"Vermin Press"

GREATEST CATASTROPHE IN HISTORY THREATENS NEW YORK AND SUBURBS

Flood Greater Than Any Since Noah's Day May at Any Time Sweep Down the Croton Valley

In terrible big black headlines, breaking the Sabbath peace, a mysterious little sheet shrieks such messages at New Yorkers. It is the New York Enquirer, only Sunday afternoon paper in the city. Making the most of its few unchallenged hours on the newsstands, it prints the wildest stories seen anywhere in the U.S. press. No less strange than the paper is its editor and publisher, a pudgy loudmouth named William Griffin. Last week the U.S. learned a few facts about Editor Griffin and his paper when he was indicted by a Federal grand jury on the charge of undermining the morale of U.S. armed forces.

He is a friend of William Randolph Hearst, whom he visits at San Simeon and with whom he sometimes exchanges public telegrams on public questions on the front pages of Hearst newspapers. Hearst likes him so well that his papers have started several abortive booms: "Griffin-for-Mayor," "Griffin-for-Senator," and report his comings & goings as if he were somebody. Most of Griffin's trips have been to Eire, where he made himself popular by clamoring for Irish independence. When he launched the Enquirer in 1926 he became one of the most violent Anglophobes and isolationists in the U.S. His paper boomed Ham Fish for President.

U.S. Prosecutor William Power Maloney and the Federal grand jury, who began to investigate Editor Griffin last fall, found him a slippery quarry. When they tried to subpoena back numbers of the Enquirer, Griffin said that he kept none. Last week, when Prosecutor Maloney sent officers with a warrant for Mr. Griffin, they failed to find him, learned that he had checked out of a hospital the day before. Said Prosecutor Maloney, grimly: "He won't get away from us. Griffin, with his close friend and associate, George Sylvester Viereck, is regarded by the Government as the key man in the Nazi network in this country." Next day Mr. Griffin turned up again: his wife telegraphed the New York Times that he was back in the hospital, with a heart attack. In the hospital Editor Griffin was put under guard.

The U.S. press, which is quick to cry out against anything that looks like interference with press freedom, last week applauded the Government's crackdown on Editor Griffin, along with the publishers of 29 other "vermin" sheets (including Scribner's Commentator) named in the indictment.

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