“# By WILLIAM ALLAN Us DETROIT S. SENATE sub-committee in- Vv H . : of penning Wiretapping and bug- ag e’s Conversations by law Pecups In this city, learn- Wboy ‘be S$ abdomen and a pair » 00ts served to hide de- UP Conversations. Senate sub-committee - Edward v. Long, D. Concentrate on Detroit nes in Washington Peo eting by sub-com- tetappine co's of extensive use ne ais and electronic equip- ) agente frnal Revenue Service | Passing” op the Detroit police and this “itl. a information obtained by Pay Method to the Federal Ther ag tigation. } a that ot a mention by one AY home o etroit police bugged La Ikewise ¢ 4n internal security case a a She charges made by Team- : pttoit fat Y William Bufalino that 7 i Telep a FBI and the Michigan tk h listened Ompany bugged his re James mM on conversations Offa and Bufalino, : 0, becaus i lion © £0 to trial e Bufalino Ops, ABAinst “ya” The Pho : 0 wi = ‘apping by Detroit cops keds gy Pread that an expert who 4 tap henigan Bell, said he king former Detroit Gigs: in fouscided to : becaus Mittee i Of Wi Men Bell and the m . att oe George Edwards Ouis J.B his police super- al Cour oF erg. Edwards, now Organi reals judge, one ye \zer, denied he | in- Ys Said wh. “ When he told Berg of the 's hands to his head ’ My God’.” Mays said with a $3.5 mil- . IN THE LAND OF THE FREE he was told not to touch the device or tell anyone else about it. Berg and his brother, Deputy Supt. James an- nounced their retirement shortly after. Mays when he worked for Michi- gan Bell, maintained telephone equip- ment from 1948 to 1964 in police headquarters, Recorders Criminal Courts and Wayne County jail. At the same time, the “Senate committee learned he was also the paid electro- nics equipment installer for a crime syndicate here. The IRS ‘case of the abdomen and cowboy boots serving as a pickup concerns one Edward J. Vitale, an ex- convict, one time winner of the Irish Sweepstakes when he was in prison. A Detroit IRS agent, Geoffrey, told Senate investigators that Vitale was used in an attempt to pin a tax fraud on his former lawyer, Russell L. Swarthout, who was a municipal judge in Garden City, a Detroit sub- urb. Vitale owed the government $300,000 in income taxes. While in prison he won $140,000 in the Irish Sweepstakes and IRS men sought to lay their hands on it to help pay his tax bill. Vitale was attempting to hide his winnings. He made a ‘deal with IRS agents to prove tax fraud against Swarthout. IRS agents met with Vitale when he came out of jail and they told Senate investigators that to protect themselves in the Grand Motel where they met, they turned on a tape re- corder hidden under the bed. They rigged Vitale up with a tiny transmitter hidden in one of his cow- boy boots, a battery pack was hidden in the other and the antenna and microphone wires were placed in his pant legs. Vitale didn’t trust the IRS agents so he used the techniques they taught him and bugged the phone of chief U.S. district Attorney William Merrill. Those conversations, Vitale claims showed he was promised im- munity from prosecution. William DePugh, for 12 years a De- troit detective in the vice and narco- tics squad, told Sen. Long’s investi- gating committee that he participated in seven wiretaps. Most were. on gamblers and organized crime. “In one particular tap I established once and for all that there was a national crime syndicate. I turned over in my mind the significance of a conspiracy which reached all the way to the top officals in this coun- try.” That ended DePughs testimony. He now works for the Internal Reve- nue Service. Vincent W. Piersante, former chief of the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) was subpeonaed to appear. The CIB was made up of the one time Detroit police “Red Squad”, the labor detail, a section that handled peace and civil rights demonstrations and rallies. Recently Don Lobsinger, of the ultra-rightist “Breakthrough” vigilan- te crew here admitted on the witness stand in Recorders Court that he sup- plied information about peace, civil rights, left wing meetings and pictures to the ‘Special Investigation Squad.” This also is part of tht CIB. Piersante told the Senate’ sub- committee that wire-tapping and bug- ging used to be a daily function of the Detroit Police Department when he was there. Piersante said he favored Long’s Senate Bill 928 against wire- tapping. He put the finger on former police commissioner Edwards, now a federal judge, who was his chief when he was head of CIB by stating, “no detective bureau commander has the authority to wiretap. The decision must come from higher ups.” “Big Brother’ listens in Piersante admitted that the Michi- gan Bell