Imperial Valley press., 1934-03-19
EDITORIAL PAGE
and
FEATURES
BEHIND THE 'FRONT.'

The following editorial, appearing in
today's San Diego Union, under the title
Behind The Front" gives clean cut
and convincing picture of the efforts
being made by the air companies to
snatch the chesnuts out of the fire in the
present airmail controversy.
By using Lindbergh as their front" i,
the air companies have sought to becloud
the issue, knowing full we'll that the un-
iversal popularity of the famous flyer
would provide a smoke screen under
which the disappearance of airmail files
and the conduct of Mr.. MacCracken,
would be forgotten
The editorial is reproduced here be-
cause we believe it to be an excellent pre-
sentation of true facts which should not
be overlooked in deciding who is right
and who is wrong in the airmail contro-
versy.
THE voice is Lindbergh'S voice, but
the words are the words of the airmai
promoters.
To get at the truth of Lindbergh's
complaint-the protest that the airmail
people were condemned and robbed of
their contracts without fair trial.
we must endeavor to leave Lindbergh's
fine personality out of the equation, and
consider his charges as impersonally as
we would if these airmail companies had
made them.
1t is true that the airmail people did
not have a courtroom trial before their
contracts were cancelled. But how much
unfairness was involved in that fact?
Who perpetrated the unfairneSS?
Let the record answer those questions.
The airmail people may have wanted
courtroom trial-probably did-but the
record shows that some highly influen-
tial members of their group did not want
a fair trial, in or out of a courtroom
The record shows, furthermore, that they
committed acts which made fair trial in
courtroom impossible.
Two men testified under oath before
senate committee that before Postmaster
General Brown left office he caused "a
drawers of correspondence to be burned
and that documents relating to airmail
contracts were in the batch. Later, Mr..
Brown-also under oath-testified that
he did not have in his possession certain
files which the committee wanted to see.
Later, still under oath. Mr.. Brown testi-
fled that he did have the files, after all
that they had been mysteriously inSln-
uated into his premises. He produced
the files, but testified that he could not
be sure that tney contained all the uOc-
uments originally contained in them.
A key witness at the inquiry, Mr.. Mac
Cracken, refused to exhibit certain files
to the senate committee, on the ground
that they concerned confidential trans
actions between lawyer and client. The
committee subpoenaed the files, but gave
Mr. MacCracken the courtesy of chance
to ask his clients permission to show
them without a court order Mr.. Mac
Cracker then proceeded to invite his
clients to come up and abstract the pa
pers they didn't care to have the senate
see. Two of them accepted the invita-
tion-visiting Mr.. MacCracken's office
melodramatically, by dead of night,
while snowstorm ragged
There were other episodes of the kind
and their net effect was to render fair
trial impossible. That was the effect,
and that was their purpose-and the
people who perpetrated these tricks
were airmail people None Of the docu-
ment burning was done by President
Roosevelt.
A courtroom trial, once the defendants
had destroyed any evidence that might
embarrass them, would have been fine