The Money King of Viet Nam

Once the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations started digging into corruption in Army noncommissioned officers' clubs in Viet Nam, it began to turn up scandals involving everything from B-girl rings comprised of shanghaied actresses to a "little Mafia" of top sergeants who systematically bilked service clubs of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Two weeks ago, a federal grand jury indicted six present or former noncoms, including the former Sergeant Major of the Army, William Wooldridge.

Now the investigators are hunting even bigger game. They are drawing a bead on the affairs of William J. Crum, the unchallenged "Money King of Viet Nam." As told by congressional investigators and Government witnesses, Crum sat atop a sprawling $40 million consortium of corruption that reached all the way to MACV headquarters. His enterprises were manifold and very often illegal. He smuggled and traded in the black market. When necessary (which was often), the subcommittee was told, he bribed or pressured high-ranking civilian and military personnel. At one point, he held a virtual monopoly on the sales of all slot and pinball machines, jukeboxes and other coin-operated amusements to U.S. military establishments in Viet Nam. For a period of three years, if there was something for sale in Viet Nam, Crum probably sold it.

High-Priced Muscle. A onetime merchant seaman who was born in China to American parents, Crum began as a liquor distributor to PXs in Korea in 1950. By 1960, he had expanded into a major supplier of goods to military installations throughout the Far East. He was twice investigated by military authorities on suspicion of paying kickbacks and smuggling, but in both cases the investigations were dropped. Crum's secret of success was no secret at all. "Everyone has a price," he was said to have claimed, "whether he be a private or a four-star general." True to form, he collected high-placed people who could muscle for him.

One such alleged friend was Brigadier General Earl F. Cole, a deputy chief of staff at Long Binh base. According to Jack Bybee, a former Crum employee in Viet Nam, the general was paid $1,000 a month by Crum for favors. Once, when Crum was feeling threatened by the success of a competitor's slot-machine business, he asked Cole to initiate an investigation into the activities of his rival. The competitor was duly raided and forced to close. Afterward, Crum boasted that he had "paid for" the raid.

Expanding Monopoly. The narrative that emerged from the subcommittee hearings went like this: early in the Viet Nam War, Crum befriended three civilian officials of the Army-Air Force Regional Exchange in Saigon. They were in charge of transferring PX functions from the Navy to their own branch, and Crum put them up in a $1,600-a-month Saigon villa. He gave them a chef and maid service and provided them with large quantities of liquor and women. His reward: a $1,000,000 contract for jukeboxes in all American installations in Viet Nam.

As the war began to expand in earnest, Crum's PX monopolies did too. Along with his contracts for coin-operated amusements, he wangled the exclusive distributorship for Mandarin Textiles' Dynasty fashions in PXs and NCO clubs. He became a representative for the James B. Beam Distilling Co. of Chicago and the Carling Brewing Co. of Cleveland. He also kept up his lucrative side trade in such goods as freezers and air conditioners, many of which were conveniently--and illegally --stored on a base under the eye of his good friend, General Cole, the Senators were told.

As the Army probed deeper into the sergeants' cabal, they eventually came up against Crum and his "friends." Last June, the Army placed Cole on involuntary retirement after demoting him to colonel and stripping him of medals. Crum has dropped from sight--presumably to sail his yacht in the South Pacific while charting his next move.

There are those who maintain that Crum is but one among many. Indeed, Senate subcommittee sources in 1969 confirmed private reports that the black market in U.S. dollars and machinery may have been costing the American taxpayers upwards of $2 billion yearly. Asked by Senator Abraham Ribicoff if there were more "crumbs" operating in Viet Nam, Bybee replied: "Senator, there are many, many crumbs, although they haven't been as successful as William J. Crum."

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