Chapter XI: Part TWO: THE PEOPLE (Confidential!) (6)

When Frank Costello testified briefly last year before the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee investigating the transportation of slot-machines across state lines, the photo of a Senate attache calling a cab for him while Capitol policemen pushed nosy spectators away, was widely published. But what hasn’t been printed is that a table was reserved for him in advance in the Senators’ private dining-room in the Capitol, and while the great Costello dined with his staff of lawyers, a couple of U.S. Senators humbly waited for seats. The Senate dining-room is operated on a concession basis by the son-in-law of a Chicago vending-machine manufacturer.

It could be some of the Senators are on Costello’s payroll. The law firms of at least 40 Senators and Congressmen regularly represent the wire service and local gamblers in their home towns.

Now let’s gander the Kefauver Committee.

26. TERROR FROM TENNESSEE

The House and the Senate have unlimited power and initiative in one function only--they can investigate anything.

No President can veto a resolution for an investigation or by law curb its activities or its scope. Theoretically, the purpose is to acquire facts on which to base future legislation. Some of the mightiest of our historical moves have sprung from such inquiries. Giants have risen in the course of them. Harry Truman would probably have remained an obscure little nonentity were it not that he became chairman of a comparatively inconsequential Senate body which got to asking questions.

One of the surest ways to grab public attention is for a legislator to propose a resolution for a special investigation. If it passes it is not submitted to a standing committee, but its author is by established custom chosen as its chairman.

This is the story of a special Senatorial investigating committee. In many ways it is typical of such things under the Fair Deal, where politics can strangle this last independent prerogative of Congress.

The central character of this tale is Estes Kefauver, who sprung a Senate motion to investigate crime. Your authors have a personal property right in this venture. For Senator Kefauver had read _Chicago Confidential_, and what he found there made his hair stand on end. This is no conjecture. His resolution was prompted by what we had discovered and published.

He was sincere, impulsive and ambitious--if you can call a yen to be Vice-President an ambition. He is our friend, and as such we wish him well and, as Americans who know a little more than most of their fellow-citizens about what is going on, we cheered the possibilities of an untrammeled turning of the turf that would show up officially any important portion of the staggering facts for which we risked our lives.

Kefauver began bravely. He realized that he had lightning bolts in both hands; that he not only could become one of the foremost men of his time, but that he could accomplish priceless service to his country. With the infinite power that was his, he could expose and perhaps destroy the Syndicate and the Mafia which rules it, and save us from the creeping, leaping conspiracy of criminals which already in many elements of our life has superseded constituted government.

But he wants to be Vice-President.

At this writing, he is 47; Barkley is 73. Political wisdom would dictate that the second man on the next national Democratic ticket should come from a border state. Kefauver is from Tennessee. He became a headliner when he licked boss Ed Crump. He is of Dutch-American stock and a Protestant.

He has four years more on his Senate term and could be re-elected. But for a national nomination one needs a majority of the delegates at a convention. Delegates are party men, designated by the party.

He had no more than taken his first bold steps when the party went to work on him. No Democrat can fight the Mafia and get anything from most Democrats except obstruction. They are so intimately and intricately interwoven with the underworld plunderworld through all political strata that they must protect it.

Kefauver was too naive to foresee this. He comes from one of the few states where there is no gangsterism except in picayune city and county affairs, and in those the Republicans share the chicken-feed rewards. Kefauver campaigned in a coonskin cap and unhorsed the Memphis machine, which had no great state-wide strength from within and no tie-ups to bring it help from without. But the explosion that followed when his bill passed rocked the whole national party.

Kefauver, in his innocence, had read our book of disclosures, but like thousands of others, he failed to grasp the significance of the political forces which have become integrated with the system, without which it could not have spread, and to which it has contributed and does contribute incalculable money, leadership and votes. It was inconceivable to him that mayors and governors he knew and many of the statesmanlike Senators with whom he mingled, could be beholden to, not to say slaves of, swarthy, sinister men, many of them ex-convicts, who traffic in bodies of women, making and supplying dope-fiends, dealing in extortion, smuggling, bootlegging, hijacking, bribing and murdering in the principal cities and states of the union; that these hyenas were a controlling influence in nominations and elections; that they owned vast commercial and industrial enterprises, labor unions, even some newspapers, and that their pirate hands gripped the steering wheels of enormous financial fleets.

He read it. But he couldn’t believe it. And what he did believe of it he couldn’t digest.

Now he finds himself in the middle of a giant whitewash. He is the chump whose good name is used to shield the key figures of the Mafia and obfuscate their tie-up with the big city Democratic machines. He does not admit it publicly but he is heartbroken.

Senate Republicans, seeking an issue, jumped in to support the proposed investigation. Kefauver’s bill at once became a hot potato the Democrats couldn’t drop.

Dave Niles, Bill Boyle, J. Howard McGrath, and Scott Lucas huddled. They found it was too late to sidetrack the proposed investigation; it had to go on, but with “sensible” safeguards. Suggestions that the probe be transferred to other committees were waved aside as impractical; it was necessary to have a front for this and Kefauver was perfect for the job. He is a man of personal honesty, with no embarrassing machine or underworld connections.

