The decision that the evidence was insufficient to warrant Federal prosecution was made prior to your term of office; the entire matter was reconsidered during your incumbency with the result that the original conclusion was confirmed.

Respectfully,

WENDELL BERGE, Assistant Attorney General.

Senator HATCH. Mr. McGuire, do you have a document that you want to introduce in evidence?

Mr. MCGUIRE. Yes, sir; I wanted to reserve the right to introduce. a press release of the Treasury Department relating to the claim of Lester P. Barlow and rebutting some of his statements made Friday. Senator HATCH. If you will procure that, and furnish it to the reporter, then it will be inserted in the record. (The document referred to is as follows:)

[For immediate release Friday, June 27, 1941. Press Service No. 26-17]

TREASURY DEPARTMENT,

Washington.

Secretary Morgenthau today made public the Treasury's record with respect to the $300,000 claim of Lester P. Barlow, inventor, against the United States. The Secretary said that the facts in the case do not bear out the testimony of Mr. Barlow this afternoon before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee considering the nomination of Attorney General Jackson to be an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

The record in the Barlow case is as follows: On September 6, 1940, a bill was enacted providing for the payment of approximately $592,000 to Mr. Barlow in satisfaction of his claim against the United States for infringement of a patent on a bomb which he had invented many years ago. Three days later, on September 9, before the money appropriated by the bill could be paid to Mr. Barlow, papers were served upon Treasury officials in an action which John F. Clark, a Los Angeles lawyer, had that day brought in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia against Mr. Barlow, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Treasurer of the United States. The purpose of Mr. Clark's suit was to recover half of the money appropriated to Mr. Barlow and to prevent the Treasury from making payment to Barlow pending a court decision in the matter. Mr. Clark claimed that about 25 years ago he and Mr. Barlow entered into a contingent legal-fee arrangement in connection with the invention. Mr. Barlow, on the other hand, claimed that he had settled with Mr. Clark in 1924 for the sum of $12,000. This left the Treasury Department a disinterested stockholder holding moneys claimed by two persons. On at least two occasions where the Treasury found itself in this situation and paid one of two rival claimants while litigation was pending, the other claimant went to the Supreme Court of the United States and compelled the Department to pay him as well. In view of these circumstances, the Treasury Department and the Department of Justice, in order to protect the interest of the Government as well as those of the rival claimant, many years ago adopted the policy of withholding payment pending the judgment of the courts as to the rightful ownership. The Clark-Barlow case is still being litigated and the Treasury Department, while it has paid half of the sum appropriated to Mr. Barlow, is, pursuant to court order, holding up payment of the other half until final judicial determination of the matter. The Treasury Department has kept in close touch with the Department of Justice in connection with each step taken, as is its custom in such matters.

The

No Treasury attorney, according to the Department's records, told Barlow that the inventor owed $100,000 in connection with his 1936 income taxes. records of the Bureau of Internal Revenue show that he was not visited by an agent with respect to any taxes other than those for 1939 and 1940. All dealings with Barlow, insofar as his 1939 return was concerned, were conducted by correspondence and Barlow has been advised there is no question concerning his 1939 tax liability. His 1940 income tax return is now being audited by the Bureau as a matter of ordinary routine.

Senator HATCH. We will recess for a few minutes.

(Whereupon, following the taking of a short recess, the hearing was resumed.)

Senator HATCH. The committee will come to order and will hear Senator Tydings.

STATEMENT OF HON. MILLARD E. TYDINGS, UNITED STATES SENATOR FOR THE STATE OF MARYLAND

Senator TYDINGS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the subcommittee, I appear in opposition to the confirmation of Robert H. Jackson to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, believing him to be unfitted by character, philosophy, and judicial, temperament for this office.

My opinion is based upon the following, which I will now relate: In July 1939, Messrs. Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen were commentators on a radio program, the title of which was, in effect, "The Inside Story of Washington, or the Story Behind the News in Washington," in the course of which the following colloquy took place:

DREW.

meaning, of course, Drew Pearson

Well, we suddenly became interested in checking up on Government works and discovered that the Senator had put through a very interesting little deal. Just to help keep the Work Projects Administration workers busy, he had them build a road and yacht basin on his private property.

ALLEN. Wasn't that just dandy?

That remark and that broadcast, or those remarks and that broadcast, were carried on a Nation-wide radio hook-up embracing the following stations:

WJZ, New York

Senator O'MAHONEY. Before you get to that, Senator, and for the record to whom did the word "Senator" refer?

