Goldfine's Exit

Washington's Evening Star reported one day last week that Boston Big Shot Bernard Goldfine paid posh Burning Tree Club, where White House staffers golf, for the expensive set of Spalding clubs used by Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams. White House Press Secretary James Hagerty efficiently checked with Boss Adams, quickly assured reporters that the whole thing was a false alarm. Sure, Adams got the clubs for nothing, but not from his "old and dear friend" Goldfine, donor of the vicuna coat and the $2,400 Oriental rug. The club-giver turned out to be a Massachusetts theater-chain owner named Sam Goldstein. "He is a very old personal friend of Mr. Adams," explained Hagerty--and that was that.

Such was the mood of tragic burlesque in which the great Goldfine show bumped and ground to a halt last week. In the final hours the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight tugged a few more details from crafty Witness Goldfine, who, giving only facts that he knew the committee could already prove from other sources, admitted to press and Congress that he:

P: Owns the Lebanon, N.H. house in which U.S. Senator Norris Cotton lives (TIME, July 21).

P: Lent Maine's U.S. Senator Frederick Payne $3,500 to make a down payment on his house near Washington, has not been repaid.

P: Long-distanced Sherman Adams at home and at work 43 times in a recent six-month period, a phone call about once every four days ("A friend you call whenever you see fit"), and that Adams called him a number of times. P: Escorted Adams to a Boston tailor shop, Faber & Co., to be measured for a gift "suit, or probably two," although Press Secretary Hagerty had stated flatly only five weeks before that Adams had paid for the suits himself.

Goldfine learned to be as bipartisan in spreading his scandals as he has been with his money, a fact that further lessened his appeal to Chairman Oren Harris of Arkansas and his Democratic majority. New Jersey Republican Charles Wolverton, following up the Securities and Exchange Commission probe of Goldfine's real-estate troubles, asked if "the only time that you have been required to comply with the law has been under the present Administration?" Goldfine: "That is correct." Asked for details of how he got John R. Steelman, of President Truman's White House staff, to wrangle approval on a $12 million RFC loan, Goldfine relished the answer: "I was more at the White House at that time than I was since Governor Sherman Adams was at the White House."

Despite the committee's threats to charge him with contempt of Congress for repetitive refusals to answer questions, Goldfine fired off a final blast against the "smear," chuckled at Counsel Robert Lishman's joking request: "Please leave me off your gift lists." "You can return it if you want," explained Goldfine, "and if you do, it will be the first time anyone did." After a final handshake with Chairman Harris, a final visit with Adams, Goldfine, surrounded by lawyers and press-agents, flew back to Boston.

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