"Unheard Of"

For two months the House Judiciary subcommittee, headed by Kentucky's Democratic Representative Frank L. Chelf, studied the 1946 Kansas City, Mo. vote fraud case. The question that interested the subcommittee: Did the Department of Justice do what it should have done about the charges that fraud contributed to the Democratic primary defeat of Congressman Roger C. Slaughter by Harry Truman's candidate, Enos Axtell?

The subcommittee learned that Tom C. Clark, then the Attorney General and now a Supreme Court Justice, limited the first investigation to questioning of only six witnesses, and then dropped the case entirely. He picked it up again only after much public furor.

Last week Chelf and Subcommittee Member Kenneth B. Keating (R., N.Y.) concluded that Clark "showed at least extremely poor judgment." They released testimony by Francis Biddle, Clark's predecessor as Attorney General, who said that Clark's handling of the case was "inappropriate, improper and unheard of." Said the subcommittee: "That is our opinion today, and in the absence of further explanation, it stands as our final judgment."

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