An Influential Twosome

Florence Umberhocker Bratten had served for 25 years as confidential secretary to Alben Barkley. A plump and jolly woman, she liked to boast that she had a first-name friend in every office in the Government. One of her friends was Charles E. ("Chuck") Shaver, counsel for the Senate Small Business Committee. In the 1948 and 1950 campaigns, Shaver was Barkley's personal aide.

Last week Reporter Jack Steele of the New York Herald Tribune (see PRESS) broke the news that Flo and Chuck were an influential twosome when it came to getting loans from the Reconstruction Finance Corp.* In May 1950, they called on three RFC directors on behalf of one Sam Fleisher, a Minneapolis contractor who wanted to build a ritzy waterfront hotel in Miami Beach. Fleisher's loan application had been turned down four times, but a few days after Flo and Chuck made their rounds, a loan for $1,100,000 went through RFC with no trouble. Reporter Steele dug up another fact: Fleisher had paid Chuck Shaver's former Washington law firm to handle his case before RFC, and Chuck, despite his Government job, was still listed on the firm stationery as an "associate." Shaver quickly retorted that he was an "inactive associate" at the time of the loan, that he and Flo had acted solely out of friendship for Fleisher and had been paid nothing for their pains. But, just as quickly, Shaver turned in a terse resignation to the Senate Small Business Committee. It was accepted immediately. Flo flew back from a vacation at her Kentucky farm to face the preliminary inquiries of Counsel Francis Flanagan of the Senate Investigations subcommittee. She then had an hour-long interview with her boss, Alben Barkley.

The Veep came out looking old and tired and sat down to the most strained press conference in his political history. Two stenographers kept careful record as he explained that Flo Bratten was "an accommodating, good-natured, bighearted woman." Would she keep her job? Said Barkley, woodenly: "I am not going to make a hasty judgment ... I am reserving judgment."

* Steele also seined up the fact that Alben Barkley, in 1934, successfully led a fight against a bill prohibiting any attempts by Government officials, politicians or members of Congress to influence RFC loans. Said Barkley then: "It seems to me that [the bill] casts a suspicion on everybody in Congress who might be willing to aid a constituent or a friend ..."

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