A Flat Contradiction

One of the most memorable things that President Truman did at last week's press conference was to put his foot in Attorney General J. Howard McGrath's mouth.

Two days before Truman's conference, McGrath took the witness chair before the House subcommittee investigating the Internal Revenue Bureau'scandals. He was there because so many of the trails followed by the subcommittee had led to Theron Lamar Caudle. As head of the Justice Department's tax division, Caudle was one of McGrath's top assistants until Harry Truman fired him last month. The committee had gone through Caudle's close social and business relationships with ex-convicts, influence peddlers and defendants in Government tax cases.

At first it seemed that Witness McGrath would try to remain aloof from the Caudle curdle. He carefully pointed out that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, while Attorney General, had picked Caudle for U.S. attorney in the western district of North Carolina. And Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark, while Attorney General, had selected Caudle for Assistant Attorney General.

A Faulty Pipeline. Subcommittee members wanted to know about all of Caudle's deals while McGrath was his boss. What about such things as the $5,000 commission Caudle got on an airplane bought by Larry Knohl, an ex-convict "investigator" for two shady machinery dealers who were defendants in a criminal tax case? McGrath said Caudle had assured him that no one in the transaction was involved in any Government case. Asked Wisconsin's Republican Representative John W. Byrnes: If another Assistant Attorney General asked you about taking a commission on an airplane, would you investigate the matter further? "Oh, yes," said McGrath. "I have learned a lesson from this experience." The subcommittee led McGrath through example after example of Caudle's "gross indiscretions." In most cases McGrath said he was not fully informed of what was going on. Asked Representative Byrnes: "Is there not something wrong with the pipelines, then?"

"I had every reason in the world to trust Mr. Caudle," protested McGrath.

"I had known him, I had liked him immensely. I still like him immensely as a man. He has a great heart and a great love for people ... I had every reason to feel then and now that Mr. Caudle would not compromise himself, no less the department or myself, that he would not engage in anything that to his conscience seemed wrong."

A Lack of Confidence? He had never recommended that Truman dismiss Caudle, he said. "My belief is that after this committee heard Mr. Caudle in executive session and developed some of these points which I had not known before, that information was . . . transmitted directly to the President. The President acted upon that information, which came out of the executive sessions of this committee."

That was the important point that Harry Truman, two days later, flatly contradicted. Truman claimed that he had known about Caudle, and that he planned to fire him before the committee developed any leads.

When the contradiction was pointed out to Truman at the press conference, he stuck to his story of the Caudle firing, saying that he had not read McGrath's testimony, that he did not keep books for the Attorney General, that the President kept his own books.

Truman denied that he planned to fire McGrath. But Truman does not seem to have much confidence in his Attorney General. The most charitable explanation of their conflicting stories is that Truman knew that McGrath had a questionable assistant, and did not disclose his knowledge to the Attorney General.

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