Chapter VII: Part TWO: THE PEOPLE (Confidential!) (2)

Republicans who tried to get a special “pervert squad” formed were voted down on straight party lines by Democrats, who found themselves having to protect strange bed-fellows. When you read of a fag being fired or quitting, don’t think Washington’s homosexual population is reduced that much. It isn’t. Odds are the discharged degenerate is shifted up on some other government payroll. At least eight were transferred from the State Department to Agriculture. Hundreds of others driven from one department minced into others.

At the end of 1950, State said they were all gone. But on the first day of 1951, the Washington papers carried this brief item under the heading: “Two Men Face Sex Charges.”

“Alan A. Wakefield, 26, State Department employe, was released under $300 bond pending a hearing on a disorderly conduct charge. Vice Squad detectives arrested him in the men’s room of a downtown hotel.” He was since convicted of disorderly conduct.

Dr. Kinsey wasn’t appalled by the 6,000 fags in government jobs. According to his calculations, 56,787 Federal workers are congenital homosexuals. He includes 21 Congressmen and says 192 others are bad behavior risks.

We still favor the two-party system.

16. THE LITTLE RED HERRINGS

The district headquarters of the Communist Party--the local setup, not the Washington nest of the national outfit--is only a block away from the doorway of the F.B.I., on 9th near F Street. So close is the line of battle drawn.

This Union Square of the District of Columbia is, appropriately, on Skid Row. It is the apparatus that recruits government employes. And sometimes 9th Street is more active and important than 16th Street--the White House. The District chairman is Roy H. Wood.

This book does not bandy the right or wrong of Communism. It accepts and proclaims it all wrong. But it will stay within its limitations of discussing Washington, the city. So it will conduct you mostly through the muck where crawl the punks in the ranks.

The State Department boys call foreign Reds “Agrarian reformers.” We call them cobras. The real story of the extent of their infiltration into the government will never be told. Hundreds of files have been impounded or destroyed, and their subjects cleared.

The following tale is no exception. It is, rather, the rule. One night a mysterious informant called on Constantine Brown, brilliant and patriotic foreign news analyst of the _Washington Star_, with a photostatic copy of an order from a Deputy Chief of Staff, directing the Army to destroy the records on several thousand subversives.

Brown hurried to the home of Senator Styles Bridges with the evidence. By 9 A.M., Bridges had called the Military Affairs Committee together. An hour later it met and phoned the offices of the Secretary of War with an ultimatum not to destroy any orders. When the officer who had issued the order met with the committee, Bridges looked coldly at him and said, “I can forgive an officer who makes a mistake or loses a battle, but an officer who betrays the security of his country ought to be shot.”

Meanwhile, a similar order was given the Navy, but was not caught in time to head off the destruction of the records. F.D.R. was President at the time.

We are hopeful these things will come to an end, but do not expect too much. That is because we know the C.I.A.--Central Intelligence Agency--is loaded with Commies at the lower level, with some seeping right up into the upper brackets.

A bright spot, however, is the advancement to the position of ranking minority member of the House Un-American Activities Committee of Harold Velde, young ex-F.B.I. agent, now representing Abraham Lincoln’s old Illinois district in Congress. Velde, at 40, has been a G-man, a county judge, and is in his second term in the House. His training under J. Edgar Hoover sets him up as a canny spy-catcher; his hatred of subversives, left or right, will make him a brake on Commie-coddling. His predecessor on the committee was California’s new Senator Nixon, who nailed Alger Hiss, and in Congress, Senator Dirksen, who beat Scott Lucas. The Senate’s own Red probing committee is also good news.

Your authors delved into how the rank-and-file protectors and comforters of Communists in Washington got that way. We know about the over-educated Harvard prodigies, recommended to key spots by Felix Frankfurter, but how does a $3,000-a-year file clerk in State, or Defense, meet Reds in the first place? By what means is he wooed and won to betray his country? Jim Walters of the _Times-Herald_ exposed a lot. Here is more:

Red spies came here as soon as Lenin and Trotsky pulled their successful November coup in 1917. But not until the late Roosevelt handed diplomatic recognition to the enemies of civilization in 1933, did a sizeable apparatus begin to build openly in Washington. In the early years of the New Deal it became fashionable to be “liberal,” to love all radicals, including revolutionaries.

The government was overloaded with Reds, pinks, fellow-travelers, social planners, do-gooders, proletarians, boondogglers and Socialists. The federal establishment is still up to its neck in conspirators and collaborationists, despite a few publicized firings.

Let’s take the case of this humble clerk who is seduced by Reds. Seduced is just that. We covered the modus operandi used by the Pervert Sections of foreign chancelleries in the previous chapter. But not all government employes are homos or susceptible. The normal must be romanced with natural methods. Sex-starved government gals are enticed by smooth, suave, good-looking men. Meek male clerks, in soporific jobs at standardized sustenance-pay, are awakened with a sudden whiff of the esoteric when fast-working, trained good-lookers make a play for them. These happenings are not cribbed from E. Phillips Oppenheim novels. They are planned that way and they come off.

Wealthy left-wingers with mansions in Georgetown cooperate avidly. Humble government employes are invited to exotic, erotic parties. This sudden entrance into a world of wealth, taste, refinement, liquor and libido is irresistible to hoi polloi.

Smart Red undercover agents try to get a hold of some kind on their victims, something insidious. Soviet agents press a systematic campaign to bring women employes of the State Department under their control by enticing them into acts of adultery and abnormality. Parties are staged in rich surroundings with pornographic exhibitions, unlimited liquor and every form of dope--and a hidden, talking moving picture camera recording it all.

