The Charlotte News
Wednesday, November 17, 1954
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Mike Monroney of Oklahoma said this date that the chances for a compromise on the censure resolution against Senator McCarthy had been "torpedoed" by a new move to charge the Senator with continuing contempt of the Senate in the current debate, that the speech by Senator Arthur Watkins, chairman of the select committee which had unanimously recommended censure, had a "terrific impact" on the Senate as a whole. Senator Watkins stated that Senator McCarthy had been contemptuous "under our very noses" in describing the select committee as the "unwitting handmaiden" of the Communist Party. Senator Watkins therefore called for a new censure count on that basis, and Senator Edward Bennett of Utah said that he would subsequently offer one. The proponents of a compromise, including Senators Everett Dirksen of Illinois and Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, recognized that the speech had made their job more difficult, but they appeared not ready to give up on a compromise resolution, taking the form of some sort of apology by Senator McCarthy for his behavior.
In Moscow, it was reported that the U.S. had warned Russia this date that it would be forced to act to protect U.S. planes on legitimate missions unless the Russians took steps to prevent further aerial incidents between the two nations, such as that which had occurred November 7 when two Soviet jet fighters shot down a U.S. RB-29 on a photographic mission, resulting in the death of one of the crew members, over Hokkaido in Japan. A note delivered by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to the Soviet Foreign Ministry referred to that incident, stating that such actions were in "flagrant contradiction" to the recent statements by high Soviet officials that the Russians wanted to abate international tension. The Russians claimed that the plane had been flying over territory claimed by the Russians in the Habonai Islands, but the U.S. stated in the note that it did not recognize those claims and denied that the plane had strayed over Soviet territory, with the crew insisting that it had never come closer than 15 miles. It had been debated in Washington whether to use Sabre jets as escorts for such missions when they were flown near Soviet territory.
In Budapest, U.S. legation officials formally asked Hungary's Communist Government this date where U.S. representatives could get in touch with two U.S. citizens who, according to the Hungarian Government, had been released from jail after five years of imprisonment for alleged spying. Hungarian authorities had ignored two previous notes from the legation in recent months, seeking interviews with the couple in question. The Hungarian Foreign Ministry promised this date, however, to consider a request from a small contingent of Western news correspondents for assistance in locating the couple. The couple, their adopted daughter, and the husband's brother, had disappeared at different times behind the Iron Curtain in 1949 and 1950. The brother had been located in Poland convalescing in a sanatorium, but the adopted daughter had not yet been located. The Hungarian Government announcement had said that it had dropped all espionage charges against the couple after a review of their case had shown it could not be substantiated. Admitted former Communists Whittaker Chambers and Hede Massing had testified that the husband of the couple had once been a member of a Communist apparatus in Washington.
The Government announced this date that it would not appeal a ruling by Federal District Court Judge Luther Youngdahl, denying the Government's motion for his recusal from sitting further on the perjury case of Owen Lattimore because of alleged bias for the defendant. The Judge had indicated that the U.S. Attorney's allegations in the motion were "scandalous". The allegations were based on the Judge's earlier ruling under the first indictment that the principal counts were vague or in violation of the First Amendment, warranting dismissal. The defense was seeking dismissal also of the second indictment, based on Mr. Lattimore's testimony before the Senate Internal Security subcommittee in 1952 that he had never been a follower of the Communist line or promoter of Communist causes, similar to the first indictment.
The President this date, according to White House press secretary James Hagerty, told Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders that it was "essential to have a continuing bipartisan approach to foreign affairs and national security matters." He met with the leaders for the first time since the midterm elections on November 2. Both Representative Sam Rayburn, to become Speaker again in January, and outgoing Senate Majority Leader William Knowland declined to discuss what had been stated at the conference. Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin, presently chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that the President had promised "absolute cooperation and collaboration" with the Democrats in the new Congress.
