Funny Business

It was 2 1/2 years ago that the State Department first got reports that "funny business" was going on in the U.S. consulate at Hong Kong. State sent a foreign service officer from Washington to investigate. Last week the shocking results of the investigation were made public.

There had been funny business all right --two kinds of it, as the State Department told the story. First, its investigator discovered that four of the consulate's employees were homosexuals. He learned next that one of them, a chubby young (25) vice consul named John Wayne Clark Williams, was also running an illegal racket on the side--accepting bribes from Chinese seeking visas to enter the U.S. Williams, a college graduate (North Carolina) who served in the Army for three years during World War II, reportedly confessed that in his 30 months as visa clerk for the Hong Kong consulate, he had collected about $10,000 in bribes in return for visas, usually in "fees" up to $200 above the small official U.S. visa fee. Visa seekers who did not come across with the bribe were kept waiting for as long as two years in some cases.

All four employees have been fired, the State Department announced. Williams, the only one accused of bribery, was under further investigation by the Department of Justice.

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