Speaker 1: Hey there, it's your host ed helms.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted
Speaker 1: to remind you that my brand new book is coming
Speaker 1: out on April twenty ninth. It's called Snaffo, The Definitive
Speaker 1: Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups, and you can pre
Speaker 1: order it right now at snaffoodashbook dot com. Trust me,
Speaker 1: if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
Speaker 1: It's got all the wild disasters spectacular face plants we
Speaker 1: just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker.
Speaker 1: I am also going on tour to celebrate that's right.
Speaker 1: I'm coming to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago,
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and my hometown Los Angeles. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q
Speaker 1: and A or dramatically read about a kiddie cat getting
Speaker 1: turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head
Speaker 1: to snaffoo dashbook dot com to pre order the book
Speaker 1: and check out all the tour details in day, or
Speaker 1: just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it, on with the chaos. This is Snaffoo Season
Speaker 1: three formula six previously on Snaffoo, Norris and Gettler finally
Speaker 1: got the nation's attention.
Speaker 3: You have the chief medical examiner of one of the
Speaker 3: most important American cities accusing the federal government of a
Speaker 3: planned program of extermination.
Speaker 1: The DRIs tried to shrug it off. You can't poison poison,
Speaker 1: but the backlash sent Mabel Walker Willebrandt packing. Hoover had
Speaker 1: no use for her any longer.
Speaker 2: She was kind of an irrelevancy.
Speaker 1: Support for prohibition was on the ropes only when possessing
Speaker 1: the instincts of a wild beast would desire to kill
Speaker 1: or make blind the man who takes a drink of liquor.
Speaker 1: James Duran, Prohibition Commissioner, is seated at a long table.
Speaker 1: Spread Out around him are accounting documents, charts, lists of
Speaker 1: warehouses across the country where industrial alcohol is stored. He's
Speaker 1: flanked by his staff. He's been pulled into a Congressional
Speaker 1: budget hearing for nineteen thirty. It ain't the c SPAN era,
Speaker 1: but you can practically see the sweat steaming up Duran's
Speaker 1: round glasses. Stories have been swirling in the press about
Speaker 1: the Bureau's violence, its corruption, its cruel and casual approach
Speaker 1: to mass poisoning, which means that when Duran sits down
Speaker 1: to talk about funding his agency, he finds himself in
Speaker 1: a defensive posture. Part Way through, the congressman from New York,
Speaker 1: deliciously named mister Robert Bacon, decides to make Duran answer
Speaker 1: the kinds of questions he usually ducks.
Speaker 4: You will recall fall there were a number of deaths
Speaker 4: in New York City due to wood alcohol poisoning.
Speaker 1: Yes, Sir Bacon presses him on whether or not the
Speaker 1: people in New York were killed by his formulas, the
Speaker 1: ones that pumped lethal toxins into the industrial alcohol supply.
Speaker 1: In other words, did he sacrifice these people on the
Speaker 1: altar of prohibition. Let me just say personally, I love
Speaker 1: this moment. It's like, yeah, we're finally going to get
Speaker 1: it all from the horse's mouth. I know we're back
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties, but the drama of this moment
Speaker 1: it's what I love about history. It's why we do
Speaker 1: this damn podcast. As Deborah Blum says, the last.
Speaker 3: Thing you want is for your people to be called
Speaker 3: murdering chemas in a congressional hearing.
Speaker 1: So true, Deborah, with the screws finally being put to Duran.
Speaker 1: Would citizens finally get answers for the deaths of their
Speaker 1: loved ones? Would Duran, or anyone else for that matter,
Speaker 1: finally be held accountable for the Treasury Department's deadly poisoning scheme.
Speaker 1: I'm at Helms and this is Snaffo, a show about
Speaker 1: history's greatest screw ups. This is season three, the story
Speaker 1: of Formula six. How prohibitions war on alcohol went so
Speaker 1: off the rails the government wound up poisoning its own people.
Speaker 1: In our final episode, James Durand faces a reckoning, first
Speaker 1: in Congress and then for his career. Along the way,
Speaker 1: his Prohibition boys finally catch George Cassidy, But that slippery
Speaker 1: George has one more trick up its sleeve. As the
Speaker 1: Great Depression pushes Prohibition off center stage, Charles Norris and
Speaker 1: Alexander get takes stock, and so do we. In the
Speaker 1: US Senate mailroom, a new clerk is sorting the day's
Speaker 1: incoming letters. It's the spring of nineteen thirty, another election year.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of mail flying in and out as senators
Speaker 1: coordinate their campaigns. But this new clerk can't stay focused
Speaker 1: on his work. He keeps looking up, watching the flow
Speaker 1: of people coming into the building. He's got his eyes
Speaker 1: peeled for one thing in particular. He's looking for a
Speaker 1: green hat. He's looking for George Cassidy, as George's son says.
Speaker 2: So this guy had it out for dad and he
Speaker 2: wanted on bad.
Speaker 1: The clerk job. It's a ruse, just a cover. The
Speaker 1: guy's name is Roger Butts, and he's a young prohibition
Speaker 1: agent on his first big assignment. He's just twenty years old,
Speaker 1: but he's been specially assigned to catch and I quote,
Speaker 1: the man in the green hat. You gotta admit your
Speaker 1: brand is strong when even the haters are using your handle.
Speaker 1: Duran's Prohibition Bureau is making one final play to bring
Speaker 1: him down. The mailroom charade goes on for a while,
Speaker 1: but just scanning government offices for suspicious behavior isn't getting
Speaker 1: him anywhere. So Butts gets off his duff and takes action.