In Onslow Beach, N.C., a war games exercise involving the Second Marine Division had taken place the previous night, with about 15,000 Marines participating in a landing operation, carried on without air cover, as fog and misty rain had prevented planes from participating. The participating Marines had established a bridgehead across the Inland Waterway separating the beach from the mainland, and engineers had hastily erected a 50-ton pontoon bridge over the waterway this date. A scheduled assault by seaplanes, designed to reinforce the attackers with men and supplies, was rescheduled because of the weather. Thus far, there had been no casualties in the exercise.
In Cleveland, O., the first-degree murder trial of Dr. Samuel Sheppard, charged with the killing of his wife, Marilyn, on July 4, continued this date, with the coroner continuing his testimony, stating that the wristwatch which Mrs. Sheppard had worn the night she was murdered had been ripped off of her wrist after the blood thereon had dried. He said that the bracelet of the watch had been in position on her wrist when the bloodstains were wet and remained in that position until the blood had dried, that he observed the impression of the watch bracelet in the dried blood on her wrist. He said that it took 15 to 20 minutes for blood to dry, that it would become sticky within a few minutes, depending on the amount of blood present. The inference to be drawn from the testimony was that the watch, found on the floor of the living room near where Dr. Sheppard had sat stripped to the waist on the morning after the murder, had been ripped off the wrist of his wife by Dr. Sheppard in an effort to stage the scene. The defense would contend that the watch had been dropped during the ransacking of parts of the house by the bushy-haired intruder, whom Dr. Sheppard said was the murderer whom he had encountered in the darkened upstairs bedroom after responding to his wife's screams, which he heard from the living room couch on the first floor, where he had gone to sleep while his wife and a neighbor couple were watching television at around midnight. He had claimed at the coroner's inquest the previous July that the intruder initially hit him on the back of the neck in the bedroom, causing him momentarily to lose consciousness, that when he regained consciousness, he gave chase to the intruder, who exited the house toward the lake shore, there scuffled with the intruder and was again knocked unconscious, that when he regained consciousness, the intruder was gone. The testimony of the coroner regarding the dried blood was a surprise to the defense, as had been the coroner's testimony the previous day that he believed a surgical instrument had produced a blank space in a bloodstain on the underside of the pillow where Mrs. Sheppard's head lay when she was discovered dead. The coroner had admitted during cross-examination that he did not mean to imply that the bloodstain pattern could not have been made by something other than a surgical instrument. The prosecution was attempting to establish the inference that such a surgical instrument had been the murder weapon, consistent with Dr. Sheppard being an osteopathic neurological surgeon. A company in Michigan said to the press this date that the prosecutor's office had mailed a copy of the bloody imprint to see if it matched any surgical instruments which they manufactured and sold to the hospital where Dr. Sheppard practiced, a hospital owned by the Sheppard family, including his father and brothers who were also doctors.
In Denver, Colo., news of discovery of uranium on property belonging to the City Water Board and that the ore was worth up to $1,850 per ton, prompted the Water Board to instruct the Water Department to negotiate for development of the discovery, with a royalty payment to be made to the City of Denver.
In Chicago, a 12-year old boy, who subsequently told police that his father had taught him how to drive a jeep, had commandeered the family Cadillac convertible and gone joyriding, quickly, however, plowing the car into another car and bouncing off into a second parked automobile, causing $1,500 worth of damage. He was not hurt—yet.
In Adelaide, Australia, actor William Boyd, who played Hopalong Cassidy, had stepped forward the previous night on a stage in the center of an arena to speak to the crowd during an exhibition of boomerang throwing, at which point the wind caught a boomerang, causing it to dip under the awning of the stage, at which point Mr. Boyd heard its whistling and ducked quickly, the boomerang missing his head by inches and coming within three feet of his wife.
