Daily hansan
LAWRENCE. KANSAS
51st Year, No. 123
Tuesday, April 13, 1954
Files Opened In Investigation Of FHA Scandal
Washington —(U.P.)— Investigators dug into Federal Housing administration files today to smash a multi-million-dollar home and apartment loan scandal involving both Republican and Democratic administrations.
A well informed source revealed that President Eisenhower ordered seizure of the agency's files here and in field offices late yesterday after the FHA refused to open them for an investigation.
Albert M. Cole, housing and home finance agency chief and Hollyday's superior, disclosed the scandal yesterday and charged "gross negligence or collusion" by FHA officials. He said Hollyday had condoned "illegal employment."
FBI and additional special agents swarmed over the records seeking fresh evidence of wrong-doing under two Federal Housing programs. Under one program, many home owners have been "fleeced" by high pressure home improvement salesmen. Under the other, FHA-insured loans have been made for $75,000,000 more than the cost of the projects.
Mr. Cole did not identify the others involved but said "most" top FHA officials are under scrutiny. He said some of the cases being investigated go back to the Truman administration and that "some" were in the Eisenhower administration.
Mr. Eisenhower ousted FHA Chief Guy T. O., Hollyday to make way for a full scale investigation of the agency's operations, Hollyday, an Eisenhower appointee, said he was still "most enthusiastic" about the administration but refused to comment on his ouster.
but the truth of the agency who, he said, face "criminal" prosecution.
Mr. Cole said there are 12 top officials of the agency, some hold-overs from the Truman administration or earlier. Mr. Cole upheld approval of the resignation of one of them—Assistant Commissioner Clyde L. Powell—to determine if he is involved in the scandal. Mr. Powell, who decided to quit after 20 years with FHA, denied any knowledge of wrong-doing and blamed his resignation on "politics."
Mr. Cole said the Justice department has already begun prosecution in some cases of "serious irregularities and abuses" under the program's government insurance of loans to finance small home improvements.
an important source of reduced attorneys an area most ready to start action in other cases where exorbitant profits have been realized from excessive government-insured loans on apartment houses. But he said investigators have so far only "scratched the surface" in their look into this program.
Mr. Cole appointed Los Angeles Attorney William F. McKenna, a former congressional investigator, as deputy to direct the inquiry.
Weather
The Kansas weatherman said today "prospects for moisture continue unfavorable." U. S. Meteorologist
P. N. Eland said that toward t he end of the week there might be a little rain, however. Traces of drizzle were reported early today at Wichita a n d n Hutchinson. Kansas was in a slow warm-up to d ay that will continue tomorrow. A f-
WARMER.
termoon high readings should generally be in the 70s. The peak temperature Monday was 69 degrees at Hill City, Russell and Salina. This morning's low was 40 at Goodland
A characteristic 18th century drawing by Giovanni Agostina Ratti representing an "Allegory on Education" is the masterpiece of the month for April now on display at the Museum of Art.
The rococo drawing is a preparatory sketch for a fresco which Ratti, one of the leading north Italian painters of the 18th century, was commissioned to draw in the Jesuit school in Genoa, the Via Balbi. Enclosed in an ornamental frame, it was made to decorate a wall.
DORIS FLEESON
Museum Displays Ratti Drawing
Kansas State Historical Society Topeka, Ks.
The subject was to be didactic as well as decorative. In the lower zone of the picture, earnest and fatcheeked students dressed in knee breeches, jackets, and waistcoats, with their hair neatly powdered, struggled over the rocky road of learning.
Through their efforts they will reach the middle zone where great poets and thinkers of the past wait to help them on their way. Once acquainted with these great minds and with their creations, the students will be helped onward and upward* toward Parnassus, where Appollo, the god of art and learning, is seated among the nine Muses.
Doris Fleeson Chosen to Speak At Kansan Fete
Doris Fleeson, columnist for the Bell syndicate, will be the featured speaker at the annual University Daily Kansan Board dinner May 15.
