INVESTIGATIONS: Tales of the V.O.A.

Senator Joseph McCarthy's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations turned its flickering beam on the Voice of America last week, and the public, watching on television, caught startling glimpses of an oddly run agency with some strange birds roosting in it. Frequently McCarthy's beam darted erratically up side alleys, or swept bewilderingly from one point to another, leaving great patches unilluminated. But some of the highlighted details were eyebrow-raising. Items:

¶Lewis J. McKesson, a former Voice engineer, testified that two 1,000,000-watt transmitters the agency was building in the U.S. were "not properly located." Both sites, he said, lie within the earth-girdling magnetic-storm belt; if located outside the belt, the transmitters would cost $18 million less to build, and require 90% less power. A Voice official named Frederick Freeman added that the contract for building one of the two transmitters had been awarded to "the least eligible of 14 bidders." Soon after Freeman testified, Voice Boss Wilson M.Compton ordered work on both projects halted.

¶Donald R. Creed, assistant chief of the Domestic Transmitter Division, told of a white-elephant recording truck that had cost $65,000 to build. On its maiden field trip two years ago, it proved so defective that "about $25,000 or $30,000" more was spent for alterations. After a few more expeditions, the monster was confined to a garage, where it now gathers dust.

¶Of a budgeted $30,000 for recorded programs for Latin America in one quarter of 1952, $28,000 went into a "flimsy and foolish" playlet. The Eye of the Eagle, about a roving superscientist with an atomic eye that could see through walls.

¶Miss Nancy Lenkeith, a cigarette-smoking brunette with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, said that she had been fired from her job in the Voice's French section after she had written a favorable review of Whittaker Chambers' Witness. Also, she related, on her very first day in the section. Acting Chief Troup Mathews called her to his office and "told me his primary interest was in setting up collectivist groups." McCarthy interrupted her with a warning that "many children are watching this program." Later the committee released a transcript of Nancy's nonpublic testimony. Mathews, she testified, had told her that in the group all children would be brought up communally, and asked her if she would join: "I said I had no children. He said that could be arranged. So I said I had no husband. He said that didn't matter, that could be worked out . . . Well. I was curious why he wanted me, having just met me. I asked him what kind of people he wanted to bring there . . . and he told me . . . people who have no dogmatic religious beliefs." In a statement to the press. Mathews called Miss Lenkeith's story "a tissue of fabrication and vicious falsehoods."