him that the Senate of the U. S. wanted him.

Next Sergeant Jurney drove across the Potomac River to Alexandria, Va. to ask whether Mr. Hopson was staying at a small hotel there. He was not. Thereupon Sleuth Jurney good-naturedly treated his camp followers to beer and a fish supper, at a cost of $16 borrowed from a deputy on the understanding that it would be charged to their expense account.

Sergeant Jurney decided to beat one more covert before quitting for the day. The motorcade drove back to Washington to the Hotel Shoreham to ask Bernard B. Robinson, Hopson's "Washington representative", whether he knew where his boss was. At the desk of the Shoreham whom should Mr. Jurney bump into but beefy, bad-tempered Chairman John J. O'Connor of the House Rules Committee, who captured "Pimpernel" Hopson fortnight ago.

"Can you tell me where Hopson is?" asked the Senate's agent amiably.

"You're wasting your time," snarled Representative O'Connor. "Hopson is in my custody and I wouldn't turn him over to you under any consideration."

Sergeant Jurney and his party felt they were getting hot, rode up to the eighth floor and went to Mr. Robinson's room.

Sounds of gaiety and merriment came through the door. Sergeant Jurney knocked. Mr. Robinson opened the door, hastily popped out and shut the party in behind him.

"Is Mr. Hopson in there?" inquired Sergeant Jurney.

"I haven't heard from him since a week ago Monday."

Sergeant Jurney looked suspiciously at the door.

"Sorry I can't ask you in for a drink," explained Mr. Robinson with embarrassment, "but I'm entertaining a dinner party." Then he bowed himself back into his room, shutting the door behind him. Male and female voices could be heard laughing inside.

Sergeant Jurney looked dubiously at his deputies, at the newshawks. "There's a whole crowd in there," he mused undecidedly. Less squeamish, the newshawks put their ears to the door, listened hopefully. Then the door opened and everybody gaped. Out slid thin, hollow-cheeked Presidential Secretary Marvin Mclntyre, followed by Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Wood ("Chip") Robert Jr., followed by Amon Carter, Democratic "angel," publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

"Hello, Mac," gurgled Mr. Jurney. "Have you got Hopson in your pocket?" Secretary Mclntyre laughed, looked uneasily at the newshawks.

"I know a good story when I see it," he began, recalling the days when he, too, was a Washington reporter, "but we don't know anything about this. I've never even seen Hopson." Photographers opened their cameras.

"I forbid you to take any pictures!" commanded President Roosevelt's No. 2 White House aide, "and nothing must be written about this." Cameramen meekly obeyed, but news hawks did not see why they should suppress a newsworthy account of New Dealers fraternizing socially with "the Power Trust." Publisher Carter began to bluster:

"Now I want you fellows to under stand that 'Chip' Robert and Mac are my guests. And I don't want anything in the papers about their being up here. And if any one of you fellows does write any thing about this, I'll see that it's not printed and I'll see that he's fired, see? I got five franchises in the AP, I take the UP, the INS and Universal Service and I'll see that anyone who prints this story gets fired, see?"

"Now, boys," urged Sergeant Jurney, assuming a new role, "there's no reason why you should involve Mr. Mclntyre and Mr. Robert in something that means nothing."

Finally Publisher Carter assumed a more conciliatory tone, took some newshawks downstairs for drinks. Afterwards he telephoned the news services asking them not to send out the story. Associated Press did suppress it. The others sent out abbreviated accounts by wire. Next morning not a word was printed in any Washington paper about what Sleuth Jurney and his party found on the eighth floor of the Shoreham Hotel. By afternoon, however, AP had had a change of heart, picked up the story from the version printed by the New York Post. At last Washington heard how Sergeant Jurney failed to find a 225-lb. needle in the Washington haystack but stumbled into a mare's nest.

But if the Press was willing to play dumb with Mr. Mclntyre's political faux pas, Republicans were not. Senator Gibson of Vermont, member of the Lobby Investigating Committee, promptly announced that he would ask to have Messrs. Mclntyre and Robert summoned to explain under oath their "relations" with Lobbyist Robinson and Associated Gas & Electric.

Treasure Trove. Standard plot for thrillers since Treasure Island is two bitterly hostile groups of adventurers competing to discover and carry off a fabulous hoard of pirate treasure. Such was the plot which Representative O'Connor's House Rules Committee and Senator Hugo La Fayette Black's Senate Lobby Investigating Committee were playing, with the testimony of Howard Colwell Hopson as the Treasure Trove. The steps by which the ambitious rivals reached their present state of front page enmity:

1) Representative O'Connor's investigation of lobbying for and against the Public Utility Bill was the aftermath of a House revolt at Administration pressure on Representatives to compel them to accept the "death sentence" clause for holding companies. Senator Black's investigation of the same thing was sponsored by friends of the "death sentence" who sought so to discredit the utilities in the headlines that the House would have to reverse its position on the "death sentence."

2) Same day Representative O'Connor moved to get his investigation afoot with a $50,000 appropriation for expenses, Senator Black demanded $150,000 for a job that would throw the House show into the shade. To even matters, Senator Black got only a third of what he asked for.

