Pants Too Long?

THE ADMINISTRATION Pants Too Long? The question posed by Senate investigators in Washington last week was not "who wears the pants in Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert Tripp Ross's family?" but "who makes them and sells them to the Army?" One answer was evident enough: Mrs. Claire Wynn Ross is president of a Manhattan and Knoxville, Tenn. men's and boys' clothing company that won a contract to make 249,000 pairs of trousers for the Army, at a cost of $834,150, while husband Robert Tripp Ross was holding down his job in the Pentagon.

Ross, a New Yorker who is in charge of Defense's legislative and public affairs, stoutly maintains that there is no conflict of interest involved. Over the years, he explained, the clothing company, until recently headed by his brother-in-law, had been awarded a great many contracts for military clothing. Ross himself, until 1952, had been vice president of the firm, but divested himself of all company connections when he went to work in the Pentagon. Last winter, right after Mrs. Ross became president of the company, she was awarded the contract for the 249,000 pairs of trousers as the lowest responsible bidder. That, said Ross, was all there was to it.

Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson, who well remembers that he was forced to sell some 40,000 shares of General Motors stock before he was allowed to work for the Government, came to Ross's side: "There is no reason for criticism whatsoever," he said. "I think it's bad enough to make a man sell everything he owns, but if he has to divorce his wife, too, that's going pretty far." That support seemed to be enough for Ross at first. Then, suddenly, at week's end, Ross sent a letter to Senate Government Operations Committee Chairman John L. McClellan. "Under these circumstances," he wrote, "I am taking a leave of absence from my position . . . until the matter has been cleared up."

Obviously there were some people in Washington who thought that Mrs. Ross should have stopped making pants for the Army long ago; now it was possible--under the stern Eisenhower code forbidding even the appearance of conflict of interest--that she may have made the pants too long.

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