Washington-U.S.A.
COFFIN, TRIS
WASHINGTON—U.S.A. By Tris Coffin The Last Days of The Great Crusade ON the night of January 20, 1953, millions of Americans professed to see a faint, golden glow about the magnificent colonial...
...He used his political friends, including Adams, with the careless arrogance of a nouveau riche...
...In sharp contrast to the Truman era, few of the Eisenhower scandals were first exposed by newspapers...
...The defendant was tried and convicted...
...When Adams was caught living in the expensive hotel suite of Goldfine, wearing his vicuna coat and treading on his Oriental rug, Washington's first reaction was riotous glee...
...This case was stubbornly rammed ahead despite three angry protests from the Canadian Government and two adverse rulings by the U.S...
...The Eisenhower Administration prosecuted Connelly with enthusiasm and thunderbolts of righteous rage accompanied every step of the prosecution...
...Connelly received a loan, which he repaid, and two suits of clothes...
...The lawyer saw Connelly and asked him to arrange for him to see the Justice Department lawyer handling the case...
...They finally had to settle for Matt Connelly, a tall, cheerful Irishman who hunted rascals for the Truman Committee and then was the President's appointment secretary...
...Tax Court...
...At a Foreign Relations Committee hearing, it was brought out that the Treasury officer in charge of this case was on leave of absence from the Cleveland law firm handling Humphrey's business...
...The Adams revelations leave the GOP with little to brag about...
...More recently, Payne, admittedly a wearer of a Goldfine vicuna coat, did not suffer in the GOP primary which came as Adams's peccadilloes filled the papers...
...The Eisenhower Crusade had sounded the trumpets far and wide...
...This was done...
...American voters as a whole have never shown any great anger about corruption, as have the British...
...His flint-like personality did not welcome friendships...
...Whatever the Crusade's other failings, many felt, it did clean up the mess in Washington...
...The word "crude" might best describe Goldfine...
...The public was led to believe that he was virtually an ascetic who, when not sacrificing himself for the Eisenhower Crusade, was communing with a higher life...
...In his turn...
...Government was being operated by a small-town New Hampshire politician who didn't know when he was being "taken...
...But Mr...
...On the surface, nothing could be more incongruous than the "dear friendship" between Adams and Gold-fine...
...But laughter was followed by a rather shocked silence...
...He wanted money and power, and, if the accusations on file in the Federal Trade Commission have any truth, he got it by using methods that would offend most stomachs...
...When a Labor MP accepted a gold cigarette case, a suit of clothes, hospitality, and a week's vacation at a seaside, a Labor leader, Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross said: "Our whole system of government rests upon public confidence in the honor and integrity of those who are officers of the crown...
...So widely known was his aloofness that it was said the first eight rows at the committee hearing were reserved for Republican Congressmen who had never seen him...
...Today, Senator Frederick G. Payne (R.-Me...
...Its clarion call: honesty in Government...
...Eisenhower wanted to make plain that he considered Talbott had done no wrong...
...It is a matter which affects every political party and every citizen, and every party and every citizen suffers for it...
...Governor Adams was responsible only to the President, who is notoriously bored by details of government...
...If in the end some once-promising career is ended, let no one take it as the occasion for smug self-righteousness or partisan satisfaction...
...Under Eisenhower, the managers-of government—most of them busi-" nessmen, are watched by no one...
...One House Committee investigator told me: "Adams has been mixed up with everything but the Indian Claims Commission...
...It took the Great Depression to oust the "business" Administration of the Twenties...
...All five factors as they operate today suggest that Sherman Adams has no exclusive hold on "imprudent" conduct...
...A liquor scandal in his administration as Governor reached into his own office and sent one man to jail, but Payne was easily elected Senator...
...Individual reporters have time and again picked up scents of scandal, but found little encouragement from their publishers...
...Governor Adams has refused to admit anything but "imprudence," even when the House committee's counsel pointed out wryly that Adams had violated a law by turning over confidential data about Goldfine's alleged violations to his chum...