As many as 65 or 70 attend these aphrodisiac get-togethers, where many wear rich Oriental costumes and Arabian Nights music completes the intoxication of all the senses. Not only potential friends are thus won and hooked, but dangerous foes are silenced. One gossip writer, a feared crusader, has within the last couple of years become a virtual transmission belt for the Communist line. He was called into a secret projection room and shown a devastating film of his behavior at a drunken, depraved orgy. We have seen “stills” from it.

This use of sex as a means of recruiting is a basic tactic. It has been developed to such an extent by the Reds, they now seek to convert children thereby. Herbert J. Benjamin, long a key figure in the Communist Party in the United States, was arrested recently by vice squad men for selling lewd pictures and literature to Washington children, and convicted of violation of the D.C. code.

Benjamin, a former secretary of the International Workers Order, long a contributor to party magazines and periodicals, was mentioned in a memo by Earl Browder, November 27, 1939, as an alternate to the tenth convention of a national Communist Party committee. Later he was the organization’s national press director and was in charge of the St. Louis office of a Communist political association. He and his wife lived in the Trenton Terrace apartments, on Mississippi Ave., SE, where other tenants were Rob Hall, Washington correspondent for the _Daily Worker_, and Joseph Forer, a veteran attorney for Reds. Benjamin’s wife was manager of the apartment house.

The pinks are still working strenuously to grab off and bring up new followers from the incubator stage. As these lines were written, three names listed by the District Board of Education as speakers for its in-service-training program were found to be also in the House Committee on Un-American Activities’ files as left-wingers--Dr. Paul B. Cornely, Freedmen’s Hospital medical director; Dr. Alice V. Keliher, of New York University; and Dr. Dora B. Smith, of the University of Minnesota. Superintendent of Schools Corning said, “The names were identical with names in the House Un-American Committee records.” Since then Red and Socialist-slanted text books have been found to be in use in Washington’s schools.

Until two years ago, there was considerable radical financial interest in radio station WQQW. The stock has since been placed in a voting-trust with a good American as trustee. For years this station refused to sign off with “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The Dupont Theatre specializes in interracial and foreign films, most of them slanted left. Danny Weitzman, owner of the building, was active in the Wallace presidential campaign.

The Reds and bleeding hearts play up their “love” for Negroes at every opportunity. This often pays off big dividends because so many colored people are employed in government offices. A few Negroes are dumb enough to be misled by the Reds’ baloney about the brotherhood of man. But to their eternal glory, the great mass of Negroes are among the most patriotic citizens in the country. A few malcontents, who have been taken in by the crocodile tears of the Eleanor Roosevelt brand of reformer, occasionally indirectly render aid and comfort to the enemy.

To show how much they love the Negro, the white Communist brethren hold their District powwows at Shilo Baptist Church, a Negro house of worship in the NW section.

It is a Communist strategy to line Negroes into the party through white gals who, to show their complete compliance and condition of servitude, are urged to give themselves to colored men. Into this specialized service they seem to wade with more than token application.

Mrs. Louise Branston Berman, millionaire radical who declines to state if she’s a Communist on grounds of self-incrimination, spends much of her time in Washington. She uses her great wealth to help the enrollment of left-wing recruits through social contacts. Louts who never dined above a cafeteria before are invited to sumptuous banquets in her homes in various parts of the country. Visiting Negro dignitaries who can’t get accommodations in hotels are her house guests. Mrs. Branston will learn for the first time here that when she put up the Negro singer, Paul Robeson, government agents had “bugs” in every room of her house from the parlor to the boudoir--she ought to hear the recordings. We did. They’re neither intellectual nor musical--but they are illuminating.

A principal Communist apparatus and recruiting ground for new Reds on the lower levels was the late but unlamented UNRRA.

The organization was rotten with traitors during the time Mayor LaGuardia was its director. Either he didn’t know what was going on, because he attended meetings only a few times, or he didn’t care.

When UNRRA was disbanded, its Red membership was moved almost en masse to the payroll of the United Nations secretariat. Many are now stationed in New York, where they are sabotaging U.N. work as far as they can. Others are attached to U.N. field offices in Washington.

If anyone doubts it was the policy of UNRRA to aid Communism and that this had the approval of the present administration, which is bent on fighting Communism, let him read the following excerpts from a memo which we filched from the UNRRA files. It is an inter-office communication, written in 1947, and addressed to Col. Katzin, a South African, then an important UNRRA man and now top aide to Trygve Lie.

It follows: (The italics are ours.)

“It should be made clear that _the administration, in pushing for distribution to Communist areas_ and in requesting Edgerton to report on such distribution, has in mind _actual shipments into Communist areas_ and not merely movements out of Shanghai with the expressed intention of making such shipments.”

Another paragraph reads, “In reference to Shanghai 6404, it is interesting to note the U.K. position that _the program should be cut proportionately if the (Chinese) Nationalist government does not meet its obligations for Communist area distribution_.”

In other words, we strengthened the Chinese Reds so they could kill our boys three years later.

Another batch of Communists and Communist-lovers came into the U.N. through its International Child Fund. This department is loaded with ex-State Department employes fired on suspicion of subversive activities.

That is a common habit. If all the homos, spies and other undesirables fired for cause were traced, hundreds would be found snugly ensconced in other bureaus, ostensibly screened, actually given screens of protection and falsification by the radicals in high places.

We are not indicting Eleanor Roosevelt or Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter as Communists. Yet it is impossible to study the set-up of the District of Columbia white collar Communist underground without finding tie-lines from them to members of this group.