Miss Fleeson was graduated from the University in 1923. She is a native of Sterling. She was a political reporter and Washington correspondent for the New York Daily News from 1927 to 1942 and served as a wan correspondent for Woman's Home Companion in 1943 and 1944. She has been the Washington correspondent with the Bell syndicate since 1945.
Miss Fleeson will receive the distinguished service citation of the Alumni association. The citation was voted last summer, but Miss Fleeson has been unable to receive the award until now. The distinguished service citation is an honorary degree, which the University does not grant.
The dinner will be held in the Student Union ballroom. Honors to outstanding students in journalism will be announced at the banquet and certificates awarded for the best work in the various departments of the Daily Kansan will be given. Again this year the William Allen White Foundation will give $50 for the top editorial work.
She has twice been awarded the New York newspaperwoman's club prize for distinguished reporting, The Theta Sigma Phi Headliner award was given to her in 1950 and she received the Distinguished Service Award from the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1951.
Her recent awards include the Missouri Honor Award for Distinguished Service in Journalism last May. Mary Fleeson gave the first Grosman Memorial Lecture at the University of Colorado last year and received an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature from Culver-Stockton college, Canton, Mo.
Miss Fleeson is regarded as the top woman columnist and is one of the leading journalistic figures on the Washington scene.
The Kansan Board dinner is being held in conjunction with the conference and between 300 and 400 are expected for the dinner.
An author who has published 10 novels besides poems, short stories, and sketches in Russian, French, and English, will visit the University next week and will give the fifth Humanities Series lecture at 8 p.m. Tuesday. April 20 in Fraser theater.
Former Russian Noble To Give Humanities Talk
One of his books is a critical biography of Nikolai Gogol, the Russian novelist and dramatist who wrote "The Inspector General."
Professor Nabokov, who is also an entomologist specializing in butterflies, will spend three days on the campus, speaking to classes and visiting with students and faculty.
He is Prof. Vladimir Nabokov, born into a Russian noble family, but now a naturalized American citizen and professor of Russian literature at Cornell university. His Humanities lecture, "Gogol-The Man and the Mask," will be the last in the 1953-54 series.
He received the American Academy of Arts and Letters award in 1951, and has twice held a Guggenheim fellowship for creative writing. He has made extensive lecture tours in the United States for the Institute of International Education, and has taught creative writing in several summer conferences. He was a research fellow in entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard from 1942 to 1948, and he has published in scientific journals at least 17 articles about butterflies.
To give students and faculty members an opportunity to hear him discuss his own work, the Humanities committee has arranged a tea and program for Monday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. April 19 in the Kansas room of the Union. Professor Nabokov will read from and discuss some of his poems, short stories, and sketches, many of which have been published in the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's magazines.
He was born in. St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1899. His father was a Liberal statesman who was elected to the first Duma created in 1905. One of his grandfathers was state minister of justice under Czar Alexander II, and the other was president of the Academy of Medicine. The family escaped from Russia in 1919 and lived in England, Germany, and France.
He was educated in a private school in St. Petersburg, and he later was graduated with honors at Cambridge in England.
Washington—(U.P.)The Atomic Energy commission has ordered famed scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer barred from all atomic work and secrets pending a new investigation of alleged Communist links.
Famed Scientist Suspended by AEC
1. He associated with Communists frequently during the early 1940s. His brother (Frank) was a Communist. His wife had been a Communist.
Dr. Oppenheimer, brilliant physicist who mastermined U.S. development of the A-bomb, was suspended as an AEC consultant Dec. 23 after he refused to resign in the face of the inquiry.
4. He failed for many months to report an attempt by an alleged Communist to get scientific information from him for the Soviet Union, although he rejected the attempt as "traitorous."
The action was disclosed last night only a few hours after an AEC security panel launched formal, secret hearings to determine whether the suspension should be made permanent.
The news struck the capital like a thunderbolt. It marked the first time that the loyalty of a U.S. scientist of Dr. Oppenheimer's imposing stature had been revealed under investigation.
2. He hired Communists or former Communists at Los Alamos during the war.
In suspending Mr. Oppenheimer, the AEC cited information indicating he associated with known Communists in the 1940s, once hired Communists or former Communists for an atomic project, opposed Homb development, and delayed reporting a Red attempt to get secrets from him although he called it "traiterous."
