Black Booty

In a virtuous recital of the trials and triumphs of Congressional investigating committees published in the February issue of Harper's Magazine, Alabama's Senator Hugo La Fayette Black, who has made his reputation chiefly by heading Senate investigations of air mail contracts and of lobbying against the Public Utilities Bill, observed:

"Whenever a Congressional committee inspects the so-called private papers of a corporation official, the cry goes up that this is an outrageous invasion of the rights of private citizens. . . . Slowly business executives have built up the fiction that they have a right to enjoy some special privilege of secrecy."

Last week as the Black Committee resumed its scratching in the Power lobby's backyard, after a six-month layoff, discovery of the Committee's interim activities roused a mighty howl throughout the land, which showed that many & many a citizen still regarded his privacy as something more than a "fiction." Backed up by court action, it promised to result in a showdown on the headline-making power of Congress to probe the affairs of private citizens at will.

Silas Hardy Strawn, onetime president of the American Bar Association and of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, and a hard-bitten Republican critic of the New Deal, is senior partner of the Chicago law firm of Winston, Strawn & Shaw. Short time ago Lawyer Strawn learned that the Black Committee had subpoenaed from Western Union copies of all telegrams sent or received by his firm between Feb. 1 and Dec. 1, 1935. Outraged, he promptly hired one of Washington's smartest lawyers, Frank J. Hogan, defender of Albert B. Fall, Edward L. Doheny, William P. MacCracken Jr. and Andrew W. Mellon (TIME, March 11, 1935). Last week Lawyer Hogan marched into District of Columbia Supreme Court, charged that the Black Committee had instituted an unconstitutional "inquisitorial investigation and fishing expedition" into his client's private affairs, got a temporary injunction restraining Western Union from handing over the Strawn telegrams.

With the Strawn action as a lead, newshawks investigated, soon turned up a surprising set of facts. The Black Committee, it developed, had seized the Feb. 1-Dec. 1 telegrams of some 1,000 firms, organizations and individuals. Some of this booty had been obtained by the Committee's own subpoenas, of which it had issued more than 2,000 to Western Union and Postal Telegraph offices throughout the land. Others, it was reported, had been secured for it by the Federal Communications Commission, whose clerks were said to have copied off more than 13,000 messages in Western Union's Washington offices alone. Newshawks estimated the total of telegrams seized at 5,000,000.

Asked for an explanation, Senator Black replied: "We've subpoenaed all telegrams of these gentlemen who conceal themselves behind organizations and groups in order to determine the policies of the nation behind a mask."

To most observers, the list of groups and persons whose telegrams had been subpoenaed seemed self-explanatory. It was chiefly composed of utility companies and their lawyers, including the Manhattan firm of John W. Davis. But it also included the American Liberty League, the Crusaders, the Sentinels of the Republic, the National Economy League, the Women's National Republican Club--all more or less openly devoted to turning the New Deal out of office Nov. 3.

Says the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. . . . Last week Old Guardsman James W. Wadsworth of New York leaped up in the House to charge the Black Committee with flagrant violation of that safeguard. This

Representative, who was once a Senator, further declared that the Federal Communications Commission, though empowered to examine telegraph companies' records for its own purposes, had no power whatever to seize private correspondence transmitted by these common carriers. That "pillage," cried the New Yorker, was an act of "terrorism" which led straight to political blackmail.

Over the radio Liberty League President Jouett Shouse called for "a mammoth petition of protest against this monstrous invasion of our fundamental rights."

Cracked Scripps-Howard's Washington Columnist Raymond Clapper: "Why doesn't the Black Committee seize the telegrams of prominent Democrats who have been selling their influence with the Administration for fat legal fees? If we are going in for Nazi methods, there is no use being squeamish about it."

Judicially stretching his indignation over the whole subject of legislative investigations, Pundit Walter Lippmann pointed out that investigating committees act as both prosecutor and judge; put men on trial with no advance knowledge of the charges against them, no right to be represented by counsel, to call their own wit nesses or to cross-examine their accusers; operate with no procedure, no rules of evidence, no court of appeal, no jury ex cept the newspaper-reading public. "What should be proposed," boomed he, "is that Legislatures cease to regard themselves above the law, above the rules of equity and justice, and that in making laws they respect the spirit of the law."

Above courts of law was exactly where Senator Black promptly declared himself to be. Securing postponement until this week of a hearing on making the Strawn injunction permanent, he arranged for a legal representative of his Committee to appear beside Western Union as "a friend of the court." On the Senate floor he cried: "In my judgment, if any judge ever issued an injunction to prevent the delivery of papers summoned by this body, the Congress should immediately enact legislation taking away that jurisdiction from the courts, for Congress creates the jurisdiction of those courts. If I had any idea that any judge would issue an injunction against this body getting certain evidence, I would long ago have introduced a bill taking away the power to do so."

One by one California's McAdoo, Nebraska's Norris, New York's Wagner, Missouri's Clark and Montana's Wheeler uprose to chime assent. No Senator raised his voice in objection. No Senator knows when he himself may be heading an investigation, needing all the power he can command.

Ripping into his critics, Senator Black charged that the same kind of seekers of special privilege who had organized the Liberty League were behind "fake farm unions, sentinels of the republic, protectors of liberty, guardians of the Constitution, self-defense leagues." Picking out the Chicago Tribune for special mention, he declared that, "a gross and malicious campaign of misrepresentation" had been launched against his Committee.

Specifically, Inquisitor Black denied that he had seized the files of the Liberty League, that the Federal Communications Commission had helped him round up his telegrams.

Meantime in his Committee hearings the sharp-tongued Senator was making out a more concrete case for his seizures. Vice President Stephen B. Severson of Buffalo, N. Y.'s Republic Light, Heat & Power Co., a Cities Service subsidiary, admitted that without authorization he had signed the names of some 30 relatives and friends in his home town of Stoughton, Wis. to telegrams opposing the utilities bill, sent them to the Representative from that Wisconsin district. Copies of those telegrams in the company's files and 7,000 others had been destroyed, but Vice President Severson did not know how, when or by whom.

Officials of Crew Levick Co., another Cities Service subsidiary, likewise testified that their anti-utilities bill telegrams had been burned or otherwise disposed of. "And all this being true," Senator Black asked a Crew Levick sales manager, "the only place on this earth where the Committee can get this information is from the telegraph companies?"

Said the sales manager: "That is right." Finally the squabble was brought to a temporary intermission by the unanimous passage by the Senate of a resolution introduced by Senator Borah directing the Federal Communications Commission to supply a detailed report of all its activities in investigating messages.

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