Miller's Other Woe

While struggling to help devise an anti-inflation strategy for the nation, the Carter Administration's top financial officer has been fighting his own battle for political survival. Treasury Secretary G. William Miller has had to fend off charges, resulting from a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, that he perjured himself during the 1978 Senate hearings preceding his confirmation as Federal Reserve Board chairman, a post he held until he moved to Treasury in July 1979. Last week Miller's prospects for survival as a member of the Administration brightened considerably. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti announced that he saw no grounds for appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the Treasury chief.

Miller's troubles stem from events in the early 1970s, when he was president and then chairman of Textron Inc., a multibillion-dollar conglomerate. During his confirmation hearings, Miller declared flatly: "My company did not bribe anybody." In January, however, a lengthy SEC report charged that Bell Helicopter, a Textron division, had paid off a number of officials abroad, as it did in Iran, in order to obtain military contracts. Responding to this new evidence, Miller has adamantly maintained that he was innocent of perjury because he knew nothing of the bribes.

Civiletti's decision not to appoint a special prosecutor was based in part on a technicality: the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, which requires the Attorney General to appoint an outsider to probe damaging accusations against Administration officials, was passed after the Justice Department had already begun looking into the charges against Textron. Civiletti added, however, that he had "very serious doubts that specific information sufficient to trigger the act has been developed indicating that Secretary Miller has violated any criminal law." Civiletti said he was directing the Justice Department "to proceed with all possible speed" to bring before a grand jury any evidence of possible improper dealings by Textron and Bell Helicopter.

Civiletti's decision failed to soothe the Secretary's critics, who claim the investigation is dawdling and the FBI has not even been called in, as would be expected in such a matter. Senator William Proxmire, chairman of the Banking Committee, which conducted the Secretary's confirmation hearings, contends that Civiletti has not tried to force testimony from top Textron and Bell officials, who might have told Miller of the bribes, by simply granting them immunity. Civiletti insists more witnesses will be called before the grand jury and "where necessary, their testimony compelled." Until they are, the question of whether or not William Miller lied under oath is unlikely to be resolved.

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