...Talbott was caught in a conflict of interest and forced to resign when it became plain Congress would no longer accept him...
...Another sign of the Crusade's double standard is the zeal with which the Treasury pushed a tax claim against a Canadian mining company which, by odd coincidence, was the chief rival of former Secretary of the Treasury George M. Humphrey's iron mining interests...
...It is interesting that this and other ethical cases within the Eisenhower Administration have not provoked the famed vigor of the Justice Department, although former Attorney General Brownell and his boys searched mightily for indictments against Truman Democrats, including a Cabinet member...
...The seat of the disturbance was a huge, barn-like hearing room in the old House Office Building...
...Connelly was accused of attempting to obstruct justice in this fashion: A defendant in a tax-dodging case sent his lawyer to Washington...
...There, a committee with the curious name of Legislative Oversight was looking, almost fearfully, into the tangled lives of Sherman Adams, the deputy President, and Bernard Gold-fine, an aggressive textile manufacturer who collected politicians as others collect expensive tapestry...
...Finally, the Administration has enjoyed a great deal more than an armistice in the traditional war between the press and the Government...
...is an example of a public official markedly unhurt by scandals...
...When General Eisenhower declared, "When it comes to casting out the crooks and their cronies, I can promise you we won't wait for Congressional proddings and investigations," even the press was impressed...
...What Adams did was to remove from the Eisenhower Administration its last claim to idealism...
...Adams airily said he was not aware of the law—and that, he seemed to say, settled that...
...Any smaller fry who might have any hesitations about taking gifts, large and small, could recall Nixon's "triumph" of 1952...
...The laughter drowned out the noise of the collapse of Western power in Lebanon, Moscow's newest struggle and the recession...
...These hearings can go on until the Congressmen get tired of looking at each other...
...Any investigator with half the heart for it, a modern Senator Tom Walsh, can dig fame for himself out of the crumbling ruins of the Great Crusade...
...Wesley C. Clark, in his Public Administration and Private Interests, says five factors determine the moral climate of any Administration: the moral tone of the nation, the machinery of administration, the staff, "perhaps most important, the leadership which guides the staff and controls the machinery, and, finally, the news spotlight in which administrative activities are conducted...
...The President himself expressed this view when he pinned a medal on one-time Air Force Secretary Harold E. Talbott...
...During the week of June 16, 1958, theatergoers leaving the National and passing the White House were startled to discover that an atmospheric disturbance had driven away the aura...
...For it was plain that, when General Eisenhower was ill, resting or out on the golf course, the huge, unwieldy machinery of the U.S...
...The Administration headed by Eisenhower and Adams has sternly refused any form of clemency...
...Since then, a succession of Eisenhower Crusaders whose ethics have been questioned have responded with outraged indignation...
...This was when he tearfully condoned Richard Nixon's acceptance of a $16,000 fund from a group of wealthy California Republicans...
...On the other hand, this Administration has locked up even the most trivial details as "Secret...
...By Tris Coffin The Last Days of The Great Crusade ON the night of January 20, 1953, millions of Americans professed to see a faint, golden glow about the magnificent colonial mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...
...Congressman Wright Patman (D.-Tex...
...on the trail of what may develop into a major scandal, was refused access to some questionable foreign loans on the grounds that they were "Secret...
...Governor Adams had (courtesy of Jim Hagerty) become a legend— a pillar of integrity who brought his lunch to work, rode coach planes, and unsmilingly led square dances...
...The cries of agony from Republican Senators up for re-election at the "imprudence" of Governor Adams can only be compared to the moans in the Democratic cloakrooms when Alger Hiss, an aloof, unsmiling assistant to the Secretary of State, was discovered passing out secrets to a Soviet spy...
...Connelly, his health, finances and spirits ruined, is slated for 2 years in prison...
...The breakdown of moral authority in the Eisenhower Administration began before the General moved in the White House...
...Governor Adams's assistance to his friends was not confined to Gold-fine and the Federal Trade Commission...
...The Teapot Dome scandals of the Harding Administration did not change any political tides...
Vol. 41 • June 1958 • No. 26
