Probing submarine contracts and an admiral's gifts
Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy, friend of congressional committee chairmen, was accustomed to getting his way with defense contractors. Once, according to congressional investigators, while visiting General Dynamics' Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Conn., the crusty admiral admired a horn-handled fruit knife and idly declared that he would like to have a dozen of them. Shipyard executives hopped to. The handle was shipped off to a General Dynamics' lab, where analysis revealed that it had been made from the horn of a rare Southeast Asian buffalo. More buffalo horn was sent for, and...