The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-08-18
By WESTBROOK PEGLER

cI A.Ao - 'AS~~ NS OWN p0A POSS
of making people think9
By WEsTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1945, by King Features Syndicate)
NEW YORK-Felix Frankfurter. in the
famous Ablative case, wrote that it is Ger.
nicious over simplification to hold that the
meaning of a law is plain because it's Ian
guage is plain. To be sure, old Vicente has
never been successfully charged with using
plain language and even in this dictum he
balled up his wordage in the true manner OF
Earl Browder but, if you use kind of mental
Braine you fetch up at the idea that he
wouldn't take any responsibility if he should
sit down and write some dish sheaf of
mash.notes and that if he should tell her, 81
am nuts about you,'' he could just as well
mean "you make me SICK" and probably
would.
Well, me, am otherwise when say
there is leak in the Supreme Court of the
United States I don't mean that there is no
leak. I mean that there is and that this same
leak if it isn't plugged might be used one CT
these days in some decision affecting the
stock market to let some gang of racketeers,
perhaps bunch of communists pull off a
killing on the strength of tip from the in
side. They might even engineer panic.
This leak in the Supreme Court has been
made evident on two occasions, the latest one
being flat, unqualified foretelling of de-
cision which went in favor of the communist
conspiracy against the United States govern
ment plus an accurate list Of the justices
who dissented, weeks in advance Of the public
announcement of the decision.
My language is plain and means exactly
what it says when I say l neither believe
nor insinuate that old Vicente has been the
source Of this leakage However I have rea
son to suspect from past performances that
one Of the brethren is responsible. Moreover,
l can say that this has been called to the
attention of Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone
and of Representative Hatton Summers, of
Texas, the chairman of the Judiciary Com
mittee Of the House.
Not being privy to the affairs of the SUI
preme Court nor wanting to be, won't even
speculate as to whether Mr.. Stone has brought
it up in meeting and raised hell about it in
the privacy of the lodge. Our people don't
try to break into the privacy of the court,
or the Cabinet or the State Department,
either, for that matter, and decent editors
would reuse to jump the gun on court de-
cisions even If they did have pipelines into
the chambers. We feel that such news can
wait until it is announced in open court be-
cause this court has been debauched enough
already by politics and theology under the
new deal without our exploiting its degrad-
ton to complete the destruction of public con-
fdence in its integrity, and inasmuch as
fortune-telling is against the law and we won't
believe in it anyway, we lay off guessing
and speculation on the off-chance that it
might come true.
Well, so what can be done about It?
If this were any other government agency
even the State Department, where secrets OF
atomic power are stored, the FBI might be
1ol 10 nj,
another as charWoman, another as messen.
ger, and Sc forth, and maybe tap the phones
OF some Of the justices and plant listening
devices in their chambers and their homes
The FBI was called in, you remember, to
find out who was leaking confidential dpio
matte information at the State Department
and came up with a bunch of arrests, recent
ly followed by set of indictments.
But it does seem unthinkable to dc this TO
the Supreme Court because it occupies a po
sition OF the highest public trust and if you
go to spying on these men, how you feel
confident that the spies won't take advantage
OF their information? And the court, itself
could hardly call on the FBI for this service
because all the members would have to know
about it and you can't catch a leak if you
warn him that you are watching him. More
over, 1t just wouldn't be nice.
don't see just what the Judiciary Com
SOoAo
no suggestions. You could call every one of
the justices and every secretary and other
employee of the court and the guilty one
would be sure to say he never dunnit and
there you would be, right where you began
And there is no profit in calling on anyone
who deals in such information because you
would only advertise him or her, and the
traditional defense person cannot be COM
PEELED to betray a confidence would be in
voked even though the informant who gave
the confidence broke confidence himself in do
ing so.
1t might do some good to have speech
two in the House and Senate about it and
a public airing of specific instance in which
the mathematical probabilities against an &C
curate guess are SO great to discredit a
guess as the explanation. Anyway such stuff
is not presented as guess-work
Well, anyway, my language is plain and
my meaning just as plain when I say that
the United States Supreme Court has sprung
leak.