Grain Scandals (Cont'd)

After poking its head into grain bins leased by the Agriculture Department's Commodity Credit Corp., a House subcommittee thought it smelled something rotten. Last week it accused CCC employees of accepting expensive presents from companies they did business with, and charged that CCC had wasted "millions of dollars" in grain-storage fees.

CCC had misinterpreted the law, said the subcommittee, and used private warehouses when Government-owned space was available. In doing so, the committee charged, CCC had rented at least 109 warehouses which were actually surplus Government property and which had been leased by the Government in the first place to private grain-storage companies. Specific committee charges:

P: Fifteen workers in CCC's Dallas office took gifts from private companies ranging from "boxes of fruit and shrimp, raincoats, Stetson hats and Mexican belts with silver buckles to $100 gift certificates and trips to expensive dude ranches and fishing resorts . . ."

P: CCC paid storage charges of more than $382,000 in 20 months to Kansas City's Mid-West Storage & Realty Co., even though the company rented the buildings from the Government at Camp Crowder, Mo. for only $11,270 a year. V. M. Harris Grain Co., also at Camp Crowder, got $290,335 for a surplus Army warehouse it rented from the Government for $16,713. (Sidney Smith, head of the CCC's Kansas City storage-claims office, was suspended for approving $84,000 worth of storage fees after shortages were discovered in the Harris Co.'s elevators. At Forbes Air Base in Kansas, the Emergency Grain Storage Co. collected $965,000 from CCC in three years, paid $23,985 rent for its Government buildings.

P: One Government employee, Stephen G. Benit Jr., was indicted by a federal grand jury in Fort Worth on charges of taking $1,750 in bribes from an Oklahoma grain-elevator company. Yet the committee found that Benit was given a $4,575-a-year job at OPS after being dismissed by CCC. Two other employees, in the Kansas City office, showed "official favoritism" toward Houston Texas' Lone Star Co., awarded it a contract even though its bid was higher than others submitted.

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