Admission of favours to help whisky sales

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32536, 20 February 1971, Page 17

Admission of favours to help whisky sales

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, February 18. A major distiller first denied and then admitted today full knowledge that his agents heaped favours on high-ranking United States officials in Vietnam in order to make Jim Beam the best-selling bourbon in the war zone.

In halting, often apologetic testimony to the Senate Investigations sub-committee, Mr Mel Peterson, vice-presi-dent of the James Beam Distilling Company confirmed that Saigon villas were among the treats provided for United States officials to push Jim Beam sales at PX stores and service clubs throughout South Vietnam. He also confirmed his company’s close relationship with its former chief Vietnam agent, William Crum, pictured in previous testimony as a purveyor of bribes and kickbacks who created nearmonopoly control of goods and services sold to military clubs and similar facilities, first in South Korea and later in Vietnam.

Another witness, a former Army investigator, testified that an Army-ordered investigation of Crum’s Korean activities in 1959 was halted by order of the United States Bth Army Headquarters in Seoul two months after it began.

Before he was ordered to write a “whitewash” report, said a retired chief warrant officer, Augustin Manfredi, his two-man investigating team had uncovered evidence that Crum was involved in bribery, kickbacks, and smug-gling-activities that the Investigations sub-committee alleges Crum shifted to Saigon when the Vietnam war escalated. Mr Peterson, called to answer indications yesterday by sub-committee investigators that he was part of Crum’s schemes to curry favour with United States purchasing agents in. Vietnam, at first denied them. He said he “condoned” Crum’s acquiring and furnishing a Saigon villa in 1965 for the top four PX officials in Vietnam because "quite frankly I had no alternative ... I received the information after he did it.” Under questioning, Mr Peterson later admitted that he knew of the dealings and had approved them.