The man of mystery in Washington is wealthy, brilliant, daring Max Lowenthal. He wrote the unwieldy book purporting to pulverize the F.B.I. which sold only 6,000 copies. Almost as many were given away. Yet no one knows much about him. He is a shadowy figure who thrives on obscurity, though he has filled public posts of importance. Until Congressman Dondero, of Michigan, investigated him, his name was obscure in Washington. Today not ten people in the government know more about him than the fact that he is frequently more powerful than the President and the Congress of the United States. This is some of what Congressman Dondero charged on the floor of the House of Representatives about Mr. Lowenthal whom he referred to as sinister and surreptitious:

Like the Communist Party, whose cause he has served so well, he operates on two levels. One is seemingly respectable; the other completely underground. He is native-born. His name does not appear in Who’s Who. To secure even a sketch of his biography has been a task.

Born in Minneapolis in 1888, like many other parlor pinks, fellow-travelers, Communists and convicted perjurers, he attended Harvard Law School. In those days he came under the influence of another man who through the years has manipulated Charlie McCarthys in Government office. There is a striking kinship between the master, Justice Felix Frankfurter, and the pupil, Max Lowenthal.

He served as a secretary to Judge Julian M. Mack in New York, then infiltrated the respectable law firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. After a few years he founded his own firm, Lowenthal, Szold & Brandwen.

Later he secured an appointment as Assistant Secretary of the President’s Mediation Board in 1917; in 1918 he was in the War Department; in 1920 he was an Assistant Secretary to the President’s Industrial Conference. He became executive secretary for the Wickersham Commission on Law Enforcement, but when he found he could not run it he resigned. He became research director of the Banking and Currency Commission, was on the staff of the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce, also affiliated with the Board of Economic Welfare.

In Germany, known as general counsel to General Clay, he had as an assistant George Shaw Wheeler, the American traitor, Communist and renegade who shocked all America when he denounced the land of his birth and asked Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia for asylum.

Evidence of his unswerving loyalty to Soviet Russia is clear and unequivocal. There is an interesting sidelight. The California authorities raided the office of the Russian-American Industrial Corp., whose head, the late Sidney Hillman, had turned on Communism, but his general counsel still follows the party line.

He was a member of the left-wing National Lawyers Guild, a member of the National Committee of the International Juridical Association with Lee Pressman.

Carol Weiss King, who represented more Communists than any other lawyer, was a law clerk in Lowenthal’s office.

Lowenthal, living in New York, spent much of his time in Washington; his influence is a menace to the best interests of America--so said Congressman Dondero.

Don’t kid yourself. The Reds are not on the run in Washington. No Communist control law means anything if the administration doesn’t want it enforced. The anemic Security Board appointed by the President to apply the McCarran Act, loaded down as it is with left-wing apologists, is the tip-off.

One day after Senator Tydings, who became an ex because he “white-washed” Owen Lattimore, returned to private life he joined the law firm of his father-in-law, Joseph E. “Mission to Moscow” Davies. A senior partner in that firm is Seth Richardson, appointed by Truman to head the Security Board.

Meanwhile, the rapid expansion of Federal employment has forced the government to forego the usual pre-job loyalty checks of tens of thousands of new workers--hundreds of Communists are going on the payroll and will be there for months, possibly years, until their backgrounds are delved into.

With a green light, the F.B.I. could break the back of the Communists’ underground. But J. Edgar Hoover cannot make policies. He is just a cop who has to follow orders. At this writing the orders have not come. The traitors in Washington are safe. On the other hand, those who testify against Reds are frequently harassed by Justice Department lawyers.

If this weren’t so ghastly serious, some phases of the great Communist spy-hunt would be laughable. For instance, there’s the story of the prominent woman lawyer from New York, retained to represent a left-winger about to be questioned by a Congressional committee. This Communist kept his full status well hidden. He couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer who handled Communist cases. So this portly Portia was retained. She had no known Red connections.

On her way to Washington she stopped in Baltimore, to confer with a well-known Communist counsel there, to be briefed. It began as a business confab. They arranged a follow-up rendezvous in Washington. The Baltimore attorney’s wife suspected him, followed him to Washington and caught him in the act with the lady lawyer from New York.

The wife sued for divorce. The co-respondent testified, admitted intercourse but denied adultery.

“I was raped,” she cried.

Cross-examination:

Q.--Did you have intimate relations with the defendant?

A.--Yes.

Q.--Did you consent?

A.--Yes.

Q.--Then how do you make that out rape?

A.--I found out since that he is a damned Communist!

17. KICKING THE GONG AROUND

It may be news that widespread addiction to narcotics is a comparatively recent American manifestation. Long after the turn of the century, a few trickles supplied pig-tailed Chinamen, despondent prostitutes, ex-cons who had picked up the habit in stir and a few rich fools who would try anything for a bang. Juvenile use was unheard of. Marijuana was unknown outside pad-parties in the Harlem jungles and among a thin fringe of Mexicans. The Harrison Narcotics Law, first federal recognition of the existence of such an evil, is only 35 years old.

We are solemnly convinced that the great growth of this plague in the past 20 years has been parallel to the spread of Communism in our country. And it has not been confined to our country.

Estimates by the Narcotic Control Section of the United Nations, that one of every ten people on earth uses habit-forming drugs in some manner or form, are borne out in this country, where the evil is prevalent in all sections. It is the greatest tangible menace facing us. And dope addiction, on the rise, can be traced definitely to Soviet Russia.

