(2 of 2)
In a later effort to reverse a Dutch decision to buy French Breguet Atlantic patrol planes rather than Lockheed's P-3 Orions, Lockheed offered Prince Bernhard $500,000 in July 1968. The prince, who knew that the Dutch government had already decided to buy the French planes, refused the money. According to the commission report, Lockheed insisted on showing "its appreciation of the prince's honesty by offering him $100,000 just the same." A Swiss bank check for that amount was cashed by a mysterious "Victor Van Baarn" before it too went inexplicably astray.
Perhaps the most damaging evidence unearthed by the commission was two letters that Prince Bernhard wrote to Lockheed in the fall of 1974, asking for commissions that might have netted him $1 million if The Netherlands decided to buy any of the corporation's P-3 Orions. Angered by Lockheed's apparent refusal of his request, the prince wrote: "Since 1968 I have in good faith spent a lot of time and effort to push things in the right way in critical areas and times and have tried to prevent wrong decisions influenced by political considerations. So I do feel a little bitter. . ."
At Lockheed, where a new management is now in charge, Board Chairman Robert Haack said only that he was "saddened" by the revelations in The Hague. That response seemed remarkably understated, for as the Dutch braced themselves for a televised parliamentary debate this week on the Bernhard report, they faced a bout of national soul searching as convulsive as that produced in the U.S. by the Watergate revelations.