X Kenny as Attorney General

Relationship to Governor Warren

Fry

I wanted to ask you a few things about your attorney-generalship. The state law enforcement community had long been led by Earl Warren, in the sheriffs' organization, in the district attorneys' association, and so forth. When you went in as a sort of chief law officer did this pose a difficulty for you, since they had been literally organized by Warren and were "his boys"?

Kenny

Yes, they were still Earl Warren's boys, and I didn't do anything to disturb it.

Fry

I was wondering how this affected your ability to deal with the law officers all over the state?

Kenny

Not at all, it didn't hurt it at all. They were with us, and Warren and I were absolutely together. Warren had the idea of using the attorney general's office to give it an important say in the development of the war effort.

Fry

You mean when he was governor or attorney general?

Kenny

When governor. As attorney general, he also did.

Fry

Yes, he had that battle with Olson over civil defense leadership.

Kenny

[Governor] Olson was willing to fight Warren, but I wasn't. When I was attorney general, we saw it the same way.

Fry

I wondered if you ever had a difference of opinion in which the support of the law enforcement people around the state was rallied to Warren rather than you?

Kenny

I don't believe so.

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Fry

One of the things that you did when you were attorney general was ask for legislation to put your deputy attorneys general under civil service. I wondered why Warren hadn't already done that, since he had done so much reorganization.

Kenny

He just didn't believe in civil service for attorneys. An attorney ought to be a man that you could fire right away. He felt that they were professional men, and that was the general belief of our district attorneys in the state. They didn't have any civil service deputies.

But when Warren was running for governor, and I was running for attorney general, I promised the deputies who were appointed by Warren that I would "pack them in" so they wouldn't be vulnerable. They sure reminded me of it when I got in [chuckling]. Earl called me down to the governor's office, and he said,

"You sure you want this, Bob?"

I said, "Yes, I promised it." And I said, "I got my start in politics when I passed the civil service examination for the county counsel's office in Los Angeles." So he signed the bill. He just asked me about it when the bill was down there for signature.

Fry

So that was no problem between you and Warren.

Kenny

No. All of his deputies, like Jim Oakley, Ted Westphal and all of those fellows, were packing it in. They'd have been out on the street otherwise.

Fry

You did put in a training program I think, for riot control. Is that right?

Kenny

Yes.

Fry

I have a note here about the Peace Officers' Committee on Civil Disturbances Interim Report issued in 1943. The committee was appointed by Earl Warren, following a meeting in Los Angeles August 19, 1943, with you as chairman, Roy W. Hays, adjutant general, E. Raymond Kato, chief of the California Highway Patrol, and so forth. You were together on this and planned--

Kenny

This was occasioned by the Zoot Suit riot of 1943. I don't know whether I developed that story or not; I think I do in my book.26

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Fry

Yes, you develop the story of the Zoot Suit Riot. I wanted to supplement it with your story of how you trained officers for riot control, because later, in the `sixties, this became a brand new law and order issue again.

Kenny

Yes. Well, Bob Powers was appointed by Warren to be law enforcement coordinator. And Bob was obviously in need of seminars or something to teach the peace officers the techniques of getting racial harmony.

Fry

Yes. We have the story of that, too, in Bob Powers' interview.27

Kenny

Well, that's the story.

Fry

Was there any attempt to train them, also, for what to do when a riot does develop, the difference in techniques that a law enforcement officer has to use for a mob disorder as opposed to arresting a drunk on the street?

Kenny

Yes, or giving a traffic tag to the wife of the chairman of the city council.

Yes, we had a course down at Richmond. There had been some danger of racial turbulence in Richmond because there was a large black population coming in there, and the war was about over. So Bob Powers and a fellow named McIntyre ran the course. I think it's referred to in my autobiography. He came out from a foundation in Chicago that Marshall Field had established.

Fry

Oh, I see. I thought that was just training to cope with racial prejudice.

Kenny

Well, that was it primarily, but we got it all under the law enforcement coordination plan, or whatever it was.

Changes in Organization

Fry

In your office, in general, did you move more towards a stronger, more centralized attorney general's office, following the kind Warren had set up?

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Kenny

I just did what Warren had been doing.

Fry

Didn't you set up the Department of Justice, and develop more in the area of criminal laboratories?

