F.b.i. Never Got Warrant to Seek Pelley, Justice Department Asserts

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is not now, nor has it ever been, searching for William Dudley Pelley, the Department of Justice announced this afternoon. The Justice Department said it had never received from the Dies Committee any warrants or citations for contempt which would entitle it to hunt the anti-Semitic publisher.

The statement stunned Rep. Jerry Voorhis, young Congressman who had been head of a special subcommittee entrusted with the hunt for Pelley. Voorhis said that he had personally requested Attorney General Frank Murphy to find Pelley and that he had signed a letter setting forth the complaints against Pelley, which he presumed was sent to the department.

No record of this letter has been found by the Department. Voorhis said that the letter was prepared in the offices of the Dies Committee, on committee stationary, under the direction of Rhea Whitley, the committee counsel. He himself did not see the letter mailed, he said.

For months it has been presumed, and often announced by Dies Committee members, that the “G-men” had joined North Carolina State authorities and the Dies committee in the hunt for Pelley.

Meanwhile, Rep. Frank E. Hook (Dem.,Mich.) refused to appear at a secret session of the Dies Committee and place in the committee’s hands original copies of letters in his possession which he alleged linked Chairman Martin Dies with and the Christian Front. The purported letters written by Pelley intimated that Dies “would not go out of his way” to embarrass Pelley, Charles E. Coughlin, James True or other anti-Semites.

Hook rushed into the House press gallery late this afternoon to shout charges that the Dies Committee had tried to make him appear at a secret session but that he had refused. “I won’t go before any closed hearing,” he said. “I won’t present these letters until there is an open hearing with Dies himself presiding. I don’t want Dies to have the chance to make some statement down in Orange, Texas, that the letters are forgeries.”

The closed hearing was called today by Rep. Joseph Starnes (Dem.,Ala.), with all other members of the committee prepared to attend. The attitude of the members was that Hook’s charges reflected upon the entire committee.