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Plots & Shots. All his life, says Bennett, Ford lived in fear of enemies, real and imaginary. At various times he imagined that the Jews, the Catholic Church, and above all Wilmington's Du Ponts, were out to get him. Once he had Bennett send an agent to Wilmington to nose out what the Du Ponts were doing in, synthetic rubber. When the agent died suddenly, Bennett sent another who, by coincidence, suffered a fatal stroke. Cried Ford: "Harry, don't send any more men down there . . . they're killing them."
Ford's home was honeycombed with tunnels, where he could escape or hide in event of danger. When Bennett built a home near Ann Arbor, Ford got him to build a tower with a secret door "as an escape for the children," and connect it with a hidden tunnel in the yard. "However," writes Bennett, "the secret exit was never used. At the end of the tunnel, I kept my lion and tiger cages." *
The Empty Kitty. To any visiting clergyman, of whatever denomination, Ford would say: "Well, now, you've got the best religion in the world." This gave rise to reports that he leaned toward various faiths, but, Bennett says, Ford had "his own private religion." He believed strongly in reincarnation. His proof, says Bennett, was simple. Pointing out that chickens, which used to run in front of autos and get killed, now headed for the side of the road, Ford said: "That chicken has learned, because it has been hit in the [behind] in a previous life."
For his services, Bennett says, Ford gave him to understand that the contents of a "kitty" in a safe in his office would ultimately be Bennett's. The kitty, "from which expenditures could be made without explanation," sometimes held as much as $4,000,000 in cash. But in the fall of 1945, when Ford retired from the company, the kitty was cleaned out and Bennett got nothing.
When Bennett left the company for good, he concludes: "It was all I could do to keep myself from running down the hall, I wanted to get out so fast. I felt like a man being let out of prison."