JUSTICE: Back-Room Man Out Front

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Brownell retired to his back-room office and attacked the security problem in a more effective way. His Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted 14 Smith Act cases (22 Communist functionaries are awaiting trial on Smith Act charges). Communist-front organizations have been hard hit (the Jefferson School in Manhattan recently went out of business after its enrollment dropped to 400 from 14,000 in 1946). The Soble spy case was so handled that it brought confessions, not controversy. Such is the Brownell security record that FBI Director John Edgar Hoover, no man to low-rate the threat of Communism for the sake of pleasing any Attorney General who happens to be his boss, says the Communist Party in the U.S. is now "stunned."

Trustbusting. At the outset of the Eisenhower Administration, Democrats began watching and waiting for a breakdown in antitrust enforcement. They are still watching and waiting. Relying heavily on the consent decree to accomplish the Government's purpose while avoiding long, costly court battles, Brownell's Justice Department has taken on such business giants as General Motors, International Business Machines, Pan American-Grace Airways and the Radio Corp. of America. General Lucius Clay, chairman of the Continental Can Co. and one of President Eisenhower's closest friends and advisers. is indignant at two antitrust suits filed against his company.

"If I stay at this job much longer," says Herb Brownell, "I will have picked a fight with every friend I ever had outside of Government." His remark is perhaps too exclusive: Brownell's lonely job has required him to pick fights with some friends inside the Government. He tangled with Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, who could see nothing illegal about big packers and grocers making a tidy profit by selling cheese to the Government at one support price and buying it back a few days later at a lower price. The Justice Department is suing to recover $2,500,000. Again, Brownell clashed with the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and prominent banking interests because he wanted close federal control of bank holding companies.

Climax in Civil Rights. Today Herbert Brownell is nearing the high moment of his career. He is out in the open; he knows it and he likes it. He is the personal target of Southern opposition to the civil rights program now in Congress. He is determined to fight it through. "This program," says Brownell. "may be remembered longer than anything we do in Washington."