THE WORD FROM WASHINGTON
The Word from Washington Three years ago the North American Aviation Company was in the Washington headlines as part of the Bobby Baker case. The testimony had been that North American favored...
...We have come to the view," he said, "that we will continue to have frank and confident cooperation which, of course, takes into consideration the matters of our two nations and that any problems that might come up will be discussed frankly without any attempt to bring about results which a partner would not wish...
...There are distressing signs at this writing that the effort to negotiate a nuclear nonproliferation treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union may go down the drain...
...Teague was chairman of the House subcommittee investigating the Apollo disaster—which occurred thirteen months after the Phillips report...
...If only Adam had done the humble bit," one colleague remarked, "there would have been no need to throw him out...
...that it would expose West German private enterprise to industrial espionage...
...Notwithstanding that Powell left a strong imprint on much of the Great Society legislation of which President Johnson is so proud, while there is no single piece of major legislation with which Dodd can be prominently identified...
...Notwithstanding that the Dodd hearings were a model of adversary procedure with the Connecticut Senator accorded full right to counsel and to confrontation of his accusers unlike the roughshod Powell hearings...
...The testimony had been that North American favored Baker's vending machine company with valuable concessions...
...that his quixotic defiance of the Selective Service System will cost him millions of dollars and the world's heavyweight championship...
...Would you assume that this is trying to be a public servant or trying to get into the newspapers...
...They were only gone two days...
...They returned to the refugee camp...
...It was during the Kennedy Administration, when Kerr ran the Senate, that North American was picked as prime contractor for the $22 billion Apollo program...
...Powell displayed no such remorse...
...They have voiced concern that it would disrupt the workings of Euratom, the West European atomic agency...
...Notwithstanding all this, it must be assumed that Congress acted with wisdom and compassion in the way it meted out justice to both men...
...But the most intriguing of all the elements in this mystery was raised by Representative William F. Ryan, New York Democrat, when he disclosed what he claimed to be the findings of a document known as the "Phillips Report" (after Apollo general manager Major General Samuel C. Phillips...
...Senator John G. Tower of Texas summoned reporters to hint darkly about possible conspiracies involved in the preparation and release of the Blue Book, and to suggest an investigation of its authors...
...that he adheres to the faith of the Black Muslims, who fail to meet accepted standards of conventional piety...
...This is the climate of hybridized capitalism in which North American grew to pre-eminence in the American aerospace industry...
...I Cyrus Vance, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, deplores the "heated and intolerant" nature of the Vietnam debate, and would like to see "the national sense of balance" restored...
...If Kiesinger overstated the American commitment to West Germany, the President made no effort to set the record straight...
...It had been further revealed that Fred B. Black Jr., North American's man in Washington, was a business partner of Baker's as well as a close personal friend of the late Senator Robert S. Kerr, Oklahoma Democrat, who headed the powerful Senate Space Committee...
...Does bipartisanship mean that Democratic mistakes are Republican responsibilities...
...He called the report "a classic political mistake...
...Delayed and compromised ground and qualification test programs give us serious concern that fully qualified flight vehicles will not be available to support the lunar landing program...
...The Germans have made no secret of their distaste for the proposed treaty...
...The circumstances of the fire and the subsequent investigation into its causes were wrapped in layers of official secrecy that seemed inappropriate to a civilian program...
...North American Aviation quality is not up to NASA required standards...
...In contrast to the rest of us, who do...
...asked Representative Olin E. Teague, Texas Democrat, of Ryan's disclosures...
...It was virtually unnoticed in news accounts of General William Westmoreland's White House briefing for Congressional and Cabinet VIPs last month...
...Potomacus...
...I did not read the final version," he explained...
...Only a month or two ago, American officials were saying that such objections would be overridden for the greater good of obtaining a treaty...
...Powell's misappropriation of House salary funds was estimated by his peers at about $45,000...
...Meanwhile, back at the White House, President Johnson has been making his own contribution to "the national sense of balance" by passing out copies of a speech by Thurman Arnold castigating the "alienated intellectuals" who criticize the Administration...
...Senator Everett Dirksen, the mellilo-quent Minority Leader, left a sickbed to reaffirm unswerving fealty to President Johnson and his war...
...Emphasis added...
...that it would interfere with development of peaceful uses of atomic energy...
...Cassius Clay, a healthy young man who won fame and fortune by skillfully bruising and battering other healthy young men for the amusement and titillation of his fellow citizens, now faces public obloquy (and perhaps five years in jail) for declining his Government's invitation to bruise and batter Vietnamese...
...They note that he now chooses to be known as Muhammad Ali—a name obviously unsuited to the needs of headline writers...
...The Chancellor proclaimed that he had won a virtual veto over American policy affecting his country...
