INVESTIGATIONS: Rotten Apple

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The U.S. people last week watched an extraordinary and absorbing spectacle—the public disgrace of a U.S. Army general. Never in modern times had a high officer suffered such dishonor, seldom had one brought more upon himself and his service than did stiff-backed, sharp-eyed Major General Bennett E. Meyers.

During the war, General Meyers (retired in 1945) was regarded, in & out of the Air Forces, as one of its ablest men. He had risen from private. As second in command of A.A.F. procurement, he had had much to do with the spending of $60 billion; he had been praised for getting airplanes when they were needed. He was a Big Man. On the sordid evidence presented before Senator Homer Ferguson's War Investigating subcommittee last week, Benny Meyers was something else. He was a man of cheap little schemes who hid behind cheaply bought dupes while he enriched himself.

Tools & Stooges. He had a cozy set-up for the cozy war he fought in Washington and at Dayton's Wright Field. Despite the warnings of superiors that he must have no interest in companies which might be doing business with the Army, Meyers got his fingers into a metal-tooling factory. It was the Aviation Electric Corp., a few miles from his office at Wright. It wasn't much— a 190-ft. by 140-ft. one-story building with no more than 30 machines, at its peak. Benny put about $54,000 in it. He needed one more tool—a stooge behind whom he could hide his ownership of Aviation Electric.

He found what he wanted in a mild young man named Bleriot H. Lamarre, a $28-a-week bookkeeper married to a handsome brunette named Mildred Readnower. Mildred had been Benny Meyers' secretary at Wright Field. Bookkeeper Lamarre became Aviation Electric's new president. But he was boss on the letterheads only; Meyers told him what to do and how much to pay himself ($38 a week).

Soon the money began to roll in. Meyers recommended the firm to Bell Aircraft, as being owned by "some friends"; Bell farmed out some minor jobs to Aviation Electric. The first was for fuse boxes. Lamarre figured that they could be profitably made for $11 each. Meyers upped that to $44.58 each, and got it. In five years, Aviation Electric collected $1,053,000 from the Bell account (and about $375,000 from others).

Love & Gifts. Hiding and taking the profits became a problem. Benny rigged the books to show Lamarre's salary as $31,000 a year (meantime Lamarre got an actual raise to $51.51 a week). There had to be another stooge. In came Mrs. Lamarre's brother, Thomas Readnower, who was listed on the books as a vice president at $18,600 a year, but got an actual salary of $25 a week. The kickback to the general of the difference between the real and fictitious salaries also got to be a problem. At first it was handled in cashier's checks, but they were too easily traced. Then it was paid in $1,000 bills—but soon the Treasury began eying all big bills suspiciously. Then it was transferred in smaller bills.

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