But significant factors must not be overlooked. The first is that after none of these spectacular accusations of murder plots was anyone ever formally charged before any court with conspiracy to commit murder.
The second is the undeniable fact that the so-called murder conference in the De Soto Hotel was neither more nor less than a political caucus of the type customarily held behind closed doors in order to facilitate full freedom of discussion about personalities, political prospects, and the like.
The third is that when all the verbiage about patronage plums and job distribution and endorsement of candidacies is sifted for substance, a pitiably small modicum of grain is recovered from a mountain of chaff. Here are the only specific references to the infliction of bodily harm by those hotel conferees actually quoted by Long in his Senate speech:
Oscar Whilden is reported as saying: “I am out to murder, bulldoze, steal, or anything else to win this election.” An unidentified voice said: “I would draw in a lottery to go out and kill Long. It would only take one man, one gun, one bullet.” Another unidentified voice said: “I haven’t the slightest doubt but that Roosevelt would pardon anyone who killed Long.” And still another unidentified voice said: “The best way would be to just hang around Washington and kill him in the Senate.”
These four remarks were sandwiched in among two days of political discussion about an approaching state campaign, the selection of candidates, the use of federal patronage, and matters of that sort! By way of illustration, a remark in a recent magazine article about another Louisiana representative, Congressman Otto Passman, would offer a much firmer foundation for a conspiracy charge along the lines followed by Long.
Passman has dedicated himself, in season and out, to opposing and reducing foreign-aid appropriations, and President Kennedy is quoted as asking at the signing ceremony of one of these bills: “What am I going to do about Passman?”
“Mr. President,” a bystander is reported as replying, “you’re surrounded by a lot of well-armed Secret Service Men. Why don’t you have one of them shoot him—by accident, of course? In fact, Mr. President, if you promise me immunity, I’ll do it myself.”
No one who read that statement took it in its literal sense; no one regarded it as a serious proposal to authorize, commit, and condone the murder of a legislator. Yet that is precisely the construction Huey Long put on four similar remarks made at intervals during a two-day caucus in a New Orleans hotel.
All this would tend to cast doubts upon the complicity of Carl Weiss in a murder conspiracy, even had he been the sort of person to whom a deed involving assassination would normally have been possible. However, what removes the assumption that he was the chosen executioner of a political camarilla from serious consideration is this:
Carl Weiss was virtually unknown outside of his immediate professional, social, and familial circle. Not one of the leading supposed “plotters” of the hotel conference spoke of him during that meeting, none of the leaders who were asked about him later could recall having heard of him, although his wife’s father and uncle were known to virtually all of them.