The Pittsburgh Press (October 13, 1944)
O’Daniel charges probe is ‘smear’
Says facts about his paper are on record
Washington (UP) –
The Senate Campaign Expenditures Committee, now engaged in an informal study of the “Battle of the Statler,” headed toward a new controversy today, this time over the anti-Roosevelt newspaper published by Senator W. Lee “Pass the Biscuits Pappy” O’Daniel (D-TX).
Chairman Theodore F. Green (D-RI), who has set Oct. 18 and 19 for public hearings into the W. Lee O’Daniel News, was asked by the Texas Senator to “stop smearing” him and to call off his “gumshoe investigators.”
O’Daniel charges ‘smear’
Declaring that Mr. Green’s job “is to smear, not investigate,” Mr. O’Daniel said all facts concerning his publication – subscriber lists, receipts, names of staff members and the paper’s backers – had been on public file with the Post Office Department for five months.
Mr. O’Daniel said:
If Green had been as interested in getting the facts as he was in smearing a United States Senator, he would have found all this out long ago, instead of making a mystery out of it and then passing it along to New Deal propaganda minister Drew Pearson to broadcast on the radio.
No decision on tussle
Mr. Green told reporters that there was still no decision on whether the Committee would hold public hearings into the tussle that took place at the Statler Hotel here shortly after President Roosevelt’s address to the AFL Teamsters Union Sept. 23. Two naval officers and reportedly members of the union were the principals.
Committee Counsel Robert T. Murphy is now in New York hoping to see Daniel Tobin, president of the Teamsters, Mr. Green said. The chairman refused to comment on reports that the officers involved were intoxicated.