Speaker 1: He starts asking around, say, do you know if.
Speaker 5: There's fella called the man in the green hat. I'm
Speaker 5: trying to get something for the holidays, to make a
Speaker 5: little whoopie yep.
Speaker 1: According to his own testimony, Butts is and I quote
Speaker 1: in search of some whiopie, one of those W words
Speaker 1: spelled with an H. I love those whiskey while what ever.
Speaker 1: Someone eventually obliges and introduces Butts to Cassidy. Two days
Speaker 1: later in the Senate stationary room, Butts squares George up
Speaker 1: and determines he matches the physical description he was given
Speaker 1: by the Prohibition Bureau. But on this day, Cassidy isn't
Speaker 1: supporting his typical green hat. He's dressed to the nines
Speaker 1: in a blue suit, but his hat is damn What
Speaker 1: a tricksteh. So Butts orders a fifth of gin. They
Speaker 1: shake hands, but Cassidy doesn't fall for the trap. Rather
Speaker 1: than deliver it to Butts personally, he passes the bottle
Speaker 1: off through a third party. No evidence, no gotcha. Butts
Speaker 1: tries again and again, but round after round, Cassidy is
Speaker 1: just a little too slick for him.
Speaker 5: Since Cassidy knew the House office building better than the
Speaker 5: agents did and understood the Senate's side, it was mighty
Speaker 5: hot to mislead him.
Speaker 1: Finally, Butts decides he needs to take a different approach.
Speaker 1: He corners a staffer for a senator he knows as
Speaker 1: a customer of Cassidys, and he reveals he's an undercover agent.
Speaker 5: The man was not surprised. He said he had been
Speaker 5: suspicious of me for some time.
Speaker 1: Suspicious or no. The man agreed to help Butts make
Speaker 1: the arrest. The staffer calls Cassidy to place in order,
Speaker 1: and George drives out to the parking lot of the
Speaker 1: Senate Building to make the drop.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if George let his guard down or what.
Speaker 1: Maybe this particular staffer was a regular someone he trusted.
Speaker 1: Regardless to George, it was just a normal day. As
Speaker 1: his son Fred says.
Speaker 2: He would have parked someplace close by.
Speaker 1: When suddenly prohibition officers surround his car. They grab him,
Speaker 1: pull him out. They popped the trunk and rummaged through
Speaker 1: his vehicle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was going in and he nabbed him.
Speaker 1: I think we can all see Butts smugs smile right.
Speaker 1: All that hard work is finally paying off. He got
Speaker 1: his man. But that smile fades because George is smart.
Speaker 1: No bottles on him, no liquor in the car. A
Speaker 1: trailing vehicle tries to pull away, and the prohibition agents
Speaker 1: realize Cassidy is leading a two car caravan, the liquors
Speaker 1: in the car behind him. Agents spring away from Cassidy
Speaker 1: to stop the second car. I imagine it from George's perspective.
Speaker 1: Pushed onto the hood of his car, officers grabbing his wrists.
Speaker 1: He's got to be hoping his accomplice can shift into
Speaker 1: reverse and peel out of there. But Butts and the
Speaker 1: other agents are too quick. The second driver can't maneuver.
Speaker 1: He stopped and dragged out. The search that follows turns
Speaker 1: up a mother load.
Speaker 2: He probably had, you know, half a dozen or more
Speaker 2: suitcases in the car.
Speaker 1: Butts says they nabbed at least six fifths of gin.
Speaker 1: George's mind must have been racing as Butts popped open
Speaker 1: the suitcases and counts the bottles. Was this finally it?
Speaker 5: For him?
Speaker 1: His wife at home? What would she do if he
Speaker 1: was in the slammer? Maybe he hoped he could skate
Speaker 1: by because of his two car plan. He's got deniability, right.
Speaker 1: They can't pin the liquor on him. But with the
Speaker 1: liquor in hand, Butts and the other agents turn their
Speaker 1: attention to George. When they go through his pockets, they
Speaker 1: pull out something even more incriminating than a hip flask.
Speaker 1: They get their hands on the key to his whole operation.
Speaker 1: A little black book. It's George's client list. It seems
Speaker 1: like many extra legal entrepreneurs before him. George took notes
Speaker 1: on his criminal enterprise, and it's clear from his ledger
Speaker 1: he's been bootlegging in Congress for a decade. The case
Speaker 1: was a slam dunk for butts in the bureau. When
Speaker 1: George went to trial, he found he was facing a
Speaker 1: year and a half in jail. That was bad enough,
Speaker 1: but then something else really got his dander up. As
Speaker 1: the court's decision came down, they ruled it was not
Speaker 1: a punishable crime for his m customers to purchase alcohol.
Speaker 1: In other words, while George was taking the fall, every
Speaker 1: gen guzzling senator preaching the good word of prohibition was
Speaker 1: effectively immune from charges. The law wasn't going to lay
Speaker 1: a finger on them.
Speaker 2: It was just a matter trying to catch them in
Speaker 2: such a way that it doesn't implicate high ups.
Speaker 1: So George decided, if the courts weren't going to give
Speaker 1: his sanctimonious customers their due, he would do it himself.
Speaker 7: Doctor Duran, are you familiar with the amendment providing that
Speaker 7: no industrial alcohol should be denatured by any material injurious
Speaker 7: to the human system, Yes, sir.
