TURKEY: The General’s Cleanup

The furor that began four months ago when four U.S. sergeants stationed at Izmir were arrested on charges of currency black-marketing, and two in turn accused Turkish cops of torturing them (TIME, Aug. 24 et seq.), drags on in the slow-moving Turkish courts. While the State Department, in deference to its NATO partner, tried to hush up the whole affair, NATO Supreme Commander Lauris Norstad dispatched from Paris a personal investigating team headed by Major General Joseph Carroll, a onetime top FBIman, who was commissioned an Air Force Reserve colonel in 1948 to do police work. Carroll and his team made a study of black-marketing by U.S. personnel in Turkey at NATO’s southeastern headquarters, which was apparently so hot that the Pentagon has steadfastly refused to make a line of it public.

Since his investigation began, 23 officers and noncoms have been transferred out of Turkey with more to follow. The Pentagon has refused to say whether any were guilty of misdeeds or merely of failure to exercise sufficient responsibility. Several of the officers complain that the opposition Turkish press, which is currently on an anti-American kick, has played the story as if all were culprits. Among the 13 officers reassigned are five Izmir unit commanders and four finance officers; among the ten sergeants was the personal secretary of NATO’s Izmir commander, Lieut. General Paul Harkins.