Third Sunday after Trinity. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” In the white-walled country church in Virginia, the bronzed preacher recalls the evidence that the devil is still very much with us—Hitler and six million Jews, the “Vietcongolese,” the napalm, Stalin’s purges, Adam Clayton Powell and “in the Senate, we have Senator Dodd whose financial dealings are subject to the severest question. .. .” What is Thomas Joseph Dodd doing in this squalid company? How does it come about that a two-term United States senator, a respected liberal Democrat at home, a perceptive and pugnacious analyst of the Communist threat at large, should be precipitately and passionately denounced as a swindler, a con man and a common thief? The answer is a sad paradigm of the misuse of the mass media. Senator Strom Thurmond said Dodd “had suffered from the prejudgment of the press. Seldom has there been such a case of malicious slander in the nation.” But it was more than this. For the Dodd case shows how it becomes almost impossible to rebut or to judge fairly accusations which have been constantly repeated on television and in the newspapers, particularly when the evidence is extremely complex and narrowly balanced. The Senate did its utmost to act as a just judge and jury. No assembly in the world could have tried harder. And yet in the end, the pressures—of public opinion, of the media, of ineradicably preformed ideas in the senators’ own minds— were probably too much for them. No bad thing for a public body to enforce stern rules on its members. But on this occasion the senators were bound to feel that an acquittal would not only be a slap in the eye for their own Ethics Committee but would also lower public confidence in the Senate. If Dodd was let off, it would only go to show that the Senate was just a cosy club which looked after its own. But was Dodd guilty? Well, no smoke without fire, you know. . .
A bright June morning. Lilies bloom round the gleaming Capitol. In the Senate Chamber, John Cornelius Stennis (D., Miss.) rises to propose Senate Resolution 112. Stennis, a veteran of the McCarthy censure, is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Standards and Conduct, vulgarly known as the Ethics Committee. On each senator’s desk: the two green volumes of evidence totaling 1164 pages plus the thirty-page report. In the buttonhole of Senator Sam Ervin’s sky-blue jacket: a red carnation. But the 83 senators present— unheard-of attendance called forth by an extraordinary situation—are not in festive mood. Stennis reminds them that the matter is no longer in the hands of the six Committee members: “It rests in the bosom of the Senate.” The Senate looks distinctly uncomfortable at being landed with this awkward burden. Sen. Res. 112 must be quoted in full, for its florid phrasing conceals more procedural thorns than any rose: “Resolved, that it is the judgment of the Senate that the Senator from Connecticut, Thomas J. Dodd, for having engaged in a course of conduct over a period of five years from 1961 to 1965 of exercising the influence and power of his office as a United States Senator, as shown by the conclusions in the Investigation by the Select Committee on Standards and Conduct, “(a) to obtain, and use for his personal benefit, funds from the public through political testimonials and a political campaign, and “(b) to request and accept reimbursements for expenses from both the Senate and private organizations for the same travel, “deserves the censure of the Senate; and he is so censured for his conduct, which is contrary to accepted morals, derogates from the public trust expected of a Senator; and tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.” Harsh language, but arguably no harsher than would be justified if the charges can be proved. Stennis in a flat, blaring voice and with expansive rotating gestures defines the charges more precisely. At this stage he attempts to be rigorously fair. Later, when the Committee’s methods are questioned, he becomes somewhat plaintive and self-justifying. He claims that he is not prosecuting, but protecting what the Committee believes to be the truth. But inevitably he is cast in the prosecutor’s role. Stennis is not condemning testimonial dinners as such, he insists; the charges relate solely to the use of the money, “raised under all the banners and trappings of political campaigning.” The public was not “advised” of the purpose of the events. Newspapers at the time uniformly reported that the idea was to raise funds for Senator Dodd’s campaign. The dinners were organized by Dodd’s staff and by prominent Connecticut politicos. Dodd’s treasurer mingled the money raised at the dinners with the campaign funds. All the circumstances of these affairs pointed to a political purpose. On the charges of double reimbursement of expenses (the so-called double-billing charge), the Stennis line is that the seven instances agreed on by Dodd and the Committee must be seen as “a planned operation amounting to a course of conduct’— in other words, that Dodd knew about the chicanery and acquiesced in it. This question of intent was to become crucial. Finally, Stennis attempted to protect the Committee against one of the main howitzers of the defense—that the allegations came from a tainted source. How could the senators censure one of their number on the basis of documents stolen from the Senator’s office by four faithless and illicitly amorous sacked employees of Dodd’s? How could the Senate accept the allegations of two unscrupulous columnists, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, against a senator of hitherto unblemished character? Stennis sought to show that the Committee had not drunk at these poisoned wells, that their conclusions were based almost exclusively on the 116 clauses of the printed facts as stipulated between Dodd and. the Committee plus sworn supporting testimony which was undisputed by Senator Dodd. Two vital exceptions to this clean record emerged: 1. Dodd’s intent to double-bill rested almost solely on the word of Michael O’Hare, Dodd’s former bookkeeper and one of the faithless four. O’Hare’s bookkeeper-predecessors denied that the Senator had ever asked them to double-bill. 2. The most telling evidence that the testimonial functions were political came in a letter from Dodd to LBJ, thanking the then Vice President for offering to take part and saying “how much your visit will assist us in getting my campaign drive under way.” This letter, quoted by Senator Percy, was among the stolen files and did not come up at the hearings. Stennis concludes by asking for “a clear and unmistakable expression of disapproval. If we pass up this matter, then sometime, somewhere, something big will slip out of this chamber and a lesser standard or lesser role or lesser conduct will have to be accepted.” By sticking to the evidence and not overstating his case—he refused for example to accuse Dodd – of stealing or fraud, but only of “converting”—Stennis made about the best presentation of the Committee’s case. His colleagues were not always so restrained or so methodical. In the afternoon, Senator Wallace Bennett, the Committee’s vice-chairman, made a long-winded defense of the Committee’s methods. Bennett is a jovial tortoise-faced Mormon with an apparently insatiable passion for detail. Noticeably the keenest of the Committee members to get Dodd, Bennett was reluctant to concede the slightest point favorable to the accused. He mocked Dodd for having spent testimonial money on joining a country club and taking his staff to the races. At which point enter Senator Russell Billiu Long of Louisiana.
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