Back-Room Man Out Front

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In forbidding, grey Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary a convict petitioned the Department of Justice for the removal from his chest of a tattoo vowing eternal devotion to "Mary"; he was about to be released and wanted to marry a girl with another name. Over the Rio Grande Immigration Service patrolmen peered from their light plane in search of the Mexican wetbacks who would, if they could, slip across the border in illegal droves to work on U.S. ranches. In Tacoma, Wash, a federal grand jury accused David Daniel Beck, a labor giant with a turnip torso, of , cheating on his income taxes. In Manhattan one of the hottest security cases in years was unfolding behind grand jury doors with the confession of Communist Spies Jack and Myra Soble and their accomplice, Jacob Albam. In Pennsylvania Bethlehem Steel Corp. lawyers worked and planned against the multimillion-dollar possibility that their proposed merger with the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. might be adjudged a threat to a free economy. And in Tallahassee, Fla. a White Citizens' Council member spat disgustedly as he spoke of the same "nigger lovin' s.o.b." against whom Southern Congressmen for weeks had been preparing an oratorical assault.

All these and uncounted, uncountable others were problems last week for a slender, balding man who sat talking softly, hands clasped around updrawn knee, behind his desk in a limestone building on Washington's Constitution Avenue. He is Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., 53, whose awesome duty it is to apply, on behalf of the U.S. Government, the constants of law to a time of explosive change.

The Human Link. As a personality, Herb Brownell is probably the least-known member of the original Eisenhower Cabinet; yet none has greater impact on the daily life of every man and woman in a nation of law under the Constitution. Brownell represents the legal arm of the Administration. He passes on almost every action the Government takes or would like to take. All legislation sent to Congress is reviewed by his office. Government contracts involving new policies are screened by him. Agreements with foreign nations go through his hands. His is the responsibility for ensuring a free economy by enforcing the antitrust laws, for ensuring the Government of its right to survive by enforcing the security laws, for ensuring all citizens of all colors of equal protection under the law. He is the human link between the abstractions of law and the realities of life.

Under Herbert Brownell the Justice Department has:

P:Slashed its staggering backlog of cases and "matters," i.e., investigations that may or may not become "cases," from 75,000 in 1952 to 53,000 in 1956--even while increasing the caseload by 10%. P:Initiated a practice of checking with the American Bar Association before recommending a nomination to the federal bench; observers are generally agreed as to the notably high quality of the four Eisenhower-appointed Supreme Court Justices and the 131 judges named to lower federal courts. P:Prodded and pushed federal courts toward clearing their swamped dockets, e.g., by recommending younger judges, by urging judges to halve their traditional summer-long vacations. P:Won more criminal tax convictions than in the previous twelve years (2,272 against 2,260). P:Built up an outstanding antitrust record, based not on penalizing growth but on protecting the right of all to grow. P: Attacked Communists with such legal skill that Communist Party Boss William Z. Foster was moved to say: "The attack by the Government upon the party has been directly responsible for the bulk of its losses." P:Launched a many-pronged assault on civil rights restrictions. In his proposed civil rights program Herbert Brownell is moving eyes open, fists up, into his toughest fight.

During the 52 months required to shape that record, schools and offices and courts of law across the U.S. began to realize that Herbert Brownell. 62nd Attorney General, may very well turn out to be one of the best--and the one who will leave the most lasting impression upon his nation's legal history. The process of realization was slow and painful: Herbert Brownell, longtime master political planner, had to prove the hard way that he was worthy of being Attorney General Brownell.

The Pol-to-Pol Whisper. There were, in fact, many gasps and a few shudders when Brownell became Attorney General. He was a professional politician entering a Justice Department already reeking and rocking from too many professional politicians. Brownell had been the strategist for the presidential campaigns of Tom Dewey and Dwight Eisenhower; he was the hotel-suite mastermind who liked to note that he had never spent so much as a night on a campaign train. Politician Brownell was treated like one of the boys when he came up for confirmation by the politicians of the U.S. Senate. They went through the motions of asking him questions at his hearing. Had he retired from his private business? Yes. Was his name gone from the door of his law office? Yes. yes. What had he done with his holdings? He had converted them into Government bonds. And at that point Nevada's Democratic Senator, the late Pat McCarran, leaned over with a pol-to-pol whisper: "Brownell, you're in a helluva shape if we don't confirm you."