3) No sooner had Representative O'Connor got well started toward headlines, investigating the mutual accusations of Representative Brewster and Brain Truster Tom Corcoran, than Senator Black stole the front page from him by a more spectacular investigation of fake telegrams from Pennsylvania (TIME, July 29).

4) By way of direct assault on the House Senator Black pilloried obscure Congressman Patton of Texas, smearing him for days with imputations of having accepted a bribe, although all that the Senator was able to prove was that the Representative had been seen to depart from the hotel room of a utility man carrying a cigar box which one witness did not think contained cigars.

When, after such proceedings, Witness Hopson fell into his hands, Chairman O'Connor naturally was in no mood to share his treasure with his rival. But no sooner had Mr. Hopson begun his testimony before the House Rules Committee (TIME, Aug. 19) than Senator Black tried to steal him. The first attempt to serve a Senate subpena was foiled by Representative O'Connor's agents, who surrounded Witness Hopson as he left the hearing, ganged the Senate process server. Next time Representative O Connor had Witness Hopson on the stand, he found him just as affable as at the first hearing and just as uncommunicative. The chief treasure dug out of him was a laugh at the expense of the Senate which had been hunting for him all over Washington while he had been staying at the Shoreham Hotel registered under the name of his chauffeur, Thomas McCarthy.

As Mr. Hopson left that session one of Senator Black's servers thrust into his hands a subpena ordering him to appear instanter before the Senate Committee. The Senate Committee waited for him all afternoon but he did not appear. That night Sergeant Jurney made the search which ended so surprisingly at the Shoreham. Next day Representative O'Connor and Senator Black were again at swords' points, for it turned out that Mr. Hopson had a good excuse for not appearing before the Senate on the previous afternoon : the House Committee had had him testifying at a secret session. If the Senate was going to try to steal his witness, Representative O'Connor threatened to have Mr. Hopson placed under protective arrest. Senator Black started backing water, announced that since the House felt as it did, he would preserve "the rules of comity," would not try to seize Mr. Hopson while Representative O'Connor was examining him.

That night Representative O'Connor had a shock. All day he kept Mr. Hopson under examination in secret. At 5 p. m. the examination was over. At 5:20 Mr. Hopson, who evidently did not relish the prospect of being put under arrest by the Senate for contempt or by the House for his protection, marched into a special session of Senator Black's committee.

Expert Inquisition. The first thing that Senator Black proceeded to prove was that he was an abler headlinemaker than his House rival. Mr. Hopson before any committee is a witness expert at avoiding damaging admissions, at amplifying his answers into attacks upon his opponents. Nonetheless, Senator Black promptly began producing from his lips facts worthy of headlines at least bigger than those that Representative O'Connor had been able to evoke:

P:Mr. Hopson had not been captured by Representative O'Connor's agents. Instead, his attorneys had arranged to have him subpenaed by the House, on the theory that the House investigators were less rough with utility witnesses than those of the Senate.

In attempting to influence the Press on the Public Utility Bill and particularly on Associated Gas & Electric Mr. Hopson had tried the usual trick of irate business men, threatening to withdraw advertising. Papers he admitted working on without success were the New York Times and the Scripps-Howard group. He had also protested vigorously comments by Arthur Brisbane and the late Will Rogers anent holding companies. The Hearst Press as a whole and the Gannett chain he found no fault with. In fact he had wired William-Randolph Hearst ideas for editorials, had increased his advertising in Hearst papers.

P:At one time earlier this summer he had considered going to Washington to attend hearings on the Public Utility Bill, but Patrick J. Hurley, onetime Secretary of War, had advised against it on the ground that A. G. & E. "might get the works if we appear." Mr. Hopson's lawyers in Manhattan also advised him not to go to Washington because at that time he was presenting a doctor's certificate saying he was too ill to appear before the New York Legislature's utility investigating committee in Albany.

Such were a few of the admissions which Senator Black succeeded in extracting during the odd hours when Chairman O'Connor was not pre-empting the time of their joint witness, but well did Mr. Hopson know from those first brief experiences that he was in the hands of an expert inquisitor.

Alabama's Black. The true expertness of Senator Black's examination was shown by the way he made his witness give only such answers as Mr. Black desired. The first time Witness Hopson tried to explain one of his answers, Inquisitor Black shut him off: "Just state the facts. We don't want speeches here. . . . We don't want philosophy. . . . You suggested that the Administration be accused of lobbying on this bill?"

Witness: "I may have. I feel the Administration did lobby. . . ."

Senator: "That's enough. We don't care for your opinion of the Administration's acts."

Again & again wily Senator Black would trip Witness Hopson up, cause him to fall headlong into puddles of contradiction. Mr. Hopson would flush, sputter, say he had not understood the question. Before the end of his first day's examination, Mr. Hopson made a significant answer to a significant question: "I don't recall. You have me on the hip."