Senator TYDINGS. That is right, Senator O'Mahoney; I had better read a couple of sentences before that so you will get the whole continuity.

And Bob

Robert Allen

And don't forget Senator Tydings, of Maryland, Drew.

DREW. That's right, Bob; Senator Tydings has promised us a poke in the eye, I had forgotten.

Now, was the Senator sore about it?

DREW. Well, we suddenly became interested * * *

And it continues on, so that you see I am the individual mentioned in it.

That was carried over the following stations:

WJZ, of New York; WBZ, of Boston; WBZA, of Springfield, Mass.; WEAN, Providence, R. I.; WICC, Bridgeport, Conn.; WFIL, Philadelphia; WBAL, Baltimore, WMAL, of Washington; WSYR, of Syracuse, N. Y.; WHAM, Rochester; WEBR, of Buffalo; KDKA, of Pittsburgh; WHK, of Cleveland; WSPD, Toledo; WXYZ, Detroit; WCKY, Cincinnati; WMFF, Plattsburg, N. Y.; WRTD, Richmond, Va.; WABY, Albany, N. Y.; WJTN, Jamestown, N. Y.; WCOL, Columbus, Ohio; WOOD, of Grand Rapids, Mich.; WFDF, Flint,

Mich.; WJIM, Lansing, Mich.; WIBM, Jackson, Mich.; WELL, Battle Creek, Mich.; WBCM, Bay City, Mich.; and WNBC, of New Britain, Conn.

The stations that I have just read as carrying this broadcast entitled "The Inside Story," was furnished me by Carlton D. Smith, assistant manager of the National Broadcasting Co., Inc., Trans-Lux Building, Washington, D. C., in a letter addressed to me on July 27, 1939, in which he said:

DEAR SENATOR TYDINGS: As requested by your telephone conversation this morning, I submit below a list of the stations which carried the early broadcast of "The Inside Story," the program of Tuesday night.

I understand it was transcribed and rebroadcast later on to still other stations farther west, but for the purpose of the record, I want to show the widespread distribution of this story at the time uttered in person by the two men in question.

Well, naturally, as this charged me with the appropriation of Government funds for my own use, and I was in fact charged with larceny not on one count, but on two: In the first instance, that I had taken public funds for the building of private roads on private property; and the second, I was charged with the taking of Government funds for the building of a large yacht harbor on my estate; I want to state that there has never been a penny of money spent on my estate, on my own property, other than that spent by Millard Tydings.

I then got in touch with the broadcasting company and told them that I did not intend to let this lie pass unheeded this being one of a long series of malicious stories furthered mostly by Pearson, up until this time, and not having been joined before by his other friends and commentators and fellow newspapermen in an attempt to hurt me. I relate this so that the committee may get the background.

Some years ago when the Virgin Islands were under the administration of Mr. Pearson's father, the Governor of the Virgin Islands, the Senate voted for an investigation of the conduct of the affairs there, and placed me in charge of that investigation.

Mr. Pearson came to my office and attempted to blackmail me into a whitewash, of course without any effect. Since that time, Mr. Pearson has spent a great deal of his time, and if the committee is interested in this, then I will be glad to substantiate my words with documentary evidence, but simply to give you a picture of the matter, Pearson spent a great deal of time spreading stories of a kind which reflected on the integrity and character of the United States Senate, and in the campaign of 1938, he was most busy, and two of his own family, I understand, according to the Congressional Record, put out some 15 or 16 thousand dollars in an effort to defeat me in the purge of 1938, to no avail, and this was simply the accumulation of a great number of stories of that kind.

I decided at that time that there should be a showdown, and in the course of looking up what my rights may be, I turned to see what acts of Congress there might be covering utterances of that character and found that Congress had passed an act which held as follows and which is now a part of the District of Columbia Code, title 6, part I, chapter 2, section 38, page 42-section 38 reads:

Libel-Penalty: Whoever publishes a libel shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $1,000, or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years, or both.

March 3, 1901.

The point here is that I had found a remedy for malicious defamation of character and I proposed to utilize it as I had a right to do, not only as a citizen, but as a public official in the maintenance before the people of the country of the proof of the integrity of its public officials, for it reflected upon the Senate of the United States, as well.

I therefore wrote to-no; in the meantime Mr. Smith came to me when I protested that the Nation-wide hook-up had been utilized to spread a story which had not even a single iota of truth. There could be no justification for this, because a harbor basin is something that you cannot hide, and naturally, being charged with building a harbor basin-it stood to reason that the purveyor of the story must have seen the basin on my property as he stated, and there is no harbor basin on my private estate or on any other property that I ever owned.

