The Charlotte News

Wednesday, June 2, 1954

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President, at his press conference, said this date that his Administration had an impressive list of accomplishments in fighting Communism and subversion. He made public a Justice Department report listing what he called the accomplishments of the Administration during its first 16 months in office, saying that the effort against Communism and the constant surveillance of Communists was being carried on constantly by appropriate Federal agencies in conformance with due process and the laws, done "quietly and relentlessly", and that those who knew best its effectiveness were the Communists, themselves. After virtually banning questions regarding the issue of executive department members providing information to Senator McCarthy, as he had demanded, one journalist had asked him whether he felt that Senator McCarthy was hurting the Administration's legislative program, prompting a look of sharp annoyance from the President, at which point, after a pause, he turned away and indicated his readiness for the next question.

In the 25th day of hearings before the Senate Investigations subcommittee regarding the dispute between the Army and Senator McCarthy, the McCarthy camp contended that the Army had failed to produce all of its monitored telephone calls, prompting the Senator to state that without them, none of them should be utilized in the hearings. He said he had no objection to all of them being placed in evidence, even if illegally obtained. He objected, however, to any of them being used unless all were introduced. A motion was before the subcommittee, presented by Senator Stuart Symington, to order the immediate introduction of the calls, objection to which was raised by usual chief counsel of the subcommittee, Roy Cohn, who was in the midst of his testimony before the subcommittee. It had been disclosed early during the hearings that a stenographer in the office of Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens usually listened in on an extension to conversations and customarily transcribed a record thereof. Secretary Stevens said that the purpose of the transcripts had been so that any requests made to him by telephone could be handled expeditiously and with clear understanding of the particular request. The issue had arisen as to whether the transcripts of conversations with Senator McCarthy and his aides should be introduced into the hearings. Mr. Cohn had objected that not all of the transcripts had been provided to Ray Jenkins, the special counsel for the subcommittee during the hearings. To the objection, Army special counsel Joseph Welch responded that production of some of the transcripts had been barred by the President's executive order which forbade testimony or provision of documents to Congress concerning private conversations had in the executive branch. Mr. Cohn said he specifically remembered one telephone conversation with Secretary Stevens, occurring September 28, which had not been included in the transcripts provided by the Army. Mr. Welch said that every call which was monitored and not subject to the President's order would be produced, and also stated that if a particular call was taken by the Secretary outside his regular office, it might not have been monitored and transcribed ultimately. The subcommittee determined that it would question Jack Lucas, who monitored the calls to determine which ones were covered and if all had been produced, and would seek a ruling from Attorney General Herbert Brownell as to whether some of the calls were covered by the President's order.

Senator McCarthy also told reporters that he would insist that Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont be called to repeat under oath his assertions made on the Senate floor the previous day that the Senator was "dividing the country" and helping the Communists. Senator Flanders said that he would appear if called to testify, but that he believed he could add nothing to what he had already stated in the floor speech. The previous day, Senator McCarthy had stated during the hearings that his whole "hassle" with Army officials could be cleared up in 24 hours if all parties submitted to lie detector tests. He said that he was willing to submit first to one taken before television cameras.

The Senator, just prior to the noon recess in the hearings, also said that his subcommittee had information "alarming" beyond words, that there was Communist infiltration of the CIA and to hydrogen and atomic bomb plants, much more serious than the alleged infiltration of the secret radar laboratories at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, which, the previous fall, had led to the dispute between the Senator, his staff, and the Army. He did not elaborate on the allegations.

Only the transcript of the afternoon session, during which Roy Cohn continued his testimony, is available online.

We feel constrained to note, for those who might become confused historically, that there is a significant difference between the President's executive order and the attempt 20 years hence by the Nixon Administration to resist subpoenas of the special prosecutor for tapes of conversations made at the White House between executive department personnel relating to criminal conduct, namely obstruction of justice, cover up by Administration officials of previous criminal misconduct of persons paid circuitously and surreptitiously by the Committee to Re-elect the President in 1972, eventually involving conduct prior to that in 1971. It was that which the Supreme Court ultimately ruled could not be made subject to a blanket "executive privilege" exception, as the President had sought to invoke with regard to some of the taped conversations, having determined privately on a course of "limited hangout", while feigning "full disclosure" publicly, with a very visible stack of transcripts of the tapes during a particularly memorable Presidential address to the nation in April, 1974. Thus, for the slow learners, Presidential directives regarding confidentiality, okay, but attempts thereby to use it as a pretext for cover-up of criminal misconduct within the Administration, bad, bad.

The President signed a bill the previous day changing the name of Armistice Day, celebrated on November 11, to Veterans Day. Originally conceived to honor the veterans of World War I, the name change coincided with the more recent tradition, since World War II, of honoring veterans of all wars on that day.

A half hour before Secretary of the Air Force Harold Talbott was scheduled to report the findings of the commission charged with the responsibility of recommending a choice for the new Air Force Academy, an announcement was made that the report would be delayed. There was no explanation for the postponement.

In Portsmouth, N.H., a flash explosion aboard a Navy submarine as it lay in dry dock killed two civilian workmen and caused burns to a sailor, though not injured critically. Six other civilian workmen on the submarine at the time were not injured. The submarine did not appear heavily damaged.

