Now he finds himself in the middle of a giant whitewash. He is the chump whose good name is used to shield the key figures of the Mafia and obfuscate their tie-up with the big city Democratic machines. He does not admit it publicly but he is heartbroken.
Senate Republicans, seeking an issue, jumped in to support the proposed investigation. Kefauver’s bill at once became a hot potato the Democrats couldn’t drop.
Dave Niles, Bill Boyle, J. Howard McGrath, and Scott Lucas huddled. They found it was too late to sidetrack the proposed investigation; it had to go on, but with “sensible” safeguards. Suggestions that the probe be transferred to other committees were waved aside as impractical; it was necessary to have a front for this and Kefauver was perfect for the job. He is a man of personal honesty, with no embarrassing machine or underworld connections.
The committee was voted, but with the surprising proviso that the Vice President should name the minority party members. This was unprecedented. Minority leaders always choose their own committee members. The purpose of this tactic was to deal Michigan Senator Homer Ferguson, the Republican’s top investigator, out. Membership was limited to five, three Democrats and two Republicans. Thereupon Vice President Barkley followed orders, named two GOPers, one harmless. Both were in the middle of violent primary campaigns, fighting for political survival. It was known they could not spend much time with the committee. Wiley, a good man, is a ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee. He was kept close to that post by the Korean mess. Julius Cahn, Wiley’s intelligent aide, was rendered impotent. And Tobey is more a New Dealer than most Democrats. He got campaign support from the administration, and in payment gratuitously but muddle-headedly blamed gambling in New York on Dewey.
The motor of a Senatorial investigating committee is its counsel and the staff. The members have other duties, must attend other committee meetings, must be on the floor for roll-calls. And they are not usually professional prosecutors. They are at the mercy of their staffs.
That’s when the shenanigans began. Kefauver had no experience with such shenanigans. He didn’t know whom to retain. Tom Murphy, Alger Hiss’ nemesis and later Police Commissioner of New York, was recommended. But Murphy was persona non grata in Washington because he had guts enough not to throw the Hiss prosecution, after he had learned that would please the Attorney General’s office.
Dave Niles told Kefauver to ask Ferdinand Pecora for advice. Pecora, then a Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, was getting by on the reputation of having exposed the money barons of Wall Street in the early 1930’s. Pecora is a thoroughgoing New Dealer and Kefauver is one of the faithful. They failed to tell the man from Tennessee that Pecora is Bronx boss Ed Flynn’s man. Flynn is head of the machine in which Frank Costello is a power. Pecora attended Costello’s celebrated party at the Copacabana nightclub, with half the local bench, a number of jurists who owed their robes to Costello.
Pecora recommended his protégé, Rudolph Halley, of the law firm of Fulton, Walter and Halley, for counsel and Felix Frankfurter phoned to confirm it. Halley had been on the staff of the Truman Committee when Fulton was its chief counsel, so he looked good to Estes as an experienced prober. But Halley had been an attorney for the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, in which it was alleged underworld characters owned stock. Kefauver told your reporters he had heard a rumor Halley might have represented them, and had asked him about it before hiring him. Kefauver looked us in the eyes and stated, “Halley said it wasn’t so. Naturally, I took his word for it.”
After the Kefauver Committee had been functioning some months, Halley admitted to your reporters before witnesses, that he knew there were large underworld holdings in that company, which had been his client. We have a sworn affidavit which reads as follows:
“Mr. Halley stated that the statement in the book Chicago Confidential, to the effect that the underworld syndicate has bundles of stock in the Hudson & Manhattan tubes, was substantially correct; that it was his own personal knowledge, as former counsel for the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, that the underworld owned large blocks of stock in that company.”