The Summing Up

The epicenter of U.S. sin & corruption, the Kefauver committee indicated in its hefty report last week, is now located squarely in the middle of New York City. The committee spent but seven pages on Miami, brushed off St. Louis with three, and devoted only ten to Chicago itself.

But it turned out 35 full pages of indignant prose on Gotham and, in its criticism of U.S. officials, reserved its bitterest and most lengthy blasts for New York's ex-Mayor William O'Dwyer, now U.S. Ambassador to Mexico.

O'Dwyer, the committee charged, had contributed directly and indirectly "to the growth of organized crime, racketeering and gangsterism in New York City." It accused him of playing footie with Underworld Big Shot Frank Costello (who also came in for a sharp dressing down) and with failing to do his full duty as Brooklyn's district attorney before becoming mayor.

The ex-mayor, firing back from the depths of the American embassy in Mexico City, cried that the committee's conclusions were "fantastic." Said he: "For reasons unknown to me, a concerted effort has been made, by inference and innuendo, to discredit me on a personal basis. Of this I have no fear. My public life is a matter of record . . . My achievements were hailed on all sides . . ."

In Washington the President announced, defiantly, that he would not fire O'Dwyer and did not expect him to resign. The Ambassador, he explained, is a fighter, just like I am.

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