Herb Brownell's public appearance and elusive personality often seem to confirm the picture of him as a back-room operator and little else. Completely relaxed, he slumps in his red leather swivel chair or tucks a knee under his chin--and gives the impression of being about to spring sidewise. His wide mouth breaks easily--to some, too easily--into a smile. Essentially a shy man, he finds his shyness often misread as furtive secrecy, his undeniable brilliance mistaken for slickness. Most suspicious of all to his critics is his habit of being right. Explains a longtime Washington friend: "Did you ever get into a poker game with a man who remembered every card played in every hand, how each player bet each hand, who figured all the odds instantly in his head, and was lucky besides? It's exasperating, because a guy like that usually wins, and when the game is over, you don't quite trust him, no matter how pleasant he seems. Well, that's Brownell's trouble."

When Herb Brownell first walked with his long, sway-backed stride into the cavernous throne room used as an office by previous Attorneys General, he took one startled look at the space and grandeur, fled, and set up shop in a small, comfortable and, naturally, back room. It took several days for secretaries in nearby offices to realize that the silent man they saw walking the corridors was the new Attorney General. Most Washington newsmen have mistrusted Brownell ever since he disclosed to five favored reporters the nomination of California's Earl Warren to be Chief Justice of the U.S. Where did he announce it? Not at a formal press conference (he seems stiff and evasive at such Washington affairs, loathes and rarely holds them) but over cocktails and around the fireplace in the seclusion of his home.

Small wonder, then, that Department of Justice careermen braced themselves for still another onslaught of political spoilsmanship when Brownell turned up as boss of the department.

"Go Ahead & Prosecute." As Brownell saw it, the Department of Justice seemed no particular rose. He found in it a vast, amorphous organization with more than 600 offices in the U.S. and its territories, assets that included the copyright to Lili Marlene, custody of the $100 million General Aniline & Film Corp. (both under the Office of Alien Property) and the nation's largest arsenal of side arms (15,000 weapons, which annually fire 10,625,000 rounds). Filled with political sinecures, worm-eaten with the scandals of the Truman Administration, the department's morale had dropped out of sight.

The first step was to dispel the idea of Brownell as a patronage bagman and as an Attorney General who would flip the legal coin in favor of Republicans. The New York State Republican organization recommended five men for a U.S. attorney's post; Brownell turned down all five and named his own man on the basis of competence. Brownell recommended the nomination of Frank Van Dusen, who had distinguished legal but few political credentials, to the District Court in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania's Republican Senators arose in wrath, held out for their own candidates, delayed confirmation for more than a year. Brownell rechecked Van Dusen's qualifications and made his decision: "We'll fight it through." He did; the Senators buckled, and Van Dusen was unanimously confirmed.

U.S. attorneys got the right to hire whomever they chose (today there are 19 Republicans and 18 Democrats in the Los Angeles office). Brownell purged incompetents from the Justice Department (his short-term predecessor, Democrat James McGranery of Philadelphia, had recommended nearly 100 for firing), but his own press officer is one of the many holdovers from the Truman Administration. Democrats, e.g., Theron Lamar Caudle, the old honeysuckle boy of the Truman Administration tax scandals, and Truman's onetime Appointments Secretary Matt Connelly, have been prosecuted and convicted for rascality. So have Republicans: former Colorado Republican Chairman Charles Haskell was convicted for tax dodging; last week Cook County Assessor Frank Keenan, the most powerful G.O.P. officeholder in the Chicago area, was indicted on income tax charges. A pro-Eisenhower Democratic governor came charging to Washington to prevent the tax prosecution of a state political bigwig. Within two weeks a Justice Department letter went to the U.S. attorney involved: "Go ahead and prosecute." Says the U.S. attorney: "When the governor went to Washington, it was like waving a red flag."

None but the Brighter. With such evenhandedness Brownell began the job of reviving spirit and pride in the Department of Justice. He started selecting his own circle of top officials. Says smooth, smart Deputy Attorney General William Rogers, 43, a New York prosecutor for Tom Dewey and a close friend of and adviser to Vice President Nixon: "We went out like coaches recruiting college athletes. We scouted the field for the best available men."

The Brownell-scouted team lunches daily as a top-echelon unit in a green-walled dining room near the Attorney General's office (everyone chips in about $30 a month in officers' mess-style) to discuss department business. The teamwork idea extends to frequent family parties, where Brownell will occasionally let down his scant hair and sing, off-key, old college songs. But the wives' general complaint is that their husbands huddle off in a corner and talk nothing but shop.

