4pQonT

334 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
sternly. "Who's putting you up to go around talking to these
Congressmen about getting him out?"
"Getting paid pretty well for it, aren't you?" said the first agent.
This barrage continued for some minutes without my being able to
edge in with a word of response.
"We'll be back to see ya in a couple of days," the first agent
said. "Meanwhile, better be careful." I took this to mean "Stay
away from Pound." I decided against reporting this incident to
him, and during a lull the next day, I casually asked Dorothy
Pound if she were bothered much by F.B.I, agents.
"Well, I really don't know," she answered with her charming
laugh. "There's all sorts of queer people hanging 'round my
place."
One of my fellow students at the Institute of Contemporary Arts
was a nephew of Senator Robert Taft. I took the nephew out to
see Pound in order to convince him that he was sane and should be
released. The nephew then took me to see the Senator. At that
time, Taft was contending with Eisenhower for the Presidential
nomination, and he was afraid to speak up for Pound. He promised
to do something later on, but he never did.
I then brought in an attorney from New Jersey, Edward A.
Fleckenstein, who had been prominent in German relief work
after the war. He had been deported from Germany only a few
months before, on a charge of making a speech in which he
favorably mentioned Senator Joseph McCarthy. The action was
taken at the request of the U.S. High Commissioner to Germany,
James Conant. This ubiquitous "liberal" was one of the advisors
who persuaded President Truman to drop the atom bomb upon a
Japan that was already suing for peace, thus paving the way for a
self-righteous Russia to drop one upon us at some future date.
Pound was not pleased at the intervention of Fleckenstein. For
the first time, he told me that he was not interested in obtaining a
writ of habeas corpus, and that he no longer wished to see the
case tried. I was amazed to hear him say that the government
should drop the charges of treason, paving the way for his immediate
release from St. Elizabeths. It seemed incredible, after
hearing Vinson's and Clark's inside view of the case, that this