"This Is Inexcusable"

In 1939 Franklin Roosevelt made Norman Littell, a fresh-faced, 40-year-old Seattle lawyer, Assistant Attorney General of the U.S. A passionate crusader for good government, young Norman Littell tackled his job with zeal and zing. But he never quite hit it off with his immediate boss, Attorney General Francis Biddle. Worse still, zealous Lawyer Littell got into the habit of denouncing Washington bungling in public. His zeal finally got on the nerves of a formidable array of Old New Dealers, including Harold Ickes, Jesse Jones, Francis Biddle and Tommy ("The Cork") Corcoran, ex-brain-truster turned lawyer-lobbyist.

Last week, after five bustling years in the Justice Department, Norman Littell had a rare Washington experience. Franklin Roosevelt fired him.* The reason: "insubordination." Said ex-Assistant Attorney General Littell: "I am a victim of the Ickes-Corcoran-Biddle axis. . . . The Commander in Chief ... is completely absorbed in the war. He cannot be supposed to know all that is going on in the Government departments." Lawyer Littell's version of what has been going on in the Justice Department:

"Petty Animosity." On Nov. 18, Francis Biddle asked for Littell's resignation, on the grounds that he and his assistant were "personally incompatible." Instead of his resignation, Littell wrote out a withering 12,000-word blast at his boss. The Attorney General of the U.S., Littell charged, was guilty of "confusion [and] superficiality of mind . . . frustration . . . personal vanity . . . devious ways . . . petty, personal animosity . . . intimate connections" with Lobbyist Tommy Corcoran to the detriment of the public interest. He charged that the Attorney General was "exasperated" because Littell had warned Congress of three shady-looking Administration schemes:

P: The Navy Department's Elk Hills oil deal, through which valuable Government oil lands were to be "given away" to Standard Oil of California.

P: The maneuver by Will Clayton, retiring Surplus Property Administrator, to dispose of $15 billion in Government-owned lands through "the hierarchy of the National Association of Real Estate Boards."

P: A War Department plan to turn back the Breakers Hotel in Florida to private owners--at great loss to U.S. taxpayers.

Norman Littell was particularly harassed, he said, by a Justice Department fraud investigation of Savannah Shipyard Co., represented in Washington by Corcoran.

What Has Tommy Got? On one occasion Assistant Littell waited for three days to confer with Mr. Biddle. Just after he finally got in to see him, the phone rang "and Mr. Biddle's remarks were about like this: 'Hello, Tommy. No--you don't need to come over here. You can come here or I'll come to your apartment, whichever suits your convenience.' It was clear that he preferred to have the Attorney General go there. My appointment was cut short and Mr. Biddle departed in about five minutes. . . .

"I have been asked many times in recent years: 'What has Tommy Corcoran got on Biddle?' The Attorney General charges that I am disloyal. Was it disloyal to answer such a question by saying: 'I don't know'?"

The Attorney General did not care to discuss all these "reckless and unfounded statements," and Franklin Roosevelt found that the Littell statement substantiated Mr. Biddle's charge of insubordination. The President wrote: "This is inexcusable; and under the circumstances my only alternative is to remove him from office, which I have done today."

* In twelve years, the President has sacked only two others (he normally sheds unwanted officials by reshuffling their duties to others). FTCommissioner William E. Humphrey, fired in 1933, insisted until his death several months later that he was still an FTCommissioner. In 1938, TVA Chairman Dr. Arthur E. Morgan, having resisted numerous pointed invitations to resign, was fired with "regret."

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