electronics expert Elijah Mays had told him that he found evi- dence in 1962 that the then Superin- tendent of Police Louis Berg’s tele- phone wires were equipped to tap the phones of the then police commis- sioner George Edwards. Mays charg- ed that retired policeman Albert Nor- mali, communications specialist who did much of the police tapping of phones was the one who rigged up the tap on Edwards’ phone. Normali took the fifth amendment and was ex- cused. Piersante said he used on his own phone a “scrambler” to prevent it being tapped in police headquarters. Questioning by Sen. Long’s staff elicited the information from Detroit cops that 20 taps on phones of citi- zens were in operation between 1956 and 1962. Teamster Union attorney William Bufalino has a suit in which he charges one of these taps was on his phone and that the police, together with Department of Justice officials from the “Get Hoffa’’ department had a listening pots at 15415 Mack Ave- nue, Detroit. Piesante said he never went to lis- tening posts to pick up tapes or re- cordings or listen. Contradicting Piersante was Detec- tive Lt. Howard Gladue who admit- ted being involved in wiretapping, “Piersante came to the listening posts to pick up recording tapes or written summaries of overheard conversa- tions,” charged Gladue. The Senate committee also heard that a Detroit federal grand jury room was bugged and also a judge’s cham- ber. Chief Federal judge Ralph. Free- man told reporters he will bring it to the attention of and for discussion by the Federal bench. cy | —_ Lord Russell challenges Johnson ago Sir Ber- » World-renown- : : fe Scientist, : Mtern,;: ormation hear test oral tribunal af tm ; Vi rators n> against the &tnam, ¢, 0! War crimes in lice then he hos dene Tonner to U.S. pec Peg, eee Calling on him yore this tribunal ernm ~ Conduct of hi iomin iru H Tae er: digest of that let- by tf hr Ugho geal ee, €ar th Yo Mr ae Secre : lary of that the amar : a ae nam etoMages ys pare a any a d in ed in € full evi- Korea or World War II. These approach 1,500 tons daily... This war is like that waged by fascist Japan and nazi Germany in Southeast Asia - and Eastern Europe respec- tively. : The parallel is precise. Pre- sident Eisenhower made ex- plicit American purposes in 1953: “Now let us assume we lost Indo-China. If Indo-China goes, the tin and tungsten we “so greatly value would cease coming. We are after the cheapest way to prevent the occurrence of something ter- rible — the loss of our ability to get what we want from the riches of the land of the Indo- Chinese territory and free Southeast Asia.” Here, then, is the reason why the peoples of the world resist and the people of Viet- nam are now resisting. Here also is the reason why the torture and experimental weapons inflicted by you on Vietnam are grounds for sol- emn proceedings intended to examine this practice and to weigh the evidence of crimes against humanity in the pre- cise sense Jaid down at Nur- emberg. Justice Robert- Jackson of the United States Supreme Court said at Nuremberg: “The real complaining party at the bar is civilization. Civil- ization is asking whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with the crimes of such magnitude as Germany’s . . . Civilization ex- pects this tribunal to put the forces of international law, its precepts, its prohibitions and most of its sanctions on the side of peace.” This is the indictment against your government to- day. The relevance of it was also made clear by Justice Jackson: “No future lawyer under- taking to prosecute crimes against the peace of the world will have to face the argu- ment that the effort is unpre- cedented and, therefore, by inference, improper.” This tribunal rests for its legitimacy not only upon its public mandate, nor upon the eminence and internationally representative character of the members. The tribunal has a solemn antecedent in the Nuremberg proceedings. American Supreme Court Jus- tice Robert Jackson summa- rized the issue and stated the pasis of the present tribunal: “If certain acts and viola- tions of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to lay, down a rule of criminal con- duct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” Here, then, is the challenge before you: Will you appear before a wider justice than you recognize and risk a more profound condemnation than you may be able to un- derstand? _ “Sorry about your raise, Krumbum, but while you're down there you can shine up my shoes...” “Instead of a wage in- crease, the firm is allowing you to use it’s secret execu- tive tax evasion system...” April 21, 1967—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 5