The committee was voted, but with the surprising proviso that the Vice President should name the minority party members. This was unprecedented. Minority leaders always choose their own committee members. The purpose of this tactic was to deal Michigan Senator Homer Ferguson, the Republican’s top investigator, out. Membership was limited to five, three Democrats and two Republicans. Thereupon Vice President Barkley followed orders, named two GOPers, one harmless. Both were in the middle of violent primary campaigns, fighting for political survival. It was known they could not spend much time with the committee. Wiley, a good man, is a ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee. He was kept close to that post by the Korean mess. Julius Cahn, Wiley’s intelligent aide, was rendered impotent. And Tobey is more a New Dealer than most Democrats. He got campaign support from the administration, and in payment gratuitously but muddle-headedly blamed gambling in New York on Dewey.

The motor of a Senatorial investigating committee is its counsel and the staff. The members have other duties, must attend other committee meetings, must be on the floor for roll-calls. And they are not usually professional prosecutors. They are at the mercy of their staffs.

That’s when the shenanigans began. Kefauver had no experience with such shenanigans. He didn’t know whom to retain. Tom Murphy, Alger Hiss’ nemesis and later Police Commissioner of New York, was recommended. But Murphy was persona non grata in Washington because he had guts enough not to throw the Hiss prosecution, after he had learned that would please the Attorney General’s office.

Dave Niles told Kefauver to ask Ferdinand Pecora for advice. Pecora, then a Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, was getting by on the reputation of having exposed the money barons of Wall Street in the early 1930’s. Pecora is a thoroughgoing New Dealer and Kefauver is one of the faithful. They failed to tell the man from Tennessee that Pecora is Bronx boss Ed Flynn’s man. Flynn is head of the machine in which Frank Costello is a power. Pecora attended Costello’s celebrated party at the Copacabana nightclub, with half the local bench, a number of jurists who owed their robes to Costello.

Pecora recommended his protégé, Rudolph Halley, of the law firm of Fulton, Walter and Halley, for counsel and Felix Frankfurter phoned to confirm it. Halley had been on the staff of the Truman Committee when Fulton was its chief counsel, so he looked good to Estes as an experienced prober. But Halley had been an attorney for the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, in which it was alleged underworld characters owned stock. Kefauver told your reporters he had heard a rumor Halley might have represented them, and had asked him about it before hiring him. Kefauver looked us in the eyes and stated, “Halley said it wasn’t so. Naturally, I took his word for it.”

After the Kefauver Committee had been functioning some months, Halley admitted to your reporters before witnesses, that he knew there were large underworld holdings in that company, which had been his client. We have a sworn affidavit which reads as follows:

“Mr. Halley stated that the statement in the book _Chicago Confidential_, to the effect that the underworld syndicate has bundles of stock in the Hudson & Manhattan tubes, was substantially correct; that it was his own personal knowledge, as former counsel for the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, that the underworld owned large blocks of stock in that company.”

After a change in management, Halley was dismissed from the H & M, and went to work for the Kefauver Committee at $120 a week. The new management of the railroad said it had virtually eliminated suspicious stockholders and emasculated shady directors who could not be fired.

Among the investigators hired by the committee were ex-cops, disappointed lawyers and the usual Washington hanger-on-ers, recommended for jobs by influential friends.

Kefauver’s principal source of information about the underworld was what he had read in _Chicago Confidential_, He knew no more. He asked Mortimer to take a leave of absence from his newspaper and act as paid adviser to the committee. Mortimer accepted, but said that he would take no compensation. Over the weekend, Kefauver withdrew his offer in a telegram in which he blamed other Senators. He said they feared other newspapermen would be offended. That was an alibi, quickly arranged when influential Democrats vetoed the idea. But he took advice from Nat Perlow, editor of the Police Gazette!

At the first open hearing of the committee, subpenaed gamblers were represented by Morris Shenker, St. Louis lawyer, formerly on the Missouri Democratic committee. As a result of his good work in obtaining campaign donations, Shenker was named by Bill Boyle to the Democratic finance committee. He hastily resigned after the deal was exposed in Lait’s column.

Every effort was made to keep Kefauver concentrated on gambling. Syndicate heads know the nation is not shocked over bookmaking. Whenever witnesses or informers got hot on narcotics, the spine of the Syndicate system, or began to talk about the huge investments of the underworld in legitimate business, they were brushed off. There were rumors of fixes, payoffs and other such skulduggery, though Kefauver was absolutely in the clear. But whenever he was warned such things were happening, Kefauver, a softie at heart, who believes evil of no one, said it was impossible.

Though he promised your reporters his committee would hold open hearings in New York and Chicago before election, at which no punches would be pulled, he folded up like a frightened puppy. After one day in New York, at which no one of importance was questioned, the committee adjourned until after the election, with the statement that Joe Adonis, who had been allegedly sought for 90 days, was unavailable. Your reporters saw Adonis every night at the corner of 50th Street and Broadway while committee investigators were supposed to be searching for him. While the great man-hunt was supposed to be on, Adonis voluntarily surrendered himself to New Jersey authorities who wanted to prosecute him for gambling.

When asked why Costello hadn’t been called before election, a committee spokesman stated “We have nothing to ask Mr. Costello.”

Similar wariness was shown in Chicago. When former police captain Dan Gilbert, who was Jake Arvey’s hand-picked candidate for sheriff of Cook County, was on the stand at a secret hearing, he was questioned about his wealth. Your authors had exposed him as the richest cop in the world, a millionaire. Gilbert’s salary had never topped $9,000 a year, yet he admitted at the closed hearing he owned more than $350,000--which he said he had acquired through “speculation.” The committee dropped it then. Senator Kefauver, in an interview, said, “Captain Gilbert was a forthright witness.” When the _Chicago Sun Times_, a Democratic New Deal newspaper, got hold of the minutes of the secret hearing and splashed the text on Page 1 a few days before election, Kefauver threatened to hold someone in contempt for the leak. Yet the committee did not explain why this information of public interest had been bottled up before election, and why Gilbert’s bank accounts and securities had not been scrutinized.

