While Estes was threatening other newspapermen with jail, columnist Drew Pearson, his fervent supporter, was permitted to obtain access to secret committee records, including highly confidential income tax returns.
Wherever the committee held hearings, its staff tried to pick on the little guys, fingered as the goats. The procedure in Miami was to put six local Jewish bookmakers out of business. The Mafia was muscling in on them anyway. The dispossessed were scheduled to be closed up so the Chicago Sicilian mob would have clear sailing in Miami as soon as the hullabaloo about the crime investigation blew over next year.
Only half-hearted efforts were made to locate important figures. Where, at any time, any were questioned or threatened with contempt, it was because the situation was so wide open that no cover-up could be attempted without bringing the newspapers down.
At this writing, Harry Russell, Chicago hoodlum, is the only recalcitrant witness brought to trial. He’s a small potato, a Jew taking the rap for the Mafia.
The position of the Committee has been that witnesses could refuse to incriminate themselves only on federal offenses, but that if it was state prosecution they feared, they had no immunity—tenuous reasoning any way you look at it, though many lawyers say it’s legal.
But Kefauver has been letting his enthusiasm get the better of him, and recently stated at an open hearing, “Don’t think we’re going to let you get away with this. We are working closely with local prosecutors and will turn our records over, particularly where anyone defies this committee.”
Though no comment appeared in the papers, the mob lawyers knew he had played into their hands. He might have made the contempt stick before; now, however, since he himself has stated he’s acting as an agent for the states—though unofficial—it’s a million to one not one recalcitrant witness will be convicted.
The only state in which the committee got tough before election was Pennsylvania, where the municipal machines are Republican. In New York, boss Flynn and Tammany were unmolested, and the onus was put on Dewey for having tolerated gambling in Saratoga. There was no mention that when Lehman, F.D.R.’s “good right arm,” was governor, gambling was just as wide open there, and more so.
One of your reporters remembers seeing a limousine with New York State license Number 1 parked under the portico of Piping Rock, a notorious and expensive Saratoga gambling joint run by Luciano. That was Governor Lehman’s car. It is possible his chauffeur was inside playing dominoes.
But the strategy of the Democratic brain-trust miscarried. People in New York knew Costello was running the town and trying to get control of the state, even when the Senate committee, with all its power and money, fiddled and twiddled. Chicagoans knew the Fischettis and Capones, Boss Arvey, Dan Gilbert and Senator Scott Lucas were political bedfellows, which charge was aired daily in the papers during the 1950 campaign.