INDUSTRY: Ringing the Brass

Rising to his feet in the Senate last week, Illinois Democrat Paul Douglas took out after the Pentagon and its defense contractors. Said Douglas: "The system of defense procurement has led to great abuse. And when companies hire former officers to negotiate with their former fellow officers, the abuses are magnified." With that, Douglas released figures showing that 88 of the nation's 100 top contractors employed no fewer than 721 ex-officers with the rank of colonel and up. Douglas said darkly that there is grave suspicion that many of these men were hired as influence peddlers to assure fat contracts: "They didn't hire those 721 merely for their military knowledge."

Douglas' blast was the latest in a series of angry rumblings in Congress over the role of retired and resigned military men in business. Three weeks ago New York's Representative Alfred Santangelo offered a harsh amendment to the Administration's $39 billion military appropriations bill for fiscal 1960: no funds could be used for contracts with any company that had hired general officers who had been on active duty within the last five years. The amendment was defeated by only a narrow (147 to 125) margin. Shortly after, the House's watchdog Armed Services Investigation Subcommittee fired off 840 questionnaires to 100 leading contractors and 200 individuals, asking whether any business had been "solicited"' by former military men. Said Chairman F. Edward Hebert, who promises a full-scale investigation early next month: "The big names better come to protect themselves. If not, they'll become suspect. If you enlist brains for the sake of brains, there is nothing wrong. But if you enlist names for the sake of contacts, that is wrong."

Listening to the barrage last week, the defense industry kept mum publicly. Privately, it reacted with surprise—and considerable anger of its own. In Pittsburgh, Reserve Army Colonel Willard Rockwell, who once took time off from running his three manufacturing companies to serve briefly as an assistant to the Defense Secretary, ridiculed the whole thing. Snorted Rockwell, whom Representative Santangelo listed as "suspect": "The White House has bought eleven of our Aero Commander planes. I can't even sell one to the military. How's that for influence?" When it comes to pressuring for contracts, he charged that the real big leaguers are in Congress itself. "Every time some Congressman wants a contract for a hometown favorite, the Pentagon is supposed to jump." Businessmen noted that Representative Santangelo himself complained that New York was not getting its fair share of contracts; the West Coast was getting all the gravy.