Kenny

We created the Department of Justice, because some Oakland yacht bandit, whom Earl Warren had gotten a conviction for when he was district attorney, and who was supposed to be locked up in Folsom or San Quentin, showed up in the streets of San Francisco driving the warden's car. Warren was excited about that.

The prison board was the controlling element, not the governor, and so we called a special session and created the power in the Adult Authority, which was a new agency that we created over that weekend. Warren was very intense about [Lloyd E.] Samsell. The man was Samsell.

Fry

Samsell, yes.

Kenny

I think that would show up in the index in my book. Maybe not.

Anyway, Samsell was the warden's chauffeur--the former yacht bandit. And we took the power out of the prison board and gave it to this newly created agency, the Adult Authority. That's when that came--the present Adult Authority.

Fry

Right. Now, how did the Department of Justice fit into that?

Kenny

Well, we had to have somebody at the head of it. The governor couldn't be head of it, but he still felt like he ought to be; so it was the Department of Justice and the bill made the attorney general the head of it.

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Fry

That was at the same time, then, that the Department of Corrections was reorganized?

Kenny

It was part of the same bill. Warren called a special session of the legislature, and we created a Department of Justice. We put the functions of the prison board into the Department of Justice and into the Adult Authority. The Adult Authority was given this new power of determining the length of sentences. It had control of that part of the prisons. Another board was given the power of governing the prisons. I think that was in May of 1944.

Fry

Yes, it was early spring of '44. When you said that Warren wanted to be in charge, did you mean of the Department of Justice?

Kenny

Yes. He knew he couldn't be; he was unfortunately handicapped by being the governor at that time. It logically had to go into my department and he put it in there; he told the legislature that was what he wanted.

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We also picked up other departments, for instance the State Narcotic Division, which had been an independent thing. At the time of this reorganization, we put the state narcotics under the attorney general, or under the Department of Justice.

Fry

Was the Department of Justice encompassed by the attorney general's organizational chart, or was it kind of off by itself?

Kenny

No, the attorney general became the head of the Department of Justice, and the narcotics division just became a division under a pleasant Irishman that they later fired. A dirty trick.

Fry

You mean, after you went out?

Kenny

Yes.

Fry

Then [Attorney General Frederick Napolean] Howser fired him?

Kenny

I guess Howser felt that that was important. Warren wouldn't have fired Joe-- I can't remember his name.

Victimless Crimes

Fry

What were your big narcotics problems then? Did you have to deal with pot--with marijuana?

Kenny

Not much. Marijuana was a great thing to improve statistics.

Fry

What do you mean?

Kenny

All law enforcement agencies have to make more pinches than they did the year before, so those pot arrests, those pinches for pot, were very handy in improving our statistical position. We looked very busy.

Fry

[Laughter] I gather, then, that there was no real move to eradicate the pot smokers from the face of California?

Kenny

No, no. Most people had never heard of it. It was very handy in making us look busy.

Fry

And your Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation?

Kenny

That had been an independent bureau, just like the narcotic bureau, and that was brought under the attorney general too.

Fry

Did you have any trouble getting the sheriffs and DAs in outlying counties to use these services?

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Kenny

They used it about the same as they always had. There was an existing bureau, and it went on about the same as usual. They had finger printing experts, and modus-operandi men, and they just continued under a slightly different name. It was just a change of names. The only thing new that happened was that the old prison board was abolished and the Adult Authority came in to fix sentences.

Fry

I got the impression from the annual report that the venereal disease service was new--that it was put in with all these others at that time.

Kenny

Yes. Well, we were making some department of the federal government happy. The federal government wanted to stay its hand; the health department didn't want to take over what they thought was essentially a state function. They said: "We'll send you out some men who will write books and deliver speeches on the subject." They sent out a nice fellow from Virginia, if I recall, who wrote a book on venereal disease control and signed my name to it.

Fry

So it was not under public health because they thought that it would be a state function and not one for the counties?

Kenny

Public health apparently didn't want to take on the chore of quarantining people who were infected with venereal disease.

Fry

They saw this more as a law enforcement function?

Kenny

Yes. We had to deal with the army and the navy on venereal disease control.

