JUSTICE: Back-Room Man Out Front

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Herb Brownell's public appearance and elusive personality often seem to confirm the picture of him as a back-room operator and little else. Completely relaxed, he slumps in his red leather swivel chair or tucks a knee under his chin—and gives the impression of being about to spring sidewise. His wide mouth breaks easily—to some, too easily—into a smile. Essentially a shy man, he finds his shyness often misread as furtive secrecy, his undeniable brilliance mistaken for slickness. Most suspicious of all to his critics is his habit of being right. Explains a longtime Washington friend: "Did you ever get into a poker game with a man who remembered every card played in every hand, how each player bet each hand, who figured all the odds instantly in his head, and was lucky besides? It's exasperating, because a guy like that usually wins, and when the game is over, you don't quite trust him, no matter how pleasant he seems. Well, that's Brownell's trouble."

When Herb Brownell first walked with his long, sway-backed stride into the cavernous throne room used as an office by previous Attorneys General, he took one startled look at the space and grandeur, fled, and set up shop in a small, comfortable and, naturally, back room. It took several days for secretaries in nearby offices to realize that the silent man they saw walking the corridors was the new Attorney General. Most Washington newsmen have mistrusted Brownell ever since he disclosed to five favored reporters the nomination of California's Earl Warren to be Chief Justice of the U.S. Where did he announce it? Not at a formal press conference (he seems stiff and evasive at such Washington affairs, loathes and rarely holds them) but over cocktails and around the fireplace in the seclusion of his home.

Small wonder, then, that Department of Justice careermen braced themselves for still another onslaught of political spoilsmanship when Brownell turned up as boss of the department.

"Go Ahead & Prosecute." As Brownell saw it, the Department of Justice seemed no particular rose. He found in it a vast, amorphous organization with more than 600 offices in the U.S. and its territories, assets that included the copyright to Lili Marlene, custody of the $100 million General Aniline & Film Corp. (both under the Office of Alien Property) and the nation's largest arsenal of side arms (15,000 weapons, which annually fire 10,625,000 rounds). Filled with political sinecures, worm-eaten with the scandals of the Truman Administration, the department's morale had dropped out of sight.