Tommy the Cork: The Secret World of Washington's First Modern Lobbyist
Lichtman, Allan J.
TOMMY THE CORK THE SECRET WORLD OF WASHINGTON'S FIRST MODERN LOBBYIST by Allan J. Lichtman When Truman taped Tommy Corcoran, he gave history a unique look at the beginning of...
...in Georgetown was an around-the-clock workshop filled with Ivy League law school graduates Cohen and Corcoran had brought to Washington to help save the country...
...They were the Hot Dog Boys, Felix Frankfurter's Harvard Law School proteges who, from 1933 to 1940, teamed up to create one of the great lawmaking duos of this century...
...ting them in on potential profits from the case...
...the key to lobbying is not getting something done, but taking credit for getting something done...
...He plotted with a future Supreme Court justice to bribe a selective service official, and acted as real estate agent for a sitting Court justice...
...When asked by Raycrest for help, Corcoran first thought about his own pocketbook: "How about the old dole...
...Fortas: Now all or any part of that is yours...
...He had helped establish the Export-Import Bank as an FDR adviser in 1934...
...They said they would come and bring it down...
...He had joined Roosevelt's administration in 1933, seemingly an idealist recruited by Felix Frankfurter to help "cheat the cheaters?' But by Allan J. Lichtman is professor of history and associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the American University in Washington, D.0 1941 Corcoran had embarked on a career that would gain him a more dubious distinction as the prototype modern lobbyist and influence peddler...
...During the war, Corcoran had served FDR as unofficial head of Lend Lease to China, a program that operated in the form of a private corporation, China Defense Supplies...
...He had just the weapon—Secretary Anderson's cocktail party gaffe...
...Corcoran: And I think I can work this thing out on a purchase basis...
...He says one thing to your face, and then four or five days later a subordinate of his writes a letter...
...Corcoran's brother Dave had been the company president and FDR's uncle Franklin Delano and Chinese leader T.V...
...Ben demonstrated through the 40 years after the New Deal that he believed in New Deal ideals," says Joseph Rauh, a civil rights attorney who worked for both Cohen and Corcoran in the thirties...
...Ben was available night and day to advise on the same liberal ideals he had advised on in the New Deal," says David Ginsburg, a lawyer who worked with Cohen in the thirties...
...Corcoran's lasting contribution to American politics was in showing just how self-enriching passage through the revolving door can be...
...Corcoran: The third thing I want to tell you...
...Corcoran, nicknamed "Tommy the Cork" by Franklin Roosevelt, had been FDR's chief political operative, guiding much of the New Deal legislation through Congress and serving as the President's primary deal maker and talent scout...
...The enemies he had made through his highpressured lobbying style also blocked Corcoran's dream of becoming U.S...
...The next day Corcoran learned that while alcohol may make confessions more readily available, it does not necessarily make them accurate...
...Corcoran may have been secretly pleased that Anderson was mistaken about the demise of restrictions on fats and oils...
...Corcoran enlisted a Catholic bishop in one lobbying effort, and used the off-the-cuff words of a tipsy cabinet secretary in another...
...He saw it as a civil war that would be a disaster for America to involve itself in," says Ginsburg...
...Once you get into this business you've got to be a draft horse and you've got to wear blinders ." BEN COHEN: ONE WHO TOOK A DIFFERENT PATH N of all the architects of the New Deal sold out...
...To press Secretary of Agriculture Clinton P. Anderson for allocations beyond what department staff recommended, Corcoran enlisted the active participation of both law partner Worth Clark and Worth's cousin, Bennett Champ Clark, former senator from President Truman's home state of Missouri and a recent appointee to the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia...
...should be used as an instrument for ending the Cold War since, by bringing nations together, it is the "best hope of peace on earth" While other New Dealers like former Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, who served as FDR's undersecretary of the Interior, and Thurman Arnold, FDR's by John Eisendrath assistant attorney general for antitrust, teamed up in powerful law firms like Arnold, Porter, and Fortas, Cohen wrote books like The United Nations Constitutional Developments, Growth, and Possibilities...
...Corcoran and Chennault were able to keep their commitments to UNRRA and establish a marginally profitable airline...
...In his first year in private practice, he is reported to have earned over $250,000 (comparable to seven figures in today's lobbyistintensive Washington...
