THE OTHER KEFAUVER

...At this session, he was the Armed Services committee's floor manager on a bill bringing a uniform system of military justice...

...The President of the United States was on the phone...

...But he wanted his message in the morning and afternoon papers of Saturday...

...Truman keep the record straight...

...The veto was laid down so late that the President's message missed the afternoon papers entirely...

...We have built it upon free men...

...Majority Leader Scott Lucas had Kefauver, Douglas, Humphrey, Magnuson, Lehman, Myers, Mc-Mahon, Benton, Kilgore, Neely, Graham, and perhaps 10 other Senators in support of the so-called Kilgore substitute, which would have turned the McCarran bill into a measure directed at known Communists in periods of national emergency such as the one then and now prevailing...

...No man in the Senate outdid this slow-talking Tennessee lawyer in standing against the chief legislative aberration of our times—the McCarran-Mundt-Nixon-Ferguson fever of 1950...

...Pat McCarran, Nevada Democrat heading the Judiciary Committee on which Kefauver took a seat, and McCarran has been as inveterate a Kefauver foe as McKellar...

...The libel that Kefauver is indifferent to the constitutional liberties of individual citizens is based, allegedly, on the 33 citations issued by his committee for contempt of Congress and the grilling of reluctant witnesses before the nation's TV screens...

...The line had been drawn...

...And it proved to the hilt what kind of man Tennessee and the nation had in Estes Kefauver...

...He talked about crime and his conviction that Tennesseans "would not begrudge" his efforts spent on a crusade that had only long-range effects upon his native state...

...Kenneth McKellar, look like only the first installment the Lord sent Job...

...Kefauver followed...

...has given witnesses the privilege of the fullest aid and advice of counsel...

...and that as chairman of the crime committee he has shown himself indifferent to the individual rights of private citizens...

...It has long been manifest that this Tennessee lawyer, from the time he entered the House in 1939, has sought to be a statesman...

...As he has climbed into national prominence in his first Senate term, Kefauver has been attacked in the cloakrooms on three alleged counts: It is said that he is over-fond of publicity...

...If one takes for example, Kefauver's colleagues on the crime committee— Wiley of Wisconsin, O'Conor of Maryland, Tobey of New Hampshire, and Hunt of Wyoming—Kefauver, to this observer, appeared to run last in the race for the cameras...

...has sought affirmatively to prevent disclosure of names of persons who might be unjustly prejudiced...

...If a Southerner were to be so honored, which he doubted, "there are others in the South who are more able and better qualified than I." Before donning his famous coon-skin cap for a Chattanooga homecoming, the junior Senator from Tennessee stopped in Nashville for a speech...

...Before going to Washington Mr...

...Grabbed by reporters when he stepped out of the chamber after Lucas sat down he announced: "I'm going to vote against this damned bill if it costs me reelection...

...During the second session of the 81st Congress, which lasted through September, Kefauver was "on the record" 79c/c of the time...

...IV But the scope of Kefauver's legislative interests is even broader than these issues suggest...

...In his May 1 report to the Senate, Kefauver bowed to this ruling and backed a proposal by Atty...

...When there was no response, Connally loudly hazarded the guess that the Tennessean was "out chasing crap shooters...

...Congressional Quarterly, a reporting service on the Capitol, keeps a running record of the percentages in which members of the Senate and the House make their stands felt in key roll calls...

...one of the Tennessean's staff brought him a message...

...Joseph McCarthy in their minds, the overwhelming majority of Kefauver's colleagues considered these democratic safeguards political liabilities...

...To the American Civil Liberties Union, finally, the Kefauver committee "paved the way" for Congressional investigators in its "respect for individual rights...

...In the Judiciary Committee, and again on the floor, Kefauver sought to amend the worst features of Section 4 of the McCarran omnibus, trying to write in such elemental constitutional protections as proof of "intent to damage the United States" or of "acts of force and violence...

...The 33 citizens cited by the Senate for refusing to testify before the crime committee are some of the most unsavory characters unearthed in the probe...

...But his total Senate record, omitting a decade of distinguished service in the House, is too impressive to be buried, even by the brilliant performance of his crime committee chairmanship...

...Congress was in its final session...

...We are taking too long to begin seriously the fight for peace . . . America and the free world need to know what we are fighting for . . . The truth is we are proceeding on a war-to-war basis, when we should proceed on a war-for-peace basis...

...It was Kefauver who had to make the decision count...

...The Estes Kefauver who pushes Atlantic Union is the same Estes Kefauver who stopped traffic in all the cities on the coaxial cable with the televised hearings of the Senate crime committee in New York...

...The House of Representatives overrode the veto without debate, 286-48...

...If it did not sink in now...

...Eight said no...

...Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin all gave their people 'security,' but, Mr...

...Wisecracking Tom Connally, Democrat of Texas, was calling the roll for questioners one day and reached the name of Kefauver, a member of the Armed Services contingent...

...First to make up his mind, on the heels of the Lucas maneuver, was Kefauver of Tennessee...

