The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-12-28

'''''''''''' can't restst the
 Peter EdsOn tempt a ton to make dishonest dollar by cheating and chiseling on war contracts.
 The nature of these war frauds complaints runs all tho way from petty chiseling up to multi-million dollar stuff,
 An explosives manufacturers in Maryland put hls mistress on the payroll at $S00,0o0 q year, trying to charge 1t to the government which had given him Q war contract.
 A little clique of petty officers in charge of making food purchases for e Navy mess in the Norfolk, Va, area, entered into a conspiracy with tho merchants from whom they bought supplies to kick back with Q commission.
 A Texas merchant, faced with an indictment on similar charge, committed suicide,
 one shipyard official had his house painted and remodeled With labor which was being paid for by the Maritime Commission to build ships
 A couple of eX-War Production Board officials were indicted for H. legally diverting and selling used machine tools,
 Those are typical cases of petty personal graft.
 SHADY DEALS.
 RIG AND SMALL
 Small business firms with rela- lively small war contracts have been charged with various shady prac- tices,
 An Iowa firm caught supplying defective shells was found to be get- ting by with It's crooked work through the simple device of swltch- ing government inspectors OK tags to shop trucks carrying shells that had not been inspected
 An eastern clothing contractor was found to be selling salvaged uniforms as new equipment,
 Fortunately, the number of war fraud cases involving the supplying to the armed services of defective materials has been small.
 It is when you get into the big war fraud cases that the really sensational stuff appears. Indict- ment of the Anaconda Wire and Cable Company of Marion, Ind, and Ave of Its officials for conspiracy to defraud the United States is the most recent of the big cases. By faking tests and by.passing inSpec- tions, it is charged that this com. pany delivered to the Army Signal Corps, the Navy and the Soviet gov- ernrnent through Lend-Lease Ad- ministration, defective wire and cable intended for combat communi- cations use, ships Degaussing cables for arti-mine protective equipment, and submarine wire.
 The lives Of thousands might have been endangered If this fraud had not been discovered, Total amount Of war contracts held by this firm, wholly owned subsidiary of the Anaconda Copper Company, may amount to over S6 million, and this is the second case in which an in- dietment has been returned against Anaconda Wire and Cable.
 The first case, and by far the big gest case yet unearthed by the spe- cial War Frauds unit of the Depart ment of Justice is the indictment returned by n Newark, N. J., grand jury against nine corporations and six of their officers, charged with conspiring to make identical bids at unreasonably high prices and in selling S55 million worth of patented electrical cable to the Navy at pro- fits ranging from 35 per cent to 70 per cent.
 Other cases. perhaps just as sen- sational, are TOW in the process of investigation.
 WHERE GOVERNMENT
 GETS TIPOFFS
 Leads on all these war fraud cases have had their sources in many un- usual places. Tn one case, an honest secretary didn't like the crooked work her boss was pulling of against the government and reported him.
 A lot of tips come from anonymous letters. Some tipsters sign their names and tell all, even though 1t means certain loss of job for the informants. In the Marion, Ind, Anaconda Wire and Cable case. it was an honest Signal Corps inspec- ter. Cyrus Shipp, who detected the dirty work and started his own in- vestigation. Later, a letter came in which confirmed the entire fraud.
 The War Frauds unit of the De- partment of Justice was set up last February. A staff of some 70 lawyers from the criminal and anti-trust divisions of justice was assembled to handle all complaints of fraud con- nected with the war effort. That staff is now headed by Tom c. Clark with John Darsey as his assistant chief.
 UIder Clark's direction. the em- phasis is now placed on cleaning mp these war fraud cases while they're hot. FBI, Army and Navy Irtelli- gence units and the legal and .n- vestigative staffs of other govern- ment agencies all get in on the play. Tn the last wear. investigations ard indictments were delayed until it was all over. Witnesses and cvi- dence were scattered and concealed by that time and few of the war grafters got what was coming to them.