In Kansas City, Lou Boudreau, recently ousted manager of the Boston Red Sox, this date was named field manager of the new Kansas City Athletics, signed to a two-year contract. A Chicago millionaire had bought the Athletics the previous week and announced that the team would be moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City. It has always been troubling, that team name, because of the notion that fans of the team are inevitably referred to as supporters of the Athletics.
In Charlotte, yeggs had stolen $2,246 in cash during the night from a safe at a business, according to detectives. The door to the safe was not damaged, leading police to speculate as to whether the intruders had worked the safe's combination or had found the door unlocked. The manager of the office said that he was certain that he had locked the safe the previous day at closing time. A .32-caliber pistol was also stolen from the safe. It was the third safe robbery occurring since the prior Friday night, one having involved the theft of $200 and the other, at an Esso service station, the entire safe, containing $2,800.
Also in Charlotte, at the State Baptist Convention, the Wake Forest College Board of Trustees and a special committee met this date to discuss postponement of the move of the campus from Wake Forest, near Raleigh, to Winston-Salem. The move had been scheduled for 1955, and postponement to 1956 was under consideration. Dr. Harold Tribble, president of Wake Forest, said in a report to the convention that a total of 19 million dollars would be used in new campus construction, that 14 million had been raised through pledges and donations, and that the remaining money had to be raised subsequently. Without a dissenting vote, the convention during the morning approved a record 2.7 million dollars as a goal for the coming year and told three colleges that they could borrow almost 3.5 million dollars to be used for building expansion. The Brown v. Board of Education public school desegregation ruling was discussed during the afternoon in a report accepted by the convention as recommended by the Committee on Social Service and Civic Righteousness, the Committee having reported that the South was compelled to a policy of restrained emotions, that citizens of North Carolina would be wise to express confidence and trust in educational, industrial, governmental and religious leadership regarding the matter.
On the editorial page, "Sen. Ervin Speaks out Courageously" indicates that Senator Sam Ervin, who had been described as "a big friendly bear with the disposition of a lamb", was not easily angered, that his judicial equanimity was as famous as his mountain wit. But after a round of vicious baiting by Senator McCarthy, the bear in him had come out during the week, as he gave a speech to the Senate against Senator McCarthy, who had been bullying persons in and outside of the Government for years. It finds it a courageous performance, that his patience had been strained to the breaking point by Senator McCarthy's fantastic charges aimed at the Watkins select committee, of which Senator Ervin was a member, Senator McCarthy having contended that certain members, including Senator Ervin, had begun their duties on the committee with bias, and that the committee was the "unwitting handmaiden" of the Communist Party.
Senators had crowded into the chamber to hear Senator Ervin's speech, in which he accused Senator McCarthy of "besmirching" his colleagues, that if the statements were made while not believing it, Senator McCarthy was guilty of "moral incapacity", and if he believed it, of "mental incapacity", either of which, in his view, were grounds for expulsion. He had thus nixed the idea of the compromise resolution being sought by some Republican friends of the Senator, notably Senators Everett Dirksen and Styles Bridges. He challenged the Senate to stand up and do its duty.
It wonders whether the Senate would allow itself to be "bullyragged and browbeaten" further by Senator McCarthy and permit his continuing abuses to go unchallenged. It suggests that the Senator, with his arrogant behavior since the Senate had reconvened for the special session to consider the censure resolution, had demonstrated that he was more deserving of censure, not less. If anything, it finds, censure was too good for him.
Incidentally, it might be noted that Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts was absent from the Senate chamber at the time of Senator Ervin's speech. It was not for lack of interest, but rather because he had entered the hospital on October 10 and undergone spinal corrective surgery on October 21 for his back ailment, aggravated by the war, resulting in incessant pain, impacting his ability to walk at times without the aid of crutches by spring, 1954. He would remain hospitalized in post-operative convalescent care until December 21, at one point being administered the last rites for becoming comatose, near death, the subsequent complications ultimately requiring further surgery in early 1955, preventing his return to the Senate until May, 1955. Drew Pearson had reported in late September speculation that the Senator chose the time for the surgery deliberately, so as not to be compelled to take an adverse stance to Senator McCarthy, given the latter's personal popularity in Massachusetts.
