Wyatt v. Everybody

Not in many a month had Washington whiffed such a steamy mess. Smack in the middle of it was Housing Boss Wilson Wyatt's huge emergency housing program. And at the rate the pot was boiling, the big plan would soon be cooked.

Boss Wyatt was the one who put the pot on the fire. He wanted RFC to lend up to $90,000,000 to eleven companies, some of which had never built houses, to build prefabricated houses and housing parts. Biggest loan would go to Chicago's Lustron Corp., along with a lease on Chicago's RFC-owned Dodge-Chrysler plant (TIME, Nov. 11). RFC's roly-poly George Allen said flatly: no. Most of the companies were putting up negligible security, might make as much as 14,000% profit if the loans went through.

Crying "emergency," and down with such businesslike considerations for RFC cash, Wyatt rushed to the White House. So did Allen. When they came out, they smiled sweetly, said: "We are in complete disagreement."

Ingredient No. 2. The pot was really brought to a sizzling boil by Preston Tucker, a small-time promoter with big ideas of making autos in the Chicago plant. He had agreed in September to lease it from the War Assets Administration. But NHA had ordered the plant to go to Lustron. In a frantic effort to block this, Tucker came up with a dark tale. His story: a lawyer approached him, just before the National Housing Administration ordered the plant turned over to Lustron, and promised to block the deal if Tucker 1) gave him $400,000 in stock in his company and 2) hired him at $36,000 a year. When Tucker turned down the deal, the plant went to Lustron.

In high dudgeon, Wyatt denied that NHA was involved in any such skullduggery. True, there had been a phone call to NHA from "a lawyer" who represented himself as acting for Tucker. The lawyer had asked NHA to hold up the Lustron deal. But the delay was routine. When the lawyer had called back and said "the deal was off," the plant had been ordered turned over to Lustron.

Ingredient No. 3. Who was the mysterious lawyer? He turned out to be Theodore Granik, counsel for the U.S. Housing Authority (predecessor to NHA) till 1941, onetime special adviser to WPB and now operator of "American Forum," a radio discussion program.

He called Tucker's shakedown story an "unvarnished lie." He had been hired by Tucker, said he, back in July to help raise cash for Tucker's auto project. Tucker's charges of a shakedown now, said he, were merely an attempt to get out of paying him. He threatened to "sue Tucker for the fees and for libel." (Said Tucker: "Poppycock.")

But it was one more blow at Wyatt's dying program. As the President left on a vacation without making a decision, Washington dopesters gave odds that Wyatt would not get his money and that his emergency housing program was dead.

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