...Corporate America crowded into the capital to take part in the war effort, to gain contracts and concessions from government, and to share in the development of a U.S.-dominated post-war economic and strategic system...
...In August 1937, The American Magazine described them this way: "Of the two men, Cohen is more the social philosopher, Corcoran more the lawyer working on an assignment with Uncle Sam as his client...
...The company was supposed to deduct the 2,500,000 pounds from the 1946 quota, but "no one is going to jail and time passes," Worth Clark concluded...
...The legislation engineered by Cohen and John Eisendrath is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...For example, when Ganson Purcell was about to step down as chairman of the SEC, Corcoran offered him precious office space...
...Corcoran rounded up the votes, relishing more, one contemporary recalls, the arm-twisting and exercise of power that got the bills passed than the impact they had on bettering people's lives...
...After a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Corcoran joined the prestigious Wall Street firm of Cotton and Franklin where he plunged into the practice of securities law...
...I have very carefully not talked this thing directly with him because I'm passing the messages in such a way—remember we've violated a law—that I'm never putting myself in the point where I've said it" That strategy received a temporary setback when career officials within Agriculture sent a letter warning that the department "did not believe the Company had acted in good faith in its use of fats during the last quarter of 1945" The letter prompted the following exchange between Corcoran and Judge Bennett Clark reported on February 4, 1946: Corcoran: I must say that guy [Anderson] is a most amazing bird...
...At a time when Corcoran was successfully scheming to cash in by transforming U.N...
...just simply make him understand, fellow, that when you're in business to make money, fellow...you've got to play in line—you know what I mean—and your private life is part of the game...
...Corcoran's behind-the-scenes maneuvering on behalf of New Deal legislation impressed both Frankfurter, by then a Roosevelt confidant, and the president himself...
...But it was Tommy Corcoran and a handful of other FDR aides who first applied that career strategy to the executive branch...
...After several unsuccessful efforts to gain special treatment, Corcoran finally gained a partial victory for his client...
...According to Corcoran, Anderson had agreed that Lever Brothers should be allowed additional fats and oils, but had not overruled staff objections because he was about to lift all restrictions on them anyway...
...Supposedly on temporary assignment, he would never again leave the nation's capital...
...Ironically, at the same time Corcoran was plotting to help secure Pauley's nomination over Ickes objections, he was helping the interior secretary write his letter of resignation...
...So Corcoran offered the party a stake in the deal: in exchange for assistance with Lever Brothers, Corcoran and Worth Clark agreed to help the party treasurer court A. P. Giannini, retiring head of the Bank of America, and a politically influential financier...
...I don't know whether I can deliver those two votes or not—my own hunch is that if I can, it is probably the last chance I've got to heave him in so tough that I'll get this quota...
...Disarmament Commission...
...In several of the deals captured on the tapes, Corcoran helped powerful individuals with problems that involved the government, often enlisting the help of important officials and cutCorcoran's lasting contribution was in showing how self-enriching passage through the revolving door can be...
...The boom in Washington office building construction is explainable in no small part by the need to provide safe haven for the Tommy Corcorans of the eighties...
...Officially Cohen was in the Public Works Administration, Corcoran at the Reconstruction Finance Corporation...
...Corcoran usually demanded high fees as in the Rubinstein case...
...So as I understand it the two million five is already in the kettle...
...He had earlier approached Robert Hannegan, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the postmaster general, about assisting in the Lever Brothers case, but Hannegan, seeing little in it for him, did little to help...
...Corcoran, however, withstood judicial review and remains today remarkably intact...
...But of all the deals captured on tape, none more fully illustrates Corcoran's repertoire of lobbying techniques—and how often those techniques failed—than his exhaustive efforts in late 1945 and 1946 to help the Lever Brothers company increase its quota on the materials used in the making of soap...
...I think that would be the best damn investment...
...relief efforts into the first CIA-backed airline, Cohen was laboring to make the U.N...
...airline be authorized to carry commercial freight...
...Clark: The first chance I get I'm going to tell Harry Tillman what a dirty double-crossing sonofa-bitch this fellow is...
...The tapes show them considering a plan to strike it rich by helping financier Serge Rubinstein avoid criminal prosecution for draft evasion and securities law violations...
