Pentagon Admits Over-spending

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31519, 6 November 1967, Page 13

Pentagon Admits Over-spending

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, ' Nov. 5. Embarrassed Pentagon officials are kicking at “money-saving” computers that led them to pay up to $312 for plastic generator handles with a market price of $1.60. This was one of hundreds of examples of excessive prices apparently paid by the Defence Department for items ranging from nuts and washers to steel tubes and wrenches. An Armed Services sub-com-

mittee of the House of Representatives started investigating the Pentagon's purchasing system this week amid accusations of “miserable” and “reprehensible” work by some young officials. Congressman Otis Pike, a New York Democrat heading the investigation, said the officials often could have done a better job by walking to the corner hardware store.

The chief, buyer for the Pentagon, Mr Thomas Morris, took the brunt of the Congressional panel’s scorn. On one occasion he defended his staff for taking the right action in paying $2.28 for 15c washers. Defence supply computers, on which the multi-million-item operation depends, did

not tell them where they could get the washers for less, be said.

A new York firm which allegedly charged almost 200 times above the normal selling price for the generator handles has been cut off from the Pentagon’s list of suppliers pending an investigation by the Justice Department.

Mr Morris, Assistant Secretary of Defence for Logistics, said that the Pentagon computers often identified only the manufacturers or prime contractors for items of equipment.

The sub-committee’s chairman, Congressman Porter Hardy, of Virginia, said that the New York firm had indi-.

cated that it manufactured the plastic handles, although it bought them from a New Jersey firm for resale to the Pentagon. The House panel opened its public investigation as a result of startling figures unearthed last summer by Congressman Pike, who has made Government money - wasting his forte. For example, the Navy this week conceded his charge that it paid $l2O each for 20 pieces of tubing which even a computer had advised were available for $2. By tightening computer programming and retraining its less-experienced buyers, the Pentagon hopes to save up to s2sm a year.