Again, Heflin

On May 30, 1923, Harry Micajah Daugherty, then Attorney General, had gone to visit President Harding at the White House. In his apartment at the Wardman Park Hotel, his private secretary heard a shot and a crash. Jesse Smith, a diabetes sufferer, Mr. Daugherty's man Friday, who had a desk but no official position in the Department of Justice, was found dead in the next room. A pistol lay on the floor beside him. He was pronounced a suicide. He had enjoyed life; why had he left it? Washington people said that ill health and imminent scandal had burdened his mind.

Last week when Senator Heflin of Alabama had become sufficiently steamed up commenting on the Fall-Doheny trial (see above), he kept going until he had run over the entire Harding coterie--including Jesse Smith. Said the heated Mr. Heflin: "Nobody else knew what he (Smith) knew and with him dead there was nobody to tell the story--so Jesse Smith was murdered."

Emory R. Buckner, U. S. District Attorney in New York, immediately demanded that Senator Heflin explain his murder charge, and began an investigation.

Two days later, Mr. Heflin again stood up in the Senate. He backed up his previous charges with more charges, quoted an old testimony of an Alabama bootlegger: " 'You know Secretary Mellon loaned the Republican National Committee $5,000,000 in 1920. Only $3,000,000 has been repaid. There is a deficit of $2,000,000. Jess Smith was charged with getting that money. The plan was to have the liquor men and the breweries contribute to this fund . . .' '

"That is one of the reasons," shouted Senator Heflin, "why they wanted to get rid of Jess Smith."