The Record from Hackensack, New Jersey • 65

Also In This Section no LI i I i 1 1 Editorials Aviation Classified Ad Obituaries Si.CTION Bad Luck or Bad System? Five essive the sainthood. But his being a Republican made up for that. Similarly, Gov. Walter E. Edge must have felt that former U.S.

Attorney Walter G. Winne had outstanding qualifications. And, of course, Winne was an exemplary Republican what more can you ask? And if" Gov. William T. Cahill didn't feel that Dilts had the same qualifications, then why did he appoint him in 1970? Ah, but all three Governors were to have restless nights over their carefully selected Bergen County Prosecutors.

West's offense was never spelled out in open court as were those of Winne and Dills in trials in 1954 and 1972. West was suspended for his role in indicting publisher John Borg in March, 1930, after his Bergen Evening Record published an expose concerning Lodi Township (now South Hacken-sack) sewers. The expose linked West's mentor, State Sen. Ralph W. Chandless, to misuse of $200,000 in state funds.

Chandless, then a powerful Republican leader, had been responsible for appointing West. West retaliated by hauling Borg before a grand jury and having him indicted for conspiring to defraud the state of $200,000 the amount Borg's newspaper said was being misused. Three months later the same grand jury demanded that Borg's indictment be quashed and declared it had been misled. West was relieved and never reinstated. Chandless was drummed out of the Senate.

West finally quit on April 9, 1931. He had been paid his salary for two years hile a succession of state's attorneys ran his office. Eventually even the pay was stopped. HE RESIGNED at a Bad time for Republicans. A Democrat, A.

Harry Moore, was Governor, and West's resignation allowed him to appoint John J. Breslin Jr. West's successor. Bres-lin served until 1944. Democrats flatly denied at the time that they had made a deal with West to have him resign before the gubernatorial election of 1934, which, incidentally, saw Republicans take back the State House.

West faded out of the picture. His law practice and health eventually did the same. He was suspended from practicing law in 1961 because of unethical conduct. He died at the age of 73 in 1964 after collapsing from a stroke. The Prosecutor's Office, meanwhile, went its way through the Depression and war years without another major scandal.

Winne took over during the heyday of Joe Adonis, Willie Woretti, and Frank Erickson, who operated gambling joints under the nose of county and local police officials. Winne was 55 years old when he took office. He was a well liked Republican leader who had served as a U.S. Attorney under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

He had the right philosophy for the times, at least according to those who bet in Adonis's plush parlors in Lodi, Fort Lee, and elsewhere. Winne's policy was that he'd prosecute the crooks if someone else caught them. "Let it be known," he said in explaining his philosophy, "that the duty to apprehend law violators is that of the local police. The Prosecutor runs a law office, and is charged with presenting cases to grand and petit juries." Estes Kefauvers Senate Investigation Commute eventually prompted Gov. Alfred E.

Dris- JD2 J)5 D8 Simeon Stylites William A. Caldwell Just Among Us Unicorns ASCRIBE IT to the atmosphere, which was ghostly. "But do you believe," said Dr. Cassidy, "that the media tell the truth, tha whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" In tha shadowed corners of the room chill vapors swam up, groping eyelessly, 'and flowed out across the floor. One of the truths that will not be told on any electronic tape is that those others did not see these spirits of that which not yet is but I did.

We had met at the recording studio in Les Paul's house on the steep hillside called Deerhaven. It's in Mahwah. There'd be Dr. John. Robert Cassidy, dean of the colleges at Ramapo' College of New Jersey just up the road; Dr.

Howard Radest of Ethical Culture, professor of philosophy at Ramapo; and Arnold Snyder of Englewood, who runs ABC news and who organized this semester's master lecture series at the college. Me too I mustn't forget. Cassidy asked me the grave-opening question. And, to have done with nu's and bolts, wa were to record a couple of tapes (WPAT, 7:35 a.m. Sundays) examining what has developed so far in Arnold Snyder's long, star-bedizened symposium with the somewhat superb thema "News Media and Society: Meeting the Challenges of Freedom." It's a magnificent studio, and I'm told it is jam-packed nights and weekends by rock combos and has turned out some best-seller records, but that's somebody else's story.

