"A Damned Comic Opera"

Teamed in tight-lipped pairs, a squad of determined men ranged the Pentagon last week. They were military gumshoes from the Air Force inspector general's office, sent out on a mission that was both sinister and ridiculous. "It's a damned comic opera,'' snapped a longtime Pentagon official. "In all my years in Government, I've never seen anything like this."

Act I of the comic opera began in late March, when Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara got sore because a Senate subcommittee planned to investigate the multibillion-dollar TFX fighter plane contract (TIME, March 22; April 5). Then the Washington Star's Pentagon Reporter Richard Fryklund got hold of a behind-the-scenes (but unclassified) Air Force memorandum detailing the moans of Air Force experts who felt they had been cruelly treated by the subcommittee's staff. The memo complained that staff interrogators' "oral abuse . . . harsh language . . . threats . . . rapid-fire questions . . . emotional rantings" had so unnerved the doughty men of the Pentagon that one collapsed from "nervous exhaustion and recurring ulcer" and two more came down with "deep fatigue."

Search for a Leak. The Star played Fryklund's story on Page One under the headline AIR FORCE HITS TFX PROBE TACTICS. The story irritated Arkansas' Senator John McClellan, the subcommittee chairman, since he felt it reflected on his staff.

McNamara got sizzling angry. It wasn't that he "doubted the truth" of the memo, he told a purpling Senator McClellan. But he himself, said McNamara. had "done everything possible to bottle up what is a very damaging memorandum." He had directly ordered that it be locked in a Pentagon safe. And now here it was on the front pages. "This has happened to me 15 or 20 times in the last 26 months." rumbled McNamara. "I became so upset about the situation that on several occasions I have discussed it with the Attorney General and J. Edgar Hoover."

This time McNamara did not call the FBI, but summoned his Air Force inspector general, burly, crew-cut Lieut. General W. H. ("Butch" I Blanchard. The general swept right into the leak-seeking game by calling Reporter Fryklund to his office and asking him point-blank who gave him the memo. Fryklund stood firm upon his obligation to protect his sources, so Blanchard unleashed his plainclothes investigators.

Descending upon Pentagon officials, the probers flashed identification cards and snapped out a series of questions: Are you acquainted with Richard Fryklund? When did you last see Fryklund? Have you seen the Air Force memorandum in question? Did you give it to Fryklund? Etc. After hearing the answers, the interrogators gravely asked each person questioned to sign an affidavit swearing that he had told the truth. That done, the inspector general's men capped the ordeal by whipping out still another document --this one labeled in bold letters, CONSENT

TO UNDERGO LIE-DETECTOR EXAMINATION.

In all, 120 Pentagon denizens were subjected to this grating business (one got out of a sickbed for the quiz). They ranged from alarmed female secretaries to high officials appointed by the President-Navy Secretary Fred Korth, Air Force Secretary Eugene Zuckert. and even Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell Gilpatric, No. 2 man in the Pentagon. Zuckert and a few other officials refused to sign the agreement to submit to a lie-detector test. Korth and Gilpatric signed.

Residue of Fear. The very first question the President got asked at his midweek press conference was "How do you feel about using lie detectors on men you have appointed to office?" Kennedy parried by asking whether the reporter was "talking about a hypothetical case or an actual case." but then he came out and said the lie-detector tactic was a "mistake." Since nobody was actually subjected to a lie-detector test, he went on. "I don't think we need concern ourselves in the future about it."

The great leak hunt, however, could not be dismissed quite as easily as all that. Embarrassed Secretary McNamara had halted the investigation (with the culprit still unfound). but it left behind a lingering residue of fear, sorrow and anger in the Pentagon. "It's a tragedy for those of us who work here." mourned a Pentagon official. "If we're not to be trusted, what's the use of being in this business?"

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