National Affairs: Resignations Wanted

The committee had hardly left New York before the powder which had spilled during ex-Fireman Crane’s confession began to go off. In tones of hurried, hoarse outrage, Mayor Vincent Impellitteri gave Water Commissioner James J. Moran 24 hours to resign the $15,000-a-year lifetime job which Bill O’Dwyer had given him last summer. Next day, face ashen, hands shaking, Moran let a clutch of reporters into his Brooklyn house and read off a letter of resignation. He did not mention Crane’s tale of giving him $55,000, ended up in feeble defiance: “With a stomach which can no longer digest the hypocrisies of the so-called politicians, I hereby tender my resignation.”

This week Moran was indicted on charges of perjury.

Next the powder went off under Crane himself. The president of the A.F.L. International Association of Fire Fighters sent him a telegram from Washington asking him to resign as the International’s vice president. Crane with consummate audacity replied: “It is indeed unfortunate . . . that you see fit to indulge in petty politics . . .” He was suspended forthwith. But the New York local of the union seemed perfectly content to keep him on as its president.

Ambassador O’Dwyer was left simmering gently in his own juices. He appeared before a New York grand jury, signed a waiver of immunity, took the oath, and flatly denied that Crane had ever given him any money, let alone $10,000 in a red manila envelope. Despite his denial, his reputation had been badly smudged. Washington hummed with rumors that he would presently be “nudged” into doing the gentlemanly thing—resigning his ambassadorship as gracefully as possible.

O’Dwyer announced that he had no intention of resigning. And at week’s end Harry Truman (who has never forgotten that O’Dwyer scorned him before the 1948 convention) indicated that he was still taking O’Dwyer’s explanation at its face value.