Babes in the Wood

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Before the Truman Committee, investigating defense contracts, appeared three mysterious and interesting characters. To the committee, they looked a little wolfish.

By their own account, they were innocent babes in the wood.

One was a dumpy, melon-headed promoter from Manhattan, Frank Cohen, who in 18 months had puffed up a $5,000 investment into an ordnance empire with assets of more than $6,000,000 (TIME, Nov. 3). One was Franklin Roosevelt's old friend Thomas Gardiner ("Tommy the Cork") Corcoran. One was a lanky, jug-eared bureaucrat, Charles Franklin West, who no longer has a bureau.

First on the stand last week was Tommy Corcoran. For weeks Reporter Thomas L. Stokes had been blasting away about Corcoran's defense lobbying, his connection with Frank Cohen's Empire Ordnance Corp. Tommy Corcoran had asked the committee to hear him.

On the stand, Tommy was, as usual, cool, debonair, confident. He admitted that he had made some $100,000 in lawyer's fees, mostly in connection with Government business. He insisted stoutly that he had done no wrong, used no political influence—that he had merely advised his clients what to do, where to go, how to manage deals with the Government. As for Empire, said Tommy, Cohen had asked him for advice. Too busy to handle the case himself, he recommended another law firm, collected $5,000 as his share of their $18,000 fee.

The committee handled Tommy the Cork with the greatest delicacy, was seemingly satisfied with his explanation.

Charley West looked sick as he walked into the committee room next day. Mopping his brow, he told how Frank Cohen had hired him to help Empire Ordnance Corp. "in connection with their matters pertaining to work in Washington." But he, too, insisted that he had never been employed to use his political influence. Asked the committee: Just what, then, was his job? As Charley pictured it, he was just a sort of guide and errand boy for Cohen's men.

Long, eloquent Tom Connally of Texas spoke for the committee when he snorted: "I'm trying to find a loophole to give you the benefit of the doubt. I can't. What were you selling to Cohen unless it was the idea that you were close to the big shots in the Government and could get contracts?"

A truculent and evasive witness, Cohen testified that he had interested Willys-Overland (motors) in forming Empire Ordnance, that when Willys-Overland pulled out he found new backers, kept 30% of the common stock for himself and his family.

Asked fox-faced little Senator Harry S. Truman, chairman of the committee: What had Charley West done to earn the $11,000 Cohen paid him? Shouted Witness Cohen: "Nothing, except to cause us all this trouble!"

Before the hearing was over, Frank Cohen had been forced to admit that he was once indicted in New Jersey, that he had been denounced by the New York State insurance commissioner, that Massachusetts' insurance commissioner had called him "the mad dog of insurance." The committee granted that Empire was indeed turning out the arms it had contracted to make. As to the rest of Cohen's story, the committee was dubious.