"The Evil Outweighs the Good" indicates that the SBI had reported regarding alleged irregularities in voting in Clay and Graham Counties, which had been charged by the Solicitor of the judicial district of those counties. In addition, the House Campaign Investigating subcommittee had ordered a full probe of alleged irregularities in Ashe and Alexander Counties. Most of the trouble could be traced to the sale of absentee ballots, and the SBI director had stated that both Republicans and Democrats were involved in that practice.
It indicates that it was an old story in the state, that through the years, the absentee ballot had become a handy and familiar object of election suspicion, that in just about every campaign which was particularly fierce, or when a vote was very close, the losing candidate would begin to seek a weapon to use on the opponent, which would inevitably become the absentee ballot scandal. With such ballots being easily obtained, there was temptation to cheat, and votes were occasionally bought and sold. Whether they were or not, suspicion that they were attached to the entire election machinery of the state.
It suggests that few laws were so easily violated as those regarding absentee voting, and that dishonest politicians were almost invited to make use of the device. The principle behind absentee voting was sound, as depriving people who were too sick to go to the polls of a vote was not justifiable, and it was just as difficult to deprive a person whose duty required that they be out of town on election day. Thus, the absentee ballot should not be abolished unless the evil uses of it outweighed its benefits.
But, it asserts, the evil did greatly outweigh the benefits, as the chairman of the State Board of Elections had insisted seven years earlier. It raises no question as to the appropriateness of supplying absentee ballots to members of the armed forces, but suggests that because of the actions of a few, they should be denied to civilians. It thus hopes that the General Assembly to convene in January would repeal the civilian absentee ballot law, just as the 1939 General Assembly had repealed the law allowing absentee ballots in primaries.
"—And Then To Get on with the Job" indicates that Greensboro and Winston-Salem had raised more than 100 percent of their community fund-raising goals, as had also Greenville and Charleston, S.C., and a number of other smaller communities through the Carolinas. But Charlotte was lagging behind, with the United Appeal having reported the previous week that it had fulfilled 81 percent of the $951,000 goal, leaving $182,000 still to be raised by the following day at the end of the campaign.
It indicates that the shortfall amounted to less than a dollar per resident of the county and urges those who had not yet pledged to do so this night or the following morning so that the goal could be reached, enabling the community to be a better place to live.
A piece from the Wall Street Journal, titled "The Physicist and the Plumbers", indicates that Dr. Albert Einstein had said that if he were growing up at present, he would reject science, scholarship and the arts as his life's work, that he had recently written that he "would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances." He was being critical of what he perceived as undue restraint on the intellectual community, imposed by such things as subpoenas to testify before Congressional committees and the security measures of the Atomic Energy Commission.
It indicates that there were many scientists and teachers who disagreed with Dr. Einstein, and suggests that there were probably AEC plumbers who had to undergo a security check when the plumbing needed clearance. It also finds that advising young people to become peddlers did not appear to offer the same independence that they would find by becoming plumbers, electricians or carpenters. It relates that when it called a plumber, he might appear or not, and never charged a modest bill when he did come, leading it to conclude that he was as financially independent as any scholar might be, unless he poured his money down the drain.
It concludes that it was probably good that Dr. Einstein was not young enough to take his own advice or he would find that there were disadvantages in the trades just as in the professions, that a man who could learn to juggle worlds could also learn the art of plumbing, particularly if he were the forgetful sort, as was said of Dr. Einstein. But whether someone so outspoken and rebellious could long remain in a union was another question. Also, had Dr. Einstein become a plumber, he might have wound up as Secretary of Labor. Martin Durkin, who had been head of the plumbers union before becoming Secretary, having resigned the previous year after only a few months as Secretary, disgruntled because he contended that the President had not kept his word about submitting to Congress certain agreed amendments to Taft-Hartley, could explain that sometimes plumbers had as much trouble in government as did scientists.
