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The whole performance has raised questions about the competence of some ITT executives, shaken the reputations of some Nixon Administration officials, and hurt the nation's political relations with certain foreign governments. In the U.S., the ITT controversy has dragged out the confirmation of Richard Kleindienst as Attorney General—because as Deputy Attorney General he approved the antitrust settlement—and handed Democrats an easy opportunity to portray the Nixon Administration as too readily swayed by giant corporations. More generally, it has reopened an old debate about whether business bigness, particularly conglomerate bigness, is bad. Business men around the U.S. complain that the ITT affair has hurt them, too, because it has blackened the image of business in general and given fresh fuel to its increasingly vocal critics. In Latin America, the ITT case has given gleeful leftists the opportunity to aim their attacks on imperialistic Yanqui business against an identifiable company rather than a fuzzy abstraction.
The ultimate effects on ITT itself are not yet clear. The company seems as powerful a multinational force as ever. It boasts more than 200 primary divisions and subsidiaries and countless sub-subsidiaries*on every continent, which among other things operate the hot line between Washington and Moscow, manufacture telephones in Australia, Brazil and Norway, and run the Hamilton mutual funds in the U.S. A consumer who became annoyed with ITT would have a difficult time boycotting it: he could not rent an Avis car, buy a Levitt house, sleep in a Sheraton hotel, park in an APCOA garage, use Scott's fertilizer or seed, eat Wonder Bread or Morton frozen foods. He would have to turn his eyes away from the advertising posters on commuter trains and buses (ITT owns TDI, the company that rents space for the cards), and he could not have watched any televised reports of President Nixon's visit to China (ITT World Communications coordinated all the transmission). The wealthy and powerful who might wish to avoid contact with ITT would suffer a special privation: they would have to refuse listing in Who's Who; ITT owns that, too.
ITT seems vulnerable in some other ways. In the past, it has grown largely by acquisition. Between 1964 and mid-1971, it absorbed no fewer than 98 companies. The antitrust settlement now effectively bars ITT from acquiring any U.S. company with annual sales of $100 million or more, and the bad publicity that has lately befallen ITT might impose further limits. ITT has made almost all its past acquisitions in exchange for stock. The recent controversies have driven down the price of its shares from an early 1972 high of $64.50 to $55.75 last week, making it less attractive to the owners of any company Geneen might covet. The controversies will also make federal and state government officials supercautious in dealing with ITT executives who approach them for favorable tax, merger or regulatory decisions.