National Affairs: Ohio Gangster

Broken by death and disgrace though the Ohio Gang is, memories of its high revels and rapacious graft from 1921 to 1923 still linger in the back eddies of Washington gossip. Never has the full story been told of the clique which came into power the day Warren Gamaliel

Harding entered the White House. Last week was published a book by one of the members, which, by purporting to throw new light on the Gang’s activities, stirred old Washington memories, set the U. S. District Attorney’s office to further belated investigating.*

The book’s author, Gaston B. Means, was once a Secret Service investigator for the Department of Justice. Born in North Carolina about 45 years ago, he began his career as a detective at ten when he rode about the county eavesdropping on prospective jurors for his attorney-father. He entered the William J. Burns (“Eye That Never Sleeps”) Detective Agency in 1910 as an undercover man. He served Captain Boy-Ed, German spy, for $1,000 per week. In 1917 he was tried for murdering a client, Mrs. Maude C. King; was acquitted. When in 1921 Burns became chief of the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation, Means was hired there also, ostensibly for War fraud investigations, but really to block them. Discharged, he supplied the Senate investigating committee with much material with which to drive Harry Micajah Daugherty out of the Cabinet as Attorney General. About Washington Means had a shoddy, shifty reputation which was confirmed when he was convicted of a huge conspiracy against the Dry law and sent to Atlanta Penitentiary for three years. He emerged in 1928. Six feet tall, weighing 200 Ibs., Means has a bullet head, small bright eyes, an ingratiating smile, a round chin underhung with a fat neck. His ethics as an Investigator (his capitalization) are repugnant to ordinary citizens.

Means, in his book, tells of close professional services for and with the Ohio Gang, the group of political campfollowers, not all from Ohio, who swarmed into Washington at Harding’s heels. Its members were the President’s friends and playmates. They used him to shield their deviltry. The Gang supposedly centred around Daugherty in the Department of Justice.†Its active manager was Jess Smith, Daugherty’s friend and roommate, onetime Ohio dry-goods clerk, whose body was found in his hotel room after he had threatened to “quit the racket.”**

Other members included Thomas Woodnutt Miller, onetime Alien Property Custodian, convicted for fraud in the American Metals case; Col. Thomas B. Felder, deceased; Charles Forbes, convicted of fraud as Director of the Veterans Bureau. Socially its meeting places were a green house on K Street, near the Department of Justice, and a house on H Street, next to the old Shoreham Hotel which backed on the city home of Publisher Edward Beale McLean of the Washington Post, a big-hearted Harding friend.

The Gang’s executive headquarters, according to Means, was at No. 903 16th St., a large comfortable house, rented for $1,000 per month where Means, drawing $83-33 per week as a U. S. investigator, lived with five servants, a car and chauffeur. In its backyard, Means claims, was concealed the gang’s cash, sometimes $500,000, never less than $50,000. Later this money would be deposited in a bank at Washington Court House, Ohio.*

The gang’s graft, according to Means, came in part from the sale of protection to big New York bootleggers. Means’s account of how this graft was collected: he would engage two rooms at a Manhattan hotel. On the table of one room would be placed a huge glass bowl with money in it. ‘Leggers would arrive at prearranged hours with their tribute in $1,000 bills. Means would watch them from the next room as they dropped their money into the bowl and departed. In this way ‘leggers bought protection without putting money in anybody’s hands. Declares Means: “Never once was I shortchanged! . . . My sales usually ran about $65,000 per day. . . . Fully $7,000,000 passed through my glass bowl.”

Boldly Means charges Daugherty with being a “master salesman” of Department of Justice privileges, including paroles, pardons, Federal judgeships, liquor withdrawals, dismissal of charges.

More intimate, more startling, more insinuating are Means’s allegations involving President and Mrs. Harding. Washington used to hear many a muffled story of the couple’s domestic difficulties. It is to these tales that Means gives new currency.

