Cap Gets Tough

Landing on military suppliers

If there have been wrongdoings ...

that in any way defrauded the Government or caused waste . . . I don't have the slightest hesitancy in asking the Department of Justice to take whatever remedies are appropriate to deal with the situation." With that warning, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger last week announced a long-overdue crackdown on military purchasing agents and on contractors who may have charged inflated prices for spare parts.

No criminal prosecutions were planned, at least for the moment. But Weinberger said that an officer at the Naval Training and Equipment Center (NTEC) in Orlando, Fla., would be reassigned to another post. The officer, whose name was not revealed, had purchased 348 items, including lamps and microcircuits, from the Sperry Corp. at a cost of $80,204 rather than from Pentagon inventories, where they would have cost $3,658.

Weinberger's crackdown was prompted in part by a Pentagon report that disclosed scandalous price increases--as much as 3,725%--for spare parts being sold to the military. Critics derided the disciplinary steps as mere wrist slaps, but Weinberger disagrees: "We want to do something to ensure that we don't continue contracts like these." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.