Double Diversion

Still shaken by the Harry Dexter White scandal, the Democratic National Committee last week counterattacked. The White Case, said Deputy Chairman Clayton Fritchey, was nothing but a diversionary effort to cover up assorted Republican sins, including "a serious situation within the Justice Department itself." Part of that serious situation, Fritchey charged, was that the Department of Justice had 1) "tied the hands of the FBI in the investigation of an extremely big crime syndicate," 2) immediately fired the U.S. attorney when he busted up the syndicate anyway.

Fritchey's diversionary attack concerned the Smaldone brothers. Eugene ("Checkers") and Clyde ("Flip Flop"), whose Colorado gambling empire netted them $1,000,000 yearly. Checkers was charged with income-tax evasion, but the first jury could not reach a verdict. While a second jury was being assembled, both brothers were caught trying to bribe prospective jurymen. Federal Judge Willis W. Ritter* sentenced them each to 60 years, then remarked indignantly from the bench, "I don't understand why the U.S. Department of Justice . . . should refuse to assist [in the case] . . . but they did." U.S. Attorney Charles S. Vigil agreed that "they quite obviously were not trying to help me."

Within the week newspapers were reprinting old rumors, circulated by Colorado Democratic Senator Edwin C. Johnson (who got Vigil his job originally), that the Smaldones were pressuring Washington to discipline their prosecutor.

Attorney General Brownell had ignored the rumors and judicial ad libs, but Fritchey's double diversion provoked a blast of devastating statements from his department:

P: It was a tip to the FBI that started the whole jury-tampering case, and 19 FBI agents worked on it.

P: Treasury agents did much of the investigating, but the FBI arrested both Checkers and Flip Flop, and an FBI man was a Government witness at their trial.

P: After he won the case, Vigil wrote thank-you notes to both the FBI and Justice's criminal division.

Prosecutor Vigil was turned down on two requests. Washington refused to let the FBI interrogate jury panel members about a case they might be called on to decide, suggesting that the judge do it. and when Vigil called for financial backgrounds of jury panel members, the Department of Justice refused to get the information together, holding that the financial condition of jurors is not the key to susceptibility to bribery.

The Justice Department did plead guilty to Fritchey's other charge, that it had fired Vigil. It said that Vigil originally agreed to turn his office over to his Republican successor (as 67 other holdover U.S. attorneys have done) but changed his mind after he had won the Smaldone case and refused to resign. Then Washington fired him.

* Ritter, a Truman appointee, was confirmed by the Senate after a year of wrangling, secret hearings, Republican protests and disapproval by the American Bar Association's judiciary committee. In three years on the bench, he has earned quite a reputation for individualism; he once ordered 26 postal employees on the floor below his court arrested, because their noise at work disturbed him.

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