Now It Can Be Told

Harold Ickes, onetime Secretary of the Interior, last week confessed to an old sin. He admitted that he was the man behind the mysterious 1945 nomination of Oklahoma Congressman Jed Johnson for a $10,000-a-year lifetime judgeship in the U.S. Customs Court.

Jed had never taken the job. As a Congressman he had enjoyed annoying Harold so much that he preferred to stay where he was. Then, too late, Jed discovered that he had erred. Though he had been in Congress for 20 years, his constituents let him down. He was suddenly out of a job. So this year, when another judgeship (now worth $15,000 a year) became vacant, Jed had persuaded Harry Truman to name him. This appointment was being considered last week by a Senate subcommittee when Ickes stormed in, vibrating in every corpuscle.

He made it plain that Jed had always rubbed him the wrong way. As a Congressman Jed Johnson, he said, was always asking for petty favors. To make sure they were granted he frequently threatened to swing an economy ax on Ickes' Interior Department. Ickes had finally decided that there was only one way out--to boot Jed upstairs as hard as he could. That was why he had got Franklin Roosevelt to offer Jed the judgeship.

Indignantly now he told the Senate subcommittee that Jed was "unfit" to be a judge. "I was willing to sacrifice him.. . . ." he cried . "He would do less harm as a customs judge [than as a Congressman], I didn't think then that he was qualified . . . and I don't now."

The Senators sat agape. Observed West Virginia's Chapman Revercomb: "This is the most unusual qualification I have ever heard advanced for the appointment of a federal judge--to appoint him because he is irksome to the Administration." Said Harold Ickes:

"Maybe I shouldn't have done it."

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