Report on the Bureau

A once obscure St. Louis banker named John Snyder has collected more taxes than any man in the history of the world, and has had more widespread scandals in his administration than any Secretary of the Treasury in the history of the U.S. These two facts assure Snyder a place in history, but he keeps worrying about how it will all look to history--and to contemporaries. Last week Snyder's treasury issued a glowing, 29-page blurb entitled Report to Taxpayers. Subject: the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Salient point: Snyder admitted 174 BIR "separations" during fiscal 1952 (including 53 for taking bribes, 24 for embezzlement). Otherwise, he said, everything was fine & dandy.

No sooner was Snyder's whitewash report published than three quiescent Treasury skeletons began to rattle again. P: Daniel Bolich, 52, assistant internal revenue commissioner and No. 2 man in the tax collections hierarchy until he retired last November because of "poor health," was indicted by a Brooklyn federal grand jury. The charge: criminal evasion of income taxes. Bolich (rhymes with toe kick) was under fire last April from the House subcommittee investigating irregularities in the BIR (TIME, April 14). P:Fred H. Altmeyer, 39, suspended deputy collector of internal revenue in Pittsburgh, was indicted by a federal grand jury for extorting and embezzling $4,142 from two taxpayers.

P: Lawrence O. Bardin, 51, former Indianapolis brewer and ex-convict, was indicted by an Indianapolis federal grand jury on charges of evading $213,458 in income taxes in 1946. Bardin figured with onetime (1944-47) Commissioner of Internal Revenue Joseph D. Nunan Jr. last February, in charges by Senator John J. Williams, Delaware Republican, that Nunan, after he left the federal service, had represented Bardin's brewery against a Government tax claim of $636,000. The claim against Bardin, made when Nunan was commissioner, was settled by Attorney Nunan for $4,500, or less than 1%.

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