Nation: Once More, with Feeling

"God Almighty, did I say that? It's horrible!"

That was the first reaction of George Harrold Carswell last week when confronted with a blatantly racist speech he had made 22 years ago. The revelation came only two days after Judge Carswell, 50, was named by President Nixon to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated last May by Abe Fortas.

The embarrassment seemed like a playback of the recent Clement Haynsworth episode. That time, Attorney General John Mitchell and the FBI had overlooked Haynsworth's financial dealings, which led to ethical questions and eventually Haynsworth's rejection by the Senate. This time, Mitchell & Co. had apparently been so concerned in checking the nominee's finances that they overlooked another bit of damaging information. The Administration's bungle was all the more ironic because the Senate, after the bruising Haynsworth battle, stood ready to accept virtually whomever President Nixon chose the second time. Taking full advantage of that license, Nixon picked Carswell, who, like Haynsworth, is a strict constructionist, an interpreter of the law rather than an innovator, and a Southerner, from Tallahassee, Fla.

Carswell had made the speech in 1948 during his unsuccessful campaign for a seat in the Georgia legislature. "I believe that segregation of the races is proper," Carswell, who was then 28, told an American Legion gathering, "and the only practical and correct way of life in our states. I yield to no man in the firm, vigorous belief in the principles of white supremacy and I shall always be so governed."

Candidates, of course, often say things on the hustings better left unrecorded. But Carswell printed the speech in the Irwinton Bulletin, a home-town weekly newspaper that he had operated while he was a Duke University student. The browning copy was found last week by George Thurston, a newsman for the local CBS-TV station and TIME'S Tallahassee stringer, who aired his findings. Chagrined, a Department of Justice spokesman lamely tried to explain why the FBI had not bothered to check the Carswell contributions to the Bulletin: "If an FBI man had stopped to fill his tank" in Irwinton, a town of 700 people, he would surely have caused talk and then the news of the nomination would have been disclosed.

After the initial shock, both Carswell and Attorney General Mitchell issued statements about the remarks "attributed" to the judge—seemingly a vague attempt to hint that Carswell had never made the speech. Carswell said: "I denounce and reject the words themselves [of the speech] and the ideas they represent. They're obnoxious and abhorrent to my personal philosophy." The statement concluded with the wry comment that "incidentally, I lost that election; I was considered too liberal."