Down on tha floor under the glassed control console the eggheads sat at a little table, microphones dangling in their eyes, their faces ash-white and staring in the spotlights, disembodied. Around us in tha gloom huddled ivory-toothed pianos and organs, the sex-object profiles of the electric guitars made in Mr. Paul's cluttered shop, the figured fabrics of sound-baffling panels and hangings. In the dark at the edges of the room something was stirring. Dr.

Cassidy had asked whether people are being told the truth. AT A CONFERENCE in Washington last week a man who has been running a polygraph (lie detector) school training law enforcement officers for the last 24 years testified that plants are possessed of intelligence, that they hava emotions ranging from fear and hatred through; indifference to love, and that they can diagnosa the covert intentions of persons around them ia ways you and I can't. His name is Cleve Backster. He is 48 years old. His competence as a polygraph techniciaa has not been impeached.

In 19C6, "just curious, he connected lie-detector electrodes to tha leaves of a plant in his office. The contour of tha lines on the charts corresponded to the reading he'd have gotten from a human subject. Still curious, he wondered what the recording pea would do if he burned the leaves with a It slewed off the top of the chart. It can't be true. 5 Eut: I When a botanist walked into the room tha plants under test went dead produced no more reading than would a corpse.

Within 30 minutes after she left they resumed broadcast ing. In her work she has to destroy plants. He insists that when, absent from tha of- fice, he talks about his office plant, it charts a response at the moment he's discussing it. He is satisfied plants prosper when loved, -and advises people going on vacation to take) along a picture of a plant and think about it. After thousands of experiments, Cleva Backster says flatly: "Plants have a sense of perception that goes beyond our five senses." Snort, "Anthropomorphism," or merely "Bah!" and let's get back to Mahwah.

Let's get back to the future. MY ANSWER to the question was, of course, that nobody has thus far told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about anything. Within the framework of a 64-paga newspaper or a 22-minute broadcast or a ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a "Hamlet," an "Oda on a Grecian Urn" nothing mortal man caa say or do is the least fraction of justice to his subject. This is banal enough. The media can testify to what they think they saw or heard, within the limits of the time and space and wits they have.

The is silent, as in theology. But I wasn't thinking then about the impossibility of telling the whole truth about a spoonful of soup in all the books of all the libraries ia Earth, the unintelligibiiity of the world we know. Dr. Cassidy was waiting, but I couldn't find tha words to say there are worlds we don't know and we live in them. It may be true that' the plants about us and on the plate before us are sentient fellow creatures.

The universe of antimatter, the universa that exists in the dominion beyond the speed of light, the possibility that within a few years or hours some scientist will establish objective evidence that immortality is a datum and, on some nth dimension, Heaven is around us how shall we talk to each other about truth? How did Socrates and Plato, who were experts in this field, discuss the truth about television and translunar orbits and the treatment of schizophrenia by prefrontal Iobotomy? We can report the superficial phenomena that appear to our senses to be facts. But our truths are mythology. And we ourselves ara myths or clumsy metaphors. I don't think I ever did answer Cassidy's question, and, not noticing the vapors rising about our knees, they went to other things. SUNDAY, APRIL 23, 1973 A i Another Prosecutor coll to send Nelson F.

Stamler to Bergen County to see exactly what Winne wasn't doing. The roof over the great gambling scandal exploded. In October 1950 Winne was relieved of responsibility in gambling cases. Stamler's probing led to his complete suspension Dec. 1, 1950, and Winne remained suspended until his term expired April 25, 1954.

Winne was indicted Nov. 23, 1951 on 19 counts of failing to uncover and prosecute gambling operations reported to his office. He was acquitted in 1954. He went back to private practice and retirement. Now 83 and in poor health, Winne lives in a nursing home in Montclair.

The New Jersey Supreme Court refused to grant him $34,005 in back pay, holding that a public official is paid for the work he performs. THE BERGEN COUNTY Freeholders last week paid Dilts $36,252 in pay withheld during his suspension. County Counsel Michael J. Ferrara explained that Dilts's status differed from Winne's because of a change in the laws regulating removal of prosecutors. Winne was a part-time prosecutor who had a private civil practice.

When he was suspended he continued to practice civil law. Dilts, however, under the 1970 Criminal Justice Act was a full-time prosecutor and could not hold any other paid position. While under suspension, Dilts was prohibited from doing any kind of work. "You can't deprive him of his right to work without providing back salary," Ferrara said. Dilts was suspended May 13, 1971, after 14 months in office.