Fry

Did that have to do with quarantining neighborhoods around military camps? Prostitution areas, red light districts?

Kenny

I guess so. Let's see now, what were the red light districts? There was a red light abatement act, yes. It was a popular name that was created in San Francisco in, I'd say, the 1910s, or around in there. There were crusading clergymen who were going to "put out the red lights."

I have the book here, but you don't want to get diverted into that.

Fry

We might give a reference to it so that people can look it up; it must be in various documents libraries. Was it published by the state?

Kenny

Yes, I think it was; I think we did that much. The federals did the work. I'll give it to you with my compliments.

Fry

Well, thank you! Let me see what I can find here as a reference.

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"Combating Venereal Diseases: Laws and Procedures, by Robert W. Kenny, State of California, Department of Justice." No date. It is obviously a timeless document! [Laughter] It must have been printed about, when, '44, '45, maybe?

Kenny

Yes. There would be a camp where they were training pilots, up around the Oregon border. There would be a lot of lumberjacks who were cutting down spruce, and who were also chasing the ladies in Plumas or wherever the county seat was. The navy would come in, if it was a navy camp, or the army, and say,

"Bob, we've got to do something to slow this VD rate."

And so I'd call the sheriff in and say, "I've had this visit from the army," and remind them there was this act called the May Act--a federal act that required states to follow out the orders of the armed services. So the sheriff would say,

"We can't do it. You tell the army and navy [laughter] to do it." It would end up that I usually got the army to agree to declare these houses off-limits to service men. That seemed to be a fair way of doing it.

You'd have terrible trouble--that May Act. I remember I'd call up Irving Martin of the Stockton Record, a pillar of the community. I'd say, "Can you get your grand jury to act on these houses?"

He'd say, "Bob, why are you picking on Stockton!" And the Sacramento Bee said to me, "We can't help that problem." I think there was a codicil in [Bee publisher Charles K.] McClatchy's will, in which he said that Sacramento was built on a single man's economy, and you shouldn't do anything to close these cat houses! [Laughter] Yes, I think that's the codicil. But it's a rumor, and probably not so.

Fry

Along with his support for public power, he was also for public prostitution!

Kenny

Yes, I believe that the Bee was against it--that you shouldn't disturb the single man's economy. So we had an uphill fight. Crusading against sin wasn't at all popular, it turned out. There were large interests in a lot of those Northern California communities that didn't want any interference: "Don't pick on us!"

Fry

Was this also an example of your office having power to step in and enforce laws in communities where they were inadequately being enforced by the local law enforcement officers?

Kenny

That's right.

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Fry

Did you have very many instances, besides the prostitution issue?

Kenny

We didn't have very many. We usually called the sheriff and said, "We've had this complaint from the army; can we help you in doing it."

Fry

Were there other types of crimes, besides prostitution, where you had to intercede?

Kenny

Gambling.

Fry

You had to step in there some?

Kenny

These were all what are now known as the victimless crimes.

Fry

Yes. Now there is a bill in the legislature to--

Kenny

Abolish them, de-criminalize them.

Fry

Did victimless crimes take up much of your time then?

Kenny

It was the most sensitive thing you had to deal with. For instance in Redwood City--we couldn't get the grand jury to act; the judges weren't interested in tackling this.

Fry

Which? Prostitution?

Kenny

Gambling. A nice victimless crime. We just threw up our hands. Warren was governor, and I talked to him about it. We had Frank Coakley, who was later district attorney of Alameda. He had been a trusted deputy of Warren, and we put him on it. He couldn't do anything. Coakley had just come back out of the navy. I remember asking him up and talking to him about it.

Fry

Was this any sign of a growing power of organized crime?

Kenny

I don't think so. It was just the way we had always done it in California.

Fry

Did you have the Organized Crime Investigating Commission at that time--the crime commission that Earl Warren had appointed?

Kenny

No, he didn't appoint that until--

Fry

No, that was later. That was when [Attorney General] Howser was in.

Kenny

That was Warren's device to really fix Howser! It taught any young promising attorney general that these victimless crimes were largely indigenous and you should let the operatives operate. Let the sheriff of Amador County decide what was going on in Jackson. There's too many of them and just one of you.

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Fry

You mean that was one of Howser's mistakes--trying to get a piece of the local action?

