Like Father

Under the McClellan committee's thumb last week was Dave Beck Jr., 36-year-old, balding facsimile of his egg-bald Teamster-boss father. The long-elusive Junior lost no time on the amenities, plopped his 210-lb. frame into the witness chair, and settled right down to his pleas of possible self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment. He gave his name and address, then began to sound like a tape recording of dear old dad. Beck's bad boy managed to run up 124 uses of the Fifth (papa topped 200), and in one burst of speed tossed off 73 refusals in 20 minutes.

Staunchly upholding family tradition, Beck Junior refused to acknowledge that he knew his own father (Beck Senior would not admit to Junior). When New York Senator Irving Ives snapped: "For whom were you named?" Junior smirked, crimsoned under his tan, and refused to say.* While his icy-eyed, vigorous father showed every sign of interest in his own undoing before the labor investigating committee. Beck Junior exhibited nothing but slouching boredom as he heard charges that he had been handed some $69,000 as a Teamster organizer, never did a lick of work for his pay, profited $19,500 on the sale of toy trucks to Teamster locals, and received more than $5,000 in trinkets--cameras, washing machines, etc.--from Teamster Pal Nathan Shefferman. The one noticeable ripple in Beck Junior's sea of silence came when John McClellan asked him if he was married. After a nervous giggle and a consultation with his counsel. Beck squeaked no and had another giggle.

On the surface, the Beck Junior bearing seemed just as depressing as any other Teamster hearing but there was more to it than met the ear; Lawyer John McClellan, nettled by reluctant witnesses, was hard at work trying to define some legal limits on the capricious use of the Fifth Amendment. Beck Junior and his kissing cousin, Joe McEvoy, who was next up, had overworked a new wrinkle in abuse of the Fifth. When Beck would refuse to answer questions on such matters as his occupation or salary, McClellan would ask if he "honestly believed" his answer would tend to incriminate him. Beck would not reply with yes or "it might," as most have done, but used the Fifth again.

At day's end the Arkansas Senator branded the pair's performance a "flagrant abuse" of the Fifth Amendment, directed his staff to prepare contempt proceedings, expressed the hope that the test case might be carried, if necessary, to the highest court in the land. He did not believe, McClellan said, that a witness "is entitled to invoke the Fifth Amendment unless he can also state under oath, without perjuring himself, that he honestly believes that if he answered the question truthfully the truthful answer might tend to incriminate him." South Dakota's Karl Mundt, for the Republicans, was quick to join McClellan. Beck Junior may well provide the ample material from which the courts will cut a decision that defines the protections but limits the abuses of the now overworked Fifth Amendment.

Last week the United Auto Workers' redhaired, hot-tempered Walter Reuther, who had been crystal-clear in his denunciations of Dave Beck Sr.'s Fifth Amendment record, applied the same medicine to U.A.W. officials. In recent weeks seven officeholders in U.A.W. locals, called before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee to answer questions on Communist associations, have invoked the Fifth Amendment. In answer to critics who accused him of maintaining a double standard of morality, Reuther replied with a sharply worded, ten-page administrative letter to all his locals. His message: any appointed or elected U.A.W. official who uses the Fifth Amendment is automatically suspect and should be investigated for fitness to hold office. At week's end one of the seven, Max Trachtenberg, a chief steward at the De Soto plant in Detroit, was summarily ousted from office.

*Beck Junior was originally named Warren David Beck, legally changed his name to David Beck Jr. on April 8, 1948.

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