...In testing the constitutional provisions in this case, Kefauver followed the course of previous Congressional committee chairmen...

...They dotted the map from Alaska and Hawaii (statehood) to the St...

...In the May 1 report, Kefauver and his committee themselves raised the question of the "possible invasion of the rights of privacy" in televising Congressional investigations, and suggested that a code of procedure be worked out for the future...

...The day before, the U. S. Senate, over his strong opposition, had continued the famed crime investigating committee to Sept...

...If the Senate had been trying to match the temper of the country in bowing to McCarran, Mundt, and Ferguson, he said, it had failed...

...While he talked, the others deliberated...

...Suddenly Lucas defaulted...

...At least we would then know that Atlantic Union can not provide the answer...

...all were resoundingly defeated...

...12, 1950, the Lucas forces were ready...

...On one of his amendments, he got exactly five votes...

...There was consternation among the Democratic liberals...

...He promised more exhaustive attention to the problems of Tennessee, now that the crime committee's work was entering its legislative phase...

...III The absenteeism charge against the Tennessean was made famous during the troops-for-Europe inquiry before the Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees...

...James Cox...

...He offered the same Kilgore amendment, not as a substitute, but as an integral part of the McCarran-Mund(>Fer-guson features, and he did it without leaving his place on the floor or consulting with his original supporters...

...It was in this period, moreover, when most of the other crime committee members were campaigning and Kefauver often went alone to stage hearings in the country's major cities...

...They aided electoral college reform, railway employes, small business, public health, the veterans, and the blind...

...A law may prevent a man from calling himself a Communist but it won't change his beliefs...

...Before the crime committee was voted a year ago, Kefauver had put his name to 61 public bills and resolutions, of which only nine were strictly confined in their effect to Tennessee...

...With the 1950 election, the Korean war, and Sen...

...Only one, Harry Russell of Chicago and Miami, has to date been tried, and he was acquitted in Federal court on the ground that the Fifth Amendment guaranteed him against possible self-incrimination even when he refused to say when he first went to Florida...

...1, and the Senate Democratic Policy group had dragooned the Tennessean into staying on as a member...

...During his entire Congressional career he has been an ardent champion of home rule for the District of Columbia...

...His sustained opposition to the McCarran bill made another floor appearance on his part fair game for the charge of filibustering...

...But he spent the bulk of his address on spreading the American idea of federation over the Atlantic community of nations, and the first step he and 28 other Senators had proposed in this direction to call a meeting in which the people of these nations should be represented...

...the Senate prepared to give it the same treatment...

...Early in 1950, when to get action on his crime committee resolution he needed the support of the chairmen of Judiciary and Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committees, he bucked the former to liberalize a displaced persons bill and the latter to defeat the basing point and natural gas measures...

...When the majority leader offered the Kilgore amendment as a substitute for the McCarran bill, he got a total of 29 votes...

...Richard Russell, Paul Douglas, and Hubert Humphrey—which have attracted wide attention and been the subject of many reprintings...

...It was this spectacular achievement, and the patient and thorough way in which Kefauver brought it about, which started talk in Tennessee and everywhere else about his Presidential possibilities...

...The Senate had turned down what the President, Attorney General McGrath, and J. Edgar Hoover all considered a "more effective" method of combatting Communist espionage and sabotage...

...Peace, monopoly, crime, democratic suffrage, civil liberty—these have been the largest themes in Kefauver's Senatorial first term...

...For that ambition he has paid the price exacted of every man who possesses the ambition and cannot conceal the fact...

...Kefauver the crime crusader upset the Senate, the Administration, and the country with a performance that stripped almost every other subject from the nation's front pages until President Truman fired Gen...

...it would be lost upon the country forever...

...It was upon this demonstration that Mr...

...Douglas MacArthur...

...There are extraordinarily few Senators who appear positively to eschew it...

...The real danger to our country lies in actual or potential sabotage and espionage by the Communists, and that danger we are still not prepared to meet the day after this measure becomes law...

...But they repudiated Langer's idea...

...He carried to a successful conclusion in the Senate last year his fight in the House to plug another loophole in the anti-trust acts...

...There were no television cameras, not even a visitors' gallery, when the second session of the 81st Congress dragged out its life last September in the old Supreme Court chamber, and Estes Kefauver stood four times upon the floor in a vain effort to stem the panic legislation known as the McCarran-Mundt-Ferguson "anti-Communist" bill...

...He knew the veto would be overridden...

...On the date set for Senate action, Sept...

...As Washington correspondent for The Progressive Lowry has done a series of portraits of major figures in Congress —Sens...

...The North Dakota maverick, William Langer, talked of a filibuster, trading upon the Senate's unanimous desire to adjourn for the campaign...

...Seven said yes...

...The only way it could be kept in the papers was for his supporters in the Senate to postpone the final vote...

...But it helped Mr...

...At 6:25 p.m...

...It was "far-fetched," said Kefauver, for his Tennessee friends to be talking of the Presidency, "and I am not thinking about it...