...For example, Thurman Arnold, FDR's assistant attorney general for antitrust, went on to form one of the most respectable power-law firms in town, Arnold, Porter and Fortas...
...In 1950, the agency purchased CAT outright...
...Now that, my dear sir, is deductible...
...Tommy showed he didn't give a damn ." For a time Cohen and Corcoran worked together extraordinarily well...
...Iknow the corners of this town in the dark," boasted Thomas G. Corcoran, Washington's premier lobbyist, in a private phone conversation in 1945...
...But he doesn't know it in such a way that incriminates you...
...They show, for example, that in early 1946, Corcoran teamed up with Abe Fortas, former undersecretary of the Interior, later a Supreme Court Justice, and another New Dealer who used his government expertise for private gain...
...In 1932, Cotton and Franklin loaned Corcoran to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, an agency set up by Herbert Hoover to fight the Depression through loans to businesses and banks...
...Corcoran was particularly fond of having people like Smathers make the key contacts because it allowed him to increase his influence and protect himself at the same time...
...Although he could no longer jolt senators and cabinet secretaries by crackling "this is Tommy Corcoran calling from the White House," he could remain a manipulator of people and events and a permanent member of the in-crowd...
...On December 11, Secretary Anderson informed Corcoran that the Lever Brothers case was officially closed...
...for myself, a bond up to the gift limit of three thousand dollars for each of my kids before he goes [a total of $12,000]" The Bishop got his carfare to Europe and a potential contribution, Von Guntard gained successful arrangements to have his daughter returned, and Corcoran received $12,000 tax free for his children...
...Not only did Corcoran and other shareholders pocket $950,000 from the acquisition deal, but the CIA acquired the beginnings of an "aerial empire" that would eventually support covert operations in Nicaragua and throughout the world...
...so that they'll dig up" if Smathers could just keep them out of jail...
...At every step Corcoran searched for a way to use his former White House connections to cash in for himself, in one case personally profiting from the transformation of a United Nations relief effort into what later became the first CIAbacked airline—the forerunner of Southern Air Transport that shuttled Eugene Hasenfus and weapons to the contras...
...If Agriculture had ended its quota system, then Corcoran could not claim to have accomplished anything special for Lever Brothers...
...Corcoran: More money...
...One of the few Corcoran recruits who could not live comfortably in this world was Joseph Rauh, later counsel to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights...
...Corcoran was also interested in loans to communist-bloc countries, virgin territory for commercial expansion...
...Justice Douglas: We better get together and talk about guys to take over that place...
...In Corcorans' Washington, the tapes reveal, everything was negotiable...
...As counsel for the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, a position he served in without pay, Cohen drafted the legal opinion that expedited the supply of U.S...
...Justice Douglas: Yeah...
...Lever Brothers would shortly get the raw materials it wanted and the secretary would not have "to take on a storm in his department" by making an exception for Corcoran's client...
...The boy won't play in line, and an undisciplined colt isn't good to anybody...
...We bet on a horse that didn't show up...
...Corcoran believed that with Crowley at the helm, the bank would authorize hundreds of millions in loans to nationalist China "to be spent as we want it spent...
...Loans were to be disbursed to help foreign governments buy goods produced by American concerns...
...The first big break in the case came from Corcoran's socializing rather than Bennett Clark's influence...
...S. to China loan) is going to be in troubled waters...
...they always paid more...
...You decide whether you're Tiffany or Woolworth—not the market" But Corcoran also understood the value of humbly accepting modest payment in exchange for heartfelt future gratitude...
...By recruiting Bennett Clark, Corcoran gained both a White House connection and a potential debt of gratitude from an important federal judge...
...When it came to helping out the truly powerful, no man was more generous than Corcoran, for such assistance was a crucial tool in building his influence throughout Washington...
...Only after UNRRA needs were met would the...
...Clark: He's a dirty son-of-a-bitch...
...Corcoran particularly loved to assist companies in deep trouble...
...Joe's got to remember, fellow, that we're not free agents and we're not in politics—we're playing a law business...
...Corcoran dictated the following terms to Von Guntard's attorney: The businessman must "pay the expenses of the man of the cloth [Sheil] over and back as a contribution to him...
