Warren Olney III

Warren Olney III was an American attorney and law enforcement official, soldier, and Attorney General. He ran the Criminal Divisions of the California Department of Justice and later the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). He was an integral part of the creation of the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ, and helped write the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Early life Olney was born in 1904 in Oakland, California. As a child, Olney was taken to see Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, where he witnessed Annie Oakley's marksmanship. While at Berkeley, Olney joined Alpha Delta Phi. Olney has stated that he justified this to himself by the thinking that he was protecting these Americans from attack by their fellow neighbors, and continued to advocate for their rights, even while enforcing their removal to concentration camps.

Return to practice After the war, he returned to private practice with a law office of his own in San Francisco. However, this does not indicate his position in favor or against the Senator's conduct. In June of that year, Olney reviewed the appeal case of Val R. Lorwin, an American government employee accused of being a Communist, and noticed what he called "irregularities" in the original case.

In April 1953, before the Senate Banking Committee, Olney charged the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) was "in partnership with lenders and promoters of home repairs with no responsibility for the victims of swindlers." Olney advocated for homeowners, saying that the Rental Apartment Project Loan Program allowed "unscrupulous builders to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars in windfall profits." Olney introduced the concepts of "dynamiters" and "suede shoe boys," to the Committee, saying that these men would sell intentionally bad repairs to homeowners at "exorbitant prices."

The Attorney General at the time, Herbert Brownell Jr., wrote of Olney;

"On October 10, 1956, Assistant Attorney General Warren Olney III testified concerning the facts regarding Ouachita Parish before the Senate Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections and recommended that the Subcommittee hold public hearings in advance of the general election. The Subcommittee took no action with respect to the situation. Had the Administration's program been in effect the Department would have been able to initiate a civil action for the purpose of restoring the Negro voters to the rolls of registered voters in time to vote in the November election." Olney and Brownell felt that civil rights needed its own division at DOJ. In the final year of his tenure at this position, Olney successfully saw the creation of the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Olney also helped draft this legislation, which was the first major legislation in civil rights since the end of the American Civil War. During the debate in the United States Senate over the amendment S 1735 - what was called the "trial-by-jury issue" of the Civil Rights Act - Olney said that the language of S 1735 "was a 'clever device to nullify' the civil rights proposals. If S 1735 were enacted, he said, the civil rights program 'would be no more effective than present laws in protecting the constitutional right to vote.' " He also stated that S 1735 would "emasculate the whole bill." Concurrently, Olney served as the Executive Officer of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

In 1968, Olney created the Federal Judicial Center. Olney died in 1978.

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