The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-01-09
INVESTIGATION
FALTERS when
LEADS T0LANE
Smirch on us. Embassy
Hastily Closed Over

WASHINGTON, Jan. S.-Who was
the man who framed the Hearst forg-
cries that sought to break off Amer
lean relations with Mexico, to embroil
the United States in a quarrel with
Japan, that charged senator's and edi-
tors in this country with receiving
huge sums as corrupt retainers from
President Gales, and that represent
ed Gales as backing worldwide red
plot with the Mexican treasury?
That question remained unanswer-
ed when the senate investigating COM
mittee recessed on Jan. after hear
ing testimony from various experts
that all the documents were clumsy
forgeries, that no Mexican funds were
sent to the United States as claimed
by Hearst, and that Consul General
Elias in New York never deposited
any such sums.
Sheffield Contradictory.
With obvious gentleness the COM
mittee had eased former Ambassador
Sheffield and former First Secretary
Lane of the American embassy at
Mexico City out of the field of in
quiry. Both officials had admitted
meeting Biguel Avila, who sold the
papers to Hearst. Sheffield's own
testimony had contradicted himself.
He had first professed that he had
not seen the documents in Mexico,
and then that he had seen some of
them and pronounced them to appear
genuine although he doubted the
statements they made.
Lane, testifying that John Page,
Hearst agent, came frequently to the
embassy with purported secret docu-
ments, denied having permitted Avila
to get documents for the embassy
when Avila offered to get them for
a price. Lane denied ever having
heard of the Pedro Gonzales whom
Avila named to the committee as the
source of his documents "stolen from
government files" And Lane denied
that he had agreed with Avila to
market an outline of a report on Mex
leo that Sheffield was to make to
Secretary Kellogg.
No Money Sent.
j. F. Bresnahan, from the auditors
office of the Western Union Tele-
graph Company, testified that search
of files of all messages from Mexico
in the period covered by the dates of
the alleged messages and transfers
of money published by Hearst showed
shat no such messages were sent and
no such sums, or amounts that would
include them, were transmitted.
Chairman Reed announced that the
banks reported that no such sums
were deposited to Consul General
Elias account. This testimony swept
away Hearst's latest claim-that even
if his documents were forgeries, still
the Mexican activities described in
them were actual occurrences-in-
trigues against the United States.
Ignorant Typist.
Avila, in test letter written in
Chairman Reeds office, used a comma
instead of period after an abbre-
waited word, in the same way that
this mistake appeared frequently in
many of the papers. Commander
Cusacks, naval intelligence officer re-
tired, Spanish language expert, tes-
titled that the forgeries seemed to
have been dictated to an ignorant per-
son who typed them in strangely IL
literate fashion. Thus the word
"closed" applied to the closing of
church doors and closing of banks, in
the documents, was so misspelled that
it came out as the word meaning
sawed" Even the name of Ambas-
sador Teller at Washington was
grossly misspelled in a purported let
ter from President Gales to his broth
er-in-law, Consul General Elias.