Henry Crown - Controversy

Controversy

In October, 1963, Syndicated columnist Drew Pearson published his Washington_Merry-Go-Round newspaper column titled, titled, "'Songbird' Was Murdered" reporting that U.S. Attorney General Tom C. Clark had assigned twelve FBI agents to provide protection to informer James M. Ragen in 1946 while they interrogated him in Chicago. After the FBI fact checked Ragen's statements, Tom Clark confirmed to Pearson that the facts learned from Ragen were true and the top echelon of the Chicago mob "led to very high places." The names of seemingly respected politicians and businessmen revealed by Ragen to the FBI were words familiar to every Chicago household and some believed they had reformed, but Pearson wrote, "Yet they still controlled the mob." Pearson added that Tom C. Clark's Justice Department had no federal jurisdiction to prosecute the suspects Ragen named and after completing their questioning of Ragen and verifying his claims, the FBI withdrew their protection of him.

In the book titled, "The Drew Pearson Diaries" published five years after Pearson died in 1969, his stepson, Tyler Abell compiled and edited information contained in Pearson's investigative files. Included in the book is the additional details Pearson said Tom C. Clark and J. Edgar Hoover had learned from Ragen.:

"...it led to very high places. J. Edgar Hoover intimated the same thing. He said the people Ragen pointed to had now reformed. I learned later that it pointed to the Hilton hotel chain, Henry Crown, the big Jewish financier in Chicago, and Walter Annenberg "

Tom C. Clark appointed Crown's son, John, as one of two of his 1956 Supreme Court session law clerks. In December 1963, Chief Justice Earl Warren, acting as head of the newly formed Presidential Commission investigating the death of President Kennedy, suggested that Henry Crown's attorney, Albert E. Jenner, Jr., who also, at that time employed Crown's son, John at Jenner's Chicago law firm, be appointed as a senior assistant Warren Commission counsel. Warren gave his fellow commissioners the names of two men who approved of Jenner's appointment, Tom C. Clark and Dean Acheson.

The Warren Commission appointment of Henry Crown'a attorney Albert E. Jenner, Jr. to investigate whether either Oswald or Ruby acted alone or conspired with others remains controversial.

Henry Crown and his close friend Sam Nanini, were reported in March 1977 to have had relationships with organized crime figures.

As Attorney General, Tom Clark was accused of impropriety in the early parole of convicted Chicago crime boss, Louis Campagna and three others. Sam Nanini wrote a letter in 1947 to the federal bureau of prisons advocating parole for Campagna.