One of Brownell's most successful recruiting innovations puts the Department of Justice in competition with private firms and business corporations for the brightest law-school graduates. The program is in its third year, with the young lawyers agreeing to serve two years and to consider the opportunity of staying on as career Justice lawyers. This year 71 law graduates from 38 schools, all of them in the top 25% of their class, are entering the Justice Department.

Gradually, the spirit of top-level efficiency and teamwork has seeped down through the Justice Department ranks. "I think the Attorney General should get a Medal of Honor," says a U.S. attorney some 500 miles from Washington. "He's got us all feeling a certain pride in what we do." Another U.S. attorney's praise is the more meaningful because he frankly thinks Brownell is a cold fish ("I saw him get stewed once--but with dignity"). Says he: "Brownell has imbued the men surrounding him with the idea that there, is a great job to be done; somehow he inspires us."

"*-3." Another equally important dimension to the Brownell operation is implicit in the comment of Assistant Attorney General Perry Morton: "I think we've got a real law office here." Obscured by Brownell's political reputation was the fact that he is a crackerjack lawyer. He led his Yale Law School class, edited the Law Journal, won an Order of the Coif (he was Phi Beta Kappa from his home-state University of Nebraska), and is still considered by two former deans to rank among the finest students in Yale history. In private practice he was a partner in Manhattan's Lord, Day & Lord for more than 20 years (resigning only to become Attorney General), and an expert in corporation law. He is the first to admit that he is essentially a counselor, an office lawyer; he has never tried a case in court.

Counselor Brownell soon displayed a real talent for efficient administration--and if there was anything the Department of Justice needed, it was efficient administration. Some of the cases in the files when Brownell took over had been hanging around for a full generation. Field offices were supposed to turn in progress reports only once a year--and even then there was little reason to believe that anyone read them. Brownell instituted an elaborate IBM index system to tabulate reports--required monthly--so that Washington can now keep close track of every case at every stage of the legal game. Brownell himself reads the reports on all important cases and investigations, pencils notes in the margins, fires off brief memos typed on blue paper, e.g., "Please brief me a little more on the item on page 28 of your report." U.S. attorneys get higher salaries than before (up to $20,000), but are no longer allowed to engage in the dangerous, distracting business of outside practice. The U.S. attorney who lets a case drag can expect a "needlegram" from headquarters in short order. Especially ominous under "Remarks" on a coded work sheet sent the field offices is the notation "*-3." It translates roughly as: "The Attorney General is personally watching this case and wants action." He generally gets it.

Thus Herbert Brownell could and did raise Justice Department morale. He could and did prove himself a lawyer first and a politician second. He could and did streamline the department machinery. Without these achievements he could not have written his record. But the achievements in method were not enough. The job of Attorney General demands a special sort of courage. It requires a man willing to walk a lonely road in applying the laws in such vital fields as security, antitrust and civil rights, the laws that reach dramatically into the very blood and muscle of the nation.

The Security Storm. Herbert Brownell became acquainted with this loneliness in his first days as Attorney General. When Dwight Eisenhower took office, he found on his desk the plea for clemency of Atom Spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Brownell recommended against clemency. The Rosenberg execution was set for the Friday of June 19, 1953, at dusk because the Jewish Sabbath begins at sundown. Worldwide pressure against the execution was tremendous, the Pope used his good offices for mercy, more than 5,000 pickets chanted party-line slogans in front of the White House. Brownell quietly advised the President to go ahead with the execution unless the Rosenbergs showed a willingness to talk. They did not talk. Finally, the phone call came from Deputy Bill Rogers at the Justice Department: "It's all over." Brownell hung up the phone. The Rosenberg case was, indeed, all over.

But the security problem was far from over. Senator Joe McCarthy was monopolizing the headlines, making it appear that he was the only person who cared about ridding the Government of Communists. Other Cabinet members urged President Eisenhower to meet McCarthy headon, but Brownell thought otherwise. "Let time elapse," said he. Apply the law, Brownell counseled, by refusing to let McCarthy take over the files of the executive branch, but stay out of emotional brawls. First and last, Brownell thought that McCarthy by his excesses would bring about his own ruin. And he did.

Brownell got into trouble when his efforts to achieve a realistic security program for Government employees were taken up by Republican politicians who lumped security risks (homosexuals, alcoholics, etc.) with loyalty risks in what became known as the Eisenhower "numbers game." He got into even worse trouble when, for one of the few times in his life, he moved so far out of the back room that he found himself on the end of a very long limb. At a Chicago luncheon, Brownell made a speech identifying the Treasury Department's onetime Director of Monetary Research Harry Dexter White as a Soviet agent, and strongly implying that Harry Truman was disloyal. Brownell now says: "I felt the matter was so serious that it had to be brought to public attention in fast and dramatic fashion." But he was forced to eat his unjust words about Truman, and a serious, legitimate case of security breakdown was clouded by unnecessary brawling of the kind Brownell had urged others to avoid.