Speaker 1: Back In his budget hearing turned culture war interrogation, James
Speaker 1: Durant is fending off charges that he's been diabolically poisoning
Speaker 1: American drinkers and cackling behind his spindly fingers. Robert Bacon,
Speaker 1: the New York congressman asking the questions, wants to force
Speaker 1: Duran to admit mass poisoning through the denaturing program. But
Speaker 1: it's not just about that. He's trying to attack prohibition itself.
Speaker 1: So Bacon brings up a case where drinkers in upstate
Speaker 1: New York had tapped into a vat of methanol and
Speaker 1: dropped dead. He points the finger at Duran. This is you,
Speaker 1: This is your fault. These people died because of prohibition.
Speaker 1: Duran deflects, you will.
Speaker 4: Recall this fall, there were a number of deaths in
Speaker 4: New York City due to wood alcohol poisoning.
Speaker 1: Yes, Sir, Bacon's convinced these deaths came from industrial denaturants.
Speaker 1: Duran counters that the wood alcohol could have come from anywhere.
Speaker 1: These deaths by methanol aren't on him. In fact, since
Speaker 1: he's facing a Congress from New York. He pulls in
Speaker 1: the testimony of one famous New Yorker as evidence for
Speaker 1: his side. He brings in analysis from Alexander Gettler.
Speaker 8: The toxicologist of the City of New York, testified that
Speaker 8: the autopsies showed that pure wood alcohol only was found
Speaker 8: in the brain cells of the people who had died.
Speaker 8: It had no relation to the National Prohibition Act.
Speaker 1: Now, this moment is, for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: bananas because, as we know, if it weren't for prohibition,
Speaker 1: no one would be breaking into industrial warehouses to drink
Speaker 1: after shape ingredients. They could just walk down to the
Speaker 1: liquor store on the corner and pick up some gin.
Speaker 1: For Duran to say deaths like this had quote no
Speaker 1: relation to the National Prohibition Act, it's just well, it's
Speaker 1: an insult to anyone's basic intelligence.
Speaker 3: You know, Is he a trustworthy source, No, he's not
Speaker 3: a trustworthy source.
Speaker 1: To be clear, it's true in the case of these
Speaker 1: particular methanol deaths that Get's analysis showed they were killed
Speaker 1: by pure wood alcohol, not wood alcohol that was mixed
Speaker 1: into liquor. But Duran is using Getler's judgment of this
Speaker 1: one case to deflect from Norris and Gettler's bigger analysis
Speaker 1: that prohibition was causing people to turn to denatured alcohol
Speaker 1: and that it was poisoning them. And by the way,
Speaker 1: James Duran knows what he's doing. See behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: After the Christmas poisonings in nineteen twenty six, Duran must
Speaker 1: have gotten a little nervous. Could those deaths actually be
Speaker 1: his fault? He wrote directly to the New York Health
Speaker 1: Commissioner and asked for the city's data on the deaths.
Speaker 1: The commission wrote back, it is my belief that some
Speaker 1: of these deaths were due to methanol or other substances
Speaker 1: employed to denature alcohol. So Duran had it right there,
Speaker 1: in black and white. The New York Health Commissioner made
Speaker 1: the damning connection denaturing alcohol was killing people. But back
Speaker 1: in the present, now sitting in front of Congress, Duran
Speaker 1: has the audacity to tell the committee that Gettler's work
Speaker 1: exonerated him. It was a bold strategy. But then Duran
Speaker 1: was never going to just roll over.
Speaker 3: He's clearly defending their policies and saying, no, this wasn't us.
Speaker 3: My reaction is that's exactly what I would say if
Speaker 3: I was James Duran, which is deny all responsibility and
Speaker 3: wash his hands.
Speaker 1: I hate to be the bearer of bad news here,
Speaker 1: but this is a show about screw ups. Duran's gambit worked. Deny, evade, deflect.
Speaker 1: It's an old playbook, and Duran was a natural. It
Speaker 1: was practically a reflex for him.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is not going to be a confessional moment.
Speaker 1: And here's the real downer representative Bacon. He backed down.
Speaker 1: He asked a raft of questions, but at the key
Speaker 1: moment when he could have asked some you know, follow ups,
Speaker 1: he just kind of wilted. The hearing moved on. Just
Speaker 1: imagine Duran wiping his forehead with a silk hanky and
Speaker 1: allowing himself a sly satisfied smile. No handcuffs, no trial,
Speaker 1: just a little chit chat behind closed doors and a
Speaker 1: slick set of lies, and he was home free. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's so fracking insane. Do all the stuff we've talked about,
Speaker 1: hurt and poison and kill so many people and just
Speaker 1: walk away. The Prohibition Bureau was well aware that people
Speaker 1: were getting injured, even dying from drinking industrial chemicals. They
Speaker 1: knew the system in place to manage those chemicals was
Speaker 1: porous and corrupt. They knew it was getting out into
Speaker 1: bootleg liquor. They knew that denaturing industrial alcohol was not
Speaker 1: deterring people, and in fact, it was just killing them.
