DODD HEARINGS START

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31091, 21 June 1966, Page 15

DODD HEARINGS START

(N.Z Press Assn.—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, June 20. The United States Senate’s bi - partisan ethics committee will begin hearings today on misconduct charges against Senator Thomas Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat. The charges were made by the Washington columnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. The hearings initially will be closed and will deal with only one phase of the charge —Senator Dodd's relations with Julius Klein, owner of a Chicago public relations firm and a registered agent for West German business interests. In setting the hearing date, the committee said witnesses will not be announced in advance.

Senator Dodd, a whitehaired 59-year-old Senator now in his second term, has expressed confidence the hearings •. ill demonstrate "the malicious untruth of the charges against me.” He requested the committee investigation, saying he had nothing to conceal, and has filed a 2m dollars libel suit against the columnists. Mr Klein, who is aged 65 and is a retired National Guard (state militia) majorgeneral, also predicting that the columnists* charges will be proven false, has denied

that Senator Dodd has ever been of any help to him in his business, nor had the Senator ever received any valuable gift from him, he said. “Errand Boy” Pearson and Anderson, in a series of columns, pictured Senator Dodd as “an errand boy” for Mr Klein, delivering Senate speeches ghost-written by Mr Klein, and as making a special trip to West Germany in 1964 to help Mr Klein retain his clients there. Among other things the columnists have charged—and Senator Dodd has denied—are that the Senator diverted campaign funds raised at testimonial dinners to his personal use without reporting the money as taxable income.