He was, he declares, first assigned in October 1921. to do private investigation for Mrs. Harding, then involved with a fortune-teller called Madam X who had told the President’s wife that she was “a child of destiny.” On her order, he sneaked into a married woman’s apartment to recover communications between Madam X and Mrs. Harding and accidentally found letters from Dr. Charles E. Sawyer,†Harding’s physician, to the married woman. These he turned over to Mrs. Harding, who, he says, was scandalized at having the White House desecrated.

He tells of being summoned to the H Street house early one morning after a wild party at which a girl had been seriously injured by a crack on the head from a bottle. “I saw,” writes Means, “President Harding leaning against the mantel. He looked bewildered.” Means carried the unconscious girl to a hospital, where, the inference is, she died. This affair, says Means, led him to knowledge of what Jess Smith called “the President’s philandering gaieties”—and the name of Nan Britton, a Marion, Ohio, girl, 30 years Harding’s junior.

Means, according to his story, was summoned later to the White House by Mrs. Harding who said:

“Warren Harding has had a very ugly affair with a girl named Nan Britton— I want you to find out just when their improper relations began.”*

On these orders Means says he went to Chicago, artfully ransacking the girl’s sister’s apartment until he found Nan Britton’s diaries and letters from Harding.

These he claims he eventually turned over to Mrs. Harding, confirming her worst fears, precipitating a White House scene. Means was next sent to secure Harding presents to the mother and daughter and bring them back to Mrs. Harding, evidence to confront her husband with his alleged infidelity. On Mrs. Harding’s order, Means declares he investigated President Harding’s capacity as a father and Nan Britton’s past life. He reported that a specialist said Harding could have had children, that Nan Britton had had no other known lovers.

When Harding was faced with this evidence, Means reports that a terrific family explosion ensued, with the President shaking a reproachful finger at Means, a clenched fist at Mrs. Harding. It was for spying on the President, Means says, that he was discharged from the Department of Justice.

Means declares that Mrs. Harding, feeling that her ambition and energy had made her husband President, said: “My love for Warren Harding has turned to hate. I hate him with a hatred greater than my former love. … He deserves to die. He is not fit to live.”

The Hardings went to Alaska in June 1923, returned to San Francisco where on Aug. 3 President Harding died suddenly after a five-day illness from ptomaine poisoning. Confused to this day is the account of who was actually present at his death. According to Means, Dr. Sawyer had left the sick room while the nurses had also been sent away. When Mrs. Harding returned to Washington with her husband’s body Means says she summoned him and said: “I was alone with the President . . . only about ten minutes. It was time for his medicine. … I gave it to him. He drank it. He lay back on the pillows. Suddenly he opened his eyes wide and looked straight into my face. . . . Yes, I think he knew. He sighed and turned his head away. . . . After a few minutes I called for help. . . . Can I prevent an autopsy? . . Warren Harding died—in honor. Had he lived 24 hours longer, he might have been impeached.†… I have no regrets. . . . I have fulfilled my destiny.”

No autopsy was performed on the Harding body.

*The Strange Death of President Harding— Gaston B. Means, as told to May Dixon Thacker— Guild Publishing Corp. ($3.50).

†Daugherty, now living in seclusion at Columbus, Ohio, periodically announces he will write a book to clear his reputation.

**The coroner’s verdict was suicide from a pistol shot through the head. Senators have charged that he was murdered by the Gang.

*Mal Daugherty, brother of Harry Daugherty, had a bank there. When the Senate sought its deposit records, investigators found they had been burned.

†Dr. Sawyer died in 1924.

*In 1927 was published The President’s Daughter by Nan Britton, in which she claimed to have borne Harding a daughter. She asked his kin to aid her. In 1928 one Joseph de Barthe published a book, The Answer, attempting to prove that Harding was sterile, hence incapable of paternity, hence not the father of Nan Britton’s daughter. The Hardings had no children. Mrs. Harding, by her first marriage, was a mother.

†An error or slip. Congress was not in session during the summer of 1923. The scandals of the Harding Administration did not break in the Senate until the spring of 1924.