Quick Facts
Biography
Alexander M. Campbell (1907 – 1975) was an Indiana lawyer who served in the United States Department of Justice as Assistant U.S. Attorney General for the Criminal Division, formally from August 1948 through December 20, 1949, under Tom C. Clark as U.S. Attorney General (1945–49).
Background
Born in Coldwater, Ohio in 1907, Campbell grew up Indiana.
He attended Olivet College and Indiana University, where he received an LLB.
Career
Early career
In 1933, Campbell joined a law firm in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
In 1934, he became Democratic Party chair of Allen County, Indiana through 1936.
Indiana Government
In 1936, Cambpell became principal deputy to James R. Fleming, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana.
In Spring 1941, when Fleming left office, Campbell became acting attorney general. In November 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt formally appointed him to that position (U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana).
US Government
In Spring 1948, Campbell was asked to serve as acting Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, after T. Vincent Quinn resigned to run for office. Campbell received formal appointment Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in August 1948.
Campbell argued for government in Christoffel v. United States against Harold Christoffel, a Wisconsin labor organizer, accused of perjury over CPUSA membership.
DOJ stood up a "lobbying investigation unit" to identify violations the Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act of 1946 (successor to the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.
During his tenure, DOJ prosecuted cases including those of Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally, Alger Hiss, and Judith Coplon.
Hiss Caes
On November 1948, after Whittaker Chambers first presented the Baltimore Documents (from Chambers' "life preserver" package), including handwritten and typewritten pages of Alger Hiss, into Hiss's libel suit against Chambers, Campbell drove with two assistants from Washington to Baltimore on behalf of Justice. The Department would investigate those documents, leading both Hiss and Chambers back to a Grand Jury for further testimony. In December 1948, Chambers surrendered remaining items, dubbed the "Pumpkin Papers," really microfilm that Chambers had not yet surrendered. Justice used these materials to indict Hiss on two counts of perjury; Hiss was sentenced in January 1950.
Campbell also questioned then congressional representative Richard Nixon regarding HUAC's role in the Hiss Case, including whether HUAC had the right to withhold the Pumpkin Papers microfilm from DOJ and the grand jury:
CAMPBELL: May I say this: that in all of my 13 years of experience as a United States Attorney the investigative agencies of the United States Attorney and the FBI did not permit any person to keep evidence which is vital and essential to the case. We don't permit the sheriffs to keep them, we don't permit anybody to keep them, because it's a highly important piece of evidence.
NIXON: As an attorney - I think all three of you are attorneys - you will know that what I am discussing has been a matter which for 150 years has been the rule of the House and of the Congress. All that I can tell you is that this is the situation. I mean, of course, if I were a sheriff I would turn it over to you, certainly; a sheriff can't keep it. But I mean there is a slight difference. I mean not much. I mean, I don't mean to say anything derogatory about a sheriff or about a Congressman.
During a 1962 television interview on ABC TV, Hiss lumped Campbell into a general group whom he "denounced as conspirators in a monstrous plot to convict him on concocted evidence" and included: the presiding judge at his second trial, the three appellate court justices who rejected his appeal, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, assistant attorney general Alexander M. Campbell, federal prosecutor Thomas F. Murphy, members of the New York grand jury who indicted him, jury members in his two trials who convicted him, and HUAC members and particularly Richard Nixon and Karl Mundt."
Later years
On December 20, 1949, Campbell resigned to run for Democratic nomination for one of Indiana’s 1950 seats in the U.S. Senate but lost to incumbent Republican Senator Homer Capehart. He spoke publicly on Justice cases, e.g., "The Inside Story of the Recent Spy Trials" in an address to the Beth-El Men’s Club on April 26, 1950.
In 1956, he served as an Indiana delegates to the 1956 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which nominated a ticket of Adlai Stevenson with Estes Kefauver, who lost to the incumbent ticket of Dwight Eisenhower with Richard Nixon.
Personal and death
In 1968, Campbell died in El Paso, Texas.