Name Dropper

Three times last week, Influence Peddler Henry Grunewald lowered his bursitis-racked bulk into the witness chair of the House subcommittee investigating the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Each time he dropped enough names and dollar signs to whet the investigators' appetites, then retreated into playful forgetfulness or plain refusal to answer. Items: P:On his 1948 tax return was this item: "Presidential election bets, $20,000." Said Grunewald: "I bet on Harry Truman when everybody else dropped him." Where did he place the bet? With Miami Bookmaker Harold Salvey, a Kefauver committee witness now under indictment for income tax evasion.

P:One of his errand boys was Harry Woodring, onetime (1936-40) Secretary of War. Woodring once (1948-49) went to Europe on a Grunewald mission to line up supplies of scarce metals. Grunewald collected $10,000 for the project, paid the former Secretary of War $2,500. P: Every year Grunewald spent about $900 giving $7.50 ties to friends. The ties were cut from a special bolt of cloth reserved for his "Christmas Tie-Out Club" by Manhattan's Charvet et Fils, purveyors of expensive cravats. The ties, said Grunewald. went to "high-class people." The subcommittee got a list of "club" members from Charvet et Fils, then, red-faced, decided not to make the names public. P:In 1950 Grunewald lunched with Dorothy Lamour and her husband William Howard, along with George Schoeneman and Charles Oliphant, then top BIR men. The Howards had tax troubles, but Grunewald assured the committee that he knew nothing of them. His buddies Schoeneman and Oliphant just called him up and asked, "Would you like to come along and meet the celebrities?"

P: He was once called upon "to do good work for our beloved President, Franklin Roosevelt," or, at least, Tommy ("The Cork") Corcoran, an F.D.R. crony, had hired him to do some investigating and had said it was for Roosevelt. When sub committee members demanded to be told just what kind of job it was, Grunewald balked again: "I don't think the President would want it [told]." The subcommittee wearily pondered whether Grunewald, already convicted of contempt of Congress, was in contempt again.

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