INVESTIGATIONS: Lo, the Investigator

There I was, as recently as a month and a half ago, sitting in isolation in my academic ivory tower in New York, and lo, the call came to me to perform a great public service in Washington.

There he was, New York University Law Professor Bernard Schwartz, 35, explaining to the Federal Bar Association last September how he had come to be chief counsel for the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight, investigating the Federal Communications Commission and other U.S. regulatory agencies. And lo, last week Bernard Schwartz was tossed out in the midst of the noisiest time Capitol Hill has had since Joe McCarthy and his junketeering gum shoes, Cohn & Schine.

Schwartz's firing had long been inevitable. During his six months in Washington he had bullied both witnesses and Congressmen (TIME, Feb. 17). He had got into a mixup on his own expense accounts at the same time that he was accusing FCC Chairman John Charles Doerfer of chiseling the Government on expanses. He had leaked secret subcommittee papers to newsmen even while denouncing subcommittee members for doing the same thing; under Schwartz's taunting, subcommittee members swore under oath, in one of history's silliest congressional scenes, that they had not leaked a confidential memo to Columnist Drew Pearson. What finally did it was a weekend press conference at which Lawyer Schwartz accused the subcommittee of trying to "whitewash" his investigations.

Flinging his innuendoes high, wide and handsome, Schwartz paraded such names as White House Staff Chief Sherman Adams. Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks and George Gordon Moore (Mamie Eisenhower's brother-in-law). He darkly suggested that they had improperly influenced the regulatory agencies—and in a later statement, even while admitting that he was far from developing any complete case, he cried that he had "planned to bring to light the machinations of the White House clique in controlling decisions of these agencies."

Payment for Help. Next day the subcommittee met in anguished, angry eight-hour session. Schwartz was called in and questioned, emerged to report: "There has never been a meeting like this one. I charged directly to their face that a majority of the subcommittee were interested only in a whitewash, only in squelching the investigation. I said: 'Let's not talk about the past, but about the future. I'll give you a real investigation if you want it. If you don't want it, fire me.' ... I made the mistake of slouching, and they asked me to sit up. I said: 'Let the record show that I am now sitting up.' "

By a 7 (three Democrats, four Republicans) to 4 (three Democrats, one Republican) vote, the subcommittee booted Bernard Schwartz. Throughout it all, Schwartz's chief defender had been the subcommittee chairman, Missouri Democrat Morgan Moulder. Next day Moulder resigned his chairmanship, to be replaced by Arkansas Democrat Oren Harris, chairman of the full House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Schwartz characteristically repaid Moulder for his backing. Said he: "He turned out to be a weak man."