It has long been a tactic of nations bound on enslaving others to deaden the ambitions and energies of their victims with dope.

Examples of this stretch back to the dawn of written history. In the last century, British imperialists introduced the habit into China to control that nation. Nazi Germany flooded Poland and Czechoslovakia. Japan built huge narcotics factories in Manchuria to weaken the Chinese opposition. Russia is doing more of it now. Raw stuff pours in from Mediterranean ports. It originates in lands behind the Iron Curtain. Its importation into the United States serves Russia twofold--prostrates a prospective enemy and gets its hands on needed American exchange to be used for propaganda purposes and payment of undercover agents here. International bank drafts could be traced.

One courier can carry $1,000,000 worth of uncut dope on his person.

There are many points of community interest between the Reds and that other great international conspiracy, the Mafia, which controls the sale of drugs in America. The Commies will team up with anyone who will promote civil disorder or do their dirty work. The Mafia is interested in making a dishonest dollar and will work with any partner.

The center of the narcotics industry in the United States is in the district of former left-wing Congressman Vito Marcantonio, in East Harlem. During the days of his ascendancy, American Labor Party district leaders were able to supply police protection through alliances with both Tammany Hall and anti-Tammany Mayor LaGuardia.

Generally untrumpeted was the fact that when the infamous Charles “Lucky” Luciano was ordered deported from Cuba, the titular head of the Cuban Communist Party offered him sanctuary and appeared as his counsel.

A study of the Congressional Record will show that most of the bills and measures designed to weaken the enforcement of the Narcotics Act have been introduced by left-wingers and fellow-travelers. Many pink lawyers represent the underworld combine.

One of the most startling tieups was seen in the recent flooding of this country with cocaine. The Bureau of Narcotics had all but eliminated this devastating drug. There had been none here for 20 years. Cocaine for American consumption comes from Peru, where the coca leaves grow. A couple of years ago an Agrarian Communist group called the Apristas took over that country briefly. Seventeen cocaine factories were constructed in Lima, eleven licensed by the local Red government, and the others ran with the knowledge and connivance of the authorities. Their entire produce was routed to the United States. Coincident with saturation of this country with cocaine, which sank in price to as low as $1.50 a capsule, America went through its greatest crime wave.

When Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger traced the source of the deadly narcotic to Peru, the New Deal State Department refused to intervene, as it was required to do by the international treaties which outlawed the traffic. The reason for this failure, amounting to criminal negligence, was that we could not interfere in Latin American affairs. The cash for the cocaine was being used to foster Communism in South America.

Last year the Reds were kicked out of Peru by what Washington pinkos still refer to as “the oligarchy,” who immediately thereafter closed the coke factories. Since then, this traffic has almost dried up in the United States.

Likewise the administration has failed to inform the American public that the Permanent Central Opium Board in Geneva, Switzerland, has branded Soviet Russia and several Iron Curtain countries as palpable violators of international treaties and UN conventions regarding the control of narcotics.

You will probably learn here for the first time that the following governments, in addition to Russia, were named as treaty-violators for failure to meet their obligations: Red China, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

Among others who failed to cooperate were Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Liberia, the African Negro republic in which Negro slavery is still practiced.

Narcotic conditions in the capital are shameful. This is no fault of the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics, whose fighting chief, Commissioner Anslinger, is handcuffed by red tape, apathy and a penurious budget. The Bureau has a personnel of less than 180 for office and field work throughout the world. Its annual budget is less than $2,000,000. This is a drip in an ocean, yet Anslinger must cope with the deadliest evil known to man, backed by a huge and wealthy underworld organization controlling tens of thousands of peddlers, sluggers and killers, and owning billions of dollars.

That the unsung agents of this Treasury bureau have done as well as they have is a miracle. They could do better, especially in Washington, if they had the cooperation of the judiciary. They haven’t.

You can buy reefers on any corner in Black Town or in front of any high school in the District. You can purchase hard stuff at dozens of corners, of which we can name many and will note some. This disgrace indicts judges in the courts of the District of Columbia. All are federal, not elected, but appointed by the President. This goes for the Municipal Court bench, which sits for six years, as well as the District Court, appointed for life.

Every judge appointed in the last 18 years was put on the bench during a Democratic administration. More than 95 per cent are Democrats. Few are Washingtonians. With few exceptions, these judges are divided into two classes: Those representing the big-city bosses and gangs, and radicals named to appease bigger and redder radicals. The former, obviously, are expected to be lenient to law-breakers protected by the organized underworld. The latter, mostly fuzzy-minded intellectuals, do not believe in punishment, especially when the evildoer is a Negro or of any minority race. They can’t find wrong in any man. They believe criminals are mishandled wards of society.

The Washington field office of the Bureau of Narcotics--with only three or four agents--arrests dope peddlers as fast as they can be found and turns up enough evidence to secure convictions. But the courts almost uniformly issue suspended sentences or small fines.

The stench was so bad, dope peddlers were selling the contraband across the street from the White House, at the eastern end of Lafayette Square. The great brains regarded the venomous situation without qualms. What’s a little dope among dopes?

In desperation, Anslinger removed every agent--including one of his best men, former agent-in-charge Roy Morrison--from the city of Washington. He felt it was needless to risk his men’s lives to get evidence against junk peddlers who were sure to keep out of jail because of a fix or muddle-headedness. Thereafter, for a short time, no effort was made to enforce the narcotics laws in the District. Conditions got so bad, even the judges knew they must cooperate to avoid a national blow-up. After Anslinger restored the agents, the judges began meting out stiff sentences. But the heat soon came off and they are back at their old habits.

