Obituaries : Ex-Sen. John J. Williams; Praised for High Integrity

Ex-Sen. John J. Williams (R-Del.), who in his 24 years in Washington came to be called “the conscience of the Senate,” died Monday night at a hospital in Lewes, Del.

The man behind the Bobby Baker investigation who also exposed the tax scandals of the Harry S. Truman era was 83 and died of cardiopulmonary arrest, said a spokeswoman for Beebe Hospital.

Williams, who was known for his integrity and devotion to his constituency, served four consecutive six-year terms--from 1947 to 1971--longer than any other Delaware senator.

Typical of the man was his decision not to seek another term in 1970 because he was then 66 and believed that no one should serve in the Senate beyond age 70.

Even when he was out of office his views were sought on matters of integrity and conscience and he became a vocal critic of the Watergate scandals in the early 1970s, calling the Nixon Administration’s cover-ups “indefensible.”

And his views in a 1973 interview with The Times proved prophetic when he complimented President Richard M. Nixon for getting the nation out of Vietnam but then noted sadly that “sometimes people remember something like this (Watergate) long after they forget the good.”

And “good” was a word heard often about the former chicken feed dealer from Millsboro, Del., who maintained a stubborn and independent course throughout his life.

He once created a fuss with the Treasury by returning $1,500 of the $1,800 allotted each senator annually for stationery. The Treasury accepted the refund only after the controller general intervened. He carried on investigations within his office on an ongoing basis and always with just himself and his staff because “to be sure of it you’ve got to do it yourself.”

The most celebrated were those that resulted in disclosure of the outside business activities of Robert G. Baker, the former Senate Democratic secretary who was involved in influence peddling; the wrongdoings in the Internal Revenue Service in the early 1950s that resulted in 125 convictions for bribery, extortion and other misdeeds, and the 1949 uncovering of a $96-million shortage in the Commodity Credit Corp.

A maverick whose independence cut sharply across party lines, he once forced a roll-call vote rather than a voice vote on a bill to raise senators’ salaries and succeeded in stopping a longstanding practice by the Defense Department of giving legislators 24 hours’ notice on contracts in their states so they could announce them first.

The tall, soft-spoken Williams, whose habit of mumbling on the Senate floor brought him the sobriquet “Whispering Willie,” was the ninth of 11 children born on a farm near Frankford, Del.

With his brother he borrowed a few hundred dollars and founded a feed company. When it prospered despite what he saw as government interference in small businesses, he decided to move into politics, saying in a 1969 interview with the New York Times that “if Washington was going to run my business I thought I’d move on up to the front office.”