Speaker 1: The indifference to all of those deaths by Duran and
Speaker 1: the Dries in Congress was negligent at best. Personally, I'd
Speaker 1: go for cruel, reckless, and rooted in a callous disregard
Speaker 1: for human life. But even if Duran was able to
Speaker 1: smoothly lie his way out of this one moment of
Speaker 1: congressional accountability, not everyone was so easily fooled. Duran might
Speaker 1: deny the link, but after the public outcry from Norris
Speaker 1: and Getler's report, the American public was finally connecting the
Speaker 1: dots between national prohibition and people dying in their own
Speaker 1: towns and neighborhoods. And in nineteen thirty they got a
Speaker 1: little more affirmation from a bootlegger in a green hat,
Speaker 1: George Cassidy. As his case wound through the legal system,
Speaker 1: George made a connection a reporter at the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: I imagine him chatting with folks as he walked in
Speaker 1: and out of the courtroom. George was a colorful character,
Speaker 1: and this was a high profile bust. Some newshound was
Speaker 1: bound to catch him on a potty break. So that
Speaker 1: meant when the verdict came down and he was going
Speaker 1: to take the fall and no one else was going
Speaker 1: to pay any price at all, George knew exactly what
Speaker 1: to do. He was ready to tell his story. So,
Speaker 1: as Garrett Peck says, he gave the Post their first
Speaker 1: scoop of the century.
Speaker 9: At this point, a really great newspaper at the time
Speaker 9: as the Evening Star, and the Post is just this
Speaker 9: small arrival of the city, kind of a gossip newspaper.
Speaker 9: But they get this great scoop, and they asked Cassidy
Speaker 9: to spill the beans on Congress and he writes six
Speaker 9: front page articles.
Speaker 1: That's right, six front page articles each morning. People around
Speaker 1: the country waited with baited breath for the next installment
Speaker 1: of Old George's expose to land on newsstands. Will somebody
Speaker 1: please arrest me for bootlegging so I can get that
Speaker 1: kind of press anyway, Three weeks before people were set
Speaker 1: to cast their ballots in the nineteen thirty midterms, a
Speaker 1: bombshell landed that made voters reconsider witchbox to check extra
Speaker 1: extra Read all about it.
Speaker 6: The government's hypocrisy on prohibition.
Speaker 1: Exposed On October twenty third, nineteen thirty, George wrote, I.
Speaker 10: Saw a side of prohibition no one else has seen.
Speaker 10: I would say that four out of five Senators and
Speaker 10: Congressmen consume liquor, either at their offices or their homes.
Speaker 10: This is a conservative estimate.
Speaker 1: October twenty fourth, we would have a.
Speaker 10: Few rounds of drinks, sing a few songs, and have
Speaker 10: a general good time. And on the twenty fifth busiest day,
Speaker 10: I have a put into the House office build and
Speaker 10: I made forty seven calls on customers kept me hustling
Speaker 10: from the time the offices opened at three o'clock in
Speaker 10: the morning until well along in the evening. On occasions,
Speaker 10: I've heard members of the House and Senate making strong
Speaker 10: arguments on the floor the prohibition was being well enforced
Speaker 10: when I knew good stuff was being regularly delivered at
Speaker 10: their own offices.
Speaker 9: The Washington Post was a wet newspaper, and they knew
Speaker 9: exactly what they were doing, which was to embarrass the
Speaker 9: dry cause.
Speaker 1: What's black and white and wet all over? Yeah, a
Speaker 1: wet newspaper doesn't sound particularly threatening, but with this story,
Speaker 1: they were torching the dryes. It goes national.
Speaker 9: Other newspapers around the country are all reporting on this.
Speaker 1: This is a scandal, a good old DC scandal that
Speaker 1: couldn't have been more perfectly timed if you were a
Speaker 1: wet and gunning to kick prohibition to the curb.
Speaker 9: The last one of them was published one week before
Speaker 9: the midterm election in nineteen thirty.
Speaker 10: You can't blame these men for taking the same means
Speaker 10: of refreshment and relaxation other people enjoy. If there's any
Speaker 10: difference between members of Congress and other people in their
Speaker 10: personal habits and tastes, I didn't see it in ten
Speaker 10: years In and about Congress.
Speaker 1: As Fred Cassidy says, they didn't take any prisoners, and
Speaker 1: neither did The Washington Post. They followed the George Cassidy
Speaker 1: stories with another series from Butts himself, with headlines like.
Speaker 10: Prohibition in the Senate, Cassidy's arrest and caesarre of black
Speaker 10: book Bear five bucks.
Speaker 1: Okay, they definitely went for the Bear Butts thing, and
Speaker 1: God bless them for it. But of course, exposing the
Speaker 1: hypocrisy of the dries wasn't the only factor in the election,
Speaker 1: because in nineteen twenty nine it was.
Speaker 5: Panic sixteen and a half million shares of stock sold
Speaker 5: in a single day at any price.
Speaker 1: That frenzy set a wrecking ball through the economy.
Speaker 9: You have the collapse of the stock market, signaling the
Speaker 9: Great Depression. People are really getting cynical at this point.
Speaker 9: Who's just the worst economic catastrophe in our nation's history
Speaker 9: is absoutely unreal. And the Democrats seized on this. They're like, look,
Speaker 9: let's create jobs again, alcohol, let's do it. You know,
Speaker 9: you know, Cassidy had done a huge amount of damage
Speaker 9: here to the drys and people were all just like,
Speaker 9: we're done with this. Let's let's elect some wets and
Speaker 9: let's end this thing because it's not working.
Speaker 1: That November, the wets flooded the House, going from seventy
Speaker 1: six seats to one hundred and forty six. Republican states
Speaker 1: like Ohio and Illinois and Kansas flung aside dry Republicans
Speaker 1: for wet Democrats. As for the man who helped push
Speaker 1: the title wave, George Cassidy was behind bars, locked away,
Speaker 1: serving his time, well sort of.
Speaker 2: According to my mother and Hill, he never spent one
Speaker 2: full night in jail.
