The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York

by Caro, Robert A

  "They were playing games with Lindsay that year," says one reporter, a good one, covering Albany in 1966. "They kept saying, 'Amend it, amend it.' He'd make the amendments they asked. Then they'd ask him to make some more. I mean everyone knew what was going on. I myself heard some guy

  [legislator] say to Rosen in the corridor, 'You're forgetting about that bill for this year, aren't you?' The guy was trying to hint to him, you know? But Rosen didn't even understand what the guy was trying to tell him. He started to seriously discuss with the guy why it wasn't really dead, why the Mayor— 'THE MAYOR!'—was determined— DETERMINED!— to have it passed."

  The contract out on the bill was executed with finesse. Travia told Rosen one day that a joint session of the Senate and Assembly Rules Committees would hold a public hearing on the proposed legislation. Recalls Rosen: "Travia . . . said to me, 'All we want up there is the Mayor and one other person—there'll be one or two people there from the other side. It'll be a friendly little thing, casual.' The only reason we're having it at all, I was told, was that it was required by law." Rosen passed the message along to Big John, who appears to have seriously believed that a joint session of the two most powerful committees of the Legislature, a session on a proposal to remove Robert Moses from power, would indeed be little more than a formality. On the morning it was scheduled to be held, the Mayor flew up from New York, accompanied by only two aides, Corporation Counsel J. Lee Rankin and Executive Assistant Corporation Counsel Norman Redlich— neither of whom had even done much research into the matter to be discussed. Rosen met the three men at the airport, drove them straight to the Capitol and, before leaving in the press room transcripts of the statement the Mayor was going to make at the hearing, escorted the three men into the Assembly Parlor, in which the hearing was to be held—so that the Mayor was already in the Parlor when Rosen, in the press room, had his moment of truth.

  It came in the form of a handout, lying on the big table opposite the press-room door on which public relations men for the various legislative committees leave stacks of handouts for reporters' use. As Rosen put his stack down, he saw it lying there, and picked it up and read it. It was a handout announcing the public hearing, and the names of the speakers who were to appear at it. "A friendly little thing, casual?" It was billed as the biggest event of the day—and, Rosen saw as his eyes followed the type down, the billing was justified. Appearing for the Mayor's proposal would be one person, the unknown Redlich. Appearing for the other side would be, in addition to Moses, two former Governors, Dewey and Poletti; one former Mayor, Wagner; one former counsel to Presidents and possibly the most prestigious Democratic attorney in the state, Rosenman; Brennan of the construction workers, Guinan of the transport workers and others of the state's most powerful labor leaders; a representative of its most powerful bank (although David Rockefeller had sent a spokesman rather than appearing himself); its most powerful investment bankers; its largest stock brokerage firm; its leading and most powerful bond attorneys—and a platoon of representatives of other power groups ranging all the way from the Transit Authority to the Automobile Club of America. It was a lineup of most of the most powerful forces in the state—and it was a lineup arrayed against his boss. It was at that moment, all in a flash, Rosen recalls, that he realized that Lindsay had

  been led into a carefully concealed trap—one from which there was no escape. "I didn't realize what had happened until I saw the handout. Then I said, Travia's fucked us.' "

  Running back to the Assembly Parlor, Rosen whispered these tidings to his boss. Even without this news flash, however, Lindsay was getting the message for himself. For as he stood in the Assembly Parlor, ready for the friendly, casual little get-together, jamming through the doors came television cameramen, radio and newspaper reporters and photographers—by the dozen. And mixed among them, in addition to Travia, whom the Mayor had expected to see, were Duryea, Brydges—and a half dozen other key legislative leaders.

  Then the old lion came into the room.

  The crowd, which had been milling around, parted to let him through, and he was suddenly face to face with his enemy.

  Lindsay half turned away, almost as if to pretend he hadn't seen Moses, but as the photographers rushed up, the Mayor plunged his hands into his pockets and his face creased in a forced smile. A broad, wide grin broke across Moses' face, and for a moment the two men stood there, one young, handsome, dressed in a gold-buttoned blue blazer, precisely knotted striped rep, nervousness showing through the mask on his face; the other old, lined, bald, tough, wearing a dark suit with jacket unbuttoned and plain dark tie pulled askew—and utterly relaxed. The photographers asked for a handshake; Lindsay hesitated; sure, Moses said, and as Lindsay took his hand and Moses looked into his handsome face, the grin broadened into a smile of real delight. Then, abruptly, while Lindsay was still standing straight and still and keeping the smile glued on, Moses yanked his hand loose and whirled to walk away. There was command in that gesture; the circle around them parted—followed by his entourage, he strode through it and slouched down casually on a red leather sofa against a wall. The sofa seated four, but no one took the other seats; "at least three [aides] were standing behind him —standing!—as he sat alone on that long sofa," says reporter Sidney Schanberg of the Times. When Schanberg approached him, "he answered a couple of questions and then he got churlish and turned to Ed O'Brien and he said, 'Ed, I want to hear this testimony.' Meaning, 'Get rid of this shit!' " Then he looked up inquiringly, and another aide hurriedly ran over and whispered in Travia's ear. The Speaker had been chatting with his own aides. He stopped abruptly, caught Duryea's eye, walked with him over to the hearing table and, even before sitting down, began pounding the gavel.

