O'Dwyer's Good Friend

In New York's good old days, all the wise birds knew that big, granite-jawed Jim Moran was more than just Mayor William O'Dwyer's deputy fire commissioner. When he listened, politicians understood that O'Dwyer would hear, and when he spoke, they understood that O'Dwyer was speaking. Moran had grown up in one of Brooklyn's toughest districts; the oldest boy in a family of 14 kids, he had worked since he was eleven. Jim Moran had followed O'Dwyer up to the big time: they got together when O'Dwyer was a county judge in Brooklyn, and Moran a court clerk. Before O'Dwyer retired to become Ambassador to Mexico, he gave 49-year-old Jim Moran a present suitable for a faithful friend--a lifetime job at $15,000 a year as water commissioner.

Then the Kefauver committee held its hearing in New York. Water Commissioner Moran stirred their curiosity. A firemen's-union official swore he had given Moran $55,000 in anticipation of favors during O'Dwyer's regime; Moran was asked to quit his lifetime job, and did. But that wasn't all. The Kefauver committee asked Jim Moran how often one Louis Weber, a Brooklyn policy king, had visited Moran's headquarters. His answer: no more than once or twice a year during his five years in office.

Last week Moran, disgraced, stripped of authority, and on trial for perjury, sat in a federal court in Manhattan. He heard four firemen who had served as reception ists in his office give a different total: Weber visited Moran 111 times. Moran did not take the stand; his lawyer introduced no witnesses in his defense. The jury's inevitable verdict: guilty. A flush crept up Moran's neck, but he said nothing when the judge gave him the maximum penalty for perjury: five years and a fine of $2,000.

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