It's a Lie

"This is not going to be a whitewash," promised Georgia's tough old Carl Vinson. "Let the chips fall where they will." As soon as his Armed Services Committee could round up a staff of investigators, he was going to find out just what lay behind the rumors of skulduggery in procurement of the Air Force's B-36.

The first charge to be answered was whether anybody had benefited personally or politically by the choice of the B-36 (TIME, June 6). In a letter he delivered personally to Chairman Vinson, Air Secretary Stuart Symington categorically denied this "basic innuendo." Every airplane the Air Force had ordered, wrote Symington, and every step in the B-36 program had been approved by the nation's top air commanders. At no time had "any higher authority attempted to recommend in any way the purchase of any airplane." As to reports that his own efforts in behalf of the B-36 would be rewarded with the presidency of a "huge aircraft combine," Symington said flatly: "The report is a lie."

The second charge was that the big, high-flying B-36 was a sitting duck. Last week the Joint Chiefs of Staff sensibly ruled that there could be "no useful purpose" in staging a duel in public between the B-36 and jet fighters. The memorandum was unwillingly signed by Admiral Louis E. Denfeld, the senior member of the JCS, whose Naval airmen had started all the hullabaloo in the first place.

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