  Lindsay was the first at the lectern set up at the left end of the long table. Normally so poised, the Mayor stared down with almost painfully obvious nervousness at the full battery of microphones before which he had been lured. "He read [like] a schoolboy reciting his graduation speech," Schanberg says. Slouched on the couch, leaning on one hand, the other, big and still powerful, gripping his knee, Moses listened intently for a few minutes, even putting on the glasses with the concealed hearing aid so

  that he could be sure he heard. For a few minutes be wh impassive. his lips pressed tightly together. But as he heard what Linda .tying!

  they turned up in a small smile. As the Mayor continued and it became apparent that he had no new cards to play, the smile widened a bit. And when the Mayor got to his attack on Moses' proposed new highways, and said, "Under my administration, these proposals will never he accepted," began to laugh, hastily putting a hand up to his face to hide the laughter when he saw a photographer lifting a camera in his direction. On receipt of Rosen's message. Lindsay. Rankin and Redlich had hastilv decided that the best thing to do was to '"get the Mayor out of there" as fast as possible: recalls one of those men. "The Mayor testified and said he had to o 0 and Tf there are any questions, Mr. Redlich will answer them.'" Then he"headed out the door. Moses was obviously having real difficulty keeping from laughing out loud. If Albany was a jungle, with many of the principal beasts of prey gathered in the Assembly Parlor that day. an observer could, just bv watching Robert Moses, have known that it was his jungle. He may have been an old lion, but John Lindsay wasn't the young lion to take his jungle awav from him.

  "And then," as one observer recalls, "there followed the parade of the power brokers."

  Moses led off, as was fitting—relaxed, at home, reading his speech without looking up, speaking in bored tones, making his points effortlessly. When some of the rank-and-file assemblymen present asked him a few mild questions, he answered—in Schanberg's phrase—"like you're peasants." After a short while, he had had enough of it; he swung away from the lectern.

  The other power brokers followed. All the points necessary to be made were made, by the people best suited to make them—the lawyers that the proposed merger was illegal; the investment bankers that it would destroy
the "businesslike" nature of public authorities and would thereby make it impossible for them to raise money for needed public improvements ("No one will buy a long-term revenue bond if the management of the project operates at the beck and call and whim of elected officials"); former government officials that the man proposing it didn't know anything about government (John J. Gilhooley, not only a Transit Commissioner but a former Assistant Secretary of Labor, calling it "a political power grab . . . inanely conceived and ineptly drafted" legislation by "rank amateurs" in City Hall): politicians that the man proposing it was power hungry (it was. said Wagner. who had refused all previous overtures to attack his successor, but had trotted out his prestige at Moses' command, nothing more than "a reach for power"); the AAA that it would unfairly penalize motorists who had paid for highway facilities "through the tolls and taxes they have paid": the union leaders'that it was just plain bad. Worst of all. speaker after speaker emphasized, Lindsay's plan would deprive the public of the services of Robert Moses. "Make no mistake." Poletti said, "this arrogant and shameless ripper legislation . . . sponsored by Mayor Lindsay is intended primarily to get rid

  of Bob Moses." "I have not, nor shall I ever join the pack that is currently snapping at the heels of Robert Moses," Gilhooley said. "His achievements are beyond the reach of the peashooters now attacking him ... he will be honored by anyone who reads or writes the Twentieth Century history of the State of New York." But it wasn't what the speakers said that mattered, but what they represented. They represented power, enough power to defeat anyone in the state—even a Mayor of New York City—and to defeat him easily. As the perceptive Schanberg was to put it, "The hearing was a pro forma charade. It was like the Green Bay Packers playing a high-school team. Lindsay never had a chance." Moses didn't stay around to review the parade of power brokers he had marshaled—and there was no reason why he should. Lindsay should have—he might have lost face, but he would have learned something—he would have learned the identity of those "power brokers" he was always talking about. His foe had lined them up and paraded them before him.

  With his customary attention to detail, Moses had even arranged for a series of mopping-up actions to follow the hearings. On the following day, Brennan launched a new, all-out attack on Lindsay, charging the new Mayor with "sitting on $3 billion worth of construction projects" by putting "politics ahead of people." The construction projects listed, of course, were almost all Robert Moses projects. And the day after that, the Chase Manhattan Bank supplemented its previous opposition to the merger proposal by announcing that if the Legislature should adopt it, it would, as trustee of $379,300,000 worth of Triborough bonds, sue to invalidate the legislation; a legal brief designed to demonstrate the illegality of such a contract-breaking move was being filed with the Legislature's Rules Committees by the bank's law firm—Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby, Palmer and Wood. (The Times carried this story on page seventy-three; in terms of political realities in New York State, it was the story, above all the merger stories, that should have been on page one.) All bases were covered; when the Times editorialized that it was sure the merger would be legal, Franklin S. Wood wrote the editors a letter concluding dryly: "Your . . . opinion . . . will not, we think, be shared by most lawyers." But Moses' precautions were superfluous, a case of overkill. The Lindsay merger proposal had been dead long before—as soon as it was made, in fact. The actual murder had been delayed until the public hearing only to add to his humiliation.

