INVESTIGATIONS: Beneath Contempt

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Bernard Goldfine was back in his Boston, and his friend Sherman Adams was still at his White House desk—but by no means was all right with their world last week. With slow-moving precision, Arkansas' Oren Harris got his House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight to vote a unanimous recommendation that Goldfine be cited for contempt of the House for his refusal to answer 22 questions during gaudy hearings before the subcommittee on the operations of his Boston real estate companies. Then Chairman Harris got the parent House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee to add its unanimous endorsement. This virtually assured an automatic contempt citation by the House and a pointed invitation to the Justice Department to prosecute.

One of Goldfine's own lawyers made it clear that he thought Justice had a case. In an extraordinary publication of memos he had written during the hearings, Washington Lawyer Roger Robb revealed that he had advised Goldfine to answer all the committee questions that he possibly could. Goldfine instead took the advice of tough-talking Boston Lawyer Samuel P. Sears, who, said Robb, advised his client to "tell the committee to go to hell." Sears for his part cracked back that Attorney Robb had messed things up by hiring the pressagents who turned the Goldfine appearance into a circus (TIME, July 14), hinted darkly that Robb had not really represented Goldfine at all but was hired to protect the interests of Sherman Adams.