One high State Department official was a notorious homo who preferred young Negro boys. He was detected in a Pullman car of the Southern Railroad—on the funeral train to bury Speaker Bankhead, father of Tallulah—making immoral advances to a porter. The story reached newspaper offices, but before it could be printed the State Department sent out an urgent appeal to editors to “kill,” because it might imperil the war effort. When this official’s misdeeds were placed before President Roosevelt, it was said he refused to replace him because they both “wore the same school tie.” After resigning from the government, this official almost died of exposure when a Negro farm hand, jealous because of his attention to another, slugged him.
Aware of the seriousness of the problem, the State Department has a highly hush-hush Homosexual Bureau, manned by trained investigators and former counter-espionage agents, whose duties are to ferret out pansies in Foggy Bottom.
But the department cannot free itself of boondoggling tendencies, for at the same time it retains a personable and intelligent young lady to prepare a treatise on homosexualism, the purpose being to see if it’s possible to cure or contain the deviates who remain on the roles. Her assignment requires her to visit faggot dives, observe the queers in action and ask them how they got that way.
The following will be denied, but whenever possible the YMCA is vetoing the use of its facilities, especially the swimming pool, to all State Department employees, just to be on the safe side.
A man of almost cabinet rank in the Defense Department is also a pervert, with bivalent tendencies, a two-way performer.
These are no isolated incidents. The government is honeycombed in high places with people you wouldn’t let in your garbage-wagons.
David K. Eichler, a brilliant 37-year-old Harvard post-graduate who was a top policy-maker in the State Department as Deputy Secretary General of the Far Eastern Commission until a couple of months ago, was arrested by Park Police on the Ellipse, charged with committing an unspeakable act with a Negro man. He put up $25 “forfeit,” a Washington variation of bail cash, about which more in another chapter. The next day, at the hearing, the colored man pleaded guilty, but when Eichler didn’t appear the judge told the prisoner he might change his plea, inasmuch as his co-defendant wasn’t there.
The black fairy said, “Never mind, judge. I had a good time.”
Shortly after his arrest, Eichler went on a vacation trip to the South. After learning about the pinch, security officials instituted a search for him and summoned him back to Washington. Eichler admitted nothing, but resigned his $9,000-a-year job. He wasn’t asked to stay.
On the other hand, the Grand Jury voted a no-bill when Eugene Desvernine, 34, acting officer-in-charge of Caribbean affairs in the State Department, was arrested for an alleged sex offense against a 13-year-old boy. Desvernine, suspended from the department after his arrest in East Potomac Park, has been restored to duty.