  (By the way, Travia told reporters during a mid-afternoon recess, the legislation should never have been sent up to Albany in the first place without a home-rule message from the City Council; he didn't see how that had happened: the Legislature could not consider it without such a message.

  (That was rubbing it in, some listening legislators said, unable quite to hide their smiles. Travia had, of course, known all along that a home-rule message was required. Everyone had known. He could have mentioned the fact to Rosen previously. He must have forgotten to do so.)

  The bill was dead—although Lindsay did not have the sense to let it die quietly. He telephoned Rockefeller for support, instructed Rosen to "get to work" on the legislators. But the support from the Governor was some-

  how never forthcoming. The Mayor announced to reporters that it had "never occurred to anyone that it would be necessary to have a home-rule resolution" but that "now" the Legislature was trying to "buck-pass 11 the matter back to the City Council. When he asked the Council for the home-rule message, the request never even got out of committee.

  The Parade of the Power Brokers had, to anyone interested in the nuances of true power in New York State, been a good show. It was to be the last Robert Moses ever produced. The imperial guard would never charge for him again.

  On July ii, 1966, he had arranged a celebration to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Triborough Bridge. There were crowds— 3,500 children rounded up from housing projects and by the Police Athletic League and bused to Randall's Island for the occasion—and pageantry— officials used silver shears to snip a ribbon at the Queens end of the span and then rode in a twelve-car motorcade (eleven limousines led by Moses in a 1936 Ford touring car driven by Omero C. Catan of Teaneck, New Jersey, who on July 11, 1936, when the great bridge first opened, had been the first driver to cross) to Randall's Island, where bands played and speeches were given—and a sumptuous luncheon in Triborough's state dining room (3,500 box lunches were there for the children)—and brochures —a magnificently printed, boxed volume recording the Authority's achievements entitled Thirty Years of Accomplishment. In his speech, Moses effectively disposed of the Triborough surpluses Lindsay was always talking about, announcing that he had "committed" $40,000,000 in Authority funds for improvements to Authority-owned bridges (no city approval needed), such as a new toll plaza for the Triborough and a complete reconstruction of the Cross Bay, and $8,000,000 to the Park Department for new playgrounds. With Austin Tobin of the Port Authority taking the opportunity to tell reporters present that he was planning to open bids for the World Trade Center shortly despite the fact that Lindsay had not yet approved the project, the ceremony was turned into a demonstration by the city's two great rump governments that they were planning to proceed in future as they had in past —without being bound by the wishes of City Hall.

  To keep the bridge clear for the motorcade, all other traffic had been barred from the Queens span, and as the officials cut ribbons, thousands of Manhattan-bound motorists were kept waiting for half an hour behind them in broiling heat while Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Officers ignored the angry protest, not allowing them on the bridge until the motorcade had completed a markedly leisurely trip to Randall's Island. And there was praise enough even for Moses, Austin Tobin lauding his "great gifts of intellect, imagination, courage and dynamic energy—as well as his instinct for the jugular," Queens Borough President Mario Cariello telling the children that "New York City would never be what it is today" had Moses been born in South America, Australia or at the North Pole. But the celebration ended on a distinctly sour note: while Moses was still bidding his guests farewell, a

  messenger from the Mayor's office handed an aide a letter for Moses, and the aide gave it to Moses, and Moses, ripping it open, saw that it was a letter dismissing him as arterial highways representative.

  The Mayor had taken this step—which he should have taken before the merger fight—after it was over, too late to help him in it—but he had taken it. Once Robert Moses had held twelve government jobs simultaneously; now he was reduced to one, the chairmanship of the Triborough Authority. And within the week, Lindsay had moved to give himself a toehold even in Moses' last stronghold; Commissioner Tracy's term had expired on June 30; the Mayor appointed Transportation Administrator Palmer in his place.

  The Palmer appointment had no effect on Moses' power. The primary purpose of putting him on the board, Lindsay had told him, was to "protect the city's interest by saving as much of the surplus as possible."
But Palmer proved unable to accomplish anything. "The first time I voted 'No' on a proposal, Moses got up and walked around and gave me a half-hour speech, how I didn't understand how these things were done. ... It was probably the first 'No' vote in the history of Triborough. And the staff . . . was also appalled—they had never seen Moses confronted before." But the vote on the issue was 2-1, with the other Commissioner, realtor and Democratic financier Norman K. Winston, voting with Moses. Palmer says he had been told that Winston might be ready to be wooed away from Moses, but their first talk indicated that that was wrong; Winston was ready to follow the chairman unquestioningly on every decision. And that, of course, made Palmer's opposition academic. He consistently voted against Moses proposals —and always lost, 2-1. He was not even able to stop Moses' "commitment" of an additional $20,000,000 of surplus to the building of a second deck on the Verrazano Bridge, a project to which Lindsay was adamantly opposed.