Armed Forces: The Military Mafia

Military lore is replete with tales of slick operators who fast-talk their way past obtuse superiors, navigate bureaucratic absurdities and come out winners. Sergeant Bilko of TV and Milo Minderbinder of Catch-22 are winked at as engaging barracks rogues, and most Americans only chuckle when told, as one Pentagon official said last week, that “everyone has his own racket in the Army.”

Suddenly the humor has turned black. Scandal involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, tainting both Army brass and noncoms, has shaken a Pentagon already under attack from every side. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is digging into corruption in Army noncommissioned officers’ clubs in the U.S., Germany and Viet Nam. The key figures implicated have held two of the Army’s most respected positions. One is Sergeant Major William O. Wooldridge, 46, once the top enlisted man in the Army. He has been accused of running a “Little Mafia” of senior sergeants that systematically bilked service clubs. The other is retired Major General Carl C. Turner, 56, the Army’s former provost marshal general, or head military policeman, who later served as chief U.S. marshal in the Justice Department. Turner, according to testimony, quashed an investigation of Wooldridge and also sold Army firearms for personal profit.

Secret Accounts. Last week congressional investigators delineated an empire of larceny, kickbacks, assumed names and secret accounts in foreign banks that was allegedly run by Wooldridge and four fellow topkicks. The sergeants, some of whom were custodians of servicemen’s clubs, were said to have skimmed $350,000 a year from club slot machines in Germany and used the money to set up their own company, Maredem, Ltd., to sell supplies at inflated prices to clubs in Viet Nam. Maredem’s partners, who somehow managed to get transfers as a group, became custodians of the clubs in Viet Nam. Thus they, allegedly, sold goods to themselves. In 1968 alone, Wooldridge was said to have made $34,454 from Maredem, the others $44,574 each.

Corruption in the clubs was not confined to the Little Mafia, according to testimony. One booking agent, a blonde former dancer named June Collins, 34, said that all the club custodians whom she knew in Viet Nam demanded and received kickbacks from entertainers. She reported paying about $10,000 in two years to get jobs for clients, and was still frozen out of one club after she rebuffed the custodian’s amorous advances. She heard one sergeant boast that “being a custodian is worth $150,000.”

Country Boy. Miss Collins and other show people complained to Army and Air Force authorities, but were ignored.

The implication, supported by other witnesses, was that officers could not have cared less about hanky-panky among sergeants. Turner was accused of throttling an inquiry into a service-club scandal at Fort Benning, Ga., telling subordinate investigators: “Wooldridge is just a good ol’ country boy.”

Turner, a short, peppery former paratrooper, was called before the committee last week, but most of the interrogation involved his admitted sale of Army guns for personal profit. Turner acknowledged that, when he was provost marshal general and shortly after he retired, he had received 688 weapons confiscated by police and customs officials. At the time, he signed receipts saying the guns were for Army use, but in his testimony he insisted that the receipts were a mere “formality.” Not so, said a spokesman for one of the donors, Chicago Police Superintendent James Conlisk: “The general is engaging in falsehood.” Last June, seven of the weapons were seized as part of an illegal arms shipment to rebels in Haiti.

Turner admitted failing to pay income tax on the $6,800 profit from the gun sales, claiming that he had not known that “hobby” income was taxable. He also explained that he had lost his account ledger but filed amended tax returns this month to reflect the sales. Said Senator Charles Percy in disbelief: “It seems to me that not showing this profit in your tax returns has nothing to do with seeking a loophole. This is evasion. You are either incredibly naive or you have evaded payment of income taxes.”

Take the Fifth. When the investigation became imminent, the Justice Department hastily accepted Turner’s resignation as chief U.S. marshal, a post he had held for nearly six months. Now the department is considering proceedings against him. The Army will probably prosecute Wooldridge and the other sergeants. The sergeants deny the charges against them, but have said that they would plead the Fifth Amendment rather than testify before the subcommittee. Wooldridge told reporters: “I’m stunned. Never in my wildest nightmare did I believe this could happen to me.”

The investigation has pointed up the lack of supervision of club affairs. Acting Subcommittee Chairman Abraham Ribicoff charged that the Army pays little attention to club funds because the money is not appropriated from the federal treasury but comes from the dues and spending of individual soldiers.

One result of the investigation has been to speed up the long-planned centralization of the Army’s criminal investigation division. The Army announced last week that investigations will henceforth be monitored at central Army headquarters in order to prevent suppression of probes by local commanders. Said one general: “The petty graft will continue to goon, but maybe we can stop this big stuff.” Perhaps to show that it really means to get tough, the Army has taken back the Distinguished Service Medals previously awarded to Turner and Wooldridge.