Speaker 9: He's sitting around, play with a ward and to play
Speaker 9: poker and whatnot.
Speaker 1: He was handed an eighteen month sentence at a jail
Speaker 1: about two blocks away from his house on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 2: So you go get dressed up in the morning, go
Speaker 2: into the jail, sign and go do his work in
Speaker 2: the jail. After his shift was over, he'd come back
Speaker 2: sign out.
Speaker 9: So they let him go home every night.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: Yes, the old George remas treatment a jail term fit
Speaker 1: for a king, King of the bootleggers, at least.
Speaker 9: As part of Cassie's Lee agreement. He tells the judge
Speaker 9: he will stop bootlegging. And by the way, I got
Speaker 9: his FBI folder, he did not stop bootlegging.
Speaker 1: And remember Cassidy's little black book, replete with the contact
Speaker 1: information of each and every one of his customers, every
Speaker 1: politician who secretly solicited bootlegged liquor. While the Treasury Department
Speaker 1: got their hands on that little book, James Duran and
Speaker 1: his bosses, So what did they do with this comprehensive
Speaker 1: list of every fat cat and hypocrite in Washington? Did
Speaker 1: Duran sneak into their offices and drip methanol into their whiskies. Well,
Speaker 1: of course not. But at least they cracked down on them, right,
Speaker 1: not a chance. In fact, they did the exact opposite.
Speaker 1: Every photocopied record of Cassidy's client list was tossed into
Speaker 1: a fire and burned. If George Cassidy got the treatment
Speaker 1: of a king, then the members of Congress were I
Speaker 1: don't know emperors. The point is, even when it's clear
Speaker 1: and emperor has no clothes, in the American old boy
Speaker 1: crony system, he can always count on a James Duran
Speaker 1: to cover his ass. After the nineteen thirties midterms, prohibition
Speaker 1: was really on the ropes. Alexander Getler and Charles Norris
Speaker 1: have spelled out the failures of the Prohibition Bureau's denaturing program.
Speaker 1: Cassidy exposed the dry politicians for what they were, hypocrites
Speaker 1: getting sloshed. James Durand's crew, having failed miserably in their
Speaker 1: poisoning campaign, were totally flailing.
Speaker 3: The strategy at the federal government was that we're running
Speaker 3: out of chemical options, Let's try everything.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty one, Duran's chemists rolled out another new
Speaker 1: formula for denaturing alcohol.
Speaker 3: Formula fifty nine B. Okay, now we've tried fifty eight.
Speaker 3: Maybe there was a fifty eight A. But there were
Speaker 3: dozens of these formulas, each with a different number, each
Speaker 3: with a different mix of things. This whole panorama of
Speaker 3: industrial chemistry gets thrown at the wall in this period,
Speaker 3: and then they kind of give up.
Speaker 1: It was like the government's heart just wasn't in the
Speaker 1: whole mass poisoning thing anymore. There were no more incendiary
Speaker 1: newspaper stories about new deadly formulas. Prohibition Bureau officials, the
Speaker 1: Treasury Department, they all simply quit talking about it. They
Speaker 1: started quietly backing away from the crime scene with a
Speaker 1: nothing to see here shrug, as if the killing of
Speaker 1: thousands of Americans never happened. Deborah spent years combing through
Speaker 1: reports from newspapers, medical examiners, insurance companies, and coroner offices
Speaker 1: and came to her best estimate on the final body count.
Speaker 3: I added up all the numbers to about ten thousand deaths.
Speaker 3: That number is the best estimate that I could come
Speaker 3: up with for every report I could find from that
Speaker 3: period in the nineteen twenties. What the actual number is
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think it's higher, but don't have
Speaker 3: that evidence, and I'm not sure anyone does.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen thirties, support for the dry cause crumbled.
Speaker 1: The violence of liquor raids played apart. If you're keeping track,
Speaker 1: that's Richard Hart and the other agents like him. Corruption
Speaker 1: at every level of enforcement played a part. Two big
Speaker 1: thanks to George Cassidy for dragging that one out into
Speaker 1: the open, and the outrage over the poisoning scheme that
Speaker 1: was a body blow to the support for prohibition. Gettler's
Speaker 1: research in Norris's Essay exposed just how callous, how morally
Speaker 1: indefensible prohibition enforcement had become by the time nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: two rolled around. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic candidate for president,
Speaker 1: declared that if elected, on day one of his presidency taps,
Speaker 1: we're going to be wide open once again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, candidate once for apeal.
Speaker 10: And I am confident that the United States America want.
Speaker 11: For a pail.
Speaker 1: You hear that one guy hollering, I love that guy.
Speaker 1: If my beer mug had been sitting empty in the
Speaker 1: cabinet for ten years, yeah, I'd be voting for that too.
Speaker 4: From this date on the eight ain't Amendment's doom. I
Speaker 4: pledge myself go a new deal for the American paper.
Speaker 1: On election night nineteen thirty two, Roosevelt won in a landslide.
Speaker 1: All you again, bum ugly again. As he addressed the nation,
Speaker 1: the banner behind him was adorned with his campaign slogan,
Speaker 1: happy days are here again. The American people had spoken.
Speaker 1: It was closing time on prohibition. The drinkers in Congress
Speaker 1: rushed to pass the twenty first Amendment.
Speaker 9: It goes right from Congress right to the states for ratification.
Speaker 9: The first aid that ratifies it is the crowd state
Speaker 9: of Michigan, an excellent beer state. I might add the
Speaker 9: Prohibition Amendment. The eighteenth Amendment took thirteen months to ratify.