An example of what often happens when a dope peddler is arrested in the District is the case of William Potts, indicted on 14 counts arising from the sale and possession of heroin. On the day set for trial, an essential witness of the government could not be found. The court was so informed. The judge turned to the counsel for defense and asked if he was ready for the trial. Defense counsel was, but the U.S. Attorney said he was not, because of the witness’s absence. Thereupon the court asked if the defendant would waive a jury trial. He did. Immediately and without the pretense of trial, the court ruled. “I find the defendant not guilty.”

William P. Estoffery came into court with a record of ten specific narcotics convictions, but the United States District Court gave him eight months to three years, which meant he could be back on the street in three months. One of his previous convictions was for possession of counterfeit prescription blanks.

Here is another sample of the judicial road-blocks erected against enforcement officers who arrest dope peddlers in the capital:

Constitutional rights to privacy also give a defendant protection from illegal police raids on homes other than his own, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled recently.

The court made the ruling in reversing the conviction of Jesse W. Jeffers, Jr., on narcotics dealing charges.

Jeffers, 27, Negro, was found guilty in Judge Alexander Holtzoff’s court on testimony that police, without a search warrant, raided a room at the Dunbar Hotel and found 19 bottles of cocaine he allegedly had hidden there.

Jeffers lived elsewhere in the hotel, but the room was rented by relatives of his.

Setting a rare principle of law, the Appeals Court held evidence of the cocaine cache should have been excluded from the case because the police raid was illegal. It pointed out the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment specifically bans illegal searches of a defendant’s home, and said the principle should be enlarged to cover illegal raids on “premises that were not his.”

Judge E. Barrett Prettyman, in a dissent from the majority opinion, said “I do not see how an individual’s rights can be invaded by Government seizure of ... unstamped narcotics, not on the individual’s person or premises.”

He emphasized the case “is important in the enforcement of the narcotics laws.”

The curious part of the whole affair is that the defendant admitted the untaxed, unstamped dope was his. In fact, he demanded its return from the government.

In another of its feats of legal legerdemain, beyond the poor reasoning of a couple of reporters who didn’t graduate from Harvard Law, the august court said to the defendant in effect: “Possession of dope is illegal, so you can’t have it back, though you didn’t commit any crime when you had it before.”

Try and figure that one out.

Shortly thereafter the Appeals Court again overruled the same judge in another narcotics case and ordered a new trial for Clarence Butler on the grounds that Holtzoff’s “facial expressions” were prejudicial.

An official memorandum of the United States Treasury Department sets out facts as follows:

Since early in 1946, the Bureau has experienced repeated delay in obtaining prosecution of its cases in the District of Columbia. In numerous trials where out-of-town agents were witnesses the Bureau had to bear the expense of bringing them to Washington for testimony. Repeatedly, after the agents arrived, the hearings were continued. The Bureau could not stand this gaff and had to “stop narcotic enforcement in the District of Columbia.”

Dope cannot be manufactured locally. The Washington wholesalers must get their supplies from the international monopoly. The general practice in other cities is for the organization to deliver the wholesale lots to localities where they are to be consumed, but in the case of Washington the wholesale jobbers go to the distribution depots in other cities and pick up carload lots.

All narcotics in the United States are controlled at the top by a tight ring of evil men who, in turn, issue state and territorial rights to middlemen. Washington merchants are ordered to make their purchases in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, but mainly in New York.

Marijuana is brought up directly from Mexico, but much inferior quality reefer seed is planted on farms between Washington and Baltimore and in Virginia.

The local dope set-up is largely controlled by Negroes, though Chinese also are active in the trade and have become more so since the Communists took over China. The two tongs frequently import their own. At this writing Red China has 500 tons of opium for sale abroad. This is equal to the world requirements for medical and scientific needs for more than a year. Chiang Kai-shek prohibited the production in China in 1934. The Communists have revived Jehol and Manchurian opium cultivation, and are reopening Tientsin dens. The tongs have not been adhering of late to the agreement which limited them to noncompetitive sales. Both are selling _pin yen_ (opium) and _bok for_ (heroin). Police believe the recent but short-lived tong wars on the West Coast were attributable to breaches of the basic compromise, plus efforts of Chinese Communists to take over the tong dope distribution machinery.

Occasionally, when sources of supply are temporarily cut off, or when the Italians are able to offer a more favorable price, the Chinese Syndicates send a man to buy directly from the Mafia. This dope is stored in a warehouse near 108th Street and 2nd Avenue, New York City, in Marcantonio’s bailiwick.

Another difficulty in narcotics enforcement, not even whispered about in Washington, is the leakage from diplomatic sources. It is politic for the Bureau to deny this is so, because nothing can be done about it. But huge amounts of concentrated dope come in envoys’ sealed pouches. There is, as everyone in Washington knows, a lively racket in the diplomatic corps in black market money. No easier method of acquiring dollars is possible than through sale of dope. Some of this contraband is used by members of the embassy staffs, themselves. In some Near Eastern and Oriental countries, a daily intake of narcotics is considered as normal as our use of coffee and tobacco. Many Latin Americans are slaves to marijuana, especially in the eating form, not otherwise available in the States. Some of this, which doesn’t find its way into the channels of trade, is presented by the diplomats to their American friends.

This will be denied, too, but ranking members of the diplomatic corps who are narcotic addicts and who can’t get the stuff from other sources have it provided for them by the protocol boys in the State Department, who withdraw it from official government sources.

