ITT: The Real Scandal
ITT: The Real Scandal In a report to stockholders a few years ago, the officers of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation proudly proclaimed that their vast organization "is...
...ITT, Professor Mueller has pointed out, is "the most acquisitive corporation of the current merger movement," having acquired some 170 foreign and domestic companies in the past decade...
...It is a pattern that is not confined to the energetic hustlers of ITT...
...rent a car from ITT-Avis...
...When it was recently revealed that an executive of the Boeing Company had been spending corporate funds on Senator Henry M. Jackson's Wisconsin primary campaign, Jackson dismissed the incident as a mere "indiscretion...
...invest your savings in ITT-Hamilton Management mutual funds...
...More significant than any of these individual facets of the ITT affair— and more scandalous—is the broad pattern they reveal of pervasive corporate influence over the domestic and foreign policies of the American government...
...Another friend of special interests is Peter Flanigan...
...Willard F. Mueller, University of Wisconsin economist, before the Senate Monopoly Subcommittee, November 12, 1971...
...That this state of affairs should prevail even after the facts have been brought to light is the real scandal of the ITT affair...
...Every major special interest in the nation—from oil tycoons to dairy farmers and labor lobbyists—knows that with the judicious investment of political contributions, it can gain access to the levers of political power that are perpetually beyond the reach of ordinary citizens/ Until he resigned a few months ago as Secretary of Commerce, Maurice H. Stans was tireless in his exertions in behalf of such causes as textile import quotas and shipyard subsidies, and relentless in his opposition to consumer protection measures and antipollution controls...
...j| Thanks to some careless disclosures by a loose-lipped ITT lobbyist, some enterprising reportage by columnist Jack Anderson, and some rather fitful investigations subsequently undertaken by the Senate Judiciary Committee, we have all learned a little bit in recent weeks about the true state of the nation and the world...
...Scrutiny of the "personal" campaign contributions of ITT executives reveals that while they clearly favored the Republicans, they always took care to contribute to the Democrats as well...
...Nor is this pattern of corruption confined to a Republican • Administration...
...It is significant, of course—and scandalous—that despite the statutory ban on corporate political contributions, ITT could commit $100,000 or $200,000 or $400,000 or $600,000— each figure has been cited by persons supposedly in the know, and each has been denied—to the Republican Party's forthcoming convention in San Diego...
...Moreover, part of each of your tax dollars spent on defense and space programs goes to ITT, which is one of the nation's leading prime defense contractors...
...buy your life insurance from one of ITT's life insurance subsidiaries...
...White House Special Counsel Harry Dent observes that "there isn't a big business operation in Washington that doesn't work both sides of the street," and he is right...
...savor an ITT-Smithfield ham...
...f / It is understandable that many members of Congress should condone the kind of corporate corruption revealed in the ITT affair, since they participate in the process and benefit from it...
...it is significant, of course—and scandalous—that once they had reached their "understanding" with the Administration on the antitrust action, but before it became a matter of public knowledge, ITT officers were able to engage in profitable stock transactions, tc the detriment of the rank-and-file shareholders whose interests the cornpany is supposedly pledged to protect...
...And it is significant that John A. Mc-Cone, the former director of the CIA and now an ITT director—it's a small world—could acknowledge such intervention and defend it...
...buy cigarettes and coffee from ITT-Canteen vending machines...
...It is significant, of course—and scandalous—that Richard G. Klein-dienst, who was intimately involved in ITT's shady negotiations with the Nixon Administration, should be named to serve as the nation's chief law-enforcement officer...
...As consumers, they are compelled to pay outrageous prices for the inferior products foisted on them by unrestrained monopolies...
...As Time magazine recently noted, Flanigan "has become the Administration's chief hand-holder for business," ready to throw the weight of the President's office behind any corporate appeal for special treatment...
...In a public letter last December, before the details of the ITT affair came to light, Kleindienst asserted that the settlement had been "handled and negotiated exclusively" within the Justice Department's Antitrust Division...
