That Lingering Aroma

With a sort of heh-heh-now-let's-see-whaT -you-Republicans-can-do-about -it air, the Democratic majority on the Senate Rules Committee last May declared its investigation into the shenanigans of former Senate Democratic Secretary Bobby Baker at an end. The majority report found no real wrong doing on the part of Baker or, perish the thought, his longtime sponsor, Lyndon Johnson.

But the aroma from the Baker case has refused to fade away, mostly be cause of the efforts of Delaware's G.O.P. Senator John J. Williams, who has fashioned a highly successful Senate career from his lone-wolf investigative abilities. Among Williams' gum shoe disclosures: the Truman Administration tax scandal, which netted 125 convictions, including those of then Assistant Attorney General T. Lamar Caudle and Truman's White House appointment secretary Matthew Connelly; the Commodity Credit Corp. bookkeeping bollix, which brought to light a $96 million shortage in appropriated funds; and all sorts of chicanery in the farm soil-bank program, which was altered after Williams' disclosures.

It was Williams who first blew the whistle on Bobby Baker, and last week he was still blowing. In a Senate speech, he charged Baker with fixing a 1960 transaction in which Philadelphia Contractor Matthew McCloskey, now 71, a longtime Democratic fund raiser, former Democratic National Committee treasurer and former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, paid a $35,000 kickback after winning the contract to build the $20 million District of Columbia municipal stadium.

Breakfast Meeting. Williams' main source of information was Silver Spring, Md., Insurance Man Don Reynolds, an old business associate of Baker's and, by his own account, a pretty shady fellow himself.

Reynolds told Williams that his "first contact" with McCloskey came at a breakfast meeting with Baker. If he were to land the stadium contract, McCloskey would have to pay a performance bond premium. "Bobby and Matt discussed overpayment above that of the premium charged, and the fact that by using me as a bonding agent, the amounts could be directed to other persons or funds, and could be made as a legitimate business expense to McCloskey & Co.," Williams quoted Reynolds as saying.

As a result, said Williams, McCloskey sent Reynolds a check for $109,205.60. Of this, $73,631.28 was for the premium. Another $25,000 was earmarked for the Kennedy-Johnson campaign fund, to be passed along by Baker. "In so doing," Williams told the Senate, "Mr. McCloskey could, first, circumvent the law, which prohibits political contributions in excess of $5,000; second, charge this item off on his books as an expense of doing business, and thereby deduct it for income tax purposes; and third, in effect charge it to the American taxpayers by adding this on as a cost item of a Government contract."

Calling the G-Boys. Still another $10,000 was for Reynolds himself, and a final $574.32 was added, as Reynolds explained to Williams, so as "to confuse anyone who might later try to audit the transaction."

After Williams made his charges, Matt McCloskey, who is already being sued for $4,908,358 by the Justice Department for "defective workmanship" on an $11.8 million Veterans Administration hospital in Boston, denied everything, saying his company had sent a check only for the amount Reynolds had billed it. And with Republicans in full cry on the issue of morality in Government, President Johnson announced that he had ordered the FBI to investigate the McCloskey case. It was a pretty good bet that no FBI report would be made public before November.

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