T-Man

The scene was the senior civics class of Washington's McKinley High School.

"Does anybody know," asked the teacher, "who put Boss Tom Pendergast of Kansas City behind the bars?"

Nobody answered.

"You all ought to know it was Attorney General Murphy and J. Edgar Hoover." Seventeen-year-old Robert Irey reddened, said nothing. The Ireys don't talk much. But he knew very well who was responsible for jailing Tom Pendergast. Why, J. Edgar Hoover had never even heard of the case until the four-year accumulation of convicting evidence had been turned over to Department of Justice lawyers. He knew because the man who got the evidence was his dad.

Elmer Lincoln Irey, Robert's dad, has been called the No. 1 civil servant of the U. S. Broad-shouldered and blond, he looks and talks like a Missouri-born Sunday-school superintendent--which he is. People who don't like him--he is particularly unpopular with malefactors of wealth --say Elmer has a heart of ice. The simplest way for the Federal Government to catch a crook is to look into his income-tax returns. Elmer Irey has done just that, long and efficiently. The story goes that big gamblers nowadays are careful to station a bookkeeper next to the croupier, to keep the figures straight for Elmer.

In all his 51 years Elmer Irey has never written a magazine article, not even with ghostly aid. He has never given a tip to Walter Winchell, never been photographed in a Manhattan nightclub or on the beach at Miami. His desk has an ash tray made of counterfeiters' copper plates, three more which used to be opium containers. And that is the nearest thing there is to a T-Man* museum.

Last week Elmer Irey and his 228 unpublicized T-Men got some public recognition. To the House of Representatives Missouri's Congressman Jack Cochran presented the first publicized official report on Internal Revenue's Intelligence Unit. In the 20 years since Elmer Irey organized it, the Unit has:

>Uncovered $476,573,129 in income-tax deficiencies. Last year's haul: $39,000,000 --a profit to the Government of $30 for every dollar spent.

>Supplied evidence for 947 income-tax-evasion convictions, including Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, Waxey Gordon.

>Caught Bruno Hauptmann, because Elmer Irey insisted (over Colonel Lindbergh's objections) on recording the numbers of the ransom money.

*T for Treasury. Officially a T-Man is an "investigative agent of the Intelligence Unit of the Bureau of Internal Revenue of the United States Treasury." Mr. Irey detests "T-Man" because it sounds like "G-Man."

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