Kenny

Yes. He wouldn't let the crime be indigenous. He wanted to operate part of it himself! And it just didn't work. His deputy [Wiley] "Buck" Codel, who was arrested, went to the pokey. Drew Pearson exposed things. (Poor Drew's dead now.)

Fry

Were you more willing to let law enforcement be handled on a local basis than Warren was?

Kenny

I don't think so. When Ulysses S. Webb, who preceded Warren--(it was before I took office) was asked "what have you been doing as attorney general?", he would reply, "Well, I've been up in the northern counties."

"What are you doing there?"

"Oh, I'm mostly playing those slot machines that [District Attorney] Earl Warren abolished!" [Laughter]

Alien Land Laws and the Japanese

Fry

In another part of your annual reports, there was a report of how you were having to follow the resolution from the extraordinary session of the 1942 legislature, which said: "Evasions of the alien land laws of 1913 and 1920 be investigated and prosecuted to the utmost." Your report for '42 to '44 says: "Numerous cases of alleged violation were investigated for purposes of escheating property to the state." But then you mention that you didn't have enough staff, and there was a manpower shortage, and the scattered location of the Japanese had made this very difficult.

Kenny

And so we didn't do it! [Laughter]

Fry

I couldn't quite tell from that whether you had been able to prosecute any cases or not.

Kenny

You know, we prosecuted some.

Fry

I know there was a lot done by Warren Olney to locate these Japanese and to investigate illegal ownership of land.

Kenny

Yes, that he did in '42.

Fry

Right after Pearl Harbor.

Kenny

But you know, ultimately the war was over and all that property was given back to the Japanese. If they settled a case for money, we gave them the money back.

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Fry

I hear some of those cases are still going on.

Kenny

I doubt it.

Fry

There's some lawyer in San Francisco, Bob, who has been the main lawyer for the Japanese Americans in all those cases--

Kenny

Purcell?

Fry

No, it's someone else. He also was famous for taking a case to the supreme court to allow gay [homosexual] bars to operate, the "Black Cat" case. Now I remember his name: Wayne Collins.

Kenny

Oh, I know who you mean.

Fry

On the telephone he told me about these cases, of property escheatment. Was there another way, too, when the Japanese were being removed, that their property was confiscated?

Kenny

Yes.

Fry

At any rate, he said that sometimes they could only get back fifty cents on the dollar in some of these.

Kenny

Well, they did pretty well. We had a terribly guilty conscience on that.

Fry

So, they had the advantage of that?

Kenny

Yes.

Fry

The other thing, is that Janet Stevenson, who is working on your biography, told me that state Senator Jack Shelly stopped the expropriation of the Niseis' land, by blocking the bill in the legislature to expropriate the land. Do you know anything about that?

Kenny

No, I don't.

Fry

I don't understand how that fits in. It must have been something that would have superseded and broadened the alien land law--made it apply to the Niseis, too, as well as to Japanese aliens.

Kenny

No, I don't remember that.

Fry

The other thing is that we tried to get a full interview with Jim Oakley, but unfortunately he had his fatal heart attack before we had a session on his work in the attorney general's office. Could you fill in a little and tell me what he did in the attorney general's office for you and what sort of a worker he was?

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Kenny

Jim I knew as probably Warren's closest friend among the deputies. So when I got to be attorney general, Jim wa still down there in the Sacramento office. I'd appointed him head of the Sacramento office, I think. Jim ran the office for me for several months, then there was a vacancy in the superior court in Sacramento, and Earl appointed him to it. He was, I always felt, Warren's closest friend; I may be wrong on that. I know Warren was pleased when I appointed him to Sacramento.

Oh, Jim then became Warren's secretary.

Fry

Yes, between the time he ran the Sacramento office and became a judge.

Kenny

Then I know he went on and Warren put him on the bench.

Fry

I thought maybe one reason you had appointed him to the Sacramento office was because he would make a good liason between your office and his.

Kenny

Yes, I think that was what I did do.

Fry

Just in my brief conversation with him, it sounded like he was kind of a scholarly type. Is that a correct assessment of him?

Kenny

I think so, yes.

Fry

This propensity of his for research and reading--was this used in the office?

Kenny

I don't remember.

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