National Affairs: Big Man from Indiana

As Democratic Chairman Frank McKinney denounced termites before the assembled Democrats in New York, some termite inspection was going on in the background. McKinney was welcomed to New York by stories in the Herald Tribune charging that he is the political protégé of Democratic National Committeeman Frank M. McHale of Indiana.

“Anything but Ethical.” In 1932 Frank McHale, then a struggling lawyer in a blue suit thin from wear, got his start in politics as part of Paul McNutt’s machine. Thereafter, McHale’s political and legal careers were brilliantly successful, and it would be hard to say exactly how much one career helped the other. So formidable has the McHale name become that he has had many big Republican clients.

A lumbering, smooth-pated, flabby-jowled prototype of the political boss, McHale for years has made big fees handling cases involving the Government. He was a stockholder, director and counsel for the Empire Ordnance Corp., one of the most investigated and most criticized munitions companies of World War II. In 1941 Missouri’s Senator Harry Truman denounced Empire’s efforts to buy political influence in Washington as “anything but ethical.”

McHale won a $935,000 settlement for Empire in connection with a product it didn’t deliver to the Government. Although it had no contract, Empire had claimed that Government representatives persuaded it to develop facilities to build B-17 bomber struts. It gave up after making only five sets. When McHale got the settlement from the Appeal Board of the Office of Contract Settlement, the Government promptly seized the money to cover excess-profits taxes that Empire owed on other war contracts. Now McHale is seeking, directly from the Government, a $93,500 fee for his legal work.

Whose Coffin Plan? Another McHale client is seeking Government payment for a product it didn’t make. This is the Alliance (Ohio) Seamless Casket Co., which claims it developed a new kind of coffin for reburial of American servicemen killed overseas in World War II. It admits that it has no patent, had no contract with and produced no caskets for the Government. The case presented by McHale: the Government saved $12,575,000 by adopting Alliance specifications and giving them to other manufacturers.

McKinney and McHale have long been associated in business and politics. McHale is counsel for some McKinney enterprises, and the two are joint investors in others. Last summer both were in Washington seeing their political friends about getting a Government priority for steel to build a pipeline.

Part of McHale’s response to the Herald Tribune stories was a familiar’ one: “I was strictly within my legal rights.” McKinney said he had “assurances” that McHale had not done any influence peddling, but that he would make further inquiry and “let the chips fall where they may.” Whether he would let many chips fall on the man who recommended him to Harry Truman as Democratic National Chairman remained to be seen.