Salt Lake Telegram | 1939-12-12 | Page 6 | Silver Shirt Mystery

Silver Shirt Mystery Pelley, Leader of Fascist Group, Missing Br BRUCE CATTON WASHINGTON William Dudley Pelley, head of the Silver Sil-ver Shirts, will be the next target tar-get of the Diet committee if the committee can only find him. Just before leaving for Texas to take an enforced rest necessitated neces-sitated by overwork. Chairman Martin Dies appointed a special subcommittee consisting of Congressmen Con-gressmen Jerry Voohis, Joseph Casey and J. Parnell Thomas to quiz Pelley about various ramifications ramifi-cations e his career as Silver Shirts leader. The subcommittees Job may be a tough one. however, for at the moment no one knows where Pelley can be found. The Dies committee has been trying for weeks to locate him. Oel False Tips on Pelley Twice its own Investigators have flown to Asheville, N. C, to serve him with subpena, only to learn that the tips which said he was there were false. The U. S. marshal there has made a number of attempts to serve a Dies subpena on him, without success. Since the committee has but three investigators on its staff, andwiUjoouLJfexitence.Jt ""the end of the year, Mr. Voorhis and his colleagues have been given a tough Job. - 1 In the end, whether Plly appears before the committee probably will depend on the department of justice. Both Dies and Voorhis point out that the committee is not equipped to dig up missing persons, and a formal for-mal request for help will be made of the justice department If justice puts some G-men on the trail, Pelley may be found. If not, there isn't much the iDes committee can do. Dies at Odds with Murphy Relations between the justice department and the committee have not been exactly cordial, to date. Last year the committee brought out evidence severely critical of Attorney General Murphy's Mur-phy's conduct as governor of Michigan during the auto strikes. More recently, there has been come disagreement about whether wheth-er membership In the Communist Commu-nist party proves a person is an agent of a foreign power, with Mr. Dies taking the affirmative and Mr. Murphy the negative. The present situation may be helped in that the request for aid will be made by Mr. Voorhis. Voor-his. who is on much more friendly friend-ly terms with the administration than is the chairman of the committee. com-mittee. In any case, both Dies and Voorhis are very anxious to nave Pelley appear for qeustioning. Would Quit Leader en Sliver Shirt Funds The committee has compiled a good deal of material about Pelley. For one thing, It wants to quiz him about the disposition of funds he collected as head of the Silver Shirts. It also wants to examine him about the source of material published In his magazine, with an eye to determining deter-mining whether any of it (as trfe committee suspects) came from Germany. Lastly, it wants to make a full study of the organization, extent and- affiliations of the Silver Shirts. Both Pelley and the Silver Shirts have been mentioned at various times in testimony before be-fore the Dies committee, although al-though so far no definite tie linking link-ing his group to any of the leading fascist-type organizations in America has been turned up. Members of the committee say they have enough material and sufficient "leads" from work done thus far. so their questioning question-ing of Pelley when and if he is produced will not be in the nature na-ture of a blind fishing expedition.