Super Detective

When ECAdministrator Paul Hoffman took on his big job last April, he promised that ECA would be run on a streamlined, businesslike basis. Last week he took a long step toward making that promise come true. Over the protests of offended career bureaucrats, he gave Comptroller Eric L. Kohler the go-ahead for a tough, continuous financial checkup on ECA.

No novelty to U.S. businessmen, but an unorthodox departure for hidebound government agencies, Kohler's new role will make him a sort of super house detective, with broad authority to pry into all ECA activities both at home & abroad. Besides the routine task of keeping expenditures in line with appropriations, his investigators will follow through on ECA shipments, make sure they are not diverted to Europe's black markets or resold to Russian satellites. Reports on his continuous "internal audit" will go directly to Administrator Hoffman.

Comptroller Kohler was a natural for the assignment. A 55-year-old Michigan-born accountant (from Tom Dewey's home town of Owosso), he first stubbed his toe on Government brass as a World War I quartermaster officer. His persistent attempt to overhaul the archaic accounting methods of the sprawling Chicago quartermaster's office caused a ruckus that brought him to the verge of a court-martial. But the quartermaster general took one look at Kohler's suggestions, ordered them adopted on the spot.

After World War I, Kohler taught at Northwestern University, left a lucrative private accounting practice to set up the books for the Tennessee Valley Authority. During World War II, he moved on to the War Production Board, moved again to the Petroleum Administration. He earned a reputation as a man who could talk down tough-talking Harold Ickes. Said one admirer: "He is hard to get along with. He is unreasonably honest."

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