INVESTIGATIONS: Words & Music

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One day last week, a Washington-bound airliner put down at Memphis and Lawyer Samuel Sears, a ruddy, pipe-smoking Bostonian with a grey Homburg, natty bow tie and wispy mustache, stepped out for a breath of fresh air. A reporter rushed up to him asking: "Pardon me, sir, but are you the Australian ambassador?"

He was not, but what he was made him of far greater interest to the U.S. newspaper-reading public: he had just been named the Mundt committee counsel, the man who would direct the investigation of the row between Joe McCarthy and the U.S. Army.

An In-Law's Help. Acting Committee Chairman Karl Mundt, in his three-week search for a counsel, had said, "This job is seeking the man; the man shouldn't seek the job." But Sam Sears was no worm to hide in that old chestnut. He telephoned his Congressman, Boston's Laurence Curtis, to say that he was available. Curtis told Massachusetts' Senator Leverett Saltonstall, who told Mundt, who told Washington's Democratic Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, a committee member, to locate Sears and invite him to Washington.

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, Sears's son-in-law David Busby, a local Democratic politico, proposed Sears's name to Democratic Senator Mike Monroney. Monroney's endorsement helped make up Jackson's mind in Sears's favor.

After meeting with the committee, Sears held a press conference, where he was asked if he had expressed opinions on "McCarthy or McCarthyism." Said Sears: "Not publicly, and not privately."

Newsmen promptly found that in 1952 Sears had said McCarthy "has done a great job . . . Why, there would be 200 more Communists in the Government if it wasn't for McCarthy." The record of a debate last fall with Harvard Professor Mark Howe showed that Sears had argued: "If ridding the Government of hundreds of traitors ... is called McCarthyism, then I am glad it has a place in the dictionary."

Sam Sears explained that he had misunderstood the press-conference question; he thought it referred only to the case of McCarthy v. the Army, and not McCarthy generally. Committee Democrats did not like this answer, wanted Chairman Mundt to drop Sears, start looking for a more candid lawyer.

Toothpicks & Jalopies. Samuel Powers Sears, 58 (remote kin of "Bobo" Paul Sears Rockefeller), comes from a Cape Cod seafaring family whose heritage he upholds as commodore of the Dennis (Mass.) Yacht Club. At Harvard ('17), Sam turned his musical talent into Hasty Pudding shows—tunes by Sears, words by Robert Sherwood. The pair worked in a musty office, where young Sherwood hung his portrait among those of the great poets, while Sam's was flanked by pictures of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. Sam can still pound out lively barroom piano music, but with maturity, he has acquired a greater fancy for collecting old cars and gold toothpicks.

Sears built a reputation as an able trial lawyer specializing in defending claims against insurance companies, became president of the Massachusetts Bar Association. In 1952, a candidate of the Taft forces, he made an abortive bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination against Congressman (now Governor) Christian Herter.