Of course, Mr. Smith was very anxious, being confronted with that fact, that he could verify the fallacious nature of the story, to make all redress possible, so he went to Colonel Harrington, who was then head of the W. P. A., and Colonel Harrington, of course, knowing these two individuals equally as well as I, wrote to Mr. Smith a letter, in fact, two letters, in both of which he denied the truth of Pearson's statements, and the second one, dated August 4, 1939, is as follows:

DEAR MR. SMITH

being the assistant manager of the National Broadcasting Co.

With further reference to your letter of July 29, according to our records to the best of our knowledge and belief no Work Projects Administration money has ever been spent on property belonging to Senator Tydings.

An investigation by this Administration of specific charges that Work Projects Administration money was used on his private property failed to substantiate the allegation.

Very truly yours,

F. C. HARRINGTON, Commissioner of Public Works.

Mr. Smith then came to me and asked me if I would not consider it as an exoneration insofar as the National Broadcasting Co. was concerned, if he read that letter over the air.

I then told Mr. Smith that in my experience Pearson was a consummate scoundrel and showed him some of the things that he had spread far and wide and which he has gotten his fellow conspirators to spread, and that I thought a retraction by the men who uttered the false statements would satisfy me, but the men, for reasons I will disclose later, did not see fit to go on the air and take the story back. In the meantime, however, I let the matter drift, not wanting to be hasty, and realizing that, after all, it would be well not to act in the heat of the moment. I happened to see Colonel Harrington in the company of a friend one day and we exchanged greetings and the conversation turned to this incident, and Colonel Harrington said: "Do you know what those fellows had the nerve to do to me?" I said: "What?" He said and I am quoting as near as I can from memory, the substance of the matter-he said, "They had the effrontery to write to me and give me hell because I told the truth about

you. In other words, Senator, they wanted me to withhold the truth so that statement would carry the weight of truth throughout the country. Did you ever hear tell of such a thing?"

That was, as near as I can recall, several months later, and when I saw the malice of the thing and when I knew that the heart of the thing was a matter of documentary evidence I meditated on that and was just about to ask Colonel Harrington to give me a copy of the letter which had been written about me, when Colonel Harrington died very suddenly.

I then tried to get the letter from his successor but I was told that because it was in the nature of a personal rather than official communication, the new head of the W. P. A. could not turn it over to me, which, of course, was ridiculous, as every member of the committee knows. It had to do with a Government matter and I ought to have had a copy of the letter, but, anyhow, I contrived to get it, for when Senator Lundeen had been charged with being a Nazi agent, I believe, by the same people-some Senator introduced a resolution to investigate them and to get certain papers and so on, and I went there to ask them to get this same communication which I will now read to the committee and which is as follows. It is headed:

The Daily Washington Merry-Go-Round, Washington, D. C., Robert S. Allen. Senator O'MAHONEY (interposing). What was the heading, the inscription on it?

Senator TYDINGS. I am reading at the top. There is printed: "Daily Washington Merry-Go-Round, Washington, D. C., Robert S. Allen," and it then gives his address as Twenty-eighth Streetand "Drew Pearson," on Dumbarton Avenue, "August 10, 1939. Col. C. F. Harrington, Work Projects Administration, City:"

Dear COLONEL: Your letter to Senator Tydings

which I have just read—

Of course

and the National Broadcasting Co. certainly was a gracious action. we had it coming to us. It was very fitting that we who had defended the Work Projects Administration from its inception should be kicked in the teeth by the Work Projects Administration in the interest of a man who has done nothing but heap fire and brimstone on the Work Projects Administration and vote to gut it. We particularly appreciate your action because you did not even have the decency

talking about Machiavelian tactics—

to get in touch with us about it or to be frank about it and the real facts of the case. When I was an officer in the Army some years ago, it was the custom of an officer to be a gentleman as well as an officer, but apparently times have changed.

Very truly yours, ROBERT S. ALLEN.

and the signature is there typewritten as well.

So you will see from that letter that not only was there a reluctance to tell the truth about Senator Tydings, but there was the gall to write and condemn the man who had exonerated Senator Tydings of the charge.

Upon knowing this situation, I then took the matter up with the Honorable David A. Pine, United States District Attorney, Washington, D. C., and wrote him a rather long letter telling him about it, and talked with him on the telephone first, and Mr. Pine wrote and asked me for copies of the matter, and here is what I wrote to Mr. Pine: