A TOOL'S CONFESSION
The signed confession of the Tool of the Special Agent, who appeared before Assistant Attorneys Dorr and Smith at the United States Attorney's office in New York, which says he gave false testimony, and the voluntary statement of John J. Roach, a stock broker who was employed by the now defunct firm of Frederick Simmonds, regarding the relations between the Special Agent and that firm, while Special Agent of the Government, reveal the weak foundations of the Government's charges.
The Tool, prior to the raid, had been in the Scheftels employ. For a few months he had been a traveling business-getter for the firm. Then he was discharged. He associated himself with Frederick Simmonds, a member of the Consolidated Stock Exchange. Mr. Simmonds was badly in debt. The Tool had no money. The Agent, when he was trying to get the United States Attorney's office in New York to agree that the information collected was sufficient to warrant a raid, prevailed upon the Tool to appear before the assistant attorneys and give testimony.
In this story the chief value of the Tool himself is that he has no value. He made his statements against us to Mr. Dorr, assistant U.S. district attorney. Then he gave me a statement, signed in the presence of witnesses, recanting the statements made to Mr. Dorr. To this he later added a written postscript enforcing his recantation. Then he re-recanted and said that a large part of his first recantation, signed by him and initialed by him on each page with his initials was false. The reader is left to judge just which one of the Tool's three positions is the one in which he tells the truth. It is obvious that he must be lying in the two others, and it is not impossible that he may be lying in all three—except that some of the stuff in his first recantation, which he later denies in his second, has been verified from other sources.
Here is the main point to bear in mind concerning the Tool,—the sovereign power of seizure, search and confiscation brought into play by our great Government without due process of law, was based in part on the flimsy testimony of such a person. Thousands of investors suffered from the blow, as well as myself and associates.
It would appear from the Roach statement that he was largely instrumental in bringing about the crisis that resulted in the suspension of the Simmonds firm and in the disclosures of the Special Agent's relations therewith. These facts have become, in most instances, matters of public record. They came out during the hearings before the receiver for the bankrupt concern. It was found that the liabilities of the "busted" firm were $85,000 and the assets 100 shares of cheap mining stock and between $1,500 and $2,000 in cash. It was at this conjunction that the Special Agent was allowed to resign from the Department of Justice. The Tool he had foolishly used had proved to be a two-edged one. The Agent had been "hoist by his own petard."