He was acquitted of misconduct and bribery charges in connection with a $250,000 hijacking case. But state officials continued to question his conduct while in office, and they forced his resignation last week. HIS RESIGNATION LETTER sounded eerily like the one West wrote when he resigned' April 9, 1934. West said: Clothing styles range from army and navy store mod to Brooks Brothers 347 herringbone. In this latest tournament there were 10 girls.

No one looked at them as girls. All that mattered was their rating as chess players. There were young people in wheelchairs, young people wearing hearing aids, young people on crutches, young people wiping runny noses with the back of grimy fingers. The camaraderie was in the concentration. "This chess is a serious business," said Larry King, a bright young man with an infectious grin.

Larry directs the novice section of the tournament. "It's almost like being married. Once you take it up seriously there isn't much room "for anything else in your life." Three young men from Blauvelt in Rockland County know what he means. Ben Goldstein, Bill Bauer, and Bill Worzel arrived at the McAlpin for the first game Friday at 2 p.m. They got back home at 1 a.m.

Saturday morning they were chauffeured to the hotel to be on time for a game at 10 a.m. Another match followed at 2 p.m., a third at 8 p.m. "The boys," said Mrs. Jeanne Goldstein, Ben's mother, "got home at about a quarter of one in the morning. Next time I think they should rent a room at the hotel for the three days.

That's what some of the high schools do for their youngsters." BEN GOLDSTEIN and the two Bills, Worzel and Bauer, have been at the game seriously for about a year. In the car carrying them down to New York City they behaved much like other high school freshmen, horsing around, cutting 1 By Frank Lombardi Staff Writer THERE WAS A FESTIVE mood in the crowded courtroom as scores of the prosecutor-designate's relatives and friends waited for the oath of office. With his hand on the Bible, the new Prosecutor of the Pleas of Bergen County heard the pre-- siding judge warn: "This job will make you or I i break you, which will depend en- I I -i tirely upon the principles adopted by you in your adminis-f tration." -vs The scene is not recent. The 'j. riosecutor wasn't Robert Dilts, I wno x-csigncd last Monday.

The I scene is described in a yellowing 0 pping from The Bergen Eve- -aJ mng Record of Jan. 3, 1930. LOMBARDI heading it is like opening a time capsule. Someone like me was there," jotting furiously into a notebook, maybe rushing to a telephone to cali the story in. His work is preserved in a little library envelope, and maybe every 20 years someone like me looks at it again and says: "Lord! It all happened before!" Before Dilts it happened to Prosecutors Edward Oaks West and Walter G.

Winne, and maybe history is trying to tell something. Can it be that there's something wrong with the system rather than with the men chosen as Prosecutor? THE STATISTICS are suggestive: of five per-. manent Prosecutors chosen in the county since 1930, three went down. All were well liked, talented Republican attorneys given the honor of being the county's top cop by the Republican machine of their day. All three served the people of Bergen County with one eye on the wings, where sat the Ralph Chandlesses, John J.

Dickersons, and Nelson Grosses. It was no different when Democrats selected the Prosecutor. 'There are certain obligations that go along with this job," one Prosecutor once remarked to someone like me. It's the same throughout the country. Listen to what Stanley Rosenblatt, a Miami lawyer, writes in his book, "Justice Denied'': "The most powerful men in our criminal justice system are prosecutors.

They are politicians first and law-enforcement officials second. "The fact that they are intricately hooked into local, state, and national politics is the major single reason for the pitiful state of American law enforcement." Or is it time a better system was found? "They are looking for a saint," one official commented in discussing the qualifications Dilts's successor should have. THE QUALIFICATIONS: a practicing lawyer able to direct forceably and well; a take-charge guy; a strong administrator; someone unafraid to press investigations no matter where they lead; a person of unimpeachable reputation in every respect; a man who can produce out of chaos; someone who can guide and motivate a dispirited, inexperienced staff. And so on. The salary, $37,503, is higher than the $7,509 a year paid to West when he took office; but Gov.

Morgan F. Larson, who appointed him, probably felt West had all the qualifications save How To Quiet KENNY REGAN of Paramus missed the Na-. tional High School Chess Championship tourney the other day. He was home, sick. He had the chicken pox.

Kenny at 12 is a seventh-grader at Eastbrook Junior High School. That doesn't disqualify him from competing in a high school tournament. have," said Bill Goichberg, director of the championships, "no bottom age limit. Last year a sixth-grader almost ran off with the national title." Kenny Regan is recovering nicely from the chicken pox. He says he'll be well enough to play in the New York City High School championships.