We were offered reefers by peddlers in the alleys along 4th Street, SW; also at the corner of 7th and T and 7th and O, NW.

In an all-night diner at Vermont and L, frequented by musicians and hep kids, we were offered reefers also.

Hard stuff is obtainable with no trouble from street salesmen in Thomas Circle. In this neighborhood, which is bossed by Attilio Acalotti, you can place a bet on a horse, buy a numbers ticket or get a call girl. The service is performed for you by sidewalk newsboys and pimps on the steps of the National Christian Church.

In recent years, rich white racketeers have gone in for opium smoking themselves. They get it in Chinatown, where a few poppy parlors are in operation. As noted, members of the On Leong Tong deal mostly in opium and the members of Hip Sing in heroin.

Heroin is sold openly on the corner of 5th and H, in the Hip Sing section of Chinatown. To prove this, we became accessories to a violation of the law.

This is how simple the whole transaction was: We were steered to a broken-down wreck named Joe, a well-known dope addict. Despite his habit, Joe is an expert locksmith, a genius at his trade. He can’t work steadily, but so talented is he, the police and other local law enforcement bodies and private detective agencies frequently hire him to pick locks. That’s how he gets the money to support his habit. We gave Joe $6 to buy a deck of heroin and left him on the corner while we drove twenty feet up the block as Joe waited for his contact, across the street from the Gospel Mission.

We walked back and passed Joe as he handed the $6 to a young Chinese, who had appeared out of an area way. Joe said the Chinaman’s name was Benny Wong. This is one of the commonest Chinese names, there may be 500 with it in Washington. While Benny went to get the stuff, Joe sat down on a stoop and fell asleep. He had been loading himself with secanol, a synthetic, to keep his nerve steady until he got the heroin, and he was in a pitiable condition. While Joe slumbered, two metropolitan cops walked by. They thought he was drunk. One went to get the wagon while we talked the other out of pinching our decoy. A few minutes after the cops left, Benny returned with the heroin. That’s all there was to it.

The “hooked” addict’s cost of supporting his “yen” runs from $35 a week up, though if one “has a monkey on his back,” meaning the urge is desperate and irresistible, he will be soaked from $50 to $100 a week. Those who can afford the best stuff or who no longer get a bang out of cheap grades are bled for as much as $500 a week.

When Hyman I. Fischbach, brilliant counsel of the Congressional committee investigating crime and law enforcement in the District of Columbia, queried Assistant Commissioner Harney of the Narcotics Bureau, some startling facts about narcotic addiction were brought out, yet missed by the press and the public. These hitherto unpublished excerpts make interesting reading.

MR. HARNEY. That also depends too on the cost of the drug and the amount of his income. Addicts can get along--during the war we had lots of them who had needle habits. Their intake was probably one-fourth grain or half a grain a day of actual narcotic. The addict might develop until he gets as high as 20, 30, or 40 grains a day, considered a lethal dose for a non-initiated person. They build up resistance power. They get hoggish.

CONGRESSMAN DAVIS. What is that term?

MR. HARNEY. Use a lot of the drug. In days when drugs were freely available that was one reason for institution of cocaine. A man would stupefy himself with narcotics and with cocaine he would get an extra thrill and get out of it and brighten up and keep from going to sleep. The addict may spend $5 or $10 a day in addition to other expenses, and not being able, or disposed to work, usually becomes a thief. He can be a prowler or he might be a pickpocket. Some addicts are very good burglars. He might be a stick-up-man, not often.

A woman will be a prostitute or shoplifter. A man might be a panderer. Many addicts buy in decks, 8 ounces or 2 or 3 ounces. The preaddict would use a few grains. It differs in different localities.

MR. DAVIS. Does the price differ?

MR. HARNEY. Expressed in terms of actual narcotic content for the preaddict it may be $2 or $3 a grain.

MR. FISCHBACH. Mr. Harney, is it your point that an individual otherwise law abiding necessarily turns to petty crime in order to support the addiction?

MR. HARNEY. I would not say necessarily, but it is often apparent. I want to emphasize that addiction, particularly in the past, has been much among the criminal element. A man was down in a dangerous environment before he became addicted; he had to get in that sort of association in contrast to the casual person who might become an addict from medical reasons, but the ordinary addict becomes so by association.

MR. FISCHBACH. Then your point is there is an epidemic effect to it?

MR. HARNEY. We have a rather unusual and alarming situation which developed since the war. It does not quite follow the pattern I set out. My theory used to be that most addicts were old enough to be associated with criminals and get into the underworld with addicts before they themselves became addicts. Today, in certain localities, we have young people, some minors, and the pattern seems to be experimentation in marijuana first. That loses its thrill and those persons become addicts to heroin. Sometimes cocaine comes into the picture.

MR. DAVIS. Is marijuana used as a starter and later other narcotics are used?

MR. HARNEY. I would not say always, but frequently. Young people get into the marijuana atmosphere and you have a field for the cocaine and heroin addicts.

MR. DAVIS. Are they induced to begin with marijuana by purveyors of heroin, cocaine, morphine, and other drugs, to lead them into addiction?

MR. HARNEY. That pattern follows. Later dealers sell all three commodities. Youngsters come into the marijuana smoking atmosphere and soon there is no kick in it, and someone will tell them, “Try this.”

MR. FISCHBACH. Now who is that person?

MR. HARNEY. The peddler, or a cocaine addict, or a heroin addict.

MR. FISCHBACH. I would like to direct the attention of the committee to the case of Charles M. Roberts, alias Jim Yellow, and ask if that case presents some problems which your Bureau experienced in the District with regard to the enforcement of the narcotics law. Present the facts in the case of Jim Roberts, what kind of a person he was, how he lived, what quantity of drugs he had when taken into custody.