Drew Pearson indicates that a middle-aged woman had opened the Senate Office Building door of Senator Earle Clements of Kentucky and entered, abruptly inquiring of the stenographer, "Whom are you for?" causing consternation for the secretary as the visitor had not announced herself or given her name, but only bore a large button which read, "God bless Joe." The woman also asked the secretary for whom she worked, despite the office door bearing the name of Senator Clements. Before the secretary could answer, the woman declared that the secretary would not answer her, which showed where she stood, "afraid to tell whom you work for!" She then departed.
Mr. Pearson indicates that it was an example of the manner of operation of the Joe-Must-Stay lobbyists, who had descended on Washington. He suggests that the Senator had torn a page from the Communist book when he imported organized demonstrators to stampede the Senate into voting against the censure resolution. The spiritual leader of the group was Rabbi Benjamin Schultz, who, ironically, had joined forces with the anti-Semite, Gerald L. K. Smith, who had also come to Washington, albeit under an assumed name, to help organize the demonstration for Senator McCarthy. He had registered at the Mayflower Hotel as Stephen Goodyear, close to where Rabbi Schultz was staying. Both of them had spent much of their time huddling with pro-McCarthy Senators and herding the demonstrators around. The McCarthyites had followed the same pattern as the frequent Communist marches on Washington, which had also sought to influence Congress. As with the Communists, the McCarthyites had received their instructions from professional organizers. They had been recruited primarily from "Freedom clubs" and "McCarthy clubs", which had been organized by Senator McCarthy in Brooklyn, Boston and a few other cities. The main contingent consisted of about 650 people who had come down from New York City aboard a train which had a copy of the "Tablet", a Catholic publication from Brooklyn, positioned on each seat, containing an inflammatory defense of Senator McCarthy, including his verbatim attack on the Watkins committee. As the train had moved toward Washington, the professional organizers had moved through the train providing instructions and trying to create enthusiasm, denouncing both Republicans and Democrats. One of the pep leaders had assailed the President as "soft" on Communism and proposed Senator McCarthy for the presidency in 1956, greeted with cheers. When the train got to Washington's Union Station, the demonstrators were greeted by a D.C. police officer who warned that it was against the law for them to parade their placards on Capitol Hill, met with boos by the demonstrators. But, instead of carrying their placards to the Senate, they handed out several mimeographed protests for the demonstrators to sign and present to various Senators.
Even those idiots were not so
engaged with unreality as to seek to overturn a valid presidential
election by storming the Capitol on the day of the electoral vote
count, with some vague intention in mind to find out the "truth"
about the "stolen election", and to do something about it
Charles Kuralt, editor of the Daily Tar Heel, the UNC student newspaper, writes of students hurrying to class at UNC one morning the previous week, stopped short by a large poster in front of the YMCA building announcing in large and garish red letters: "The First International Unicorn Race, Battle Park, 4 o'clock. Heart-lifting, Instructive. Bring A Friend." A new coed had scratched her head and inquired aloud as to what it was, but grinning upperclassmen knew what it was, that BRAT was back. (Our papa used to recount, from his days on the Magical Campus, of the freshman looking for the "Yimsa" building, and so for such neophytes to the realm of sophistication and how to spot sophistry in a world of pretense, BRAT might have chosen a different building, such as Playmakers Theater nearby, on which to promulgate their event, even if a board outside the Yimsa was at the time dedicated for the purpose of publicizing impending occurrences of common lack of import to enrollees. Why, though, conform so to norms in matters of art—at base, in an age where photographic and recording equipment had supplanted the need for similitude, though not verisimilitude, in representations of abstractions from nature, mutating to a trick of the mind to jar the accustomed sentient receptor from ordinary perception—, a sedulous adherent to framed constraint in timorous pusillanimity?)
