INVESTIGATIONS: You Are to Be Pitied

Federal Communications Commissioner Richard Alfred Mack glanced uneasily around at the members of the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight, licked his dry lips, and said: "I want to apologize that I may seem a little nervous this morning." Democrat Mack had plenty to be nervous about: he was accused of accepting money and other favors for his vote to grant Miami's Channel 10 television franchise to a National Airlines subsidiary. The House subcommittee let Mack read a 4,000-word statement, handled him gently for a while, then cuffed him sharply—and weak Richie Mack left the hearing room a badly shaken man.

Against Richie Mack, 48, were these undenied, undeniable facts: ¶Since becoming a member of the seven-member FCC by appointment of President Eisenhower in 1955, he had borrowed at least $2,650 from his longtime friend Miami Lawyer Thurman A. Whiteside, a big man-about-Florida. Whiteside. as a pompous, disputatious witness last week, admitted that he had been on National Airlines' side and had talked to Mack about the bitterly fought case. ¶In 1953 Whiteside gave Mack, then a member of the Florida Railroad and Public Utilities Commission, a one-sixth interest in an insurance agency. Later, under the firm name Stembler-Shelden, it sold an insurance policy (premium: $20,000) to the National Airlines' TV subsidiary. There were no written records of Mack's interest in the agency, said Whiteside. It was all done by "orally declared trust . . . We in the firm understood that when Mr. Mack's public-service career was finished that he would come into the firm." Between 1953 and the end of 1956 Mack's income from Stembler-Shelden was nearly $10,000. ¶In 1956 Whiteside gave Mack the outstanding stock in Andar Inc., a company that, as Whiteside described it, was "engaged in the business of borrowing money and loaning money as well as buying and selling personal property." Mack's profits from Andar: $4,350.

"Strongly Recommended." Before his term in Washington, Richie Mack had kicked around Florida all his life, working as an insurance salesman and a credit manager, was secretary and general manager of the Port Everglades Rock Co. at Fort Lauderdale in 1947 when then Governor Millard Caldwell appointed him to the Florida Railroad and Public Utilities Commission. Eight years later, President Eisenhower named him to fill a Democratic vacancy on the Federal Communications Commission. Said Florida's Democratic Senator Spessard Holland at Mack's Senate confirmation hearings: "I may say that he was strongly recommended for this post by both Senator [George] Smathers and myself and, in fact, by our whole delegation from Florida." He was recommended by Florida's Governor LeRoy Collins, too.