Later, Kefauver imperiously “directed” Eugene C. Pulliam, publisher of the _Indianapolis Star_ and _News_, “to discontinue” publication of a series exposing gambling as revealed by previous committee investigations, under penalty of a contempt citation.

While Estes was threatening other newspapermen with jail, columnist Drew Pearson, his fervent supporter, was permitted to obtain access to secret committee records, including highly confidential income tax returns.

Wherever the committee held hearings, its staff tried to pick on the little guys, fingered as the goats. The procedure in Miami was to put six local Jewish bookmakers out of business. The Mafia was muscling in on them anyway. The dispossessed were scheduled to be closed up so the Chicago Sicilian mob would have clear sailing in Miami as soon as the hullabaloo about the crime investigation blew over next year.

Only half-hearted efforts were made to locate important figures. Where, at any time, any were questioned or threatened with contempt, it was because the situation was so wide open that no cover-up could be attempted without bringing the newspapers down.

At this writing, Harry Russell, Chicago hoodlum, is the only recalcitrant witness brought to trial. He’s a small potato, a Jew taking the rap for the Mafia.

The position of the Committee has been that witnesses could refuse to incriminate themselves only on federal offenses, but that if it was state prosecution they feared, they had no immunity--tenuous reasoning any way you look at it, though many lawyers say it’s legal.

But Kefauver has been letting his enthusiasm get the better of him, and recently stated at an open hearing, “Don’t think we’re going to let you get away with this. We are working closely with local prosecutors and will turn our records over, particularly where anyone defies this committee.”

Though no comment appeared in the papers, the mob lawyers knew he had played into their hands. He might have made the contempt stick before; now, however, since he himself has stated he’s acting as an agent for the states--though unofficial--it’s a million to one not one recalcitrant witness will be convicted.

The only state in which the committee got tough before election was Pennsylvania, where the municipal machines are Republican. In New York, boss Flynn and Tammany were unmolested, and the onus was put on Dewey for having tolerated gambling in Saratoga. There was no mention that when Lehman, F.D.R.’s “good right arm,” was governor, gambling was just as wide open there, and more so.

One of your reporters remembers seeing a limousine with New York State license Number 1 parked under the portico of Piping Rock, a notorious and expensive Saratoga gambling joint run by Luciano. That was Governor Lehman’s car. It is possible his chauffeur was inside playing dominoes.

But the strategy of the Democratic brain-trust miscarried. People in New York knew Costello was running the town and trying to get control of the state, even when the Senate committee, with all its power and money, fiddled and twiddled. Chicagoans knew the Fischettis and Capones, Boss Arvey, Dan Gilbert and Senator Scott Lucas were political bedfellows, which charge was aired daily in the papers during the 1950 campaign.

Wherever the committee gave the Democrats a clean bill, the people rebelled and kicked them out, most frequently on just that issue. But, where the committee had tried to show the underworld is tied up with Republicans, as in Pennsylvania, the GOP scored a great victory.

The two Democratic members of the committee, in addition to Kefauver, are Lester Hunt, of Wyoming, and Herbert O’Conor of Maryland. Where Hunt comes from, “crime” means cattle-rustling and claim-jumping. O’Conor, however, is the Democratic leader of the Maryland organization, which is in cahoots with one of the tightest and biggest Mafia concentrations in the country. Not only were no hearings held in Maryland before election, but Kefauver refused to send investigators into Prince Georges County, described heretofore as one of the most vicious crime spots of the country, even when citizens implored him to.

Instead of cracking down on murderers, procurers and dope-peddlers, the committee wasted time, money and effort on an investigation of comics. An effort was made to label the strips as the chief cause of America’s crimes.

The Senate investigating committee has, through ignorance or by design, been playing directly into the hands of the Mafia. Most Syndicate key figures no longer have anything personally to do with gambling, except as bankers and protectors. Gambling is a seasonal business and investigations and clean-ups are discounted in advance, like rain in baseball economy and warm weather in Sun Valley. These catastrophes are averaged off over a long period. The computations contemplate temporary droughts at the street level. Except for a few who will go to the can for a few months and be paid for their time, nothing is disturbed. Bookmakers still take bets right outside the Senate committee room.

If no gambling casinos run in Miami this winter they will next winter. Meanwhile, those who want to gamble will fly to Havana, where the same mob operates the wheels and crap games. Anyway, you can still bet on the nags in Miami, clean-up or no. At this writing, at least two fully equipped casinos are operating in the area.

But while the committee was grabbing front pages with its gambling exposures, the big boys were immune in the affairs that really matter to them, like manipulation of the stock market, black marketing, smuggling, counterfeiting, dope and other forms of profitable deviltry, the proceeds of which they invest in real estate and securities, so that as of now, the crime cartel is more potent in the money marts of the world than all the highbinders so long hissed at, the “international bankers.”

After Col. George White, Commr. Anslinger’s ace investigator, on loan to the Committee, was withdrawn, Scott Lucas high-pressured Truman to penalize White. White had turned up evidence that beat Lucas in Illinois.

Purposely or not, Halley even helped the giggling gangsters get rid of the few rivals who remained. Few Sicilians got a going-over; but the heat was turned on the handful of Jewish and Irish cheaters who survived.

