Congressman Convicted

Texas Democratic Congressman John Dowdy has long been a champion of morality of sorts. As a church-going district attorney in the 1940s, he once prosecuted a black rape suspect so viciously, calling him, among other epithets, "a lustful animal," that a higher court ordered a new trial. As a 19-year Congressman, he introduced bills to prevent the homosexual Mattachine Society from collecting funds in the capital, and to outlaw as obscene those publications that feature "intrigues between men and women and immoral conduct of persons." More substantively, he led a subcommittee investigation of builders and real estate operators who were making large profits from urban renewal projects.

Last week, after a complex trial in Baltimore that lasted 28 days, Congressman Dowdy, 59, stood convicted of bribery, conspiracy and perjury. The charges grew out of his dealings with Nathan Cohen, whose now-defunct construction firm had been accused of the kinds of violations that Dowdy's committee was ostensibly attacking. Dowdy, a parochial politician whose strength stems from his attention to voter complaints and requests,* thus became the 15th sitting Congressman convicted of crimes in this century. The most recent was the 1956 income-tax-evasion conviction of Massachusetts Democrat Thomas J. Lane.

Complaints. While the details of the Government's case were laboriously argued at the trial, the jury was convinced of the essential charges, finding Dowdy guilty on all eight counts. The Justice Department pictured Cohen as a slick operator from Baltimore whose Monarch Construction Co. grossed more than $2,000,000 from home improvements in the Washington area between 1963 and 1965. Complaints about high costs and shoddy workmanship caused the Federal Housing Authority to investigate Monarch, banks were warned by the FHA, money became scarce and the company folded. When the Justice Department began its own investigation, Cohen panicked and sought help from Dowdy.

Cohen's scheme for avoiding prosecution was to get Dowdy to call him before his subcommittee, thereby enabling Cohen to testify about his own fraudulent practices at Monarch and then be granted immunity from prosecution for his testimony. Cohen assigned Myrvin Clark, Monarch's sales manager, to approach Dowdy. The deal, according to the Government, was that Dowdy would call Cohen if paid $25,000. Clark, who had earlier pleaded guilty to a charge of transporting the bribe money, testified that he gave Dowdy $25,000 in a briefcase at the Atlanta airport on Sept. 22, 1965. Dowdy, according to the Government, later told Cohen that he could not be granted immunity, but that he had talked to federal prosecutors and had fixed the case. Actually, all he did was to learn from an assistant U.S. attorney that a work backlog at Justice would prevent the intricate Cohen case from coming to trial for years, if at all.

Post Office officials in 1969 began probing Monarch for mail fraud, and Cohen was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with fraud and securities violations in a stock deal. He hit upon a new way to get off with the lightest possible penalty --by helping the Government to convict Dowdy of accepting a bribe. The jury heard tape recordings of telephone conversations and from devices planted by the FBI on Cohen in which he discussed the $25,000 bribe with Dowdy. Cohen pleaded guilty to a mail fraud charge and was given a suspended sentence. Dowdy now faces a possible maximum sentence of 40 years in prison and a $40,000 fine.

Permitted to remain free pending appeal, Dowdy said that he will not resign from Congress but refused to comment on the verdict. Federal Prosecutor Stephen H. Sachs said that the case dispels some of the "skepticism, much of it soundly based, as to whether the judicial system apprehends the fat cat and the power figure. The political air smells a little sweeter after the conviction of a senior Congressman."

* He also sends notes of condolence to survivors mentioned in his district's obituary columns; even a man jailed for murdering his wife once got one.

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