After a change in management, Halley was dismissed from the H & M, and went to work for the Kefauver Committee at $120 a week. The new management of the railroad said it had virtually eliminated suspicious stockholders and emasculated shady directors who could not be fired.
Among the investigators hired by the committee were ex-cops, disappointed lawyers and the usual Washington hanger-on-ers, recommended for jobs by influential friends.
Kefauver’s principal source of information about the underworld was what he had read in Chicago Confidential, He knew no more. He asked Mortimer to take a leave of absence from his newspaper and act as paid adviser to the committee. Mortimer accepted, but said that he would take no compensation. Over the weekend, Kefauver withdrew his offer in a telegram in which he blamed other Senators. He said they feared other newspapermen would be offended. That was an alibi, quickly arranged when influential Democrats vetoed the idea. But he took advice from Nat Perlow, editor of the Police Gazette!
At the first open hearing of the committee, subpenaed gamblers were represented by Morris Shenker, St. Louis lawyer, formerly on the Missouri Democratic committee. As a result of his good work in obtaining campaign donations, Shenker was named by Bill Boyle to the Democratic finance committee. He hastily resigned after the deal was exposed in Lait’s column.
Every effort was made to keep Kefauver concentrated on gambling. Syndicate heads know the nation is not shocked over bookmaking. Whenever witnesses or informers got hot on narcotics, the spine of the Syndicate system, or began to talk about the huge investments of the underworld in legitimate business, they were brushed off. There were rumors of fixes, payoffs and other such skulduggery, though Kefauver was absolutely in the clear. But whenever he was warned such things were happening, Kefauver, a softie at heart, who believes evil of no one, said it was impossible.
Though he promised your reporters his committee would hold open hearings in New York and Chicago before election, at which no punches would be pulled, he folded up like a frightened puppy. After one day in New York, at which no one of importance was questioned, the committee adjourned until after the election, with the statement that Joe Adonis, who had been allegedly sought for 90 days, was unavailable. Your reporters saw Adonis every night at the corner of 50th Street and Broadway while committee investigators were supposed to be searching for him. While the great man-hunt was supposed to be on, Adonis voluntarily surrendered himself to New Jersey authorities who wanted to prosecute him for gambling.
When asked why Costello hadn’t been called before election, a committee spokesman stated “We have nothing to ask Mr. Costello.”
Similar wariness was shown in Chicago. When former police captain Dan Gilbert, who was Jake Arvey’s hand-picked candidate for sheriff of Cook County, was on the stand at a secret hearing, he was questioned about his wealth. Your authors had exposed him as the richest cop in the world, a millionaire. Gilbert’s salary had never topped $9,000 a year, yet he admitted at the closed hearing he owned more than $350,000—which he said he had acquired through “speculation.” The committee dropped it then. Senator Kefauver, in an interview, said, “Captain Gilbert was a forthright witness.” When the Chicago Sun Times, a Democratic New Deal newspaper, got hold of the minutes of the secret hearing and splashed the text on Page 1 a few days before election, Kefauver threatened to hold someone in contempt for the leak. Yet the committee did not explain why this information of public interest had been bottled up before election, and why Gilbert’s bank accounts and securities had not been scrutinized.
Later, Kefauver imperiously “directed” Eugene C. Pulliam, publisher of the Indianapolis Star and News, “to discontinue” publication of a series exposing gambling as revealed by previous committee investigations, under penalty of a contempt citation.