New York: No Inferences, Please

The bipartisan, four-man New York State Commission of Investigation last week held open hearings into bribery charges by Mayor Robert Wagner against Democratic State Chairman William McKeon. After two days the commission threw up its hands, made no findings or recommendations, decided merely to send a transcript on to Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Even that, insisted Commission Chairman Jacob Grumet, should not lead to the inference “that we believe a crime has been committed.”

But if perjury is still considered a crime in New York, then a crime was committed.

The Accusation. The first witness was Mayor Wagner himself. In an emotional appearance, he told this story. On the night of last Jan. 11, McKeon summoned six other Democratic state officials to a meeting in the manager’s suite of Albany’s DeWitt Clinton Hotel. Present besides McKeon were Nassau County Leader John English; Schenectady County Leader George Palmer; Joseph Crangle, subbing for Erie County Boss Peter J. Crotty; J. Raymond Jones, Negro chief of New York City’s Tammany Hall; Queen’s County Assemblyman Moses Weinstein, and New York City Election Commissioner Maurice J. O’Rourke.

Purpose of the confab, Wagner said, was to settle the party dispute over the majority leadership of the state legislature, taken over by the Democrats in last year’s election. In that fight, one slate is backed by Wagner, who was represented at the meeting by Jones, Weinstein and O’Rourke; the other is supported by an anti-Wagner coalition including McKeon, English, Palmer and Crotty, and attaching itself to the political star of Freshman U.S. Senator Bobby Kennedy.

What McKeon specifically offered,

Wagner said, was a legislative committee chairmanship with a $10,000 expense allowance, or “lulu,” as New York legislators call it, and a $26,000-a-year state court judgeship to legislators Wagner was backing for the leadership posts—on condition that they withdraw their candidacies.

The Hot Seat? The proposition, Wagner explained, was reported to him by Tammany Hall’s Jones, and had been corroborated by Weinstein and O’Rourke. Asked by Chairman Grumet if he still considered this a “bribe,” as he had stated publicly, Wagner replied: “It smacks of it.”

The next witness was Jones, who said that when everyone had assembled in the hotel suite “Mr. McKeon opened the conversation by saying he had a ‘couple of packages.'” Jones related McKeon’s offer just as Wagner had, adding: “I said, ‘It hardly seems to be worthwhile. Anything you said is of no interest to me.’ ” Using a commission-provided scale drawing of the meeting site, complete down to the sofa pillows, Jones described where each of the participants had sat. He recalled that McKeon had perched on a radiator, which moved Grumet to inquire: “Was this the hot seat?”

On the day following the meeting, Jones said, he and Election Commissioner O’Rourke were discussing McKeon’s deal, and O’Rourke said: “I thought McKeon was stupid to make the offer of a double lulu. This guy is crazy. Why, this is almost like a bribe.” But when O’Rourke was called to testify, he claimed that he had said no such thing. Moreover, he added, he had been stationed at the door to keep out reporters and had been so engrossed in a copy of Photoplay magazine that he had heard nothing that sounded like a bribe. Assemblyman Weinstein also failed to corroborate Jones’s version of the events. “As far as I’m concerned,” Weinstein said, “I heard no offer of a bribe made.”

The Denial. That left McKeon to tell his side of the story. Next day he did, with emotions that ranged from hurt to anger. Known around Albany as “Little Caesar” because of his 5-ft. 6-in. height, McKeon became party chairman with Wagner’s blessing in 1961. But when he joined the anti-Wagner forces in the current legislative hassle, the two became furious political foes. The reason for the Albany meeting in the first place, McKeon told the commission, was to bring about “some face-saving for the mayor.”

Of one thing McKeon said he was certain: “I never offered a bribe to anyone. Anyone who says so, orally or in print, is guilty of a vicious and contemptible lie.” He admitted that he had discussed the chairmanship of the Codes Committee at the meeting, and might even have mentioned the $5,000 expense allowance that goes with it.

But, he said, “I didn’t use the figure $10,000.”

Winding up his testimony, McKeon blasted Wagner for using “the flimsiest and shabbiest of evidence” and for not getting “the full facts before any charges were launched.” There was nothing “illegal, immoral or unethical” in his conduct at the meeting, he said, and “I have never offered a bribe in any form to any member of the legislature or anyone else at any time.”

McKeon’s denial was backed up by his friends who had been at the meeting. Nassau County’s English described it as a “political seminar.” Outside the hearing room, English told newsmen that the meeting had been “like a Girl Scout meeting at which one guy says, ‘You be cookie chairman and I’ll be something else.’ Jones sold a bill of goods to Wagner on that meeting. Jones lied.” This was almost precisely what Jones said about McKeon.

And that was as far as the investigation went. Meanwhile, the legislature entered its fifth week of deadlock over the Democratic leadership.