When Frank Costello testified briefly last year before the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee investigating the transportation of slot-machines across state lines, the photo of a Senate attache calling a cab for him while Capitol policemen pushed nosy spectators away, was widely published. But what hasn’t been printed is that a table was reserved for him in advance in the Senators’ private dining-room in the Capitol, and while the great Costello dined with his staff of lawyers, a couple of U.S. Senators humbly waited for seats. The Senate dining-room is operated on a concession basis by the son-in-law of a Chicago vending-machine manufacturer.
It could be some of the Senators are on Costello’s payroll. The law firms of at least 40 Senators and Congressmen regularly represent the wire service and local gamblers in their home towns.
Now let’s gander the Kefauver Committee.
26. TERROR FROM TENNESSEE
The House and the Senate have unlimited power and initiative in one function only—they can investigate anything.
No President can veto a resolution for an investigation or by law curb its activities or its scope. Theoretically, the purpose is to acquire facts on which to base future legislation. Some of the mightiest of our historical moves have sprung from such inquiries. Giants have risen in the course of them. Harry Truman would probably have remained an obscure little nonentity were it not that he became chairman of a comparatively inconsequential Senate body which got to asking questions.
One of the surest ways to grab public attention is for a legislator to propose a resolution for a special investigation. If it passes it is not submitted to a standing committee, but its author is by established custom chosen as its chairman.
This is the story of a special Senatorial investigating committee. In many ways it is typical of such things under the Fair Deal, where politics can strangle this last independent prerogative of Congress.