3. He gave contradictory testimony to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about attendance at Communist meetings in the early 1940s.
Most of the charges had been made before and Dr. Oppenheimer had been cleared. In a 43-page statement to the AEC last month, the 50-year-old atomic expert admitted some past associations with Communists but denied he ever was disloyal.
The letter suspending Dr. Oppenheimer was signed by Maj. Gen. K. D. Nichols, general manager of the AEC. It listed these specific charges:
5. He strongly opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb in 1949 and lobbed against it even after President Truman ordered the AEC to proceed with the project. At this time he was chairman of the Atomic Energy commission's general advisory committee.
In his letter, Dr. Oppenheimer assures the charges against him as follows:
1. He had associated with Communists because many of the objectives of the Cqmunist party in regard to humanitarian objectives engaged my interest. His wife had been a Communist. The influence of his brother Frank in recent years had been almost negative.
2. The program of recruitment for Los Alamos was massive and his primary objective was to get responsible scientists for the atomic installation Several scientists were mentioned as possible recruits although he believed their appointments were subject to security investigation.
3. His statements about Communist meetings were made to the best of his recollection. He recalled saying that he could not have been present at a closed meeting of the Communist party "because I was not a member of the party."
4. It has long been clear that he should have reported at once the incident reported as an attempt to get him to provide scientific information for the Soviet Union. He did not name the intermediary because of long-standing friendship and because "nothing would have led me to believe" he was actually seeking information.
5. He never urged anyone not to work on the hydrogen bomb project. His "opposition" to the hydrogen bomb consisted in being a member of the general advisory committee which unanimously opposed initiation by the United States of the program. He said this "opposition" ended once and for all when the President announced his decision to proceed with the program.
Ike Helps Open Baseball Season
President Eisenhower took a brief time out from his golfing activities today to toss out the first ball in Washington to open another major league baseball season.
And once again fans the nation over began to mull over batting average, runs batted in, earned runs, strikeouts, homers, et al, as the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers try to repeat as champions in the two leagues.
It was predicted that some 215,000 fans would see the eight games today, while many thousands were to watch the Yankee-Senator battle on television. That game is being televised here on Channel 5.
The day was forecast to be generally fair in the eight cities where activity was taking place today, but he lineups of the various squads were not so easy to pick.
Two Students To Visit Europe
The effects of machine controlled sucring, twisting and pulling on steel, paper and wood will be demonstrated by the applied mechanics department as part of its exhibit in the Engineering Exhibition.
Two University of Kansas students, Barbara Becker, education junior, and Joan Reed, college junior, have been accepted to travel in Austria and Switzerland as participants in the Experiment in International Living, for the summer.
Miss Becker will be in Austria, and Miss Reed in Switzerland Under the Experiment plan, which is a non-profit student travel organization, they will stay in one country and know it well, rather than travel all over Europe.
Exposition to Show Crushing Machines
The girls will spend one month living with families in a single community. They will share in everyday family life and visit nearby points of interest. To round out their experience within the country, they will spend the second month exploring the country.
Visitors will see machines that twist, bend and crush materials to reveal their strength and composition.
Films to Be Shown In Museum of Art
Four films will comprise the third set of the Films of Art series at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the lecture room of the Museum of Art. The films, presented by the Museum of Art, are "Il Demoniaco nell'Arte," "The Earthly Paradise of 'Hieronymus Bosch,'" "The Glory of Goya," and "Be Gone, Dull Care."
"The first three films have to do with the fantastic and sometimes also supernatural aspects of art," said Edward Maser, museum curator. The fourth deals with designs drawn directly on film. It is shown with a jazz accompaniment.
E. R. Elbel Receives Award
E. R. Elbel, professor of physical education and director of the Veterans Bureau, was one of eight persons who received an honor award for "outstanding contributions to physical education" at the convention of the Central District Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation in Lincoln, Neb., last week. Mr. Elbel is secretary-treasurer of the association.