The man who is now the Senate's No. 1 inquisitor has always been smart, always worked hard at being smart, but until a few years ago was politically nobody. Born in Clay County. Ala., Hugo Black never finished secondary school, never went to college, though in 1906 he was graduated with honors by the University of Alabama's law school. He spent brief periods as a police judge in Birmingham, as a county prosecutor, as a captain of the 81st Field Artillery. In 1926 the late Oscar W. Underwood, disgusted with Alabama politics, announced his retirement from the Senate. Unknown Hugo Black was the dark horse in a five-man primary for the Underwood seat. Without any prominent support, he put on a wrinkled suit, climbed into a Model-T Ford, stumped the State, sleeping with any farmer who would put him up, speaking at every crossroads store, saying the right words to win Ku Klux Klan support. That year, a low in Alabama politics, Ku Kluxers helped put Hugo Black in the U. S. Senate.

Elevation to the Senate did not make Hugo Black politically potent, but it enabled him to become politically respectable. As an Alabamian and an anti-utilitarian, he played second fiddle to Senator Norris on the long Muscle Shoals sonata. He got his fellow Alabama veterans costly favors. He picked up the 30-hour-week idea and, to the great delight of Labor, brandished it menacingly about the Senate chamber. In 1933 he got his 30-hour-week bill passed by the Senate amid a great spatter of headlines. Then came NRA which also promised short hours, and Senator Black adroitly sluiced his 30-hour-week following in behind it. Until NRA proved unpopular, he claimed, with some justice, that he was responsible for the passage of the National Recovery Act.

Senator Black is not a demagog, nor is he a statesman. Not until he took up investigations as a hobby was he able to capitalize to the full on his shrewdness and his talents. His interest in Muscle Shoals led him to aid the late Senator Thaddeus Caraway when that stoop-shouldered, sharp-witted little oldster was probing lobbies in 1929-30. And he was quick to detect the political profit for little Senators with big ears.

Air Mail. Before the Hoover Administration slunk out of Washington a friend tipped off Senator Black that the Post Office Department was hurrying to sign a mail contract with Philadelphia Steamship Co. On the strength of the tip Senator Black proposed an investigation of ocean mail contracts, threw in air mail contracts for good measure. During odd hours for four months he proceeded, with only fair success in publicity, to expose postal subsidies. When he began to dig into the air mail contracts, however, he struck pay dirt and also hot water. To this day two conflicting stories are told in Washington about who urged the cancellation of the air mail contracts which led to the disastrous attempts of the Army to fly the mails. One version is that Senator Black, aroused by evidence of collusion in bidding for air mail contracts, persuaded Franklin Roosevelt to make an extempore cancellation of all contracts. The other version is that Postmaster General Farley, thinking the investigation might embarrass Administration friends, urged the cancellation on the White House to bring the Black inquiry to an end. At any rate the political triumph with which a victorious investigator is traditionally rewarded escaped Senator Black.

Since then he has perfected the art of making witnesses uncomfortable.

Little Senators nave big ears and some big-eared little Senators have made great reputations as investigators. One of the greatest was little Thomas J. Walsh of Montana who single-handed took the lid off Teapot Dome. Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota is physically small but his ears were big enough to catch the overtones of the munitions business as a likely subject for Senate investigation.

Press at Elbow. Yet the making of a headlined inquisitor depends only in part on the range of his hearing. Even more fundamental is a minimum of cooperation with the Press. The best of truth hunts is comprised of long hours of dull testimony. A good inquisitor soon learns a basic journalistic rule: "Every newspaper story must have a lead." The art of conducting a successful investigation depends largely on the investigator's planning his examination so as to provide just two bits of suggestive or scandalous information. The first is to be brought out at the morning session to fill the requirements of newshawks who write for afternoon papers. The second is adduced in the afternoon to make headlines the next morning.

The co-operation that the Press gives a Senate investigation is usually even greater than it receives. In the committee room there is generally a regular system of note passing, as reporters send up questions to help the investigator. Frequently one or more newshawks provide most of the blood and sinew of an inquisition. They not only dig up original facts but stand at the committeeman's elbow helping him with suggestions during the cross examination. Behind Senator Black in the airmail investigation was loud, talkative Fulton Lewis Jr., a Hearstling who two years before had begun to ferret out airmail scandal. In the present investigation, the newshawk seen most frequently over Mr. Black's shoulder is dressy, hard-boiled Paul Y. Anderson, able correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Anderson's whole career has been spent digging up scandals, until today he sees public affairs almost entirely through a haze of suspicions. He attached himself to Senator Walsh in the original Teapot Dome investigation, later scribbled two questions on a piece of paper and handed it to that inquisitor. For refusing to answer those two questions Chairman Robert W. Stewart of Standard Oil of Indiana was tried for contempt of the Senate, and although acquitted, lost his job with the Rockefellers (TIME, March 18, 1929). Today Correspondent Anderson and Scripps-Howard's Ruth Finney, who has all a woman's ingenuity in asking embarrassing questions, are Senator Black's two closest Press aids. Hugo Black is not a Tom Walsh but with the silent partner of Tom Walsh leaning over his shoulder, a Senate investigation is still no place for a man with something to hide.

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