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Representative John B. Bennett, Michigan Republican (later): I am sure that with the efficient organization that NBC has, somebody in the top echelon knew about the story. To let those stories go by the board and then to wait until a contestant came out with a charge, and then dismiss that on the basis of representations to you by the producers, just seems to me not to be the right way to get at the facts.
What Is an Inkling? By way of belated remedies, Kintner reported that NBC had got affidavits from quiz producers and contestants that they were not cheating, and told of the formation of a kind of network secret police, composed in part of ex-FBI agents, to keep an eye on the shows. One result, announced by Kintner to the committee: the discovery of kickbacks from contestants to two employees of Treasure Hunt, who were promptly fired. But the show, presumably more closely policed, continues on the air. To the committee Kintner also proposed legislation making cheating on quiz shows a federal offense. But Kintner insisted that he would not "eliminate this whole category of programing. [Quiz shows] can be enjoyable and instructive without any fakery."
The subcommittee was not impressed. Commented Illinois Democrat Peter F. Mack Jr. later: "I had the feeling that the president of NBC did not feel any responsibility for shows carried over that network; that if the producer was out of line or an advertising agency, that he felt he was in the clear."
Testifying next day, CBS President Frank Stanton disagreed with Kintner, repeated his conviction that the danger of fraud on big-money quiz shows will always be too great no matter how carefully they are policed. Witness Stanton, who banned quiz shows from CBS three weeks ago, was against federal legislation, felt the networks themselves must enforce honesty in their entertainment as well as in commercials. But like Kintner, Stanton insisted that he and his network had been duped by the quiz producers; when "gossip about quiz shows'' reached him, Stanton accepted the assurance of "our television network people" that the shows were honest. Wasn't it remarkable, asked Counsel Lishman, that Stanton had no inkling of what was going on? Replied Stanton: "I wouldn't say that I did not have any inkling, but an inkling is a long way from something on which you can take affirmative action." Like Kintner, Stanton denied to Counsel Lishman that he had read the TIME story about quiz rigging in 1957.
Stanton: It so happened at the time that article was published I was on a trip out of the country . . . It may have been discussed; I don't know.
Lishman: Could you explain why no inquiry was really made into the matter at that time?
Stanton: It is easy now to read that article and say, "My gosh, why didn't we do something about it?" [But] this is the same publication that is fighting for advertiser dollars the same as we are . . . I think you have to realize that these are competitors who are throwing the stones. The management of the publication that ran that article is the licensee of four affiliates of the networks that were carrying those programs. The same management that was privy to the information in that article continued to carry the programs that were being fed to them.