...I think you can get $100,000 down this morning" Leahy reported the following day that Rubinstein's one slim hope was that Selective Service might want to quash the prosecution to avoid being embarrassed by their initial failure to discover the violation...
...Solicitor General or under-secretary of the Navy, FDR's old job...
...You have to know how [to take advantage], and it is just a question of getting the jump...
...Corcoran's favorite arrangement was the triple play in which he would gain compensation for the efforts of others, avoid taxes, and make all parties believe that he had performed favors on their behalf...
...When the task proved more difficult than he expected, Corcoran moaned that "what they did was chisel an extra $25,000 bucks worth of work out of me—the sons of bitches:' The quid pro quo was so blatant in this case that the check arrived drawn on the company's account...
...But the tapes show that he was less successful in his bid to become a broker for the billions of dollars in loans that the federal government used to spur the revival of international trade...
...They recognized that the mix of New Deal regulations and World War II foreign policy commitments had created an opening for savvy, well-connected lobbyists who focused not just on Congress, as they had in the past, but on federal agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Export-Import Bank...
...Corcoran's plan called for picking these clients clean...
...Because we've got to get this thing off the ground, boy...
...In return, CAT would ferry UNRRA's relief supplies to war-devastated China...
...Cohen later served as U.S...
...Corcoran's mission changed to damage control...
...When you're charging fees .. .charge them high," Corcoran advised one senator...
...He provides the evolutionary bridge between the crass fixers of the past and today's slick lawyers who serve the public interest for a short time for the sole purpose of cashing in later...
...They then engaged in an Alphonse and Gaston conversation about compensation: Fortas: He [Rubinstein] handed me a check for five [$5,000] ...on one of his companies...
...If the man of the cloth actually delivers ...1 want him to make the same $5,000 contribution to the Catholic Youth Movement over here...
...Corcoran was not the only former New Dealer to follow such a path...
...When Nelson Rockefeller, an occasional business partner, was dismissed as assistant secretary of state, Corcoran blamed "that wild commie-kike crowd that are sure that if you're not willing to dissolve all existing forms of society to their benefit, you're an s.o.b...
...Truman didn't appoint Crowley or any other Corcoran ally to the Export-Import bank...
...In 1933, FDR's `Brain Trust" recruited him to help write and lobby for legislation governing the securities industry...
...I hope there's no dictography in that office...
...But he knows that in reliance on what he told me, you have taken an action which otherwise you wouldn't have taken...
...He helped the American Hotel Owners Association get relief from pricing restrictions and the Raycrest Mills company to get increased supplies of Rayon...
...In a conversation taped on January 4, 1946, Corcoran asked former New Deal colleague Ben Cohen to help discipline Joseph Rauh...
...Corcoran had to explain to the novices that corporate contributions were illegal and that other arrangements had to be made for remitting the money...
...I told them I wanted $5,000 now and $15,000 in January...
...President Truman had nominated California oil executive Ed Pauley for undersecretary of the Navy, but the nomination had stalled because of objections from Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes...
...Corcoran: I have no doubt about it...
...In addition, Corcoran personally moved to get in on various enterprises, peddling aspirin, branch banking, public works projects, and exports of every kind...
...member of the U.N...
...But Giannini was not enthralled...
...He learned that connections may only take you so far if the people in power simply don't want to listen to you...
...To help Rubinstein with his draft evasion case, Corcoran that day called William Leahy, Selective Service director for the District of Columbia: "He [Rubinstein] is a rich man who's scared as I never knew one who's scared...
...And we're trying to get this guy [Rubinstein] out of town on a plane...
...Justice Douglas: Oh, you did...
...They were deposited in the Truman Presidential library and opened to researchers two years after Corcoran's death in 1981...
...Corcoran: Sure...
...Purcell accepted, adding what must have been music to Tommy the Cork: "But I feel I owe you so much already" For Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Corcoran functioned as a real estate agent...
...Just as Corcoran seemed to have run out of avenues for exerting pressure on the department, one last potential deal fell in his lap...
...Fortas: Well, Tom you're too generous...
...The "big storming pirate," Corcoran complained to Clark on December 19, had "pounded the table" and complained, "if you can give me two of them [branch banks] you can give me the whole twenty-five of them and I demand them ." No help came from Giannini...
...I'd like to make Bennett secure for life on that [Lever Brothers case]" Corcoran told Worth Clark...
