Stockpile Spat

As it must to almost all congressional investigations, partisan politics last week burst into the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee's probe of Government war-emergency stockpiling. Missouri Democrat Stuart Symington, the subcommittee chairman, expansively told a news conference that his three months of hearings had disclosed that "the taxpayers stand to lose over $1 billion as a result of these stockpile operations--far greater than any I have seen in the Billie Sol Estes case."

President Kennedy demanded the investigation last winter. He had, he said, been "astonished" to learn that the stockpile of industrial materials was worth more than $7.7 billion, nearly twice the amount needed for a three-year war. He hinted that "mismanagement" and "unconscionable profits" permeated the program on a grand scale. Testimony has indicated that some metal firms were permitted to make handsome profits through favorable contracts with the Government. So far, the long hours of hearings have turned up only one minor conflict-of-interests case: that of Dr. John D. Morgan Jr., who was a consultant for the Office of Emergency Planning in 1957, at the same time that he represented Climax Molybdenum Co., which held a Government contract. The Government fired Morgan last week from his $50-a-day part-time consultant's job.

At his news conference, Democrat Symington indicated he had far bigger game in sight. He said he might quiz Eisenhower's Treasury Secretary George Humphrey about limited-risk contracts that the Truman Administration signed, just four days before it went out of office, with Hanna Nickel Smelting Co. Humphrey headed the nickel company's parent firm, M.A. Hanna Co., before he joined the Government, and he retained his Hanna stock while Treasury Secretary. All of these facts had been disclosed long ago, but Symington said he wanted to know if Humphrey's companies made unjustified profits.

Symington's partisan play infuriated Dwight Eisenhower, who just happened to be in Washington lunching with Republican Congressmen. He said his Administration had played no favorites in administering the stockpile program, a program which, he emphasized, "operated under laws that existed long before I got there." As for George Humphrey, Ike remained a fervent admirer. Said he: "If Secretary Humphrey ever did a dishonest thing in his life, I'm ready to mount the cross and you can put the nails and spear in me."*

*Full of fire, Cattle Farmer Eisenhower earlier got mad when G.O.P. Congressmen told him the original Kennedy farm program included jail sentences for some farmers who failed to cooperate. Wrote Washington's Republican Representative Catherine May to her constituents about the meeting: "He declared that if any of these proposed regimented programs became law he would be darned if he just wouldn't rather go to jail than to submit." Ike will not be jailed--the provision was dropped from the bill.

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