Sly Vigilantes

Colorado's loud, semi-bald, profane Governor Teller Ammons shoved himself back from his desk, whisked his office chair aside, stepped to the nearest wall ventilator grill, stared into the dimness of the shaft and emitted an angry oath.

There, suspended three feet above the floor, was a crystal microphone.

Ever since that March day when someone mysteriously advised Governor Ammons that for more than three months microphones had been picking up every sound in the Executive office and in the de luxe Denver apartment of Democratic Lobbyist Frederick E. Dickerson (utilities and liquor interests) an amazing scandal has been bubbling merrily on the back of Colorado's political stove, threatening to boil over at any moment. Last fortnight, the moment finally arrived.

The microphones in the Governor's office and his friend's home were put there by four self-appointed political vigilantes: Lawyer Erl H. Ellis, onetime Chairman of the State Bar Association; the Denver Post's shaggy, sunken-eyed Legislative Reporter Walden E. Sweet; Private Detective Jack H. Gilmore; and Walter Lear, former secretary to U. S. Senator Edwin C. Johnson. Day after the microphones were found, the vigilantes--who in 1934 helped clean up the State's slot machine racket, in 1935 put a former Secretary of State in jail for liquor grafting--explained that they had installed them to get evidence of malfeasance and bribery. Every sound caught in their amazingly efficient apparatus had been transferred to records. Contents of the records, some 40 in all, had been taken down by stenographers in a 400-page record. Enraged, Governor Ammons began by demanding a legislative investigation. When Lawyer Ellis and his confreres said they welcomed the prospect, Governor Ammons changed his tune, tried to have the vigilantes indicted for "eaves-dropping." Eavesdropping is a common law offense which requires that the eavesdropper repeat what he overhears. This was exactly what Colorado's vigilantes, to the chagrin of the State's newspaper readers, refused to do. The State Supreme Court suspended Lawyer Ellis for questionable practice but no immediate prospect that Coloradans would find out what they wanted to know--the contents of the records--appeared until three weeks ago, when a special grand jury indicted the vigilantes for being "public nuisances." Last fortnight, District Attorney John A. Carroll asked that the records and transcript be handed over for safekeeping to the clerk of the court. When a district judge complied, the records became public property. Denver newspapers took advantage of their chance. The Rocky Mountain News outdid its rivals by running it in full, except for obscenity, on 15 unbroken pages.

That Denver's Rocky Mountain News, which has stanchly supported the Governor since news of the microphone got out, felt justified in printing the transcript in full was a fair indication of its contents. What Colorado has been waiting for for six months turned out to be not a juicy scandal but a feeble anticlimax. Garbled and often wholly unintelligible, the transcript gave Coloradans an interesting insight into the informality with which its elected officials discharge their public duties. So far as private misconduct was concerned, the spiciest bit was a paragraph or two that indicated that Lobbyist Dickerson had entertained two young ladies in his apartment, one of whom felt too tired from a previous party to drink anything stronger than ginger ale. As for official misconduct on the part of the Governor or bribery on the part of Lobbyist Dickerson, the records proved little. Digging into the jumble of verbiage, the closest thing to actual evidence of corruption that anyone could find was a cryptic statement by a State Senator from Pueblo named Tom Dameron made in the course of a singularly unspecific conversation with Lobbyist Dickerson: "When they hear the utilities are paying $50,000 to kill this one what would they do?"

Last fortnight, Governor Ammons proclaimed that he was glad the records were out at last. Said he: "It was a cowardly trick and a plot designed to injure me." Lawyer Ellis, Reporter Sweet and Detective Gilmore announced that District Attorney Carroll had censored the records before making them public but, having caused scores of Colorado politicians to shiver in their boots for half-a-year, the vigilantes slyly added: "No one has ever bothered to ask but as a matter of fact we never contended the microphone records, outside of disclosing the duplicity of politicians and their faithlessness, contained evidence of felonies."

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