Fish Fry

"The Civil Aeronautics Board put out a big net, and they got me, a herring. The barracuda is still swimming around." With these words, a $10,065-a-year CAB trial attorney, Albert Ruppar, 47, shrugged off his dismissal from the board last week for violating the rule that prohibits CAB employees from buying airline stocks. For weeks CAB had been trying to find the man who on Aug. 2, eight days before the official announcement, had tipped off Wall Street about the board's decision to award New England's little Northeast Airlines a lucrative New York-Miami air route. As a result, Northeast stock soared from 9 1/2 to 12 1/2 in a single day's frantic trading (TIME, Aug. 20). For a while it looked as though Lawyer Ruppar, who had bought 1,000 shares of Northeast stock, was the culprit.

As it turned out, Ruppar may have been guilty of incredibly bad judgment, but not of tipping off the board's decision. He had bought his stock on the morning of Aug. 3, a day after the leak, when Northeast stock was already rising fast, on a tip from a broker friend. Ruppar got 500 shares at 10 1/2, later picked up another 500 at around 12. After holding the stock for several days, he sold in the middle of a profit-taking drop, actually lost an estimated $1,600 on the deal. That left the CAB, the FBI and the Senate Investigations Subcommittee still looking for the barracuda. But the case had already served one good purpose: from now on CAB will announce its route awards as soon as it makes its decision, thus preventing anyone, inside or out, from making a killing.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.