Et tu, Manny?

With no choice but to carry out the House's will, Speaker McCormack last week handpicked a committee of five Democrats and four Republicans to investigate Adam Powell. As chairman, he named Democrat Emanuel Celler, a New Yorker like Powell and chief House sponsor of every major civil rights bill since 1957. Manny Celler had at the time of the Powell floor debate denounced the whole investigation as "a kangaroo court." Now he heads it.

For that matter, all five of the Democrats on the panel had previously shared McCormack's view that Powell should hang onto his House seat pending investigation. One of them, Michigan's John Conyers Jr., a Negro, voted against an inquiry under any circumstances. The four Republican committeemen had all favored the successful move to have Powell step aside. Though the full House will have the final say on Powell's fate, the committee it will hear from is one that Powell himself might have picked.

Just to be on the safe side, Adam went ahead and formed his own committee--a team of eight civil rights lawyers who, he said, would help him "press this fight to the end."

As a start in that direction, Powell announced that proceeds from a forthcoming book and a long-playing record album--both entitled Keep the Faith, Baby--would be used belatedly to pay off his longstanding $164,000 libel judgment against a Harlem widow. As far as his House colleagues are concerned, however, any attempt by Powell to cleanse his past may be offset by his verbiage on the recording. Assailing his congressional opponents as "Judases" and "hypocrites," Powell compares his fate to Caesar's, at one point cries: "Et tu, Brute?" Even for Manny Celler's committee, such histrionics may be hard to take.

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