Senator Alton Lennon of North Carolina conceded victory this date to former Governor Kerr Scott, in the wake of the Democratic primary held the prior Saturday. Governor Scott held a lead of 310,800 to 286,400, receiving more than 50 percent of the vote in the field of eight candidates and so no runoff would be necessary. The interim Senator, appointed by Governor William B. Umstead the prior summer following the death at the end of June of Senator Willis Smith, discounted the possibility that he would be appointed by the Governor to fill the other seat vacated by the death three weeks earlier of Senator Clyde Hoey. He also said that he had not made up his mind whether or not he would run for the 1956 gubernatorial nomination. In fact, he would run successfully for the Congress in 1956 out of his native Wilmington, where he would serve through 1972.

In Charlotte, the person who had received the most votes in the initial primary the prior Saturday for the position of Charlotte Township constable, subject to a runoff primary as he had not achieved a majority, had been found guilty in Domestic Relations Court of simple assault on his wife, receiving a suspended 30-day sentence on the roads upon payment of $25 in fines and costs. The man's opponent in the likely runoff, however, also had a criminal record, which included arrests in 1946 for public drunkenness, gambling, assault with a deadly weapon, and at least one conviction on the gambling charge, plus another conviction for damage to property and drunkenness in 1944, a simple assault charge on which he had been found guilty in 1949, and a charge of assault with a deadly weapon in 1950, on which probable cause had been found, plus an arrest in 1952 for larceny, on which he had been found not guilty. The opponent had said that he would seek the runoff only if there were runoffs in other races, as he did not want to put the taxpayers to the burden of supporting another election only for one office. Regardless, your next constable will be a perennial jailbird. The local newspaper reporters were right on top of the story, even if a little late in the process.

Also in Charlotte, 27 persons during the prior 15 days had been charged with sex offenses and were awaiting trials in Superior Court. Each charge related to a "crime against nature", a euphemism for homosexual acts between an adult and a minor, a felony punishable by not less than five years in prison nor more than 60 years. Police Chief Frank Littlejohn said that the round-up of alleged sex offenders in some instances had uncovered practices of blackmail, wherein photographs of the acts had been taken by the youths involved, who had then blackmailed the older men into paying them more money for their acts. A detective said that the alleged practices occurred primarily in automobiles and in places such as parking lots and along roads outside the city limits, all taking place within the previous 90 days. Also arrested, but not charged, had been some female impersonators, including one man who had posed as a woman for the previous seven years. He was questioned at the Youth Bureau, dressed in a yellow sun-back dress, with high heel shoes, pocketbook and gloves. His hair was shoulder length and he wore lipstick, earrings, and fingernail polish, with arched eyebrows. He told the Youth Bureau officers that he had been married to a traveling salesman for some period of time. And you thought that stuff only happened in Los Angeles in the dear, innocent 1950's.

In Braintree, Mass., a three-year old boy who was lost had been held at the police station for two hours the previous day, during which time he had dumped a couple of police files by pulling the drawers out of the cabinets, rendered the teletype machine out of order and disrupted the telephone system by punching the buttons which switched the calls. When he beaned a lieutenant with a flashlight, the officer ordered a patrolman to place him in a police cruiser and go in search of his parents.

In Lexington, Ky., an expert in the fire department regarding the handling of fires, explosions and disasters for the previous 20 years, was nearly stumped by a "smiling squirrel", after a woman called him to tell him that there was a squirrel in her house who was smiling at her and that she was afraid of it, that every time she raised the broom to the squirrel, it smiled. The fire captain then dispatched three firemen to the scene, where they found that the house manager had the "grinning nutcracker" cornered. The firemen could not agree whether it was smiling, but said it was definitely growling when they saw it. The fire captain gave orders to capture it alive and so the firemen donned gloves and pinned the squirrel with a broom, at which point it scampered off into the wild.

Betty Boyer, in her weekly "Grocery News" column, on page 11-B, urges watching your grocer's shelves for the 50-cent coupon savings on one of the finest shortenings, tells of old hickory barbecue without a lot of cooking, and that you don't have to whip cream anymore as it is now in a can ready to use and less than two cents per serving. And don't forget a slice of the date loaf, which you can serve with a butter cream frosting or whipped cream, if desired.

On the editorial page, "McCarthy's Invitation to Anarchy" indicates that the previous week, Senator McCarthy had made two statements on the same general topic which showed, more clearly than anything he had said or done previously, that his final objective was to dominate the executive branch. During a colloquy with Senator John McClellan of Arkansas in the Army-McCarthy hearings, in which Senator McClellan had said that Senator McCarthy was probably guilty of a crime for receiving and holding information obtained by criminal means, referring to the confidential FBI document which he had received from an informant whom he refused to identify, containing, he claimed, a list of names of espionage agents at Fort Monmouth, part of a spy ring formed by executed atomic spy Julius Rosenberg, Senator McCarthy had said that he believed the oath of every Government employee to defend the country against all enemies was far above every order of the President imposing secrecy, insisting that it was the duty of the two million Federal employees to provide information to the Congress.