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Piracif in the War Program
And don't think there isn't! Your money is squandered by the billions — and if investigations are started, war contractors howl that the war effort is impeded. What price (to you) patriotism? . . . One of Mutual's most energetic news analysts places some blames as a result of careful research.
By FULTON LEWIS, JR.
THREE and onchalf years of close observation of the waste, extrava' gance, and what, in some cases, amounts to downright piracy in our war program, have left me a bit confused as to just who actually is to blame.
The Army construction forces, which have been the greatest offend' ers, have, of course, to take the ini' tial rap. But somewhere along the line the public apathy to the bold squandering of public funds has to take its share of the responsibility.
If any one had said a few years ago that the American public would sit back and swallow a job like the Canol Project in Canada without screaming for somebody's scalp; that it could read about truck drivers on Army contracts getting paid at the rate of 12 thousand dollars a year with about the same reaction it would get from reading yesterday's baseball results; or that it would be only temporarily ruffled by the realization that some war contractors are enriching themselves by various devious proc
esses while they are proudly claiming that they are getting only the meager fixed fees that the government al' lows them for cost-plus work— if any one had said a few years ago that any of those things could happen, they would have been catalogued as crazy.
But that, apparently, is what has happened, and is happening every day. Case after case of exorbitant profits in war contracts have been brought to light; but nothing is done and the whole thing keeps right on rolling.
Take the case of the Hawaiian contracts. Millions of dollars were funnelled out of the Federal Treasury through Army contracting officers who apparently had no regard whatever for the money they were spend' ing. We still don't know all the facts on that case, but we have seen examples of the grossest kind of inefficiency and waste, plus such interesting little incidents as the renting of private yachts apparently for the sole purpose of paying fantastic rents to the owners.