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In the U.S., too, cries of cover-up are being heard. Harvard Asian Expert Jerome Alan Cohen has suggested that the U.S. did not want to see the names of Lockheed's Japanese payoff recipients come out because Lockheed may have been "operating in intimate contact" with certain segments of the American Government. Indeed at week's end the New York Times reported that in the 1950s, the CIA was aware of Lockheed bribes in Japan, and that Yoshio Kodama had on a few occasions been paid by the CIA for services rendered. A U.S. intelligence official confirmed for TIME that the agency knew about the bribes, adding that "Kodama has been a well-placed, influential and knowledgeable individual and therefore a useful contact for American intelligence."
Consisting as it does of high-level Administration officials, the Richardson panel will have to struggle to persuade skeptics that it is not part of a further coverup. In announcing its creation. President Ford proclaimed that the commission's task "is not to punish American corporations." The White House also distributed a "fact sheet" noting that an American law prohibiting foreign bribery might involve the U.S. in investigating foreign officials; that requiring U.S. companies to disclose the names of foreign bribetakers might raise diplomatic hackles wherever U.S. companies do business; and that prohibiting foreign payoffs by U.S. executives could put them at a disadvantage in world trade. Those are all legitimate points, but they will hardly disarm those who feel that such a law would be the best deterrent to further payoffs abroad.
Meanwhile, Lockheed last week finally published a 1975 financial report, which showed sales up $110 million, to $3.4 billion, and profits nearly doubling from 1974, to $45 million. However, the company also announced that over the next ten years it would write off—and deduct from future profits—$502.5 million in development costs for its TriStar jet. Daniel Haughton, the company's deposed chairman, made a comment of sorts about payoffs: "I increased profits and sales for the shareholders and employees. If they want to change the rules of the game now, let them."