"Common Sense & Good Will"

For the past year Assistant Attorney General Warren E. Burger has made a hobby of collecting ships, particularly those belonging to a 44-year-old Greek shipowner named Stavros Niarchos. In February Niarchos and seven corporations under his control were indicted under a 1916 act prohibiting foreigners from buying surplus U.S. ships. The Government's charge: through dummy corporations, Niarchos had fraudulently bought 20 such tankers since the war. Niarchos stayed out of the country, and hence out of reach of the Justice Department. But his ships did not. Every time one of them touched a U.S. port, Burger had it seized, thus accumulated a fleet of 15 vessels.

Last week Niarchos admitted that he had had enough, agreed to an out-of-court settlement; in exchange, the U.S. dropped its indictment of Niarchos personally. Niarchos agreed to turn over his five remaining U.S. ships, plus $4,000,000 of the ships' profits under his operation, to the U.S. Government. Niarchos' lawyers then went into a federal District Court and entered guilty pleas for the seven corporations. The court levied $110,000 in fines. Without a moment's hesitation, one of the lawyers reached into his pocket, pulled out a packet of $1,000 bills and peeled off 110 of them.

In London Niarchos hailed the settlement as a triumph of "common sense and good will all around." Under the terms of the agreement he will be able to negotiate with U.S. Government agencies on transferring the seized ships to a friendly foreign-flag operator instead of forfeiting them, and to arrange for construction of some more tankers in U.S. shipyards. But for the six Americans who were indicted with Niarchos, including former U.S. Representative Joseph E. Casey of Massachusetts, the news was not so good. The indictments against them still stand.

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