Target in the White House

The Republican hunt for Government insiders who may have profited by speculation reached into the White House this week. Flushed up on one of Agriculture Secretary Clinton Anderson's lists of grain traders was the name of Brigadier General Wallace Graham, the President's personal physician. He was listed as having market commitments covering 50,000 bushels of wheat during September (when Government purchases were heavy and grain prices were zooming).

Dr. Graham hastily explained that he had sold out and stayed out of the market immediately after Harry Truman had denounced speculators as the villains of inflation. But that explanation would probably not be enough for the House and Senate investigating committees, whose guns were primed for just such game. Compared with Harry Truman's friend Ed Pauley, who had 500,000 bushels of grain and a lot of other commodities (TIME, Dec. 22), the White House physician was a relatively small target, but he was probably in for some congressional pot-shooting, nevertheless.

Of the 2,050 traders so far listed by Anderson, Graham and Pauley were the only Administration big shots brought into the open. Of the 99 local, state and federal employees listed, most were minor functionaries. Three employees of the Agriculture Department were listed; none was close to grain-purchasing activities in Washington. There were a few dozen Army and Navy officers, none well known. Utah's bald, Democratic Governor Herbert B. Maw was in the market with 5,000 bushels of wheat.

Many of those on Anderson's lists represented normal market trading, there was a sprinkling of big operators, with no known Government connections. "But GOPresidential Candidate Harold Stassen peppered away at the Administration, accused it of withholding information and of creating "confusion and distraction . . . by a shower of irrelevant statistics."

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