Personally, Kefauver is a delightful and appealing personage, tall, a former football-player with the charm of an F.D.R. and the fine, delicate features of a Woodrow Wilson. He may well be your next Vice President. After that--well, any American boy with no such start could be. His friends kid him and accuse him of saying “Good morning, Mr. President” every morning when he looks in the mirror as he shaves. Kefauver frowns at this. He says, “The Chief in the White House will get sore.”

Kefauver’s main weakness is that he is a Don Quixote for “causes” (except FEPC), has too much energy and tries to do too many things. He is on almost every regular and special committee it is possible for a Senator to make, so hasn’t time to do justice to any. He is in modest circumstances, cannot be bought or bribed, though he could have had millions to throw the investigation--as it is being thrown anyway. Many believe some of that money went elsewhere, without his knowledge.

An employe of the committee, whose name will not be divulged by us, disgusted by what went on, unburdened himself. He said “a fix was made in Miami” to relieve a certain wanted hoodlum from testifying; and that another deal was put over in Chicago to protect some of the most important Mafistas. A fund was raised in Hollywood to choke off disclosures.

One investigator had as a chief recommendation, other than brief service with the F.B.I., that he had been a cop in a mid-Western city. With this background he was sent in to “bust” the mob in New York, a job that many District Attorneys couldn’t do. He knew so little of New York that he had to ask how to get to Times Square.

This investigator, “unable” to find Joe Adonis during a 90-day search, was very diligent when it came to finding himself a new, high-paying job. During the course of an investigation into mob control of legitimate business, it was testified that one Bill Giglio, now under indictment on a tax rap, had “muscled” into a sugar and candy company during the last war, and that as a result of such activities he now owned a research and development laboratory, the entire output of which was being sold to a large and respected chemical corporation.

While going over Giglio’s books the Kefauver man naturally had occasion to call on the large corporation, and he ingratiated himself with its officers, who were not called to testify in Washington. The result was that, right smack in the middle of the Kefauver investigations, this dick quit to head up the plant-security set-up of the big corporation, which now has a lot of war contracts.

But the payoff is that, a couple of years ago, before the Kefauver Committee was thought of, the same fellow was in charge of security at a Long Island plant making restricted military products. There it was discovered that the future Kefauver agent was protecting the bookmakers in the plant, and he was booted out after the F.B.I. was tipped off. The book at this plant was operated by Joe Adonis. Kefauver was so informed, but did not fire his agent.

Federal and state enforcement agencies are squawking that the mob is getting access to confidential files through leaks in the committee.

But if the committee had wanted to probe, the goods were in reach. Individuals all over the country sought to put facts in its hands. Whenever possible, those who managed the investigations looked the other way.

Bill Drury, the honest Chicago ex-police captain, who was slain by gunmen last September, might have been alive now were it not for this committee. We were in constant communication with Drury, in fact Jack Lait received a letter from him in New York the morning after he was assassinated. Almost his last act was mailing it. When the committee first got under way, your authors suggested to Kefauver that he hire Drury and his partner, Captain Tom Connelly, as investigators. These men knew more first-hand about the underworld than almost anyone alive. Counsel Halley interposed. He told us the men were not “reliable,” because they had been fired from the Chicago police force. That was their chief recommendation to us. They had been rooked out of the crookedest force in the country because they were fearless, honest and untouchable.

We told Kefauver the only way he could convince us his investigation was on the up-and-up was to hire these men. He promised us he would. That was in July, 1950.

Meanwhile, Drury and Connelly sought to contact Kefauver, failing which they tried to get in touch with Halley and the chief investigator of the committee. They hated the mob so hotly, they offered to work for nothing, though they were poor men. Had Drury been retained as an investigator, he’d still be living. No cop has ever been killed except in actual combat. The underworld never murders a policeman who is going about his business. But an ex-cop--yoho.

A lot of misinformation has been published about what preceded the actual assassination, last September 25. After his death, committee employes realized they would have to explain Drury’s frequent phone calls. A story was dreamed up in Chicago to the effect that Drury was seeking “protection” and that Halley, after a couple of weeks’ consideration, had agreed to arrange for it. That runs for the end book. Drury never asked anyone for protection. He was the bravest man we ever knew. He often traveled without a gun, but the mobsters feared his fists more than bullets. We spoke to him a few days before he died. He was not frightened. He was angry. He told us he had been trying to contact committee investigators for weeks to give them information. He said that ever since he had outlined to them what he was prepared to prove he got brushed off when he called again.

The Democratic _Chicago Sun-Times_ charged categorically that Drury was rubbed out because someone on the Kefauver Committee “leaked” to the mobsters what Drury said he had the goods on. He told us his investigations implicated someone on the committee’s staff.

A few days after the murder, Kefauver phoned us long distance to tell us to get all our records and correspondence concerning Drury together as he was going to subpena us at once, in an effort to solve the cowardly crime. That was October 1, 1950. As these words were being typed in February, 1951, the subpena remained unserved and the assassination unpunished.

On the other hand, Lait and Mortimer were under considerable pressure from important personages, Republicans as well as Democrats, “to lay off Halley,” and place the blame for the miscarriage of the Kefauver committee on the chairman instead of on his staff. We refused to be bought, bribed, threatened or intimidated.

By resolution, the original life of the committee was until February 28, but it is probable that additional hearings will be authorized for March.

