Wiretapping is a merry indoor sport in Washington, engaged in by dozens of agencies—public and private.
When the White House wants to know what’s going on it employs Secret Service experts. They ferret out information about the President’s political enemies, inside and outside the government. It is filed away for future reference to be used for retaliation or guidance. Some Democratic Senators and Congressmen use Congressional committee wiretappers. Investigators get the dope on political enemies in Washington and back home. Administration leaders tried desperately to “get” Senator McCarthy and no method was beneath them. Minority party members, deprived of the services of official wiretappers, hire private detective agencies. Kefauver complained his committee’s wires were being tapped.
Many cabinet officers and other high officials usually have their own intelligence services for spying on associates, the opposition, Hoover, and even on the President himself.
Foremost among these administrative intelligence sections are those of the Department of State, Treasury, Defense, and the Post Office, with its sureshot inspectors.
Oscar Chapman, Secretary of the Interior, has a fine intelligence, headed by Mike Reilly, former chief of the White House Secret Service.
The political cross currents are such that at any time five or six sets of wiretappers, each unaware of what the other is doing, may be listening in on a subject’s wires; while the subject may have his own dicks listening in on the principals whose agents are cutting in on his conversation.
Like lobbying, wiretapping is an insidious system used by everyone, acknowledged by no one, so Congress shrinks from delving deeply into it.
Communists recently forced the issue into the open, as they did with lobbying, both of which they use extravagantly. The Senate came up with a weak-kneed investigation of wiretapping. Senator Claude “Red” Pepper, of Florida, already a lame duck, was appointed to head the committee. Pepper tried to slant the hearings to make it appear the only wiretappers in Washington were Republican leaders. He named Senator Owen Brewster of Maine as the goat. About all the investigation brought out was that the Metropolitan Police Force is a chief offender.
Police Lieutenant Joseph W. Shimon, the cops’ expert, admitted he did some outside work on these lines for private clients and for Congressional committees. Senator Brewster said he paid Shimon’s expenses to investigate a man who, Brewster thought, was “shadowing” him. It turned out also that Shimon was paid to tap Howard Hughes’ wires when that eccentric nabob was probed in connection with his wartime airplane contracts.
After the Senate committee spent a lot of time and money investigating wiretapping, its counsel, Gerhard Van Arkel, who also wants to be District Commissioner, made a brilliant discovery. He said the group already had proved its chief point, namely, “There is a good deal of wiretapping going on in Washington and it is difficult to act against the practice under present law.”