...During World War II Cohen served as economic counselor in the American embassy in London and later helped manage America's wartime economy...
...Corcoran: I'm going to pretend I got out of town before I got the letter so I won't answer it...
...He helped a major company evade wartime quotas for soaps, drawing into the fray a half-dozen major government officials, party leaders, and businessmen...
...In a conversation recorded on January 27, 1946, Corcoran explained to Fortas that the wooing of a client had two stages: first, earn their confidence, then, exploit their fears: "You can't do it until you've proved to him a little bit that you can help him...
...Corcoran avoided formal hearings in favor of private contacts and used front-men in addition to direct lobbying...
...To win Giannini's affection, Corcoran had to gain Federal Reserve Board approval of the Bank of America's plans to acquire 25 branch banks in California...
...the satellite states that are part of the Russian thing," Corcoran told Leo Crowley on October 21, 1945...
...You're going to have a terrific voice on the Russian business and on the Balkan business and on the Polish business...
...Corcoran, who remained an active player in the capital until close to his death in 1981, was by no means America's first high-powered lobbyist...
...Rather than traveling to Europe himself to make the necessary arrangements, Corcoran delegated the task to his New Deal friend, Bishop Bernard Sheil of Chicago, influential head of the Catholic Youth Organization, who was going abroad on other matters...
...Although Corcoran never officially gained recognition of Lever Brother's claims, with his aggressiveness he had in effect "succeeded in circumventing the regulations...
...When Corcoran left the government in 1940 to peddle his influence, Cohen stayed on, continuing to peddle his ideals...
...Corcoran and several associates would share both the sugar company and an exorbitant fee...
...Truman apparently tapped Corcoran because he feared that several of FDR's former aides were plotting against his administration...
...Corcoran's delicate task was to pressure the Department of Agriculture into raising Lever Brothers' allocation of raw materials, without alerting competitors such as Proctor and Gamble...
...In so doing, Truman and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who likely originated the idea for the taps, created the most extensive record of political surveillance in American history: 5,000 pages of wiretap transcripts, covering May 1945 through early 1947...
...After the triumph of Mao in 1949, they played upon fears of a spreading Asian communism to persuade the CIA to subsidize their airline as a source of supplies to anti-communist guerrillas...
...Well don't worry about it...
...I told them [the Chinese investors] that...
...He [Anderson] knows you've put it in...
...His words are preserved today because Harry S. Truman had the FBI tap into the corners of Corcoran's Washington, recording conversations held on the power broker's home and office phones...
...In his latter years, when mentioned in the press, he was often referred to as "ascetic Ben Cohen...
...But as he said in a phone conversation in January 1946, "You can't luxuriate yourself in your personal friendships and your likes and dislikes and your senses of justice and injustice when you're playing in this racket ." The little red house Corcoran's path to political power began in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where his father headed the town's most prominent law firm...
...Corcoran: No it's yours...
...His interest in trade with communist countries did not, however, stop Corcoran from joining the virulent red-baiting of the time, especially when it served his personal ends...
...Because they didn't catch it themselves...
...He was talking about Vietnam before most of us knew where it was ." Although he made millions speculating in the stock market in the twenties, friends say he dressed shabbily and lived in a dingy apartment...
...Remember what I said...
...As soon as you get him on the fly-paper and as soon as you're sure yourself you can help him, then you can do something [to get control of his assets...
...Truman withdrew Pauley's nomination and accepted the interior secretary's resignation...
...Instead the company could keep "readjusting [its quota] from quarter to quarter," putting off the deduction until wartime controls ended and no one cared anymore...
...Tommy hustle One of Corcoran's most significant preoccupations during World War II and its aftermath was helping corporations and trade groups get around the federal controls on wages, prices, and raw materials...
...involvement in Vietnam...
...The tapes even show a streak of anti-Semitism and a contempt for some of his former New Deal associates who had taken a different path...
...Corcoran's candidate to head the Export-Import Bank was Leo "The Lion" Crowley, a New Deal colleague who had run lend-lease...
...Perhaps more dramatically than any other exNew Dealer, Corcoran had turned against the idealistic vision that had supposedly brought him to government...
...He can put it on the line...