Speaker 9: The twenty first Amendment. The repeal Amendment took eight months,
Speaker 9: one state after the next. It's just like dominoes. The
Speaker 9: ell just fell bop.
Speaker 1: The champagne brewers could brew again, bars could serve again,
Speaker 1: and that means everything's going back to normal.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, No, Prohibition had been an extremely violent mess. It
Speaker 1: had changed the American way of life. It hadn't stopped
Speaker 1: the drinking, but it had driven it underground, created black markets,
Speaker 1: destroyed legitimate businesses, the pre prohibition saloons, those immigrant living
Speaker 1: rooms at the heart of working class neighborhoods. They never
Speaker 1: really came back. And of course the real cost was
Speaker 1: in human lives people. So many people had been hurt
Speaker 1: and killed along the way. So you're probably wondering the
Speaker 1: same thing I'd been wondering the whole time. Was anyone
Speaker 1: actually going to answer for all of that? The boys
Speaker 1: in Washington already knew exactly who to pin the blame on,
Speaker 1: Mabel Walker wille Brandt. As time went on, they made
Speaker 1: her the figurehead of everything that went wrong with Prohibition enforcement.
Speaker 1: During her time as Assistant Attorney General. She had been
Speaker 1: the face of the law, even swapping burns with Al
Speaker 1: Smith on the campaign trail. Right, Not that we gotta
Speaker 1: feel sorry for her after everything she did, I mean,
Speaker 1: she gave a thumbs up to the KKK. You can't
Speaker 1: just brush right past that. But by pinning it all
Speaker 1: on her, they made Mabel escapegoat for the worst abuses
Speaker 1: of the Prohibition Bureau. All of the blood spilled, the
Speaker 1: whole pile of corpses they got dumped at Mabel's feet.
Speaker 1: Prohibition Porsche her fault by making Mabel Walker win Lebrant
Speaker 1: the fall gal. Everybody else got off scot free. Take
Speaker 1: Duran himself. He weaseled out of accountability for the way
Speaker 1: he ran the Prohibition Bureau and covered up for Congress.
Speaker 1: Then he stepped down as commissioner in nineteen thirty and
Speaker 1: went back behind the scenes. Behind the scenes position was
Speaker 1: drum roll please, Commissioner of Industrial Alcohol. Remember how the
Speaker 1: Prohibition Bureau got shifted over to the Department of Justice
Speaker 1: once Mabel was gone. Well, it was part of a
Speaker 1: big show by Congress to make it look like they
Speaker 1: were really changing things now. They passed the Prohibition Reorganization Act.
Speaker 1: Not only did it send prohibition policing over to the DOJ,
Speaker 1: but in its place, the Treasury established a new bureau,
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Industrial Alcohol. Duran was the new bureau's
Speaker 1: first employee. Once a commissioner, always a commissioner, I guess.
Speaker 1: In other words, with Duran having burned Cassidy's black Book,
Speaker 1: essentially covering Congress's ass, none of those guys we're gonna
Speaker 1: come after, Duran. But one year into the new job,
Speaker 1: that's definitely not the same as the old job, Duran
Speaker 1: published his first annual report. It's big news. He's finally
Speaker 1: reversing course on the whole denaturing thing.
Speaker 8: The Bureau adapted a new policy on January first, nineteen
Speaker 8: thirty one. It eliminated the use of wood alcohol. He
Speaker 8: revoked completely denatured alcohol Formula number one and replaced wood
Speaker 8: alcohol with a new non toxic dnature and developed after
Speaker 8: several months of intense research.
Speaker 1: And sadly, that's as close as we get to an admission.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, the wood alcohol we were using was bad.
Speaker 1: It killed people, but we're stopping all that and oh look,
Speaker 1: check it out. It turns out we can actually come
Speaker 1: up with a non toxic way of denaturing industrial alcohol.
Speaker 1: Who knew? Not sure? I really trust the guy after
Speaker 1: you know everything, and now he's got a pass. He's
Speaker 1: just passing the word along. Don't worry all that little
Speaker 1: poisoning snafoo, that won't happen again. To add one more
Speaker 1: olive to this already extremely dirty martini of a career,
Speaker 1: I bet you can guess what Duran did when liquor
Speaker 1: became legal again. He became a lobbyist for the country's
Speaker 1: biggest distillers, and he set out to fight against government
Speaker 1: regulation of alcohol. God damn, I mean you remember his
Speaker 1: wife was a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
Speaker 1: She was the one who wrote that book saying it
Speaker 1: was bad to even cook with alcohol. I'm dying to
Speaker 1: know what she thought when old honeymun turned around and
Speaker 1: started chilling for big liquor. And he wasn't the only one,
Speaker 1: which brings us, for one last time back to Mabel
Speaker 1: Walker will le Brandt. We left her falling off the
Speaker 1: tightrope in Washington, but let's just say she was also
Speaker 1: able to make a nice soft landing because, as Terry
Speaker 1: Winter says, when prohibition ended, she went to work for
Speaker 1: a wine company. It is like, yeah, these people. In fact,
Speaker 1: what makes it even crazier is that Mabel started working
Speaker 1: for this wine company before prohibition ended. I mean, does anyone,
Speaker 1: anyone have a single atom of genuine conviction. It's just
Speaker 1: also cynical. Not that Mabel made that her life's work either.
