THE MILITARY SURPLUS SCANDAL
Martinsen, Dick
The Military Surplus Scandal by DICK MARTINSEN A SERIES OF advertisements carried in the Sunday New York Times for years eventually cracked open what could prove to be the greatest...
...The list of whys grew so long, in my mind, it drove me finally to the Pentagon...
...Payoffs and kickbacks have only been implied so far, but facts already established justify intensification of the inquiries under way by various Congressional subcommittees...
...Why should the Army ever have bought "casual sport shoes" at $5.97 a pair—now offered to one and all at $1.99...
...Thirty-odd years as a newsman have failed to dull my curiosity...
...There were also "unused" Navy aircraft sextants, government cost $230 each, available at $19.50...
...This quest by an unauthorized civilian became such a fruitless game of battledore and shuttlecock I began to fear that one day, at the end of some remote corridor, a custodian would sweep up only my whitened bones...
...I withdrew in frustration but not in silence, to launch a barrage of pointed questions at Congressmen and various news services...
...Why should late model Stevens .22-caliber DICK MARTINSEN, a copy editor of the Houston Chronicle, has written for a number of American and foreign publications...
...The word spread...
...In Collinswood, New Jersey, Citizen...
...Why should any service branch buy transit levels at $250 each wholesale, and auction them off for so little they can now be bought retail for $29.99...
...Men have, of course, been known to vanish forever in the maw of this gigantic monster while on strictly official missions...
...Why should the Navy buy stainless steel pitchers at $18 each, then junk them so cheaply they could be sold at a profit to the public at two for $12...
...Finally there were items calculated to stretch anyone's credulity—Reed & Barton silver sugar bowls from the Navy, unused "Pet Mats" that cost the Army $18, now yours for $1.75, and unused Army "pruner saws and machetes," yours at $2.75...
...The saw-machetes had cost the Army $80 each, and were described as "all-around garden tools with combination blade and crosscut saw on one side and keen chopping edge on the other...
...Skeet Traps"—devices to fling clay pigeons into shotgun range—which had cost the government more than $200 each, were now offered for a few dollars...
...The advertisements were placed by organizations that regularly use the Sunday Times and many other papers to hawk by direct mail so-called military "surplus" goods...
...Congressional mailbags swelled...
...target rifles, which cost the government $129 each, be jettisoned to sell at a profit for $37.50...
...The nature of innumerable items advertised at giveaway prices at first perplexed and finally disturbed me...
...Did pitchers become obsolete...
...The inquiries should probe into the past at least twenty years back, and include a broad scrutiny of individual bank accounts...
...The "surplus" business—although it is fifteen years since there has been an official war— has mushroomed into a mighty industry of 8,000 firms and trade groups...
...Unknown comrades began to back my hand...
...Navy six-inch speakers "in original boxes," cost $75, now $9.95, and Navy compensating compasses, cost $143, now $12.50...
...The Military Surplus Scandal by DICK MARTINSEN A SERIES OF advertisements carried in the Sunday New York Times for years eventually cracked open what could prove to be the greatest government scandal since Teapot Dome...
Vol. 24 • March 1960 • No. 3
