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Share the Loot. It was principally Irey and his men who broke up Huey Long's gang, gave young District Attorney Tom Dewey the evidence with which to convict Beer Baron Waxie Gordon, jailed Johnny Torrio (who proposed a deal: "Leave us cut out the shooting, boys, there's enough here for everybody"), broke the Lindbergh case and busted up the Pendergast machine.
Except for the Lindbergh case, in which Irey got Hauptmann by tracing registered ransom bills, the technique was always much the same: to determine the size of the gangster's loot, then match it against his income-tax returns. By 1940, Irey had uncovered $476,573,129 in tax deficiencies (the Philadelphia Inquirer's late Publisher Moe Annenberg made the largest single contribution to the Treasury: $8,000,000). At one time nearly two-thirds of all federal prisoners were men jailed as a result of Irey's patient, adding-machine methods.
The Tax Dodgers should be required reading in civics and political science classes throughout the U.S. Few books provide such detailed proof of the breakdown of political morality in the face of bribery and corruption. Irey, who wasn't greatly surprised by the rottenness he uncovered, found "something impressive about Mr. Truman's devotion to his larcenous constituent," Missouri's Tom Pendergast. Says Irey flatly: "Mr. Truman, then Senator Truman, used every bit of pressure that his office legally permitted to keep Pendergast out of jail."