...fertilize your lawn with ITT's Scott fertilizer...
...On the standard of truthfulness alone, he would seem to have forfeited his right to serve as Attorney General of the United States...
...In an interview with Business Week, McCone said ITT told the U.S...
...Describing that annual report before a hearing of the Senate Monopoly Subcommittee last November, University of Wisconsin economist Willard F. Mueller noted that it was "not unlike what one might expect of a Prime Minister's characterization of the British Empire in its days of glory...
...munch on ITT-Continental bakery products...
...As citizens, they are left powerless in a nation which is, supposedly, founded on the principle of their sovereignty...
...stay at hotels or motels owned by ITT-Sheraton...
...What defies understanding is the remarkable tolerance of the American people, who are victimized in many ways by the favors dispensed, for cash, to the special interests...
...insure your home at ITT-Hartford Fire Insurance...
...It is significant, of course—and scandalous—that executives of ITT could enter into private discussions with officials of the Central Intelligence Agency to plot the possible overthrow of the duly elected government of Chile, an effort toward which the corporation was apparently ready to pledge substantial financial help...
...As our attention jumps, frantically, from one short-lived sensation to the next, there is a danger that the profound lessons of the ITT affair will be forgotten...
...buy books from ITT's Bobbs-Merrill publishing division, or attend one of ITT's technical and business schools...
...But its outlines have been blurred and obfuscated in the welter of confusing charges and countercharges...
...Government, "If you have a plan, we'll help you with it...
...The Way ITT Is As a consumer you can buy a home and live in one of ITT-Levitt's planned communities...
...A former secretary to ITT lobbyist Dita D. Beard recalls that Senator Vance Hartke, Indiana Democrat, seemed to regard the corporation as his personal travel agency, requesting the use of its aircraft, and that other members of Congress regularly called ITT "for favors on a big scale...
...Today he is the chief fund-raiser for President Nixon's re-election campaign, successfully soliciting contributions from the interests he formerly served so well...
...And it is noteworthy that W. A. (Tony) Boyle, the president of the United Mine Workers, has just been convicted, and faces up to thirty-two years in jail and a $120,000 fine, for making illegal political contributions, while no one is seriously contemplating prosecution of ITT...
...buy furnishings for your home with personal loans from one of ITT's finance subsidiaries...
...ITT: The Real Scandal In a report to stockholders a few years ago, the officers of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation proudly proclaimed that their vast organization "is constantly at work around the clock—in sixty-seven nations on six continents, in activities extending from the Arctic to the Antarctic and quite literally from the bottom of the sea to the moon...
...As taxpayers, Americans are burdened with a revenue system designed to maximize their contribution while minimizing— sometimes to the vanishing point— the obligations of the rich and powerful...
...We have been afforded a rare glimpse into the corridors of power, where corporate giants deftly manipulate the processes of government to suit the demands of their balance sheets...
...ITT maintains Washington's "hot line" to Moscow, mans the Air Force Distant Early Warning (DEW) system and the giant Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) sites in Greenland and Alaska, the large NASA facility at Cocoa Beach, Florida, and the Defense Department's Western Test Range in California...
...The annual reports of ITT and other mammoth corporations, Professor Mueller observed, "increasingly read like a state of the nation address, and in some cases like a state of the world address...
...Despite the bland denials issued— under oath—by ITT executives, despite attempts by the Administration and its Congressional errand-boys to dismiss the ITT disclosures as "political jackassery," there is a general public awareness that a scandal of major dimensions lies buried in the revelations...
...It is significant, of course—and scandalous—that ITT, through direct ex parte intervention with its friends in the White House, should obtain reversal of a major decision in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, thereby not only assuring itself of an immensely profitable windfall, but heading off a Supreme Court decision that might have provided the Government with an effective weapon against the wave of conglomerate mergers that has left American consumers at the mercy of monopolies...
Vol. 36 • May 1972 • No. 5