BRAT took its name from the initials of a 17th Century French counter-revolutionary named Bourreau Richelieu A. T. La Fronde—which begs the question as to why it should not have been BRATLaF. The organization, explains Mr. Kuralt, was an avant-garde movement popular on college campuses, in this case founded by a couple of graduate students who had issued a Manifesto saying that everything which had preceded BRAT was nothing, that it took advantage of its materials instead of using them, that Dada did not take art seriously while BRAT "does too", that art is motion made static, while BRAT "is stasis brought into motion", that BRAT took the dash out of Toulouse-Lautrec, and that there were no leaders in the movement, only followers.
Shortly after its founding the prior spring, one of the organization's exhibits was removed by police from a café window with threats of dire consequences if the café owner did not stick with more down-to-earth forms for his future displays. BRAT then retreated to the roof of a classroom building, and for all anyone knew, it had disappeared—"not top down" but up top, as with the insomniac brat in Chicago who little recked the consequences of joyriding in his father's "hardtop convertible" Cadillac, (of which there was no such model in regular production, the perception of which perhaps having been created by the can having been opened in the accident, that complex mechanical application having been developed first by Ford two years hence for the 1957 models, that being another story for a later day). But, now, with the announcement of the Unicorn Race, the movement had its renascence. As BRAT put it: "Art is dead and BRAT has once more risen from the ashes to render that necessary Tug at the Heartstrings."
The organization's exhibits included paintings, sculptures and poems, plus nodal objects made of screen wire, old shoes, lengths of pipe and bits of burlap, having titles such as, "Dragon Surveying Abstract Landscape While Listening Attentively to 'Crying in the Chapel'". The most noticed of the pieces at the spring exhibition were: "What Really Happened on Errol Flynn's Yacht", "Mighty, Mighty White", and "They Martyred Savanorola: Snap, Crackle, Pop". But now there were oil paintings and a mural with names such as "Little Did I Reck", "Can't Say You Weren't Told", and "Saving for the Day".
The previous April, the organization had sponsored a canonization of destitute poet Maxwell Bodenheimer, and such events were still ongoing, well advertised in advance and completely unattended upon occurrence, even by members of BRAT. Currently, there was advertised on placards all over the campus a picnic: "Kill the Dragon, Win a Kewpie Doll! Money Back If There's a Dry Eye in the House!" The posters urged: "See the Flight of the Roc... See the mythical bird, panoramic, bigger than both of us, descended from the sky. The Roc will be looking for a snack. The audience will be invited to participate. Amusing. Heartwarming. Tear the kiddies away from TV!"
Mr. Kuralt finds that there was no telling how far the movement might spread, that, according to its co-founders, there were embryonic cells of the organization at Swarthmore and Princeton, and soon they hoped to incorporate the gospel of the cult in a massive "BRAT Anthology of Golden Moments", which they expected to attract converts. He concludes that BRAT had tremendous popular appeal, that, as an English teacher at the University had remarked to his class the previous week: "What we're seeing here is a highly successful parody of our manners and morals. Dada, Cubism and Droodles all have had their day. BRAT may be next for the world!"
Three photographs of BRAT art are included.
We have been especially attentive to detail in imparting this piece, because, obviously, it is one of the more important cultural expositions to come out of the early to mid-1950's, far beyond anything to be gleaned from the cultural phenomena of modern jazz music, the advent of popular rock 'n' roll, mid-50's painting, sculpture and architecture, beat poetry or even the spread of evangelism through Billy Graham and his worldwide Crusade, far beyond the fear and resultant tendency to escapism engendered by the hydrogen bomb and the Cold War, encapsulating the essence of dealing with nothingness in the abstract, not nihilism, which could not hold a candle to nothingness. For nothingness is. Are you?