The plan, as this went to press, was to save all the fireworks for a final blow-out in New York, at which the glamor pusses of the underworld, such as Virginia Hill, dubbed by us “Mafia Rose,” would be called for the publicity value. Virginia was served with much hullabaloo in September, but was saved six months to hypo the last act. Frank Costello was also slated to be called if he “cared to talk.”

The big boys have brazenly stood on their “constitutional rights” on the advice of high-priced counsel who assured them their chances against conviction on contempt, which is a misdemeanor punishable by a year in a Federal “country club,” were about a hundred to one.

It was decided by the Mafia Grand Council that if things got too hot, Costello would have to be the goat. He has been getting too much publicity for the conservative rulers of the Unione, who still live in cold-water tenements with fat old-country wives.

They resent the airs put on by the glamor-boy hoods, who, they feel, and with some justification, are putting the finger of the law on the syndicate.

One Mafia faction is for going further. In the event the spotlight hits Costello his number is up. He has so been told by Tony Ricci, alias Goebels, who manages many such things.

We have not seen it, nor have we any confidential information about the contents of the committee’s final report, but we are willing to bet it will be along these lines:

1) There is crime.

2) No political party has the monopoly on it.

3) There seems to be a Mafia.

4) Gamblers should pay their income tax.

5) Kids should go to Sunday school.

6) Communities should appoint Crime Prevention Societies.

7) Because of the international situation, let’s forget it and call
the whole thing off.

The plight of honest Senator Kefauver is not unique. Wherever possible, the underworld uses such characters to do their dirty work. They fall for it, probably because dreamers and social planners are gullible, not practical like their more conservative brethren. That’s why political bosses frequently back them and surprise semi-suspicious suckers who think they know things.

For instance, when the late Boss Kelly of Chicago, one of the most ruthless thieves who ever lived, thought he saw the handwriting on the wall, he nominated good men to run for Governor and Senator. At no time after Adlai Stevenson went to Springfield and Professor Paul Douglas got to Washington did these Utopians ever open their mouths or do anything, or even complain about the iniquities in Chicago, though we told plenty and a lot of other dirt wasn’t confidential.

He hand-picked as his successor Martin Kennelly, a mild old bachelor who didn’t know when it was Wednesday. This was a “businessmen’s candidate.” The mob and their Democratic sidekicks gave him the business.

Kefauver even has a soft spot for accused Commies. He was one of the seven Senators to vote against the McCarran Bill, which Marcantonio opposed in the House. Douglas, who didn’t have guts enough to vote no, because that would have imperiled Lucas’ chance in Illinois, did hop in to uphold the President’s veto.

The only Senator running for reelection who opposed the McCarran Bill all the way was Lehman, a ticket-mate of mob-backed Pecora and Lynch, an old codger of eminent respectability and Wall Street millions, who is and always was “safe”--he’s too wrapped up in Park Avenue dignity and too flattered by public honors to see or understand that with his silk-gloved hands he pulls hot chestnuts out of the oven for the dirtiest crooks, traitors and political plotters in the land.

27. LUCKY NUMBERS

The first thing a Congressional investigating committee gets, the sine qua non, is an appropriation. The next is a sheaf of time-tables. Then comes the joyful junketing-time to remote places--remote from the capital and remote from the subject.

The Kefauver committee made the grand tour--California and Florida, Chicago and New York, about everything but Yellowstone Park. Its golden fleece was gambling. They could have cleaned up their quest for about $1.60 on a taxi meter.

All the evidence, all the interstate involvements and local conditions which are the particular province of Congress, they could find in Washington. We did. All gambling in the capital is interstate because it is inseparable from its lines into and out of Maryland and Virginia.

We outlined the setup of the nationwide underworld Syndicate. We brought it to the District line. At that point the on-the-spot gamblers take over.

They have been mentioned as Emmitt Warring, king of Georgetown; Attilio Acalotti, “mayor” of Dupont Circle; Sam Beard and his partner Gary Quinn, and the Sussman brothers. Of money gouged from suckers, 90 per cent clears through them, and “Black Jack” Kelleher, Frank Erickson’s local observer.

A curious situation here is that “policy” or “numbers” gets a bigger play than bookmaking. The reverse is true almost everywhere else. The reason ascribed by the cognoscenti is that while everyone earns a fairly good living, few have enough surplus cash for important horse betting. But numbers tickets can be bought for from one cent up. That game is far more profitable for the operators, too. Bookmakers can’t do much better than putting a ceiling on track odds. They must follow the mutuels, though they stop at a 20-to-1 payoff. Bookies who can’t lay off enough often lose on a day.

The winning numbers pay only 600 to 1, whereas 999 numbers are drawn, and the draw can be fixed.

In most towns, the numbers play is predominantly by Negroes. In Washington it is general, with white government employes in the majority. The policy slips are usually sold by colored runners, often messengers and elevator boys in government buildings. The salesman withholds 25 per cent of the gross. Average booking is $50 a day.

The take from the numbers, in pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters, is deposited in the branch of the Hamilton Bank at 20th and Pennsylvania Avenue, in the Foggy Bottom section. The Congressional committee investigating local crime ascertained that this bank did not report the large deposits of small coins. The deposits are withdrawn each day and transferred to Maryland, where local representatives of the Syndicate divide the receipts and send its cut to the Mafia in New York.

The sale of numbers is so widespread, the police can make only token arrests. Invariably, when the peddler, usually a Negro, is locked up, a representative of a bonding outfit appears at once and posts bail. Next day a member of the Charlie Ford law firm appears in court. Several defendants testified the lawyers paid their fines. The operation will be described in detail later.

