U.S. v. B.G.

"The United States of America versus Bernard Goldfine," droned the clerk in a Washington Federal Court. "You are charged with contempt of Congress. How do you wish to plead?" Rising from a front-row seat the man for whom life has become a nervous round of "the U.S. v." walked to the bench, announced a firm "Not guilty." Basis of the charges: 18 instances, during a hearing last summer of the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight (TIME, July 14 et seq.) in which the 68-year-old Boston millionaire and friend of Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams refused to answer questions about $104,973 in cash withdrawals from his Boston Port Development Co. and East Boston Co.

At almost the moment that Goldfine was being fingerprinted and bailed out ($1,000) of the capital's Federal Court Building until a March 16 trial, another contempt decision was being logged in Boston. U.S. District Judge Charles Wyzanski Jr. found Goldfine and faithful Secretary Mildred Paperman guilty of criminal contempt (but postponed their sentence) for not turning over complete records of three Goldfine textile companies to an 80-man Internal Revenue task force fine-combing Goldfine's bewildering financial empire for tax fraud. And as though two contempt trials were not enough, a third gets under way this week. The Securities and Exchange Commission got Goldfine summoned back into Boston's Federal Court, accused him of ignoring a 1955 court order by failing to file last November a semiannual SEC Form 9-K on the East Boston Co.

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