Congress Off Limits

In March 1953 a two-man subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee called a Pittsburgh law clerk to Washington and asked him, in effect: Had he murdered an OSS major named William V. Holohan while they were together on a wartime mission behind the German lines in Italy in 1944? The witness was ex-Lieut. Aldo Lorenzo Icardi, 35, and the question was not unexpected. The Defense Department had already accused Icardi and a Rochester tool designer, ex-Sergeant Carl G. LoDolce, of shooting Major Holohan and dumping his body in a lake--but it could not bring them to trial because they had been honorably discharged. The Italian courts subsequently convicted Icardi and LoDolce in absentia. Before the subcommittee, Aldo Icardi blinked through his spectacles and denied any part in the murder. Two and a half years later a Washington grand jury indicted him for perjury on the basis of his testimony.

Last week, as the perjury case came up in Federal District Court, the Justice Department was ready with 18 witnesses from Italy to swear to Icardi's guilt. But the only two witnesses to get to the stand were two Congressmen, Missouri Republican Dewey Short and Subcommittee Chairman W. Sterling Cole, Republican of New York. Under close questioning by Icardi's defense counsel, Edward Bennett Williams, 35 (who defended Joe McCarthy during the 1954 Senate censure hearings), Chairman Cole recollected that he had discussed possible perjury proceedings against Icardi before Icardi gave his testimony to the subcommittee.

Largely on the strength of Cole's admission, Lawyer Williams turned to Federal Judge Raymond B. Keech to argue for dismissal. That night the judge worked until long after midnight on his decision. Next morning the courtroom was tense as he began to read it off. Principal point: Chairman Cole's subcommittee had exceeded its legitimate functions in questioning Icardi, "since neither affording an individual a forum in which to protest his innocence nor extracting testimony with a view to a perjury prosecution is a valid legislative purpose." Furthermore, the Icardi hearing amounted to a "legislative trial," and the authority of Congress to investigate "cannot be extended to sanction a legislative trial and conviction of the individual toward whom the evidence points the finger of suspicion."

After reading for 30 minutes, Judge Keech came to his final words: "I shall ask the marshal to call in the jury, and I shall direct a verdict of acquittal." Icardi broke into tears. Justice Department attorneys gaped in disbelief. Whether Aldo Icardi was guilty or innocent under terms of American justice would never be known, for Judge Keech's decision appeared to have ended, once and for all, an eleven-year, $300,000 attempt to make a case against him. But, in doing so, the judge had laid down a sharp restriction on uninhibited congressional investigation that Congress would not soon forget.

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