INVESTIGATIONS: On the Stand

By last week Boston Real Estate and Textile Operator Bernard Goldfine had become far more of a Washington attraction than his good friend, Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams. Tourists nudged one another and gawped as he swept through hotel lobbies with his entourage. Reporters and TVmen jumped at the beck of his pressagents any time of day or night. Seasoned politicos of both parties swallowed nervously every time he dropped a new political name. And behind the guarded gates of the White House, the President's staff read the news tickers in continuing wonderment to see what manner of man this was for whom Staff Chief Adams had vouched as a close personal friend.

The Peepers. Goldfine's pressagents got the week off to the wildest of Marx Brothers starts. In charge was one Jack Lotto, modestly describing himself as "a former ace reporter for the I.N.S.," who set up shop in a three-room Sheraton-Carlton press headquarters. The headquarters featured free whisky and "Press Receptionist" Bea Duprey, a toothsome Boston model who seemed mostly interested in making sure reporters got her measurements right (35-22-35). In a ridiculous midnight affair, Lotto & Co. soon caught a couple of snoopers listening in with a microphone and a tape recorder from the room next door.

Caught in the eavesdropping act: Jack Anderson, a legman for Newspeeper Columnist Drew Pearson, and Baron (name, not title) Ignatius Shacklette, chief investigator for the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight and a veteran congressional shamus. Next day the House subcommittee fired Shacklette (but Pearson kept Anderson on, saying: "I need him"). Then, the Goldfine entourage, hastened by a belated report from Goldfine's secretary, Mildred Paperman, that her room had been rifled of important documents, moved out of the Sheraton-Carlton amid much tub-thumping and hoopla, took up new quarters across K Street in 19 rooms ($1,000 a day) at the Statler.

Close to Contempt. The greater the attention, the more B.C. seemed to thrive —even though investigators were closing in relentlessly on details of shadowy business and political connections (see box next page). Settling back in the witness chair for his second week before House investigators, Goldfine played to the gallery, shouted give-'em-hell answers when provoked, slipped and dodged among questions, refused to discuss most of his fast-shuffle business affairs—and came perilously close to a contempt citation. During the committee give-and-take, Goldfine:

¶ Swore that neither Sherman Adams nor other public officials had received any of the $776,000 in mysterious treasurer's and cashier's checks bought by his companies since 1941 and still uncashed as of last May 7.

¶ Admitted that since May 7—about the time that committee investigators hit his trail—he had redeposited $395,572 worth of the checks in his company bank accounts, declared that another $209,671 worth had "never been used," that neither he nor Mildred Paperman could explain what had happened to an additional $89,000 worth of checks drawn in the 1940s. The bank, said Miss Paperman blandly, has "made mistakes in the past, and these can be an error."