...Tiiiiiinl The "Blue Book" on Vietnam issued last month by the staff of the Senate Republican Policy Committee was a remarkably sound and sensible document, considering its source...
...Here it is in the General's own words: "Last week, I heard that two of the families had decided to leave the refugee camp...
...The outlook took a sudden turn for the worse immediately after President Johnson conferred in Bonn with West German Chancellor Kurt George Kiesinger...
...Notwithstanding that it took the House only six weeks, from start to finish, to throw Powell out of Congress while the procedure that resulted in the proposed censure of Dodd dragged on for more than a year...
...The offending passages in the ninety-one-page report, these Senators agreed, were those which suggested that the opposition party might consider opposing the war...
...Dodd, who clearly needed the money to maintain a subsistence standard of living in affluent Washington, showed every sign of penitence in his accountings to the Senate...
...Now the official line is that the negotiations have become terribly difficult and may fail...
...Only those with the meanest and most preconceived ideas about Congress could raise the cry of racial bigotry in the respective treatment of Senator Thomas J. Dodd and Representative Adam Clayton Powell...
...A clue to this sudden turnabout may be offered by the remarks of Kiesinger and Mr...
...Leading Republican Senators therefore lost no time in disavowing it...
...Although a reasonable man might have concluded that the contracts on Bobby Baker's candy machines were rigged on the inside, the imagination boggles at the thought that project Apollo was handed out on this basis...
...Johnson after their talk in Bonn...
...Predictably, NASA's Congressional spokesmen jumped on Ryan for blowing the whistle...
...That we must rally behind our President...
...His punishment—expulsion—was in direct relationship to his lack of humility...
...They went back to their former area...
...The report, as disclosed by Ryan, is a broad-scale indictment of North American's management of the Apollo program...
...So he recently told a convention of the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia, adding that "informed, disciplined, and responsible dissent is the very essence of our freedom...
...Nonetheless, North American is once again in the headlines—this time in the tragic context of the January 27 fire that took the lives of three Apollo astronauts...
...It is not a concentration camp, so they could leave at their choosing and these two families did...
...Finally, Kerr, Black, Baker and other associates bought a large interest in a Tulsa bank...
...the Blue Book asked...
...Those keen judges of intellect who compose the sports news in our newspapers assure us that Clay is none too bright...
...When asked why, they stated that they missed seeing Gunsmoke on TV...
...Arnold, the old New Deal trust-buster who now presides over the wealthy Washington law firm of Arnold and Porter, named Walter Lipp-mann, Senator Fulbright, Henry Steele Commager, and John Kenneth Gal-braith as among the offending "alienated intellectuals...
...In one case North American obliged the city of Tulsa, in Kerr's home state, by putting an Apollo plant there...
...He seemed, in fact, to be enjoying himself in the Caribbean sun while Congress agonized over the consequences of his behavior...
...But the General revealed a new tactic for winning the minds and hearts of the Vietnamese...
...Unspoken but obvious has been the German fear that a nonproliferation pact would institutionalize West Germany's status as a non-nuclear power...
...Does the Republican Party serve America best by saying that politics stops at the water's edge...
...Cassius Clay, in brief, just doesn't understand the situation...
...He cited such complaints as these: "Effective planning and control from a program standpoint does not exist...
...The condition of hardware shipped from the factory, with thousands of hours work to complete, is unsatisfactory to NASA...
...The President, who doubtless shares Secretary Vance's devotion to "informed, disciplined, and responsible dissent," has been keeping a stack of copies of the Arnold speech on his desk, handing it to visitors and quoting from it with approval when the occasion arises, as it often does...
...Notwithstanding that the size of Dodd's defalcations—the conversion of political dinner contributions to his personal use—was the lion's share of some $450,000 he collected between 1961 and 1965...
...They are giving every aid and comfort to the enemy that they can in the light of their limited numbers," Arnold said when he helped Valparaiso University celebrate Law Day a few weeks ago...
...And Kerr, in turn, obliged North American and Tulsa by pushing in Congress for a multi-million dollar waterway and port improvement project to serve the city...
...Justice on Capitol Hill is, fortunately, color-blind...
...Senator Bourke B. Hickenlooper of Iowa, the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, apologized for authorizing the report's publication...
...We both know," he said, "that in unity there is strength and we both want, more than anything else, strength for our respective peoples...
...Yes, indeed," replied the leading lights of conservative Republicanism who once, long ago, talked about furnishing Americans with a choice, not an echo...
...On all these points the sports writers and their editorial page colleagues are indisputably correct...
...There is little confidence that North American will meet its schedule and performance commitments within the funds available for this portion of the Apollo program...
Vol. 31 • June 1967 • No. 6
