The Popping Cork

For more than a month, charges of influence peddling have swirled around Thomas G. ("Tommy the Cork") Corcoran's visits and phone calls to Federal Power commissioners in behalf of his high-paying ($5,000 per month) client, Tennessee Gas Transmission Co. Last week the cocky Cork arrived for his long-awaited performance before the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight. Although he has gained weight and his hair has silvered, Tommy, now 59, showed that he has lost none of the brashness and slickness that made him a leading figure in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal brain trust. He talked so fast and so long for two days that he confused and angered the committee; he insisted that he had "a perfect right" to try to sway the FPC to grant a license to Midwestern Gas Transmission Co., a Tennessee Gas subsidiary, for a $52 million pipeline.

Speak Softly. Corcoran's major point was that the case concerned an initial license, thus differed from one involving contested rates or competing applicants. Following the orders of Gardiner Symonds, board chairman of Tennessee, Corcoran said, he visited the commissioners last fall to spur action before the expiration of a Canadian deadline to build the pipeline. Corcoran said that Symonds told him to "bluntly" tell the commissioners that Symonds was not "calling wolf, wolf" when he said he would not accept less than a 7% rate of return for the pipeline to pump Canadian gas to the Midwest. FPC examiners had recommended 6 1/4%. Corcoran said he knew that issuing an "ultimatum" to the commissioners would not have been "the polite way to do it," so he made Symonds' point "in a softer vein." Declared Corcoran: "I was invited to be a nagger, and I was. I walked down the corridors of that commission as I have always ... in broad daylight, with a brass band behind me."

Corcoran said that he discussed only "procedural" and not the rate aspects or "merits" of the case with the commissioners, even though it would have been proper under the law. He claimed that he mentioned the 7% return only once with FPC Chairman Jerome Kuykendall. Explained Corcoran: "I told Mr. Kuykendall, 'Mr. Symonds still wants the 7%, but if you will look at the procedural suggestion made in the closing argument, maybe it won't be necessary to face that problem now.' " The suggestion was for FPC to grant the permit, fix the rate later. That is what FPC did. Corcoran said Symonds criticized him for talking "too softly." Added Corcoran in an aggrieved tone: "I'm wondering if it isn't improper if a lawyer doesn't take care of his client up to the limits of the law on the books at the time."

Long-Playing Record. After lecturing the committee on the slowness of FPC and its heavy backlog of 3,000 cases, Corcoran drew fire from New York Republican Steven B. Derounian. "I don't want you to be a long-playing record, because you have been doing that for two days now," said Derounian. But why, he wanted to know, hadn't Corcoran kept an office record of his work for Tennessee Gas? Replied the Cork: "I don't come down here in the same kind of a case as your friend Tom Dewey, who is also a friend of mine, with a long, long time-sheet justification as to how he charged more than I did in the case." Corcoran was referring to payments of $173,613 to Dewey's law firm in gas cases in 1957 and 1958. The FPC allowed the companies to pass on part of Dewey's fees to consumers, but it has not allowed Tennessee to pass Corcoran's fees on, because he has not explained them.

"Tom Dewey is not my friend," roared Derounian. Then he looked sharply at Arkansas Democrat Oren Harris, chairman of the committee, and told Corcoran: "And stop winking at the chairman with your left eye. Maybe he is your friend too." Corcoran blandly denied he was winking. He has, he said, a tic in his left eye.

Beyond entertaining the spectators, Corcoran posed the issue between illegality and impropriety in approaching regulatory-agency commissioners. All his talks, said Corcoran, were perfectly legal under the Administrative Procedure Act. "I think I know as much about the Federal Power Commission as most people," he boasted, "and I'm telling you it's the law." Nobody was able to dispute him. For Tommy the Cork helped write the law that set up FPC, Illinois Republican William Springer raised the question of impropriety: "It doesn't appear that ethically you or anybody else should be entitled to do what you have done. If you are on sound ground, we ought to change the law. Don't you agree?" Corcoran agreed--and added blithely: "I'll be glad to think it through and make some suggestions."

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