INVESTIGATIONS: The Appearance of Evil

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After the closing of Tax Scandals of 1951-52, it might have been thought that Truman & Co.'s Bureau of Internal Revenue had been mined out as a source of high-grade show material. But last week a House Ways & Means Subcommittee headed by New Jersey's Robert W. Kean stuck an investigative spade into the same rich lode and dug up not only a fresh scandal but a new feature character,

The new face was Welburn S. Mayock, Washington lawyer, loyal Democrat and self-styled "political manager." Now a grizzled, paunchy 59, Mayock began politicking as a 14-year-old Democratic precinct worker in his native California, rose to be counsel to the treasurer of the national committee in 1944-46, organizer and treasurer of the national Truman-Barkley Club in 1948. Often called "Judge Mayock," he explains that the title is a "phony," conferred by friends who wanted to "adorn a person of no importance."

Special Service. During the 1948 campaign, as Mayock told it last week, he promised to raise $30,000 for the pinched Democratic Party purse. His method of doing so was to get a tax case fixed. A client of his named Louis Markus knew an insurance broker named William Solomon, and Solomon knew a prosperous New York chemical manufacturer named William S. Lasdon, who had a tax problem with an estimated $1,500,000 at stake. Expensive lawyers, including a former assistant commissioner of internal revenue, had been unable to get anything done at the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Through Markus and Solomon, Mayock met Lasdon and agreed to fix the matter for $65,000 cash. Why cash? Explained Mayock to the subcommittee: "I wanted to avoid the appearance of evil."

Mayock hustled off to Washington and had a personal chat with Treasury Secretary John Snyder. Six weeks later, after Snyder prodded his underlings, Lasdon got a favorable ruling and Mayock got $65,000 cash. He split $35,000 of it among himself, Markus and Solomon, took the promised $30,000 to Louis Johnson, later Harry Truman's Defense Secretary, then chairman of the Democratic Finance Committee. "I went to the Democratic National Committee and unloaded it on Louis Johnson's desk," Mayock testified.

"He said, 'Judge, this is magnificent.' It was, too." But a few minutes later, Johnson sent his secretary running down the corridor after the departing Mayock: Johnson had recalled that the Hatch Act barred individual political contributions of more than $5,000.

Mayock got around that obstacle by simply handing several acquaintances (including Markus and Solomon) cash in exchange for checks made out to the Democratic National Committee. That was, he admitted last week, a "close violation" of the Hatch Act.

Special Speed-Up. When Markus and Solomon appeared before the subcommittee, they admitted arranging a meeting between Mayock and Lasdon, but they flatly denied getting cut in on the fee. The astonished subcommittee promptly asked the Justice and Treasury Departments to find out which of the three witnesses had committed perjury and which of them had cheated on his 1948 income tax.