Biggest Raid

Four-thirty p. m. one day last week was a zero hour. When it came, 130 Federal Prohibition agents simultaneously launched 35 assaults along a 200-mile liquor front in the sea angle from the tip of Long Island to Atlantic City. Down they bore on hotels, road houses, garages, a Manhattan office building, a New Jersey mansion. Captured were 32 prisoners, hundreds of cases of good liquor. In mid-Manhattan a detachment entered a businesslike office where directors of a colossal liquor syndicate, said to have a monopoly of the metropolitan supply, were known to meet, plan operations, declare fabulous dividends. Records the raiders found, but no directors. "BIGGEST DRY RAID" blared press headlines the next morning. A picked detachment of raiders invaded the field headquarters of the syndicate, an isolated 20-room mansion high on a New Jersey headland, onetime country house of the late Oscar Hammerstein, black cigar & light opera tycoon. Oriental rugs, costly new furniture adorned the living rooms. Beneath the house were labyrinthine tunnels where boatloads of liquor could be stored. On the roof was a lookout post and a searchlight for flashing messages out to sea. Conveniently placed was a well-stocked arsenal. Warlike trenches zigzagged about and machine guns stood on concrete emplacements. In a desk were the syndicate's account books, showing profits of $2,000,000 in the last six months. Among the disbursements listed: wages of 140 employes; running expenses of ten speedboats, 50 trucks, six ocean-going liquor steamships, among them the Shawnee, shelled by a Revenue Cutter last month (TIME, Sept. 30); also, hundreds of thousands of dollars for "protection." In a nearby cottage a radio was spluttering instructions to liquor transports off shore. As the raiders seized the operator, a Federal radioman took the key, sent luring messages to the transports. Long had the raiding radioman practiced the syndicate's secret code. Months prior, mysterious aerial buzzes had been picked up by a Coast Guard cutter. The intricate code had been deciphered, its source determined by radio compass. Thus had Prohibition men located the syndicate headquarters. New Jersey's Prohibition-Administrator William J. Calhoun, superviser of the syndicate roundup, boasted that by eavesdropping on this telltale radio he had for months checked every pint smuggled in. Unperturbed by the 10,000 cases of liquor whisked in every week, Administrator Calhoun had shrewdly plotted his concerted raid. Following up radio clues, he had learned all the privy affairs of his prospective victims, names of leaders, location of substations, connections with reputable banks and lawyers. When all seemed prime, he launched his attack. After the first reports from his lieutenants, he exulted over a complete dry-up of the district. Later came surprises and disappointments. Surprises: capture of Emanuel ("Mannie") Kessler, "King of Bootleggers" and his partner Morris Sweetwood, both onetime Atlanta timeservers; both thought to have reformed; discovery among syndicate papers of a check signed by Chicago's gang king, Alphonse ("Scarface Al") Capone, now imprisoned at Philadelphia. Disappointments: release of Kessler and Sweetwood for lack of evidence; failure to entice liquor transports into the trap baited by faked radio calls; failure to capture the three managing directors of the syndicate. Administrator Calhoun sadly admitted, after scanning the results, that the raid had been "premature."