OUT TO GET THE GOVERNMENT

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 247, 31 July 1946, Page 5

OUT TO GET THE GOVERNMENT

U.S. WARTIME CONTRACTORS MILLIONS LOST TO TREASURY (N.Z. Press Association —Copyright.) WASHINGTON, July 29. The Controller-General, Mr Lindsay Warren, testifying before the Senate War Investigation Committee, said it looked during the lush war years as if everybody and his brother were out to get the Government. •» Some high Government officials accepted entertainment, including cocktail parties, hotel bills and even travel expenses from contractors, while drawing Government allowances for the same purposes. This practice, which was the rule rather than the exception, got so bad in the Maritime Commission, for instance “that I called personally on the chairman, Admiral Emroy S. Land, and also wrote to him, upon which he issued an order condemning the practice.” Mr Warren denounced the degeneration of naval moral standards and the abuse of the broadened authority given procurement agencies under the guise of war and said that cost plus procurement is the greatest device ever invented for pumping, out the Treasury. Mr Warren said he asked Congress several times to tighten the war spending laAvs. )‘For example I appeared in 1943 before the House Military Committee (of which Mr A. J. May was chairman) and gave instance after instance of inefficient contracting officers who were dishing out United States property and money with reckless abandon.” Lack of Common Decency Mr Warren said the Government lost untold millions by not allowing accounting officers to • police contracts. “Naturally there will be some waste, extravagance and fraud in wartime,” lie said, “but what I urge is just a little ordinary common decency.” Mr Warren said there had been a widespread practice of Army officials obtaining lucrative jobs from Avar producers whose Government contracts they helped-to draft and settle while still in the forces. He specified four cases and said their discovery caused the general accounting office to throw every searchlight on the contracts held by the companies employing the men concerned. Replying to a question Mr Warren said the- practice was not illegal, but it was a question of propriety. He added that careful contracting officers who tried to protect the Government’s interests were time after ime taken off their jobs and transferred elsewhere. . The chairman, Senator James, M. Mead, agreed that the practice was indefensible and said the committee should dig deeper i»to it.