...At 10:08 the next morning, after Langer's dramatic collapse into unconsciousness and an almost equally dramatic speech by Douglas of Illinois reaffirming his original stand against the McCarran bill, Kefauver stood once more on the floor...

...But it was the same achievement which helped to blur the full outlines of Kefauver's Congressional career...

...The nation's editors, he taunted them, saw things differently...

...No man in the Senate in his first two and one-half years has been involved in more varied legislative fields...

...Even if one waives these attitudes of the club, the specific allegations fall in the face of the facts: There are some Senators who deprecate their interest in publicity, which Kefauver does not...

...Should they vote now against the bill containing the provisions they had backed, as well as those they had attacked as dangerous to American liberties...

...They sought to curb monopolies, legal discriminations fsagainst women, and inequalities in reserve officers' benefits...

...Item: His very devotion to civil liberties (an offering in the indictment...

...McCarran, and the Senate, were in too great haste...

...Kefauver met everything from indifference to ridicule when he insisted on taking an hour and a half to oppose the conference report...

...It could be," he said, "that the only result of the meeting would be that we would discover there is no common ground on which we can proceed...

...II W. MeNEIL LOWRY has a front row seat at most of the major developments in Washington, where he is chief of the Washington Bureau for the four dailies in Florida, Georgia, and Ohio owned by former Gov...

...Big Item: The Kefauver crime committee, which was created after weeks and months of feet-dragging by the Senate Democratic leadership, is widely credited with having hurt Democratic candidates in 1950, particularly then Majority Leader Scott Lucas of Illinois...

...Taken together, these charges are designed by the cynic to call into question Kefauver's role as a liberal statesman...

...It was a futile gesture, if reckoned by the final vote of 57-10 which overrode the Truman veto...

...And so on...

...On five occasions in our national history, we have had legislation of this kind passed by popular appeal . . . and then the American people were very, very ashamed of themselves a few years later...

...and has permitted statements to be submitted . . ." The unprecedented concentration of the country on Kefauver as crime crusader may itself explain why, in this early aftermath, the other Kefauver is lost sight of...

...early brought him the bitter resentment of Sen...

...Seven proceeded from his position on the District of Columbia Committee...

...The House did not give the message the attention it deserved," said the Scripps-Howard Washington News...

...that when the chips are down on an important roll-call vote, he is often absent...

...Senators had only a few minutes in which to read the complicated changes made by the House, and Kefauver pleaded with McCarran to let the vote go over until the next afternoon...

...Lowry taught English literature at the University of Illinois, Washington reporters have a background from which they can evaluate the sources of these criticisms: Item: Kefauver licked McKellar's spleen and everything McKellar stood for when he leapt from the House to the Senate in 1948, and McKellar is senior Democrat to them all...

...Truman hoped to make his forthcoming veto stick...

...The other 45 had the widest possible range...

...He has sponsored both Atlantic Union and measures to strengthen UN security forces...

...We have not built this nation upon suppression, by trying to control what people think or say...

...The leather-lunged, table-thumping Langer took over at 11:51...

...J. Howard McGrath to grant immunity to witnesses "essential" to a Congressional inquiry...

...Up to March 31 of this year (the latest summary by the Quarterly to date) Kefauver is shown to have been present on 16 out of 20 roll calls, and with definite, rather than general, pairs on the other four, [or a percentage of 100...

...Item: Kefauver's domestic policies, and his restraint in opposing the Truman civil rights program, did not endear him to the Southern Democrats when he came to the Senate, and these men controlled the imr portant committee chairmanships...

...What the President of the United States had to say on this important issue was on its way to the back pages of Saturday's newspapers, overshadowed by stories on the adjournment of Congress...

...The Legionnaires had not let him get out of the hall before voting an endorsement of what McCarran was trying to do...

...A few minutes after 10 p.m...

...President, they did not give them liberty...

...V Two days after the conference report left the Senate, it was back again with a resounding Presidential veto message calling it "dangerous" both to national security and to democracy...

...Lawrence river (the seaway project) and from the Missouri Valley to the Columbia (for development projects like the TVA...

...With adjournment pressure running high and the political campaign well under way, McCarran got the conference report back to the floor on the night of Sept...

...Humphrey and Lehman took the floor in turn for short speeches...

...But Lucas, manful as had been his opposition to the McCarran bill, had just returned from attacking the measure before the Illinois convention of the American Legion...

...They covered education, public health, maximum employment, judicial reform, and child study...

...In contrast to other investigating committees," wrote the ACLU staff counsel, Herbert Monte Levy, "the Kefauver committee has given persons attacked in testimony the right to testify personally in their own behalf...

...At 11:18 Kefauver yielded to Graham, who spoke only 33 minutes...

...It was enough to make the troubles of his mortal foes, Boss Ed Crump and Sen...

...Reporters sounded out Kefauver, Douglas, Graham, Lehman, and Humphrey—all of whom supported the President's veto...

...Panic and politics," he read from the Washington Post...