The firm of the late Secretary of State Stettinius also dabbled in Maritime Administration work. His associate was handsome ex-Congressman Joe Casey, of Massachusetts.
One of the most up-and-coming of the lawyers with “inside” connections is Margaret Truman’s “date,” Marvin Braverman. It is doubtful whether he has much influence, but people are beginning to credit him with it, and he is no chump. He is taking advantage of the publicity.
Braverman is related to Harry Hershfield, the radio wit and cartoonist. And if his small talk is anything like Harry’s, we don’t blame Margaret for liking him. Because Harry is the funniest man alive.
Former Housing Administrator Wilson Wyatt, a roaring Fair Dealer, is lobbying for big interests to repeal war-time taxes as well as for the Dominican Republic dictatorship.
Clark Clifford, the President’s former legal adviser and ghost-writer, is not starving in private practice, either.
Clifford says he “doesn’t need law books.” He uses the Mayflower Hotel menu instead.
Another law firm with great influence is Fulton, Walter and Halley, with offices over the Occidental Restaurant. Hugh Fulton was chief counsel for the Truman Committee. Rudolph Halley was on the staff. The firm has done handily representing Howard Hughes, owner of TWA. As special counsel for the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, between New York City and suburban New Jersey, they secured a 50-percent fare increase from the ICC. In our book Chicago Confidential, we said that the underworld had large blocks of stock in the Hudson and Manhattan. Since then Halley, who was the counsel of the road, confirmed our statement, reluctantly, and we have affidavits to prove it.
A law degree is not always necessary to a successful contact man. Some of the most prosperous in Washington bill themselves as press agents. There is, for instance, a little man from Missouri, Victor Messall, who dresses like a race-track follower and has his walls plastered with pictures of the President. Messall was a beaver on the President’s Senatorial campaigns. Later he was on his secretarial staff in the Senate. He has testified under oath that he has so many clients he can’t remember them all. A witness charged before the Kefauver Committee he had given Messall $1500 to help him to get sugar-points illegally from the OPA during the war. The chairman of the committee was a Democrat. The counsel was the aforementioned lawyer for the Truman committee, Rudolph Halley. The subject was suddenly dropped.
Another who bills himself as a press agent and is blossoming into a power which some call sinister because of his connections, is a former newspaperman, Dave Charnay, who runs a publicity firm in New York and Washington, Allied Syndicate. Charnay is a long-time friend of Frank Costello, reputed king of the underworld, and has done public relations for Rep. F. D. Roosevelt, Jr., and Manhattan Borough President Robert F. Wagner, Jr., son of the author of the Labor Act.
During the administration of Mayor LaGuardia, when gangsters were ordered out of New York night clubs, Charnay, then still employed as a reporter for the New York News, was made “president” of the famous Copacabana at a salary of $500 a week. Charnay was known as Costello’s press agent.