Taps for Tom

For the better part of nine days, Thomas Joseph Dodd had asked ever more plaintively for an end to the proceedings. "Don't drag me through any more," he implored. "Give me my rest either in sorrow or relief." Last week, as weary of the debate as Dodd himself, the Senate complied. It voted, 92 to 5, to censure the senior Senator from Connecticut for bringing the Senate into "dishonor and disrepute" by wrongfully taking $116,083 in campaign funds for his own use. He was only the seventh Senator in 178 years to be formally condemned by his colleagues (see box).

The indictment was not greatly softened by the dismissal, 51 to 45, of a lesser count: that Dodd had double-billed both the Government and private groups for some $1,700 in travel expenses. Many Senators regarded that sum as picayune in comparison with the misappropriated campaign funds. Many others thought that he should have the benefit of the doubt on his contention that the double-billing was the result of sloppy bookkeeping, not dishonesty. The vote may also have been influenced by the contention of Dodd's self-appointed "defender," Louisiana's Russell Long, that if Tom Dodd, 60, were found guilty in court of willful double-billing, he could be sentenced to ten years in jail and fined $10,000.

"Senatorial Heep." On the main count there was never much doubt, and Long's marathon defense served only to turn a painful exercise into an unseemly ordeal that ended by depriving Dodd of even the last vestige of dignity. Often sentimental, Dodd eventually pleaded his cause with the mawkishness of a white-haired Uriah Heep. "How many times do you want to hang me?" he asked his colleagues. "If you want to do it, be done with it--be done with it! Do away with me, and that will be the end! But in the twilight of my life--and how many years are left to me? Probably few, probably few--I ask you to search your souls about these facts, in the knowledge that every Senator has about others in this body."

"If you want to mark me a thief," he shouted, "do it today, do it before the sun goes down and let me skulk away . . . ashamed to face you tomorrow!" He reminded his colleagues that "you're in a position to destroy me, and I'm aware of it. My life is at stake. I'm not asking much. All I want is a fair shake." For all his histrionics, only three Senators--Connecticut's Abraham Ribicoff, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond and Texas' John Tower--joined Long and Dodd in voting against censure.

"Princefish." Probably the strangest aspect of the Dodd Affair was the havoc it wrought on the once-promising prospects of Russell Long. As chairman of the powerful Finance Committee and Senate Majority Whip, the "Princefish" (his father, the demagogic Huey, was the "Kingfish"), just a few short months ago had every reason to hope that he would follow Mike Mansfield as Majority Leader, perhaps even emerge one day as a vice-presidential candidate. But his wild rants and arrogant tactics in defense of Dodd--coming shortly after an equally bizarre defense of his discredited presidential-campaign financing bill--irrevocably alienated many of his colleagues, while actually harming Dodd's case.

As for Tom Dodd, he seemed hardly to understand what had happened. "I truly don't believe," he said, "that I did anything wrong." At a press conference after his censure he declared that he felt compelled to run again in 1970 in order to "vindicate" his name. Meanwhile, both the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service are pursuing their own investigations of the Senator's financial nexus.

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