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Code of Ethics. Flanked by two other lawyers, Bill Boyle strode confidently into the small third-floor Capitol committee room of the Senate Investigations subcommittee. For 20 minutes the photographers and newsreel cameramen hovered around him. He smiled a relaxed smile for the lenses, his broad Irish face showing few signs of his 49 years, except for an accordion-like rippling of chins. North Carolina's pale old Senator Clyde Hoey, Democratic chairman of the subcommittee, arrived promptly at hearing time, smiling and looking more than ever like Arthur Train's unforgettable Mr. Tutt in his dark frock coat and customary red boutonniere. Arkansas Democrat John McClellan waved a friendly greeting to Boyle before taking his seat, and Boyle gaily waved back. With a glance at the clock, Senator Hoey ordered the photographers back and rapped for order. Then, during a five hour session, Bill Boyle got a chance to explain his code of ethics.
"I never ask the Government agencies to do anything," he said solemnly. "I ask them to see a man, or a woman or a child. We never ask them to do anything." Then he added: "I would not want to assume that any Government employee would be influenced by any name. I never believed that people in Government were swayed. They just show courtesy to Senators and Representatives and people from the political committees . . . I feel that it is not only proper for the staff or officials of the Democratic National Committee to make . . . appointments [with officers of Government], but it is their duty to do so." But as for getting paid for this service, "If there was anyone associated with my committee today that I knew was doing that, I would terminate their employment.''
Did He Work or Not? Did Boyle make a clean break with his law practice when he moved from an unpaid to a paid job with the committee in 1949? Boyle says that he did, but the details have an odd look. His former law associate, Max Siskind, a sharp, self-possessed Brooklynite, last week told the Senate committee that he has paid Boyle $100,000 in installments at irregular periods over the last two years and owes him $50,000 more. The payments, Siskind said, were part of a settlement he made with Boyle when Boyle left the law office. There was no written agreement between them. They both admitted they would never let a client conduct a business agreement that way. And both of them reported the $100,000 on their income taxes as current items—i.e., not as acquisition of capital or outlay of capital.
The main implications of this deal were two. First, it was a highly irregular way for a lawyer to sell his practice, if that was the purpose. Usually when lawyers sell their practices, they do so because the buyer wants to use the old established firm name. Yet here was a situation where Bill Boyle's name was scraped off the door, and nobody was supposed to use it at all. Secondly, if Boyle really believed it was improper for a Democratic National Committee employee to represent a client for a fee, then he obviously couldn't have done any work on the cases he sold Siskind for $150,000. If he had not done any work, he was either defrauding Siskind—or getting paid enormous fees just for bringing the cases into the office when he was still the unsalaried boss of the National Committee.