Parenthetically, though we spent seven years on that campus long, long ago, we never heard of this organization, not once. That was apparently because its recondite nature was such a carefully kept secret, being a cipher, nay, nothing, the infinite nothing, imparting more meaning than substance.
We did, however, during our early time there, hear of the King of the Invisible Universe, as we have mentioned before, a self-enthroned graduate student who sponsored IUNC events, which were primarily invisible. Whether that was adjunctive to BRAT in some manner, we know not, for we know nothing. We did once, however, freshman year, attend the gathering of that organization at the Forest Theater in Battle Park, and there was a fairly substantial crowd of students present. So it was not unattended nothingness, and so apparently did not qualify for BRAT status, as not fulfilling its own titular vacuum which nature inexorably abhors.
Marquis Childs, in the third in a series of columns on Owen Lattimore, the former State Department adviser on the Far East, currently under indictment for perjury for his denial before a Senate Internal Security subcommittee that he had any sympathy with or belief in the teachings of the Communist Party, tells of former Senator and now Senator-elect Joseph O'Mahoney of Wyoming having become a target of the right-wing of the Republican Party during the midterm election campaign because of his being one of the attorneys for Mr. Lattimore, along with the firm of Arnold, Fortas and Porter—which included labor attorney Abe Fortas, future Justice of the Supreme Court, to be appointed by President Johnson in 1965. Mr. O'Mahoney had a major role in the challenge to the first indictment for the vagueness of its counts and infringement of free speech.
Senator Mahoney, having been defeated in 1952, decided to run again after the suicide the prior June of Senator Lester Hunt, who had been harassed by Republican leaders, threatening to use a tragedy involving his son against him. Then, during the campaign, Republicans began running full-page ads in newspapers and on the radio, not only linking him with Mr. Lattimore but also another client, the U.S. Cuban Sugar Corp., owned by U.S. citizens operating in Cuba, though technically a foreign company, for which representation had to be declared under law, and so Mr. O'Mahoney had registered with the Department of Justice as a representative of a foreign company. That was converted by the campaign ads into a label for Mr. Mahoney as "Foreign Agent 783", the registration number with the Department of Justice. That was then associated with his representation of Mr. Lattimore, who was labeled in the ads as the "top Soviet espionage agent", as previously claimed by Senator McCarthy.
Mr. O'Mahoney replied to the ads saying that he had not accepted Mr. Lattimore as a client until he had carefully studied the case and convinced himself of Mr. Lattimore's innocence. He pointed out that it was a basic tenet of the law that a man is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and that in a fair trial, the accused is entitled to the best legal services obtainable, consistent with the ethical canons adopted for lawyers by the 1953 meeting of the American Bar Association, regarding zealous representation of clients, no matter how unpopular their cause. Senator O'Mahoney planned to press for an investigation as to whether the ABA had meant what it said in 1953.
At the urging of Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri, Senator William Langer of North Dakota had ordered an investigation into the recusal motion brought by the Government against Federal District Court Judge Luther Youngdahl for his alleged bias in favor of Mr. Lattimore in presiding over his trial and previously dismissing the principal counts of the first indictment. That investigation could conceivably be broadened to include inquiry regarding the Department of Justice being used by the Administration for political purposes.
Mr. Childs points out that after the scandals in the Department of Justice had been uncovered during the Harding Administration 30 years earlier, President Harding's successor, Calvin Coolidge, had named the late Harlan Stone, then a Columbia University law professor, as the new Attorney General—subsequently appointed to the Supreme Court by President Coolidge, and then in 1941, elevated to Chief Justice by President Roosevelt. Mr. Childs indicates that without regard to where the praise or blame might fall during his time as Attorney General, Mr. Stone had cleaned up the Department and restored faith in the process of justice.
He concludes that there had been many who had hoped that it would be a precedent for the Eisenhower Administration, but that an increasing number of critics had accused Attorney General Herbert Brownell of playing politics with the Department and its power to prosecute.
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