He's no novice. "I have a rating of 1,829," Kenny says, without a touch of false modesty in his voice. Chess ratings depend on a complicated formula (worked out, it seems, by some gnomes in the Black Forest) that takes into account the rating of the opponents you play and the score you accumulate in a tournament. A master's rating-is 2,200. Bobby Fischer, the challenger for the world championship, has a rating of 2,800, theoretically the tops.

TENDER AGE is hardly a handicap in chess play. At the high school championships April 8 in the Hotel McAlpin in New York the absence of cheek fuzz was the rule rather than the exception. The 1971 winner was a ninth-grader, Larry Christiansen of Riverside, Calif. This year Christiansen finished in a three-way tie for first with Craig Barnes, a fellow Calif ornian, and Danny Shapiro of Great Neck, N.Y. Barnes took top prize on points.

On the McAlpin mezzanine about 700 young- oi Leaves the Courthouse "Every public official has the right accorded to even a criminal, namely: to be confronted with the charges made against him. I have exhausted every plausible and proper method facing my accusers. "There remains no alternative other than to take the position I am now taking. To continue my present status would only serve to stultify myself in the eyes of the citizens of this county." Dilts too had faced his accusers, and he decided that he had exhausted his alternatives. There were differences in the three cases, but each prosecutor was a political choice wuo was forced off the stage when his political usefulness ended.

Removal of West and of Winne had serious political repercussions. West's indictment broke the strength of Chandless's Republican machine, and the gambling scandal destroyed John J. Dickerson's political clout. Stamler, before he was fired, had linked Dickerson (then mayor of Palisades Park, a Freeholder and state GOP chairman) to the gambling activities of Moretti and Adonis. THE SCANDAL in Bergen County helped Democrat Robert B.

Meyner become Governor. So far, the Dilts case had had no visible political consequences, and there is no way to gauge what effect, if any, the case will have on Gov. Cahill, or on Nelson Gross, the man who elected Dilts while he was the county's Republican leader. It is unquestionable, however, that the latest scandal in the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office has deeply damaged the public's confidence. The county just can't afford another West, Winne, or Dilts case.

If history has any use it is that it helps the present learn from the mistakes of the past. The lesson it is trying to teach here is that politics and prosecutors make strange bedfellows. It's time for a divorce. 'em Play Chess each other up, putting each other down just a little more skillfully than the usual 14-year-old. Once at the tournament tables, the attitude changes.

They are all business. Their chauffeur walked by Ben's table four times. The young man never even looked up. The Bauer boy, red hair flying in all directions, twice whizzed past his volunteer chauffeur without a sign of recognition. The championship attracts youngsters from all over the country.

Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Oregon, and Washington are represented. California has one of the largest contingents and most of the ranking players. Running a chess tournament i3 a full-time job for Bill Goichberg. "There's a lot of work organizing these matches," said Goichberg. His eyes never looked at the questioner; he was constantly casing the main room, where two persons were selling books and magazines on chess.

"I have six people on my staff, and they keep running all the time." How do the young players find out about the tournament? "We notify the schools. Most have chess clubs. Then there are notices' in chess magazines. Serious players are bugs on reading chess publications." As for rating systems in the tourney, they're as puzzling as the theory of relativity for a non-player. What's your rating, tousle-haired B.en Goldstein was asked? "It's about 1,400, 1 figure," was the answer.

"I beat the guys with 1,300 and I lose to the guy3 with 1,500." It figures. a Roomful of Teen-Agers: Let The Classics i Mark Stuart sters were competing for the crown in a series of rooms normally used by the hotel for traveling drummers eager to display the latest fashions in brassieres or plastic toys. The hotel has a faded-elegance that once passed for chic. In this, one of New York's older, more staid commercial hostelries, there were kids wall to wall, all hunched over tables on which were chessboards, chessmen, and funny clocks with two faces. A game can last only 80 minutes.

If it hasn'i been completed by that time, points determine who wins or whether it's a draw. There isn't much physical action going on in a room in which perhaps 200 high school kids are penned. The strain of concentration is almost palpable. Stand beside a couple of players engrossed in their game. You sense they wouldn't look up if you were Raquel Welch in a skidding, bikini.

A LL COLORS, all economic classes, and al most every nationality ara in evidence..