...As a July 18, 1946 conversation showed, Corcoran and General Claire Chennault, the wartime commander of the Flying Tigers Air Group and president of CAT, were eager to carry as little humanitarian cargo as possible: • Chennault: This thing would be a great moneymaker if we didn't carry a pound of UNRRA cargo...
...TOMMY THE CORK THE SECRET WORLD OF WASHINGTON'S FIRST MODERN LOBBYIST by Allan J. Lichtman When Truman taped Tommy Corcoran, he gave history a unique look at the beginning of executive branch lobbying, now Washington's major industry...
...Perhaps the most selfless was Benjamin Cohen...
...delegation's proposal presented at Dumbarton Oaks, the first big-power meeting arranged specifically to discuss the establishment of a new world organization...
...Within 24 hours of the deal being struck, Smathers reported back that cash was on its way...
...delegate to the U.N...
...CAT began when Corcoran convinced Fiorello La Guardia, director general of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and formerly mayor of New York City, to put up nearly $2 million to purchase surplus cargo planes, fuel, and other supplies necessary to start up the airline...
...He attended Harvard Law School studying under Professor Felix Frankfurter, who later became a close adviser to Roosevelt and the leading advocate of an activist government...
...The recordings of August 30, 1945 show that Corcoran contacted Smathers with "a case of people who are awfully scared and they might pay you desperately well" Corcoran explained to Smathers that he had personally "made their agent yesterday understand that they were right in the shadow of the pen...
...Rubinstein was indicted on January 30 and later convicted in one of the most publicized draft evasion cases of the World War II era...
...Corcoran: I should think so too...
...After the war, Corcoran's law firm quickly obtained Soong as a client with a $100,000 annual retainer...
...destroyers to a badly depleted British Navy...
...Although formally employed in a minor agency position, Corcoran was drawn into the inner circles of the White House, soon becoming FDR's all-purpose speechwriter, strategist, talent scout, and backchannel lobbyist...
...The problem is how do you get the original equipment...
...Corcoran's "Little Red House" in Georgetown became the town's leading communications center...
...Although Corcoran suspected his phones might be tapped, he spoke candidly of personalities and strategies, sometimes bluntly acknowledging the illegality of his efforts...
...On December 13, Corcoran reported that Worth Clark had persuaded Fed Chairman Marriner Eccles to give Giannini permission to acquire two or three banks as a prelude to further expansion: "And now, by God, I want Bob Hannegan to deliver for me on that Lever thing as he promised he would...
...Corcoran told a Lever Brothers official on February 10, 1946 that Hannegan "asked us to get him two votes on this Naval Affairs Committee for Pauley...
...Soong (later premier) were directors...
...In a conversation taped on November 23, 1945, Corcoran told a Lever Brothers executive that he had obtained a valuable confession from Secretary Anderson during a party "after enough drinks had gone so people can't tell the truth...
...Ultimately, Corcoran helped his clients avoid punishment not through his skills of persuasion, but by making use of the Agriculture Secretary's loose lips...
...Most of Corcoran's schemes remained pipe dreams after Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist government began to collapse under the pressure of inflation, corruption, and war against Mao T e-T1ing's communist forces...
...At another point, when it appeared that a plan to have Navy planes fly UNRRA relief missions to China threatened support for the Corcoran-Chennault airline, Corcoran cried "commie" conspiracy...
...Chennault: Yeah, but I mean if we get the equipment...
...He would, for example, earn the debt of politicians by engineering deals that would throw campaign contributions their way...
...Corcoran suggested that Smathers "could say to the Department of Justice, `You're getting the full tax and fraud penalty out of these people—there's no use in smashing up a local enterprise in my home state of New Jersey' Get it...
...In the process, of course, Corcoran sometimes worked to undermine or exploit for personal gain the very laws and regulations that he and other New Dealers had helped establish...
...Corcoran admired Rauh's intelligence and hard-work, but was frustrated by his penchant for clouding business arrangements with ideology...
...In fact, they worked on everything...
...The transcripts for 1946 indicate that in return for a $6,500 contribution for the re-election of Senator Joseph Guffey of Pennsylvania, Corcoran got the William Penn Life Insurance Company a permit to construct a new office building in Doylestown, Pennsylvania...