Brownell retired to his back-room office and attacked the security problem in a more effective way. His Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted 14 Smith Act cases (22 Communist functionaries are awaiting trial on Smith Act charges). Communist-front organizations have been hard hit (the Jefferson School in Manhattan recently went out of business after its enrollment dropped to 400 from 14,000 in 1946). The Soble spy case was so handled that it brought confessions, not controversy. Such is the Brownell security record that FBI Director John Edgar Hoover, no man to low-rate the threat of Communism for the sake of pleasing any Attorney General who happens to be his boss, says the Communist Party in the U.S. is now "stunned."

Trustbusting. At the outset of the Eisenhower Administration, Democrats began watching and waiting for a breakdown in antitrust enforcement. They are still watching and waiting. Relying heavily on the consent decree to accomplish the Government's purpose while avoiding long, costly court battles, Brownell's Justice Department has taken on such business giants as General Motors, International Business Machines, Pan American-Grace Airways and the Radio Corp. of America. General Lucius Clay, chairman of the Continental Can Co. and one of President Eisenhower's closest friends and advisers. is indignant at two antitrust suits filed against his company.

"If I stay at this job much longer," says Herb Brownell, "I will have picked a fight with every friend I ever had outside of Government." His remark is perhaps too exclusive: Brownell's lonely job has required him to pick fights with some friends inside the Government. He tangled with Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, who could see nothing illegal about big packers and grocers making a tidy profit by selling cheese to the Government at one support price and buying it back a few days later at a lower price. The Justice Department is suing to recover $2,500,000. Again, Brownell clashed with the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and prominent banking interests because he wanted close federal control of bank holding companies.

Climax in Civil Rights. Today Herbert Brownell is nearing the high moment of his career. He is out in the open; he knows it and he likes it. He is the personal target of Southern opposition to the civil rights program now in Congress. He is determined to fight it through. "This program," says Brownell. "may be remembered longer than anything we do in Washington."

The first day Brownell arrived in Washington he saw a Negro family being thrown out of a restaurant. The Brownell Justice Department took the Thompson restaurant case out of the hands of an uncooperative local prosecutor, soon won a court victory abolishing segregation in Washington restaurants. Brownell followed un with unpublicized conferences with businessmen and city officials, helped bring about integration in the parks, playgrounds, theaters and other public places of the nation's capital. A Justice Department brief helped persuade the Interstate Commerce Commission to outlaw segregation on interstate trains and buses. Brownell invited Southern transportation-company heads to Washington for behind-the-scenes (backroom) conferences about transit segregation in their cities. Result: more than 20 Southern communities have killed Jim Crow without fuss or fanfare.

For the 1953 argument before the Supreme Court on school desegregation. Brownell read every word, made extensive changes in the bulky, complex Justice Department brief. When the question came as to whether the Supreme Court should declare school segregation unconstitutional. Assistant Attorney General J. Lee Rankin recalls that the tension in the great marble chamber was "electric." Says Rankin: "Attorney General Brownell had directed me to say that the Government thought it was the duty of the court to find segregation unconstitutional. That was the answer I gave."

In the Role of Servant. Brownell's present civil rights program is the result of three years' intensive study (TIME. May 6). Such measures as anti-poll-tax legislation and a fair employment practices commission were considered and cast aside as too harsh or unworkable. The program, as finally accepted and recommended by Brownell, seeks primarily to provide tools for enforcing civil rights statutes already on the books. It is especially aimed at securing for Negroes their right to vote, which both Brownell and the program's Southern enemies recognize as the heart of the whole problem of discrimination. "If the right to vote is assured," says Brownell, "other rights will flow from that. Passage of this bill will show that Congress means to translate into reality the words of promise in the Constitution."

Political Realist Brownell knows how desperate a fight the South's congressional bloc will make against his program. He recognizes the extent of his personal, out-front involvement. But even if he could, he would not now retire to a back room. For the Attorney General is the servant of a Constitution which recognizes that law without freedom is tyranny, and that freedom without law is anarchy. It is in this role of servant that the Attorney General of the U.S. says: "No higher duty rests upon the man holding my office than of translating each provision of the Bill of Rights into a concept of living law so that justice will be done to all our citizens."

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