Speaker 1: She kept climbing from position to position. Eventually she became
Speaker 1: a lawyer for two other interesting industries, the airlines and
Speaker 1: oh wait, what's this the movies. Hey, that's what I do. Also,
Speaker 1: I got to say It's a little ironic that, of
Speaker 1: all the people to comment on what went wrong with prohibition,
Speaker 1: it may have been Mabel herself who put it best.
Speaker 11: The violence which has accompanied enforcement of the prohibition law
Speaker 11: has done more than anything else to instill in the
Speaker 11: public mind the question and the doubt can prohibition ever
Speaker 11: be enforced? Is it worth the price in human life?
Speaker 1: Adios Mabel. It wasn't all your fault. That wasn't not
Speaker 1: your fault.
Speaker 3: Prohibition was a huge mistake in all kinds of ways.
Speaker 3: What I hope is that we actually learned from the mistake.
Speaker 3: I hope that understanding our history will add something to
Speaker 3: the idea that we're not going to repeat the mistakes
Speaker 3: of the past.
Speaker 1: It started as a moral crusade as a minority of
Speaker 1: hardliners fought to remake American life in their own squeaky
Speaker 1: clean image. A powerful political lobby turned it into a
Speaker 1: wedge issue. Congress made it a crime. It was a
Speaker 1: culture war that made it all the way to the Constitution.
Speaker 1: Does all of this feel a bit familiar to you?
Speaker 1: It should, because it's basically the world we still live
Speaker 1: in today. Our political system is set up so that
Speaker 1: certain people benefit from nasty, unending political fights for starters
Speaker 1: take well lobbyists.
Speaker 12: The term lobbyist actually comes from the fact that they
Speaker 12: would come and they would wait in the lobby outside
Speaker 12: the chamber, and so they were the lobbyists who would
Speaker 12: stay there in the lobby and speak to the needs
Speaker 12: of the constituents, which.
Speaker 1: Was a real service. That's my friend Josh Graham Lynn.
Speaker 1: He directs a bipartisan anti corruption organization called represent Us
Speaker 1: and Full Disclosure. I do some work with them too.
Speaker 12: But what's ended up happening is there's nothing really preventing
Speaker 12: lobbyists from taking congress people out to dinner, or hey,
Speaker 12: you want to borrow my jet, or even worse, Hey
Speaker 12: you've done a great job in Congress, and when you leave,
Speaker 12: you should come work for my lobbying firm. We can
Speaker 12: offer you ten million dollars a year. It's called the
Speaker 12: revolving door. And it's a huge problem.
Speaker 1: Look no further than Mabel Walker, Willebrandt and James Duran
Speaker 1: to see that this was a huge problem during prohibition.
Speaker 1: To hear more about how it's still a problem today.
Speaker 1: Keep an ear out for our bonus episode with Josh
Speaker 1: coming very soon, and this revolving door for lobbyists. It's
Speaker 1: just one of a number of systemic problems in the
Speaker 1: way our government functions.
Speaker 12: Most of the American people want common sense solutions that
Speaker 12: are best for the most of us, and instead what
Speaker 12: we get are ideological, hot button divisive rhetoric and then
Speaker 12: divisive policy getting passed. And part of the reason for
Speaker 12: that is that it's actually better for those in power.
Speaker 1: Most people in the nineteen twenties didn't want prohibition. Sure,
Speaker 1: maybe they knew alcohol could hurt people, but they also
Speaker 1: had a sense that banning it outright was probably not
Speaker 1: the most sensible solution.
Speaker 12: The laws that get passed and the way the government
Speaker 12: operates is actually wildly out of step with what most
Speaker 12: of us would consider reasonable or common sense, because it
Speaker 12: doesn't get people fired up, it's not hot button, it
Speaker 12: doesn't fuel the culture war.
Speaker 1: But as the historian Paul Thompson says, people have to
Speaker 1: be internally persuaded of a reform.
Speaker 12: Law is not how you change people's minds.
Speaker 9: You know, if there's no willpower, you don't write a
Speaker 9: lot of band something that's just stupid.
Speaker 6: It's just a mess.
Speaker 1: Well said Paul. Let me reiterate that law is not
Speaker 1: how you change people's minds. I mean, think about the
Speaker 1: prohibitions we still live with today, bans on abortion, bands
Speaker 1: on weed. We've only just overturned the ban on gay marriage.
Speaker 1: Since the nineteen twenties, when the Temperance movement played on
Speaker 1: racist fears and gave guns to domestic terrorists. It feels
Speaker 1: like we've been caught in one culture war after another.
Speaker 1: When lobbyists get those issues written into law, we end
Speaker 1: up enforcing moral codes with some kind of kindergarten justice.
Speaker 1: But setting off a culture war is like taking a
Speaker 1: jackhammer to the foundations of your own house. It just
Speaker 1: might bring your entire home crashing down around you. November
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, New York City, the Waldorf Astoria is
Speaker 1: putting the finishing touches on three new bars, one of
Speaker 1: them with blue and gold columns and a mirrored ceiling,
Speaker 1: is the jewel of the city. The Hotel New Yorker
Speaker 1: has purchased one hundred thousand dollars worth of top shelf
Speaker 1: whiskey and is building out a new basement wine cellar
Speaker 1: to house the world's finest wines. All anyone knew anymore
Speaker 1: was bath dub Jen The waiters at Lewis Sherry's on
Speaker 1: Park Avenue relearn the appropriate wines for each course. A
Speaker 1: hardy barolo with your steak, maybe a Chardonnay with your
Speaker 1: chicken cordon bleue. Requests for liquor licenses filed at New
Speaker 1: York City Hall are coming in at a rate of
Speaker 1: one thousand a day. At Bloomingdale's on the Upper east Side,
Speaker 1: the line snakes out the door and around the corner,
Speaker 1: customers waiting for doors to open so they can snatch
Speaker 1: up bottles of imported scotch and wine. As for Charles
Speaker 1: Norris Well, the end of prohibition is in sight, but
Speaker 1: he's still got plenty of work to do. He travels
Speaker 1: through New York, the waterfront, the Bowery, collecting data and
Speaker 1: writing down his observations for his annual report. The city
Speaker 1: is still far from perfect. The Great Depression now brings
Speaker 1: its own litany of suffering to the people around him,
Speaker 1: but the destructive wake of prohibition is finally dissipating. As
Speaker 1: he passes the Gothic edifice of Bellevue, it's hard not
Speaker 1: to remember the worst days of the poisonings, when the
Speaker 1: hospital was surrounded by bodies.