...Revolving that door By invading the privacy of Corcoran, Harry S. Truman and J. Edgar Hoover inadvertently opened to public view the once hidden world of influence peddling in Washington, D.C...
...Corcoran had played the foreign policy game perfectly with CAT, beginning the airline to meet the need for post-war relief, then selling it when concern switched to the containment of communism...
...General Assembly, U.S...
...Just when Corcoran was looking pretty impotent as a lobbyist, the Lever Brothers company itself came to his rescue—by breaking the law...
...Initially claiming to be a proponent of an activist government committed to the public good, Corcoran then spent 40 years trying to circumvent or exploit for private gain the laws and regulations that government established...
...Apparently because Anderson had compromised himself, the Agriculture Department went relatively easy on Lever Brothers...
...The following exchange, taped on March 18, 1946, shows how Corcoran mingled the personal and political, and reveals that the Supreme Court Justice was helping to arrange appointments to a key agency of government at the same time he was sitting on the court: Corcoran: I found a downtown air-cooled apartment...
...Sumner [Pike, SEC Commissioner] as well as Gans [Ganson Purcell, SEC Chairman] are quitting...
...The world takes you at your own valuation...
...Although transcripts don't show whether Corcoran and Smathers were able to keep their clients out of jail—Corcoran called it a "long shot"—they do show that they were paid handsomely for their efforts...
...Corcoran learned that Lever Brothers, without authorization, had already obtained and processed into soap the 2.5 million pounds of fats and oils for which they had wanted Agriculture Department approval...
...The Agriculture Department decision meant Corcoran would have to scramble for his client...
...We'll have to mobilize forces tonight," he told Bennett Clark...
...Sweet deal Many of Corcoran's cases exploited the new relationship between business and government that developed in the 1940s...
...The tapes provide a mini-course in the art of Washington lobbying with lessons hidden behind every deal, the most important being that lobbying is not pulling strings—it's scrambling...
...Key programs of the New Deal such as the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act were swiftly dismantled by the Supreme Court...
...For the Lever Brothers deal, Corcoran told law partner Worth Clark, a former senator from Idaho, "I want $100,000" and to keep the business for future deals with the company...
...The New Deal and the war had transformed Washington into a center of business activity...
...Rauh says Corcoran asked Cohen to team up with him again in 1950 when Cohen was preparing to leave the government...
...In fact, Lever Brothers would never actually have to deduct the fats and oils it had illegally used in 1945...
...At each level, negotiation consisted of classic back room favor trading...
...He provides the evolutionary bridge between the crass "fixers" of the past who bought and sold congressmen and today's slick lawyers who serve the public interest for a short time for the sole purpose of cashing in later...
...As early as the mid-fifties, Cohen warned against any U.S...
...By helping out on the Pauley nomination, Corcoran had a final opportunity to get the assistance he needed from party chairman Bob Hannegan...
...He really cared about public issues...
...But he did succeed spectacularly in establishing a commercial airline in China— Commercial Air Transport or CAT, the only strictly private carrier serving China...
...In the course of this one case, Corcoran had involved the treasurer of the Democratic Party, the postmaster general, a titan of American business, the head of the federal reserve system, members of the Naval Affairs Committee, a federal judge and a former senator...
...A number committed their lives to fighting for progressive ideals well after FDR had died...
...Government officials, journalists, and businessmen swapped information and traded favors with Corcoran, creating the network of contacts that he would exploit in his private practice...
...I think we can control that all right," Crowley replied...
...CAT scam While the New Deal and World War II had created a market for executive branch lobbying domestically, the end of the Depression and the war created other markets for Corcoran...
...The lure of that name is bringing in a lot of spectacular stuff to him...
...Corcoran had, in fact, a month earlier confided to Worth Clark that if rationing eased up they should go to Agriculture and ask for a face-saving, if substantively meaningless, recognition of their Lever Brothers claim: "Now I think that gives us a way of going to then9 and say now you know and we know that [quotas are] going to collapse, it's going to be unnecessary, but it's awfully important for us to make this showing so come on and do it for us...
...Fortas told Corcoran that "Chocolate bar [Lewis B. Hershey, national director of Selective Service] thinks it will be a black eye for him...
