INVESTIGATIONS: Late Fall Housecleaning

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While investigators continue to unfold layers of corruption in the Federal Government, a new and insistent theme is beginning to run through Democratic oratory. It is designed to show that the Truman Administration is a fighting foe of corruption, determined to clean out the evildoers.

Harry Truman himself sounded the pitch last week in his message to a Democratic dinner in New York. "As we prepare for next year's political battle," he said, "it is important that the Democratic Party be made strong—strong morally . . ." In a speech at the same dinner, Democratic National Chairman Frank McKinney picked up the note. "Termites can attack the soundest building," he said, "and in politics as e'sewhere, the termites we shall always have with us. The only way to deal with termites is to keep a sharp watch for them and get rid of them whenever they show up. That is just what the Democratic Party is doing . . . The few [Democratic jobholders] who do not measure up ... must be exposed and punished ... I am ready to help—and what is more important—Harry S. Truman is ready to help."

Harry Truman and Frank McKinney are demonstrating that they now recognize corruption as a critical issue "in the 1952 campaign. Their housecleaning gestures, such as the ousting of the Justice Department's Theron Lamar Caudle and the mass firings at the Internal Revenue Bureau (see below), come very late in the season.

Republicans on Capitol Hill note that there have been few firings until investigations lit the fuse. Said Nebraska's Representative Carl Curtis, commenting on Administration promises of a housecleaning: "I think they will clean up anything they know we can prove."