Broken by death and disgrace though the Ohio Gang is, memories of its high revels and rapacious graft from 1921 to 1923 still linger in the back eddies of Washington gossip. Never has the full story been told of the clique which came into power the day Warren Gamaliel
Harding entered the White House. Last week was published a book by one of the members, which, by purporting to throw new light on the Gang's activities, stirred old Washington memories, set the U. S. District Attorney's office to further belated investigating.*
The book's author, Gaston B. Means, was once a Secret Service investigator for the Department of Justice. Born in North Carolina about 45 years ago, he began his career as a detective at ten when he rode about the county eavesdropping on prospective jurors for his attorney-father. He entered the William J. Burns ("Eye That Never Sleeps") Detective Agency in 1910 as an undercover man. He served Captain Boy-Ed, German spy, for $1,000 per week. In 1917 he was tried for murdering a client, Mrs. Maude C. King; was acquitted. When in 1921 Burns became chief of the Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation, Means was hired there also, ostensibly for War fraud investigations, but really to block them. Discharged, he supplied the Senate investigating committee with much material with which to drive Harry Micajah Daugherty out of the Cabinet as Attorney General. About Washington Means had a shoddy, shifty reputation which was confirmed when he was convicted of a huge conspiracy against the Dry law and sent to Atlanta Penitentiary for three years. He emerged in 1928. Six feet tall, weighing 200 Ibs., Means has a bullet head, small bright eyes, an ingratiating smile, a round chin underhung with a fat neck. His ethics as an Investigator (his capitalization) are repugnant to ordinary citizens.
Means, in his book, tells of close professional services for and with the Ohio Gang, the group of political campfollowers, not all from Ohio, who swarmed into Washington at Harding's heels. Its members were the President's friends and playmates. They used him to shield their deviltry. The Gang supposedly centred around Daugherty in the Department of Justice.† Its active manager was Jess Smith, Daugherty's friend and roommate, onetime Ohio dry-goods clerk, whose body was found in his hotel room after he had threatened to "quit the racket."**
Other members included Thomas Woodnutt Miller, onetime Alien Property Custodian, convicted for fraud in the American Metals case; Col. Thomas B. Felder, deceased; Charles Forbes, convicted of fraud as Director of the Veterans Bureau. Socially its meeting places were a green house on K Street, near the Department of Justice, and a house on H Street, next to the old Shoreham Hotel which backed on the city home of Publisher Edward Beale McLean of the Washington Post, a big-hearted Harding friend.
The Gang's executive headquarters, according to Means, was at No. 903 16th St., a large comfortable house, rented for $1,000 per month where Means, drawing $83-33 per week as a U. S. investigator, lived with five servants, a car and chauffeur. In its backyard, Means claims, was concealed the gang's cash, sometimes $500,000, never less than $50,000. Later this money would be deposited in a bank at Washington Court House, Ohio.*