Wherever the committee gave the Democrats a clean bill, the people rebelled and kicked them out, most frequently on just that issue. But, where the committee had tried to show the underworld is tied up with Republicans, as in Pennsylvania, the GOP scored a great victory.
The two Democratic members of the committee, in addition to Kefauver, are Lester Hunt, of Wyoming, and Herbert O’Conor of Maryland. Where Hunt comes from, “crime” means cattle-rustling and claim-jumping. O’Conor, however, is the Democratic leader of the Maryland organization, which is in cahoots with one of the tightest and biggest Mafia concentrations in the country. Not only were no hearings held in Maryland before election, but Kefauver refused to send investigators into Prince Georges County, described heretofore as one of the most vicious crime spots of the country, even when citizens implored him to.
Instead of cracking down on murderers, procurers and dope-peddlers, the committee wasted time, money and effort on an investigation of comics. An effort was made to label the strips as the chief cause of America’s crimes.
The Senate investigating committee has, through ignorance or by design, been playing directly into the hands of the Mafia. Most Syndicate key figures no longer have anything personally to do with gambling, except as bankers and protectors. Gambling is a seasonal business and investigations and clean-ups are discounted in advance, like rain in baseball economy and warm weather in Sun Valley. These catastrophes are averaged off over a long period. The computations contemplate temporary droughts at the street level. Except for a few who will go to the can for a few months and be paid for their time, nothing is disturbed. Bookmakers still take bets right outside the Senate committee room.
If no gambling casinos run in Miami this winter they will next winter. Meanwhile, those who want to gamble will fly to Havana, where the same mob operates the wheels and crap games. Anyway, you can still bet on the nags in Miami, clean-up or no. At this writing, at least two fully equipped casinos are operating in the area.
But while the committee was grabbing front pages with its gambling exposures, the big boys were immune in the affairs that really matter to them, like manipulation of the stock market, black marketing, smuggling, counterfeiting, dope and other forms of profitable deviltry, the proceeds of which they invest in real estate and securities, so that as of now, the crime cartel is more potent in the money marts of the world than all the highbinders so long hissed at, the “international bankers.”
After Col. George White, Commr. Anslinger’s ace investigator, on loan to the Committee, was withdrawn, Scott Lucas high-pressured Truman to penalize White. White had turned up evidence that beat Lucas in Illinois.
Purposely or not, Halley even helped the giggling gangsters get rid of the few rivals who remained. Few Sicilians got a going-over; but the heat was turned on the handful of Jewish and Irish cheaters who survived.
Personally, Kefauver is a delightful and appealing personage, tall, a former football-player with the charm of an F.D.R. and the fine, delicate features of a Woodrow Wilson. He may well be your next Vice President. After that—well, any American boy with no such start could be. His friends kid him and accuse him of saying “Good morning, Mr. President” every morning when he looks in the mirror as he shaves. Kefauver frowns at this. He says, “The Chief in the White House will get sore.”