Back-Room Man Out Front

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In forbidding, grey Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary a convict petitioned the Department of Justice for the removal from his chest of a tattoo vowing eternal devotion to "Mary"; he was about to be released and wanted to marry a girl with another name. Over the Rio Grande Immigration Service patrolmen peered from their light plane in search of the Mexican wetbacks who would, if they could, slip across the border in illegal droves to work on U.S. ranches. In Tacoma, Wash, a federal grand jury accused David Daniel Beck, a labor giant with a turnip torso, of , cheating on his income taxes. In Manhattan one of the hottest security cases in years was unfolding behind grand jury doors with the confession of Communist Spies Jack and Myra Soble and their accomplice, Jacob Albam. In Pennsylvania Bethlehem Steel Corp. lawyers worked and planned against the multimillion-dollar possibility that their proposed merger with the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. might be adjudged a threat to a free economy. And in Tallahassee, Fla. a White Citizens' Council member spat disgustedly as he spoke of the same "nigger lovin' s.o.b." against whom Southern Congressmen for weeks had been preparing an oratorical assault.

All these and uncounted, uncountable others were problems last week for a slender, balding man who sat talking softly, hands clasped around updrawn knee, behind his desk in a limestone building on Washington's Constitution Avenue. He is Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., 53, whose awesome duty it is to apply, on behalf of the U.S. Government, the constants of law to a time of explosive change.

The Human Link. As a personality, Herb Brownell is probably the least-known member of the original Eisenhower Cabinet; yet none has greater impact on the daily life of every man and woman in a nation of law under the Constitution. Brownell represents the legal arm of the Administration. He passes on almost every action the Government takes or would like to take. All legislation sent to Congress is reviewed by his office. Government contracts involving new policies are screened by him. Agreements with foreign nations go through his hands. His is the responsibility for ensuring a free economy by enforcing the antitrust laws, for ensuring the Government of its right to survive by enforcing the security laws, for ensuring all citizens of all colors of equal protection under the law. He is the human link between the abstractions of law and the realities of life.

Under Herbert Brownell the Justice Department has: