Home to Roost?

Republican politicos, who know a tailor-made campaign issue when they see it, were happily trying one on for size last week. The fit was just about perfect. Last summer's Kansas City primary, in which President Harry Truman successfully purged Democratic Congressman Roger Slaughter--"If he's right," said Truman, "I'm wrong"--was shaping into a natty political scandal.

The scandal had been shaping up ever since the House Campaign Expenditures Committee and the Kansas City Star began investigating the primary day balloting last fall. They had discovered plenty of evidence of fraud at the polls, demanded that the Justice Department look into it. While Attorney General Tom Clark dawdled, a Jackson County grand jury opened the ballot boxes from 34 out of 255 precincts, found a "deliberate, calculated and premeditated plan" to miscount, steal and buy votes. Said the jury, which had already indicted 71: "It is our belief that Roger C. Slaughter was deprived of the nomination by a fraudulent miscount of votes and other types of fraud."

That night the lid blew off. As Harry Truman slept five blocks away in his Hotel Muehlebach suite, thieves entered the Jackson County courthouse in downtown Kansas City. They blasted open the election board's vault with nitroglycerin, stole most of the grand jury's evidence: ballots, poll books and tally sheets. Cried Missouri's Republican state chairman: "The Pendergast machine under the protection of Harry S. Truman is as rampant and vicious as it was when directed by Harry Truman's mentor, Tom Pendergast."

On the Spot. Missouri's Republican Senator James P. Kem had long been needling Tom Clark for failure to act. Clark had insisted that a thorough, preliminary probe by the FBI had turned up no grounds for federal action (i.e., no conspiracy to deprive a voter of his rights in a federal election). But before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover testified that his investigation had been specifically restricted by Clark to examining the data uncovered by two Star reporters and four Kansas City election commissioners.

Then three federal judges* made unhappy Tom Clark even more unhappy. When a summary of the FBI and Star reports had been shown to them, the judges agreed that they had advised against grand jury action at the time. But they disagreed with Clark that that had been a valid reason for closing the case. They had all expected further investigation.

This week, as Republican Subcommittee Chairman Homer Ferguson shouted "whitewash" and recommended a full Senate investigation of Tom Clark's actions, the FBI was given a free hand in Kansas City. Meanwhile, Harry Truman insisted that the investigation be pushed to the limit. Cackled Republicans derisively : "Nobody in here but us chickens."

*The three: Democrat Albert A. Ridge, onetime bugler in Harry Truman's Battery D; Truman Crony J. Caskie Collet; Republican Albert L. Reeves Sr., whose son defeated Enos Axtell, Harry Truman's nominee to succeed Slaughter, in the November elections.

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