Speaker 3: Bellvue is close to the river. They would stack the
Speaker 3: bodies up on piers behind the hospital. Sometimes when there
Speaker 3: was a catastrophe, some kind of multiple fatality thing, the
Speaker 3: bodies went to Bellevue. And there are actually the newspaper
Speaker 3: reports of the time where bodies were really stacked up.
Speaker 1: That was the thick of prohibition. But now the peers
Speaker 1: are clear.
Speaker 3: He's thinking, in this city, this imperfect, amazing city, is
Speaker 3: coming back to what it should be. People see him
Speaker 3: walking away in the dusk with this feeling of a
Speaker 3: job done.
Speaker 1: Nineteen thirty three, Utah becomes the thirty sixth state to
Speaker 1: ratify the twenty first Amendment that seals it Prohibition is overturned.
Speaker 1: In New York, Bellevue Hospital makes an announcement, to little fanfare,
Speaker 1: the formation of a new department, forensic Medicine. It's the
Speaker 1: first of its kind in the country. The head of
Speaker 1: the department will be Charles Norris and the head of
Speaker 1: toxicology Alexander Getler. In the next chapter of his career,
Speaker 1: Norris loved the stage and the microphone, relishing his position
Speaker 1: as the face of public service. Meanwhile, Getler continued to
Speaker 1: live out his days a private man in a public job.
Speaker 1: He was offered a chance to do a TV show
Speaker 1: on forensics CSI before CSI, but that wasn't his style.
Speaker 1: He kept his head down and he worked hard, but
Speaker 1: he still couldn't avoid controversy altogether. In fact, according to
Speaker 1: his grandson al the family still remembers that one time
Speaker 1: Gettler's wife, Alice, dropped by the courtroom to see Getler
Speaker 1: in action.
Speaker 13: My grandmother never went to the courtroom, and because he
Speaker 13: was always in there testifying, and she went there once
Speaker 13: and the jury found the defend and guilty for murder.
Speaker 13: He said, if I ever get out and the two people,
Speaker 13: I'm going to go get you know, the DA and
Speaker 13: that son of a bitch Gettler.
Speaker 1: So after that she went.
Speaker 13: She never went to another court case.
Speaker 1: That threat brought home the gravity of Gettler's work to
Speaker 1: his family, but to Alexander, that was the cost of
Speaker 1: doing work that really mattered. After Prohibition, even more new
Speaker 1: poisons were entering daily life. Leaded gasoline, the newly discovered
Speaker 1: in highly toxic element thallium, sold as a rat poison,
Speaker 1: but so dangerous it was eventually banned. Not to mention
Speaker 1: an old poison in the air, whose danger was just
Speaker 1: starting to emerge cigarette smoke. Alexander worked against all of
Speaker 1: these poisons, and in fact, Getler is still celebrated today
Speaker 1: by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. They give an
Speaker 1: award in his name to toxicologists who develop new techniques for
Speaker 1: chemical analysis. And he wasn't alone, because he launched a
Speaker 1: generation of forensic geniuses who followed in his footsteps. They
Speaker 1: went on to lead forensics labs from Long Island to
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico.
Speaker 6: There was like this Gettler family tree of people that
Speaker 6: he trained, and then who they trained, and who they trained,
Speaker 6: who then went on to train other people, to the
Speaker 6: point of like people who were still alive and still
Speaker 6: working and training other people.
Speaker 1: They were a special club. They were chemists and toxicologists
Speaker 1: dedicated to public health, public servants who made sure that
Speaker 1: we wouldn't accidentally poison ourselves in the pursuit of better
Speaker 1: living through chemistry. They carried on his legacy. They even
Speaker 1: called themselves the Gettler Boys. Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film,
Speaker 1: Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with
Speaker 1: Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by Me, Ed Helms, Milan Papelka,
Speaker 1: Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers
Speaker 1: are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino. This episode was written
Speaker 1: by Carl Nellis and Albert Chin, with additional writing and
Speaker 1: story editing from Alissa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production
Speaker 1: from Stephen Wood, Olivia Canny, and Kelsey Albright. Tory Smith
Speaker 1: is our associate producer. Our story editor is nicky Stein.
Speaker 1: Our production assistants are Nevin Callapoly and a kimminy Ekpo.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.
Speaker 1: Editing music and sound design by Ben Chuck. Engineering and
Speaker 1: technical direction by Nick Dooley Andrew chug Is Gilded Audio's
Speaker 1: creative director. Theme music by Dan Rosatto. The role of
Speaker 1: Mabel walkerwell Brandt was played by Kerrie Bische. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh and Ben Ryazac
Speaker 10: Ju