MR. HARNEY. Jim Roberts had two convictions for violation of the Federal narcotics laws. He had convictions for other crimes, including charges of assault. We used an agent in an undercover capacity. Roberts lived in a luxuriously furnished apartment. Some of these figures I cite are on his own statement and probably you will allow for bragging, but he had a beautifully carved television set which he claimed cost him a couple thousand dollars, and he drove a new Cadillac. While the officers were in his presence money was handed to him in a paper grocery bag. Roberts referred to a hatchet and said he was waiting to christen it in blood. When the car was seized the hatchet was under the seat of the car. Roberts’ style of living represents big-shot narcotic dealers. It makes a tremendous impression on others who might think of entering the racket.

* * *

In addition to users of standard narcotics, many in Washington go in for esoteric kicks. A growing fad in the Negro district is to inhale incense with marijuana added.

Barbiturates are sold without prescription, because the D.C. law has no teeth in it. Some become habituated to these drugs and, instead of being put to sleep by them, get all the wallop out of them that others get from opium. Many drug stores sell nembutals over the counter for 25 cents each. Nembutals are the prostitutes’ favorite. Among initiates they are known as goof balls, or nemies. They grew popular during World War II, when there was a scarcity of narcotics. Most who prefer goof balls to marijuana usually end up on morphine, heroin or cocaine.

Evelyn Walsh McLean’s daughter, who was married to Senator Reynolds, died from an overdose of goof balls.

As elsewhere, reefers are the real menace. This product of the hemp plant is easily available, can be grown anywhere, is cheap, and in some circles is in good repute. There is no such thing as an innocent reefer smoker. Sooner or later, anyone on “muggles” must become a law-breaker to some degree. Peddlers put their heads together, know how badly any customer is hooked. Then they jack up prices to beyond what most people can pay honestly.

All weed-heads are cop-haters. Even in reasonably normal condition they carry a fierce resentment against conventional forces of society.

Reefer smoking is not habitual in the sense that the addict suffers “withdrawal” symptoms, as when he is taken off other stuff. But neither is cocaine habit-forming in that sense. Both work on the emotions. Their use causes a physiological change in the brain. The reefer smoker who gives the stuff up does not turn violently ill. But he doesn’t give it up. He likes its effect and needs its lift to give him courage.

Sooner or later, all reefer smokers go on to cocaine, because the effect is the same as from reefers, a hundredfold. When the bang of the hemp wears off, cocaine is the only thing that can take its place. And because cocaine is so expensive, one must become a criminal to afford its use. And the cocaine gives one the courage to be a criminal.

The subject of tea-hounds brings us quite naturally to our next chapter, juvenile delinquency, in which stimulants are a large factor.

18. THE YOUNG IN HEART

Juvenile delinquency as a topic has become a bromide. You’d think there was little left to add. But here we found not only more of it, but conditions behind it were frequently the exact opposite of those obtaining in other populous cities.

It is generally accepted as beyond dispute that youngsters go wrong because of poverty, congestion, lack of play-space, exposure to the tenement atmosphere, the saloon and miserable home life. But Washington, with its top average of prosperity, nothing that could rightfully be called slums, no tenements and no out-and-out saloons, has a more alarming per capita of teen-age law-breakers than New York, Chicago, Detroit or Kansas City.

Remarkable, moreover, is the discovery that white youth is more delinquent proportionately to the total of all criminals of their race than Negro youth. Over all, however, more colored children break laws than whites. A study of records, talks with social workers and personal prying into many cases make it evident that more young people go wrong because of overprivilege than underprivilege.

Most kids who get into trouble are well fed, over the height and weight scientifically charted for their age, are well dressed, and have superior intelligence quotients. We checked on one, 15 years old, five feet nine inches tall, weighing 140 pounds, the son of a government official who earns $12,000 a year. He confessed to more than 100 larcenies, burglaries and purse-snatches, and he had escaped from two postal inspectors who arrested him for looting mail-boxes, searching for government checks on which he intended to forge endorsements. He and a 12-year-old accomplice had broken into 37 houses in the NW area in 20 months and had robbed scores of cars. He said:

“Everybody here is on the make. We want money, too.”

Of 2,412 arrests of white males for Part 1 offenses, serious crimes including homicide, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny, auto-theft and aggravated assault, 564, almost 25 per cent, were committed by boys 15 and under; 1,897 of the 2,412, or 75 per cent, were committed by boys 20 or under.

The figures for Negroes are the reverse. There adults are in the preponderant majority. During the time when white males of all ages committed the 2,412 specific offenses for which they were arrested, 7,729 Negroes were apprehended. Of this large number, only 1,702 of the crimes were committed by Negro boys 15 and under; of these the number charged to males 20 years and under was 3,477, considerably less than half, whereas white juveniles rolled up 75 per cent of the total for their race.

Also a departure from the usual big-town findings is the sex proportion. Juvenile delinquency is almost a complete male monopoly, about the only one in the female-heavy District. Harlem and Bronzeville, Hell’s Kitchen and the dregs of Brooklyn have their “debs,” the feminine auxiliaries of the boys’ gangs of muggers, street-fighters and thieves. The girls constitute a good one-third of the problem children, engaged in picking pockets, shoplifting and prostitution. But in Washington, in the period when the 2,412 serious crimes were charged to white males, only 309 were committed by females, and of these only 19 were under the age of 15; 96 were 20 and under. Negro females of all ages were arrested for 1,091 Part 1 crimes, of which only 38 were girls up to 15 and only 161 were 20 and under.