Numbers sellers are picked up all over the town, and they are not coy. For instance, police got a squeal that two men were selling policy slips from an auto parked in the 1200 block of 7th Street, NW. Cops questioned them and numbers slips “just rolled out of a paper bag on the car floor.” The prisoners were very “surprised,” the more so when 200 numbers books were found in the car’s trunk.

Vice squad dicks stopped in to get a shine at 209 K Street NW. They saw numbers lying on a chair next to two men. When they searched them they found many more in their possession.

Policy is a lottery. Under federal law, that is a felony. But the only way to cut in on the racket is to get tough. Twenty-five-dollar fines, paid by lawyers reimbursed by the bosses, are no deterrent. But Judge Thomas D. Quinn handcuffed the police even on that. He served notice on the U. S. Attorney’s office that he “will not tolerate” prosecutors delaying court action on gambling cases until they can get grand jury indictments.

According to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the government is within its rights requesting these continuances, but Curtis P. Mitchell, an attorney for some arrested as gamblers, alleged the civil rights of numbers suspects were being disregarded.

Judge Edward M. Curran spiked the government’s case when it attempted to clean up gambling in Thomas Circle. Though one defendant pleaded guilty to operation of a lottery, Judge Curran ruled police did not have enough “probable cause” to arrest the others, who were admittedly in possession of numbers slips.

Washington judges openly acknowledge the fact that the fines they impose are paid by the bosses.

Judge Henry A. Schweinhaut, of the United States District Court, frivolously presented a numbers operator named “Lemon” a chance to prove there is honor in Washington’s gaming fraternity.

He asked him to come forward and provide the $300 fine for an aged Negro who was convicted before him of taking numbers bets.

“Lemon put up bond for the defendant. Maybe Lemon will pay the fine,” said the District Solomon. “I’ll give him a chance to prove his loyalty to an old employe.”

Defense Attorney Mitchell, who has figured in these pages before, quickly disillusioned His Honor. “As a practical matter, a numbers backer wouldn’t be apt to pay a $300 fine for a man who only had a three-dollar-a-day numbers book,” he explained.

But the judge winked and said, “If Lemon doesn’t pay, it might get around that he will let one of his men stay in jail. It might reduce his prestige in the fraternity.”

Did we hear someone talking about legalized and licensed gambling? This is it, with a bow from the U. S. District Court.

In recent years the top rulers of the netherworld have disassociated themselves as much as possible from street-level vice and crime, preferring to remain on the sidelines, where their take comes in clean.

The situation in Washington is a pattern and example for the rest of the country, because, for obvious reasons, the tygoons have preferred to have no direct dealings with law-breaking in the nation’s capital.

The method whereby the take from policy, Washington’s chief form of gambling, goes upstairs is unique and ingenious, the product of brilliant legal scheming.

First of all, each local numbers bank is, for the records, completely independent. Its operator, who employs the runners who actually sell the lottery tickets, is supposed to be completely unaffiliated, and it would take a smarter guy than any government lawyer to prove him otherwise.

In the beginning, most of the local banks were really unaffiliated. Since then, on occasion, some have tried to remain that way. This is what happens when they do: The Big Mob sends in “customers” to bet a certain number; then, through its ability to control the daily winning number, that number comes up and the banker goes broke.

But if he wants to play ball, they sell him an “insurance policy” which guarantees him from undue loss--which is prevented by the control of the winning number. His daily premium is the payoff money.

The funniest one happened when a policy salesman asked police to lock him up because one of his clients had a $60 hit which the runner couldn’t pay off--having lost the money playing the numbers. It came about when a cop admonished Lawrence Fields, obviously drunk, to quiet down. Fields begged to be arrested on the numbers charge. The cop asked Fields whether he realized the seriousness of what he was saying. Fields replied, “Nothing will happen. My boss pays protection.”

The boss was identified in court as Sam Beard. Beard claims he is in the pickle business, but he once served 53 months in jail for gambling and 13 months for tax evasion. Fields got 90 days. His client is waiting outside the District jail.

But don’t think bookmaking is a peanut industry either. Local authorities estimate the take of bookmakers within the District at $100,000,000 a year--not gross business, but net profits.

Horse money goes to Prince Georges, Maryland, as already described. Snags Lewis, the wire service representative, transmits the payoff and profits to New York and New Jersey.

Though Bernice Franklin, former sweetheart of Attilio Acalotti, testified in federal court that at least three members of the Metropolitan Police were paid off by gamblers in her presence, Washington authorities never show any enthusiasm toward investigating charges of corruption against cops.

When District Commissioner John Russell Young testified recently before a special grand jury probing Washington gambling, he was not asked about the possibility of bribes being paid by the gamblers. Assistant U. S. Attorney John W. Fihelly, conducting the inquiry, left it flat and started on “several weeks vacation.”

You can freely make a bet on a horse in almost any place in Washington except a church--with elevator boys in government buildings, at corner cigar and drug stores, lunch stands and bellboys. If you still can’t find a place, the ingenuity of the Washington bookmaker will solve your problem. For instance, the police said they broke the biggest gambling brokerage ever operated in Washington with the arrest of two men in a “doctor’s office,” on California Avenue, N.W. Police said one of the men they arrested was a physician. He told them he could make more money with betting slips than with prescriptions.

