"My Heart Is Broken"

Standing before the fireplace in his Washington home one night last week, big Theron Lamar Caudle was not his jovial self. He shifted nervously from foot to foot, and smacked a clenched fist again & again into the open palm of his hand. Reporters were filing into the house to hear what Caudle, chief of the Justice Department's tax division, had to say in defense of himself.

Probing newsmen had written that he:

1) stopped the federal investigation into the 1946 vote frauds in Kansas City;

2) sought to hamper this year's grand jury investigation into St. Louis tax frauds;

3) participated in an Oklahoma oil-lease deal with Frank Nathan, Pittsburgh gambler and racketeer, who was arrested in a 1946 sugar black-market case, but was cleared after Caudle approved dismissal of the case;

4) failed to prosecute some big tax-delinquency cases, including a $2,400,000 one against one of his friends, a North Carolina taxi-fleet operator.

These stories whetted the interest of California Democrat Cecil R. King, chairman of a House subcommittee investigating tax irregularities. The committee had already begun to wonder "why so many tax-fraud cases recommended for prosecution by special agents had been dropped. A number of witnesses, including Caudle, were called before closed sessions. Then Harry Truman got a telephone fill-in on the case from Congressman King. Last week from Key West, Truman's office announced that Caudle had resigned "by request of the President . . . because Mr. Caudle was engaged in outside activities . . . incompatible with the duties of his office." Truman had good reason to be particularly sensitive about Caudle's case, for if his division of the Justice Department had been on the job, the Internal Revenue Bureau scandals might have been nipped in the bud.

Facing the press in his living room, Caudle waved his arms, rumpled his hair, fought back tears that crowded into his bulging, bloodshot eyes, and denied any wrongdoing. "I have steered down the middle of the road," he said. "I go to bed tonight with a clean, clear conscience, as I have every night since I have worked in this job ... I wish I had had the opportunity to explain to the President, whom I adored so much, the problems of my office. But I had no such opportunity, and I had no control over my destiny at all. My heart is broken."

Next week Caudle will have an opportunity to explain in full before an open hearing of the King subcommittee. The subcommittee, said Representative King, will be ready with a "play-by-play" of Caudle's activities and inactivities.

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