One reason for the huge incidence of juvenile delinquency, but by no means the decisive one, was an idiosyncrasy of the population trend here, topsy-turvy to every other in the country during the last 10 years. While the mean age of Americans was growing to such an extent that it appeared we were becoming a nation of old people, Washington’s population increased 26 per cent--but its child population, as of birth records, increased more than 60 per cent. Nobody seems to know why.

If this has anything to do with the high influx of Negroes, the figures above quoted challenge it as a delinquency cause. Our observations led us to the conclusion that the principal influence is a system and habit of coddling found nowhere else. By Act of Congress, none but the Juvenile Court can take jurisdiction over offenders before they are 15; defendants under 18 must be transferred to it on the court’s demand. This branch is dominated by fat matrons and skinny old maids who make a profession or a vocation of “child welfare.” To them that means no punishment; everybody is innocent. In time the judges, New Deal appointees all, many from crackpot groups with socialistic and other distorted tendencies, have been conditioned to contempt of the law and slant toward paternalistic lectures and acquittals. The result is an enormous rate of recidivists, and the figures represent multiple arrests of such repeaters rather than of so many individuals.

In the rare instances when the punks are sentenced to confinement, they go to federal reformatories, where they get short terms and de luxe treatment.

Statistics are cold; many people skip them or disbelieve them. But cops are practical. And so appalling has moppet misbehavior become that an extra detail of 30 officers has been assigned on duty around the clock to watch and buzz the teensters, in an unprecedented campaign to ease Washington’s biggest growing pain.

The vacuum in which federally appointed judges and officials responsible only to Congress can place a community is well illustrated by the juvenile delinquency procedure.

Judge Edith H. Cockrill, of the Juvenile Court, adjudicated in a star chamber, concealed from the public. Nothing came out of her court but rumors. One lawyer said her court is “a social worker’s dream and a lawyer’s nightmare.” He said children and their parents are treated as “patients,” none as offenders. The result is that about three-fourths of the kids processed through Washington Juvenile Court grow up to be adult criminals. Public pressure forced her to issue her first report last month, after more than two years on the bench.

Judge Cockrill is a typical Fair Deal beneficiary. She graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1939, then got her legal experience with the OPA. Figure out how that qualifies her to sit as a juvenile judge. Before her appointment, a couple of years ago, by President Truman, she had never tried a case in juvenile court. Her present calendar calls for about 60 cases a day, including bastardy, nonsupport and parental responsibility.

The previous incumbent on the bench was Faye L. Bentley, who voluntarily committed herself to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital--for Mental Disorders--for treatment in 1948. This is a course we recommend to some other judges.

Convicted juvenile delinquents are sent to the National Training School for Boys, the National Training School for Girls, and the Industrial Home School.

The Department of Justice estimates three of every four graduates of these reformatories become adult criminals. And this though the Training School for Boys, known as “The Hill,” goes in for all modern techniques and dodads, such as plastic surgery, psychotherapy and psychology. There are church facilities, athletics, television, radio and musical instruments. The boys are taught shoemaking, cooking, farming and other trades. The school specializes in group therapy, which has its advantages and its absurdities. Sometimes an entire group can be spoiled by one or two tough young kids who become ringleaders.

Except in the Negro sections, Washington has been spared the scourge of kid gangs. There are no major foreign-born settlements in town. Therefore the white kids seldom organize into mobs. Juvenile delinquency in other cities is often blamed on Italian, Irish, Jewish, Mexican and Puerto Rican under-age gangs.

But organization seems to be coming into fashion. While these lines were being typed, three local men were attacked and brutally beaten by a gang of 12 teensters in the 700 block, 6th Street, NW, apparently for the fun of it. The victims said the boys shouted insults at them from the sidewalk as they drove past. The three stopped and got out of the car. The gang then swarmed on them, beat them with bottles, belt-buckles, brass knuckles and improvised blackjacks.

Wherever young white criminals work together they are more often prone to choose school or college mates, or members of the same boys’ clubs as buddies. For instance, police broke up the exclusive “Weekend Burglars” gang, whose activities had stirred up residents of an exclusive NW residential section when they discovered that the criminals were home on leave on weekend passes from a military academy in Maryland. The three boys, the oldest 17, all came from wealthy families. Their method of “cracking” a home was this:

They would ring a doorbell; if no one answered, they cut through the screen and smashed the glass in the door. Inside the house, they ransacked it for three articles, taking nothing else. Playfully they would toss furniture helter-skelter and break china. The money they spent. The whiskey they drank. The stolen guns they showed off with.

Kids of all ages and both sexes and races are smoking reefers in prodigious quantities. These are easily obtainable from peddlers who work outside the schools, and inside some schools, from students, themselves. The current price for the weeds to school-children is 50 cents each, sometimes three for a dollar.

The young dope-fiends are not confined to any neighborhood of the city or to any economic class. One high school in the area, attended by children whose parents are in the upper brackets, is reported to have 95 per cent addiction. A major kid crime element is marijuana. Youngsters go on from it to more potent narcotics, then commit petty crimes to obtain the funds to buy the drugs. Reefers and other dope sharply bring out latent lawlessness.

High school athletic events have become a scandal. Bootleggers purvey liquor openly in the stands. Hundreds of stinking-drunk youngsters are swept out of the stadiums after every game.

Professional gamblers attend these games and make book without any pretense, taking bets from the kids of from 25 cents up and giving tickets in return.