“There wasn’t even a band-aid in the place.” But there were the following items:

Betting slips; a looseleaf notebook which appeared to be a gambling broker’s record, containing $75,000 in IOU’s from all over the country; two promissory notes totaling $35,000; $134 in cash, an expensive radio, and a clock with a sweep second-hand. While police went through the place the phone rang. A voice on the other end “started to give me hell for a bum steer, saying the odds had dropped to 8 to 5,” Sergt. James Roche said.

Police Lt. David McCutcheon told the District license board that a gambler paid the proprietors of Filo’s restaurant, 1700-A 9th Street, NW, $200 a month for the concession to take bets there. At this writing Filo’s is still in business.

During the seasons, Washington gamblers make book on baseball, football, basketball and hockey. Walter Lephfew and Skylar Wilson were arrested this year in what is described as a $2,000,000 football lottery.

We placed bets with bookies who hang out in the G & W Lunch Room, 17th and L.

Much of the local gambling is controlled by Greeks who operate in restaurants and private clubs.

We saw gambling going on openly on the second floor of a building on the northwest corner of 9th and H; also in the Greek restaurant on the second floor of 9th and G.

A dice and horse room was being operated over the Bazaar restaurant, at 17th and L. Say that Steve Akaris sent you. That’s how we got in.

You can find roulette in a place at 5th and G., also over a restaurant in the 100 block of Vermont Avenue.

Don’t think gambling doesn’t account for plenty of violence in the District.

On recommendation of the District license board, the commissioners turned down a police request that they revoke a billiard hall license of William G. Heflin. Earlier in the year, Joseph H. “Big Joe” Scheve, a convicted gambler, was fatally shot there. Before that, James T. Skeens shot Edward Ryan in the leg there. Police charged the billiard hall was frequented by criminals. We saw bookmakers taking bets there.

A 25-year-old fireman with twenty pairs of crooked dice in his pocket was found stabbed to death in an alley as an aftermath of a crap game in which 15 persons participated. Every die was without 1, 3 and 5, making it impossible to toss a 7. The dice were of all sizes and colors, “suitable for almost any occasion.”

One-armed bandits are banned by District and by the new Federal law. However, $100 federal stamps have been purchased for 50 such machines, operating at this writing in the city of Washington. Those in officers’ service clubs have since been removed, but many operated brazenly in places open to the public.

Pinball machines, illegal in most big cities, especially in New York, and not permitted in the Virginia counties across the Potomac, are a popular indoor sport in Washington. They are found in restaurants, drugstores, bottle clubs and playlands. Many are used as gambling devices. The federal tax of $10 on each has been paid for 1263.

Federal records show 15,000 one-armed bandits and gambling devices registered for Maryland, of which 5,000 are in the District suburbs.

Most slot machines are manufactured in Chicago. Those destined for areas in D.C. or nearby, where they are against the law, were shipped to wholesalers in Danville, Va., then distributed sub rosa to Washington and Baltimore.

Payoffs are pretty lousy.

The new Federal slot machine law is a laugh. It was dreamed up in an effort to stave off Kefauver’s investigation.

The only Senator who really fought it came from Nevada, where the one-armed bandits are legal, and into which, under the new Federal law, they can be imported freely. Nevada had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

The same Senator fought contempt citations against recalcitrant Kefauver witnesses, proving, to Estes’ surprise, what we had told him about Democratic-underworld alliances.

The joker in any statute forbidding the interstate transportation of slot machines is they are manufactured from standard and interchangeable parts which can be assembled anywhere by any competent mechanic. Instead of shipping the finished device, the Costello interests will merely send the parts to local distributors who will put them together--and save freight costs.

The underworld’s Washington representatives actually lobbied for the passage of the bill, figuring that its adoption would look like a solid accomplishment to the public, and take the “heat” off other monkey business.

Attorney General McGrath and the New Deal liberals who plugged for the measure had another reason. They hoped it would put the F.B.I. on the spot. Its enforcement being impossible, Hoover and his G-men would take the blame--either that or the F.B.I. would have to hire thousands of fly-cops and become a new, super Prohibition unit, exposed to wholesale graft and bribery, which would please the Reds and the crooks.

We don’t think gambling will ever be eliminated. We don’t think the public wants it to be. It is a human appetite, like sex and liquor, and no sumptuary legislation can wipe it out. But gambling corrupts law enforcement officers. While wagering is illegal and undercover, this is inevitable. When cops take bribes from bookmakers they feel they do no essential harm. But it’s a start and soon they will sell out to anyone.

As to the cure, no two agree. Even your authors have divided opinions. One believes in legalizing gambling, the other points out Nevada, where it is legal, as the horrible example. There the same mobsters control it and law enforcement officers are bought up as usual.

28. IT’S A CRIME

No thanks is due United States Attorney George Morris Fay for the fact that figures and information regarding the local wave of crime are still available.

Shortly after he took office, in 1946, Fay rewrote the Constitution and closed off the court files from inspection by the press on felony cases. Not satisfied, last year he tightened up in Municipal Court, introducing a form of censorship for newsmen trying to check facts.

But we finagled some figures:

Per capita computations show Washington recorded one murder for every 25,555 persons in 1949. But Chicago, generally conceded the gunmen’s playground, had one murder for every 26,902. Washington jumped to one for every 11,000 in 1950.

On the basis of population, Washington led 16 cities of 500,000 or more in aggravated (felonious) assaults during the first six months of 1950; and it was second only to Chicago in the _total_ number of such cases. Washington had 1,911, exceeded only by Chicago’s 2,184, and Chicago is five times as large as Washington!

