Another Exit

Abraham Teitelbaum's shakedown story opened the door for another sudden exit from the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Day after the Chicago lawyer testified, Charles Oliphant, the bureau's chief counsel, dashed off an angry letter of resignation to Harry Truman. The charge that he was part of a clique seeking payoffs was "fantastic," he said. The "attacks, vilification, rumor and innuendo are beyond the point of human endurance."

Charles Oliphant was a second-generation Government lawyer. His father, Herman Oliphant, served as general counsel of the Treasury Department (1934-39). Charles, now 42, went into Government service when he got out of the University of Maryland Law School in 1934 and became the Revenue Bureau's chief counsel in 1947 at $14,800 a year.

The Teitelbaum testimony was not the first mention of Oliphant's name in the flurry of Washington investigations. Testimony disclosed that he accompanied Theron Caudle on a deep-sea fishing flight to Florida, in the airplane of a man in tax trouble. After the trip, Caudle talked to Oliphant about a U.S. tax lien against their host's property, and the lien was removed. Oliphant had accepted one of those $100 cameras handed out to Government officials as a "goodwill" gesture by the now famed RFC client, American Lithofold Corp. The gift was arranged by James Finnegan, St. Louis former Internal Revenue collector who has been indicted for taking bribes. When Oliphant resigned, he provided another item for the list. He made public a personal financial statement listing a $1,300 loan from Henry Grunewald, a mysterious Washington private investigator. Oliphant refused to comment on the loan, but Richard C. Schwartz, Revenue Bureau lawyer, had something to say. He testified that Oliphant acted to speed up the prosecution of Teitelbaum after a telephone conversation with Grunewald about the case.

In his letter of resignation, Oliphant condemned the House subcommittee for permitting "irresponsible" testimony in public. He demanded the right to answer in a public hearing. California Democrat Cecil King, subcommittee chairman, promptly scheduled an Oliphant appearance. But when the time came, Oliphant didn't show up. He was ill, said his attorney, seemed almost "suffering from shock." Mr. Grunewald couldn't appear, either. His physician said he was in the hospital suffering from "severe emotional strain" and gastrointestinal disturbances.

As for Congressman King, sensations before his committee were breaking so fast that he had not had a chance to get a haircut for a month.

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