THE ADMINISTRATION: The Deep Freeze Set

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Over the White House last week rose a nasty little scandal that had already hurt the Truman Administration, and might hurt it more. It swirled around the hulking, hapless figure of Major General Harry Vaughan, onetime militiaman, military aide to the President and the President's poker-playing pal.

A Senate subcommittee started it with its investigation of "five-percenters," the influential men-about-Washington who get Government contracts for businessmen for a fee. Almost every time the subcommittee lowered its dredge last week, it scooped up Amateur General Harry Vaughan. Each time he was hauled, dripping and protesting, into public view, it became more obvious that he had been using his general's stars, his White House telephone and his place in Harry Truman's affections for a dubious purpose: to help his cronies get Government favors and big profits.

There seemed to be a good chance that the President's military aide had done so only for the most pathetic of rewards—for flattery, good fellowship and a fool's false sense of power.

Disgruntled Client. The most embarrassing revelation of the investigation stemmed from the testimony of a chunky, grey-haired Milwaukee manufacturer named Albert Joseph Gross. The witness was a disgruntled former client of Five-Percenter James V. Hunt, who had boasted of his friendship with Vaughan. Back in 1945, Witness Gross was making deep freezers. He was asked if he had ever shipped any to Washington. He had. Wisconsin's G.O.P. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy asked him who had gotten them.

"Should I answer that?" Gross asked incredulously. McCarthy said yes. The answer: "Well, Mr. Harry Vaughan." Had Vaughan paid for it? Gross testified that the freezer—and more sent to other Government officials—had been paid for (price: seven for $2,625) by Albert Verley & Co. of Chicago, a perfume firm.

By curious coincidence, the Verley Co. was the same firm which employed John Maragon, sometime Kansas City bootblack and long one of Vaughan's sharp-eyed friends, who reportedly once tried to smuggle some precious perfume oil into the country as "champagne for Mrs. Truman" (TIME, Aug. 15).

Before Gross could name the other officials to whom the freezers had been shipped, the committee cut him off—it wanted to be certain before taking more public testimony. But that did not stop newspapers from printing some names: among them those of Mrs. Harry Truman and Chief Justice Fred Vinson.

"Nothing Improper." After 28 hours of vibrant silence, Harry Vaughan issued a statement. Its gist: it was all his fault, but he was innocent. ". . . There was nothing improper in any manner regarding the gifts of these units . . ." it read. "I had a talk with two old friends of mine . . . The subject of deep freeze units came up and I said that I would like to have one . . .