...Historian Cabell Phillips wrote that Corcoran and New Deal colleague and housemate Benjamin Cohen "constituted a sort of semi-autonomous fourth level of government" Yet by the time of Roosevelt's reelection in 1940, Corcoran's seven years of scuffling with Congress and the press had transformed him into a political liability...
...As much as Thomas G. Corcoran came to be viewed as a venal lobbyist, Cohen was looked upon as a committed public servant...
...From the start it was clear Cohen was the soul of the team, the one truly committed to serving the public good...
...In the summer of 1945, for example, Corcoran teamed with former Senator William Smathers of New Jersey in an effort to acquire a share of a lucrative sugar company from businessmen charged with tax evasion...
...Thurman is doing awfully well," Corcoran remarked on November 3, 1945...
...I think you can just take the pants off them," he said...
...Even ex-mentor Frankfurter came to believe that Corcoran lacked the discipline to put into practice the ideal of selfless public service...
...But the larger scheme collapsed...
...I have a vivid idea of the rent...
...He was blamed for Roosevelt's embarrassing political defeats with the 1937 plan to pack the Supreme Court and the 1938 efforts to purge conservatives from the party...
...Fortas had apparently made a quick profit (although Rubinstein's checks may have been as suspect as his character...
...But the dramatic government expansion that began with the New Deal and World War II, and exploded in the sixties and seventies with the Great Society, spawned a breed of lobbyists who knew the workings of the executive branch...
...Cohen was involved in a number of important wartime transactions between America and its allies...
...In a conversation with a Lever Brothers official on December 20, Corcoran eicplained that if Secretary Anderson dared move against the company, Lever Brothers could pretend that the secretary's off-the-record admissions had given de facto authorization for use of the extra fats and oils...
...In a series of lectures at the Harvard Law School in 1961, Cohen argued that the U.N...
...On November 11, 1945, Corcoran's partner Bill Youngman gave the following gloomy report about prospects for loans to China: Youngman: I have a feeling this (U...
...Is that all right...
...Quota breaking was a serious crime bordering on treason...
...To get his jump on the new era, Corcoran once again used expertise and contacts developed while in government...
...We'll get it ." First, he tried to enlist the help of the Democratic Party machinery...
...Recalls a friend: "Ben was a sort of sainted figure...
...While modern influence peddlers often promise only access, Corcoran delivered hustle...
...he admitted to a minimum fee of $5,000...
...a forum for world peace...
...Corcoran could not deliver the votes for Pauley...
...Ironically, Fortas was forced off the Court in 1969 by revelations that he had participated in a similar scheme to soak a trouble-ridden financier...
...The house they shared...
...Corcoran's approach was to influence appointments to the Export-Import Bank, the main source of foreign loans in the 1940s...
...The trail that Corcoran traveled seems wellbeaten now: find a government job, develop expertise, then leave government to sell that expertise for a handsome profit...
...Now that may be hogwash, but Bill [Leahy] is going to look into it this afternoon...
...quotas were not about to be lifted on the inedible fats and oils used in soap manufacturing...
...Cohen told Rauh he had spurned his former partner, who by then was a controversial lobbyist, because, "I can't do that kind of practice?' Instead, Cohen retired to the position of active elder statesman...
...Anderson was wrong...
...He is credited with having written the U.S...
...For much of American history, corporations had hired lobbyists to press their claims in Congress...
...The triple play So in 1941 Corcoran began working as a lawyer-lobbyist...
...representative to the International Court, and chief U.S...
...You are coming back to one of the greatest foreign trade eras the world has ever known," State Department official Joe Panuch told Corcoran's brother Dave two months before the Japanese surrender...
...According to transcripts for Fall 1945, Corcoran was approached to help a wealthy businessman, Dick Von Guntard, get his daughter out of Russian-occupied Germany...
...Cohen wrote the legislation...
...Corcoran: Someday, maybe, we'll make some adjustment, but that's all yours...
...In 1944 Cohen turned his attention to the creation of the United Nations...
...Corcoran: That's right, ifChennault: Then don't carry a pound of this UNRRA cargo and make a lot more money...
...Without access to Truman's White House, however, Corcoran was frustrated in his efforts to gain leverage over the Export-Import Bank's appointees...
...Together they transformed American public life by writing and pushing through such legislation as the Securities and Exchange Act, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act...
Vol. 19 • February 1987 • No. 1
