Eyes on the Lobbies

The U.S. Senate reacted to the gas bill uproar by heading full steam toward an investigation of lobbying activity that will probably run through the summer and cost half a million dollars. Most likely to conduct the hearings: Tennessee's Democrat Albert Gore, chairman of the Privileges and Elections Subcommittee. Last week Gore's three-member subcommittee voted itself a broad franchise calling for a "study of contributions to election campaigns in federal elections and such evidence of corrupt practices as may be revealed." High on Gore's agenda are investigations of lobbying by gas and oil men, by the steel and automobile industries and by labor unions.

Gore pushed ahead with his plans while Democratic Leader Lyndon Johnson, who had hoped to avoid an all-out gas-lobbying inquiry, was in Texas, resting up at his ranch on the banks of the Pedernales River.* Gore cleared his project with on-the-spot Democratic brass, e.g., Acting Majority Leader Earle Clements and Georgia's Senator Walter George, who had presided over the Case hearings. Then, without waiting for a by-your-leave from Johnson, Gore gave public notice of his plan to make his subcommittee the Senate's searching eye.

That there would be plenty to look at was indicated by the political waves already spreading from the $2,500 cash gift from Superior Oil Co. Lobbyist John Neff to South Dakota's Republican Senator Francis Case, which Case rejected. Items:

P:Joe McCarthy, badly hurt in Wisconsin by his vote for the gas bill, found it necessary to explain a $2,000 contribution he received in 1952 from a man named N. B. Keck. Joe professed uncertainty as to whether his donor was the H. B. Keck who is president of Superior Oil, but said that, in any event"I assume he was contributing because of my fight against Communism."

P:Donald R. Ross, U.S. attorney for Nebraska, spent eight days on the Justice Department griddle in Washington, returned to Omaha, resigned. Ross had arranged interviews for Lobbyist Neff with Nebraska's Republican Senators Carl Curtis (a member of Gore's subcommittee) and Roman Hruska, both of whom voted for the gas bill.

P:Nebraska Republican Finance Chairman Joseph S. Wishart revealed that Lobbyist Neff had contributed $2,500 to G.O.P. funds in his state. Wishart said he had questioned Neff's motives at the time ("When I saw he had this handful of money, there was penalty flags down all over the field for me"), but had finally accepted the donation. Explained Wishart: "I didn't think he could be a lobbyist. He kind of had a cloak-and-dagger attitude. It seemed to me that the poor devil had $2,500 he was trying to do anything to get somebody to take."

With that sort of material as a starter, the lobbying investigation promised well to become the year's liveliest.

* At week's end Coronary Victim Johnson returned to Washington to enter the Bethesda Naval Hospital for a checkup. Doctors reported his progress "has been very satisfactory."

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