Though crime in Washington decreased slightly in 1950, as compared to 1949, the District is high among the leaders, per capita and in total number of offenses, in every major classification.

Crime has always been a popular pastime here. It increased so alarmingly during the first years of the New Deal that a group of public-spirited citizens formed the Washington Criminal Justice Association in 1936 to help combat it.

The Attorney General in that year called Washington “the crime capital of the world.” The backers hoped for a virile, hard-hitting body, similar to the Chicago Crime Commission, which under Virgil Peterson, its executive director, has done so much to spotlight the workings of the underworld there, or like Danny Sullivan’s Greater Miami Commission.

The original organizers of the Washington association included a number of do-gooders, such as Eugene Meyer, who bars the identification of Negroes in his paper. The body soon found itself struggling without sufficient funds. It is now supported by the United Community Services, which allots it only enough to pay for a director, an assistant and a secretary. The able director, Edward J. Flynn, is a competent, imaginative individual, handcuffed by lack of funds and public disinterest. He can do little more than keep a record of crimes as they occur, compile statistics and offer recommendations. They are good, but no one wants them.

The situation has gotten worse rather than better since the Attorney General castigated the city. In 1936 there were only about 7,000 serious crimes. The number dropped to about 4,000 in 1944. But by last year it had skyrocketed to 13,000. It is now slightly lower.

Washington is still the crime capital.

In other chapters we touch briefly on the so-called “organized” crimes--prostitution, gambling, and narcotics. This chapter deals mainly with offenses of violence and those against property, which are usually regarded as unorganized.

But director Flynn agrees with your authors that, with the exception of private crimes of passion, occasional robberies by hungry men and juvenile delinquency, all crime is now organized to a degree. Flynn said:

“Highly organized criminal groups, carrying out skillfully planned operations, exist in Washington.”

The police disagree with him, naturally. But the record is clear for any observer who follows the entire procedure through, from commission to arrest, bail-bonding and arraignment. The combine appears in the fencing of the loot. Burglars in Washington have a union to which they contribute a percentage of their take in return for bail when arrested, legal representation and fixes where possible. No professional burglars operate until they make arrangements in advance for disposition of their stolen goods, and, thereafter, the other services. Non-members of the union cannot secure bail at any price and are denied the services of the top criminal lawyers.

Why has the nation’s capital more crime than other cities? Flynn says it is indicative of community lethargy. He thinks that is not unique in the District, but is equally true in every city. If that is so, there must be a special reason why Washington is more lawless.

Others blame it on the lack of home rule and local government. Yet every investigation and survey elsewhere shows that corrupt municipal city hall gangs are the protectors of vice and crime. The high rates in Washington cannot be blamed on the foreign-born, because only six percent of the population is non-native. As we showed earlier, Negroes commit most of the crime. But there are Negro criminals in other large cities, especially in New York and Chicago, where they do likewise. Why then are Washington’s Negroes even more felonious?

There is no doubt that Washington is a cesspool of iniquity and a Utopia for criminals. The setup of the local government and the calibre of the men who enforce its laws and sit on its benches are partly responsible. Archaic and often ridiculous laws and regulations are a contributing factor.

For instance, guns are easy to buy in second-hand stores. There is no law requiring a license to keep a gun in a home. That forbidding the carrying of one in a car is a dead letter. It is a felony to carry a concealed weapon on the person without a license, but there are few arrests and fewer convictions for this, because the District courts and prosecutor feel it is no offense to carry an unloaded weapon, even if a clip of cartridges is in the same pocket. An expert could load the gun without removing it from his pocket.

The fantastic interpretation of laws by the U. S. Attorney and the federal courts has handcuffed the cops in their efforts to clean the town.

Not long ago a Negro was arrested for kicking and assaulting another man in a bus station. Though police found an unlicensed pistol on the prisoner’s person, and bullets in another pocket, the U. S. Attorney refused to prosecute for either the assault or concealed weapon. When queried, a representative of his office said it was obvious the colored man was a nice guy, because he didn’t load his gun and shoot his victim, who lay helpless on the floor. The prisoner had a record. When asked at a later date whether, in view of all the circumstances since developed, the D.A.’s office would prosecute, the spokesman said, “No. No judge will convict a colored man here for a minor offense like that.”

The federal judges are lenient because they are federal judges. Of the 308 with life appointments throughout the United States, 224 are Democrats. During the first 17 years of the Roosevelt-Truman administrations, 289 judges were given such appointments, of whom 272 were Democrats. The same ratio shows up in the District of Columbia. The Democratic judges are the choices and flunkies of corrupt city machines or of unions, left-wingers and fellow-travelers’ organizations. The city bosses’ men are lenient to law-breakers because their masters order them to be so. The radicals’ nominees seldom throw the book at a defendant, because Commies, pinkos and phony progressives hate cops, refer to them as cossacks.

A captain of the Metropolitan Police told us that even honest Washington coppers seldom make arrests any more, because they know what will happen when they get in court. The judge will harass, bullyrag and humiliate them. It is not unusual for a District jurist to castigate the policemen, call them liars and framers, then discharge the prisoners without hearing defense evidence. When the defendant is a Negro, the cops know they are going to get a going-over from the bench.

In 1937, after four years of Democratic administration, 90 percent of all major crimes went unpunished. Since then, largely through the efforts of Flynn’s Washington Criminal Justice Association, and more recently of counsel Fischbach’s revelations, about which more later, judges have been afraid to be too raw, and are giving stiffer sentences and holding prisoners in higher bail.