Tommy the Cork; the secret world of Washington's first modern lobbyist.

• Author: Lichtman, Allan J.
• Position: Thomas G. Corcoran

TOMMY THE CORK

THE SECRET WORLD OF WASHINGTON'S FIRST MODERN LOBBYIST

"I know the corners of this town in thedark,' boasted Thomas G. Corcoran, Washington's premier lobbyist, in a private phone coversation in 1945. His words are preserved today because Harry S. Truman had the FBI tap into the corners of Corcoran's Washington, recording conversations held on the power broker's home and office phones.

Corcoran, nicknamed "Tommy the Cork' byFranklin Roosevelt, had been FDR's chief political operative, guiding much of the New Deal legislation through Congress and serving as the President's primary deal maker and talent scout. He had joined Roosevelt's administration in 1933, seemingly an idealist recruited by Felix Frankfurter to help "cheat the cheaters.' But by 1941 Corcoran had embarked on a career that would gain him a more dubious distinction as the prototype modern lobbyist and influence peddler.

Truman apparently tapped Corcoran becausehe feared that several of FDR's former aides were plotting against his administration. In so doing, Truman and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who likely originated the idea for the taps, created the most extensive record of political surveillance in American history: 5,000 pages of wiretap transcripts, covering May 1945 through early 1947. They were deposited in the Truman Presidential library and opened to researchers two years after Corcoran's death in 1981.

The tapes provide a mini-course in the art ofWashington lobbying with lessons hidden behind every deal, the most important being that lobbying is not pulling strings--it's scrambling. Corcoran enlisted a Catholic bishop in one lobbying effort, and used the off-the-cuff words of a tipsy cabinet secretary in another. He plotted with a future Supreme Court justice to bribe a selective service official, and acted as real estate agent for a sitting Court justice. He helped a major company evade wartime quotas for soaps, drawing into the fray a half-dozen major government officials, party leaders, and businessmen.

At every step Corcoran searched for a way touse his former White House connections to cash in for himself, in one case personally profiting from the transformation of a United Nations relief effort into what later became the first CIA-backed airline--the forerunner of Southern Air Transport that shuttled Eugene Hasenfus and weapons to the contras.

Although Corcoran suspected his phonesmight be tapped, he spoke candidly of personalities and strategies, sometimes bluntly acknowledging the illegality of his efforts. The tapes even show a streak of anti-Semitism and a contempt for some of his former New Deal associates who had taken a different path.

The trail that Corcoran traveled seems well-beatennow: find a government job, develop expertise, then leave government to sell that expertise for a handsome profit. But it was Tommy Corcoran and a handful of other FDR aides who first applied that career strategy to the executive branch. They recognized that the mix of New Deal regulations and World War II foreign policy commitments had created an opening for savvy, well-connected lobbyists who focused not just on Congress, as they had in the past, but on federal agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Export-Import Bank. In the process, of course, Corcoran sometimes worked to undermine or exploit for personal gain the very laws and regulations that he and other New Dealers had helped establish. But as he said in a phone conversation in January 1946, "You can't luxuriate yourself in your personal friendships and your likes and dislikes and your senses of justice and injustice when you're playing in this racket.'

The little red house

Corcoran's path to political power began inPawtucket, Rhode Island, where his father headed the town's most prominent law firm. He attended Harvard Law School studying under Professor Felix Frankfurter, who later became a close adviser to Roosevelt and the leading advocate of an activist government. After a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Corcoran joined the prestigious Wall Street firm of Cotton and Franklin where he plunged into the practice of securities law.

In 1932, Cotton and Franklin loaned Corcoranto the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, an agency set up by Herbert Hoover to fight the Depression through loans to businesses and banks. Supposedly on temporary assignment, he would never again leave the nation's capital. In 1933, FDR's "Brain Trust' recruited him to help write and lobby for legislation governing the securities industry. Corcoran's behind-the-scenes maneuvering on behalf of New Deal legislation impressed both Frankfurter, by then a Roosevelt confidant, and the president himself. Although formally employed in a minor agency position, Corcoran was drawn into the inner circles of the White House, soon becoming FDR's all-purpose speechwriter, strategist, talent scout, and back-channel lobbyist. Corcoran's "Little Red House' in Georgetown became the town's leading communications center. Government officials, journalists, and businessmen swapped information and traded favors with Corcoran, creating the network of contacts that he would exploit in his private practice. Historian Cabell Phillips wrote that Corcoran and New Deal colleague and housemate Benjamin Cohen "constituted a sort of semi-autonomous fourth level of government.'

Yet by the time of Roosevelt's reelection in1940, Corcoran's seven years of scuffling with Congress and the press had transformed him into a political liability. He was blamed for Roosevelt's embarrassing political defeats with the 1937 plan to pack the Supreme Court and the 1938 efforts to purge conservatives from the party. The enemies he had made through his high-pressured lobbying style also blocked Corcoran's dream of becoming U.S. Solicitor General or under-secretary of the Navy, FDR's old job. Even ex-mentor Frankfurter came to believe that Corcoran lacked the discipline to put into practice the ideal of selfless public service.

The triple play

So in 1941 Corcoran began working as alawyer-lobbyist. Although he could no longer jolt senators and cabinet secretaries by crackling "this is Tommy Corcoran calling from the White House,' he could remain a manipulator of people and events and a permanent member of the in-crowd. In several of the deals captured on the tapes, Corcoran helped powerful individuals with problems that involved the government, often enlisting the help of important officials and cutting them in on potential profits from the case.

They show, for example, that in early 1946,Corcoran teamed up with Abe Fortas, former undersecretary of the Interior, later a Supreme Court Justice, and another New Dealer who used his government expertise for private gain. The tapes show them considering a plan to strike it rich by helping financier Serge Rubinstein avoid criminal prosecution for draft evasion and securities law violations. In a conversation recorded on January 27, 1946, Corcoran explained to Fortas that the wooing of a client had two stages...