NEW YORK: Joey’s Pals

Flint-chinned Joseph Fay was a man of appalling power. As vice president of the A.F.L. International Union of Operating Engineers, bellicose Joey Fay bossed the building trades of the New York-New Jersey area for years, and labor leaders, industrialists and politicians paid him homage. (Once Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City welcomed him home from a European trip with a chartered boat and the Jersey City police band aboard.) But Joey got into trouble: in 1945 he and his pal Jim Bove, vice president of the Hod Carriers Union, got 7½-to-15-year prison stretches for conspiracy to extort $368,000 from contractors for New York City’s $300 million Delaware aqueduct. When the iron doors of Sing Sing clanked behind him, the public assumed it had heard the last of Joey for a long time. Last week it turned out that Fay had merely changed his business address.

Joey’s name bobbed up in the harness-racing scandal (TIME, Oct. 5). William De Koning, boss of the union whose members kicked back money in order to keep their jobs, was reported to be a faithful visitor at Joey Fay’s Sing Sing address. Reporters demanded a list of Joey’s other callers, got a shocking surprise. No fewer than 87 persons, many of them celebrated, had gone to see Joey.

Distinguished Guests. Topping the list was the name of Arthur Wicks. Republican majority leader in the State Senate, who had just been sworn in as acting lieutenant governor of New York. Also on the list was William F. Bleakley, a former state supreme court justice, onetime G.O.P. candidate for the governorship and currently the counsel for the racketeer-ridden Yonkers Raceway.* Republican State Senator William Condon of Yonkers had a ready explanation for his visit: he had escorted A.F.L. President George Meany on a trip to see Extortionist Fay, hadn’t spoken a word during the visit. Although his name did not appear on the prison record, Meany acknowledged two trips to Sing Sing to see his old buddy.

Joey’s pals, the guest list revealed, were by no means confined to one party or profession. Other visitors included Democratic Mayor John Kenny of Jersey City, Louis Marciante, president of the New Jersey State Federation of Labor, Thomas Murray, president of the New York State Federation of Labor, George Levy, manager of Roosevelt Raceway, and former Democratic Mayor Meyer Ellenstein of Newark. Paul Troast, New Jersey construction tycoon and the G.O.P. candidate for governor, proved his friendship in another way: he had written to Governor Dewey in 1951, he admitted, to plead for a commutation for Joey.

Noble Causes. The bleats of innocence could be heard from Trenton to Albany. Nearly everyone, it seemed, had visited Joey on behalf of someone else or in the interest of some noble cause. The explanations tended to confirm reports that Fay was still firmly in command of the construction unions, that he was handing out jobs to “graduating” comrades at Sing Sing and to relatives of cooperative prison officials, and that he was masterminding the raceway shakedowns.

In fact, Acting Lieutenant Governor Wicks explained his visit by saying: “I never consulted or talked with Joseph Fay about anything else but labor conditions in the counties I represent . . . He is still a power in labor circles.” Said Governor Dewey: “I thoroughly disapprove.” “Public officials who have visited Fay owe the people a complete and satisfactory explanation.” Then Dewey transferred Fay to grim Clinton Prison at Dannemora, 245 miles farther upstate, and ordered a weekly report on his callers.

* Conditionally re-opened last week.