THE CABINET: Vimalert Affair

Until last week few citizens beside the like of Robert Cuse, a naturalized Latvian of Jersey City, N. J., realized that there was no U. S. law to prevent them from selling things to help the Spanish kill each other.

The Neutrality Act of 1935, rushed through in the final hours of the first session of the 74th Congress, provides for the specification of what is war material (for instance, any kind of airplane), requires the registration of all U. S. firms dealing in it, forbids its shipment to belligerent nations and permits its shipment abroad under any circumstances only upon receipt of a license from a division of the State Department. The Act became effective in November 1935. just in time to take all the fun out of the Ethiopian war for many a U. S. armorer. But there is nothing in the act which defines as “belligerents” either side of a civil war.

When the Spanish revolution broke out in July, not a few dealers in death who had sharp lawyers to tell them their rights, journeyed to Washington to ask the State Department’s Office of Arms & Munitions Control for licenses to peddle their wares in Burgos or Madrid. In each case, gimlet-eyed Chief Joseph Coy Green, who used to curdle the blood of lazy Princeton freshmen with his drill sergeant ways, would either wheedle or scare the applicant into dropping his request.

Thus the nation was able to pursue its policy of keeping hands off and playing square in the Spanish crisis. But Mr. Cuse of Jersey City is reported to be the biggest dealer in second-hand aircraft and plane parts in the U. S. Mr. Cuse’s obscure but active Vimalert Co. Ltd. has been reconditioning and selling planes and parts here & there—including, through Amtorg, the U. S. S. R.—for the past 15 years. Mr. Cuse is listed with the State Department as a salesman of everything lethal from a bomb to a battleship. When Chief Green tried to put State Department pressure on Mr. Cuse, the latter would not stay pressured. He demanded a license to sell $2,777,000 worth of aviation equipment to the Spanish Reds and, amid a great sweep of national headlines and much furore in official Washington, he got it.

For its $2,777,000 the Spanish Loyalist Government was clearly getting no bargain. Most important items were 18 sporting and commercial airplanes which Mr. Cuse had already gathered and was knocking down for shipment at North Beach, L. I. airport. The ships, perhaps of greater value to souvenir hunters than military flyers, included such famed oldsters as Laura Ingall’s Lockheed Orion, Powell Crosley’s Northrup, seven discarded American Airlines Vultees and Harry Richman’s Lady Peace. Most of the rest of the Vimalert shipment consisted of 411 motors and enough parts to make 150 more. All of the disassembled stuff had been sold as unfit for further duty by the U. S. Army Air Corps at Wright Field, Dayton. Last week it was still largely in Army depots and at Dayton Brigadier General Augustine W. Robins, chief of the Materiel Division of the Air Corps, firmly announced that ”it will not be shipped until money for the purchase has arrived.” Envious airplane dealers observed that Mr. Cuse had picked up his consignment at “junk prices,” should make between $1,500,000 and $2,000,000 on the deal.

North Dakota’s long-nosed Nye, whose defunct Munitions Investigating Committee fostered the Neutrality Act, talked of a new committee to investigate Jersey City’s Cuse. “Such an inquiry,” added this Senator, “should cover more than this Vimalert affair. We ought to find out how much material other Americans have been sending to the Fascists as well as to the Loyalists in Spain.”— Most armorers agree that in spite of the Arms & Munitions Control Office, small shipments of war material have constantly seeped illegally out of the U. S.

Most positive of all official reactions to the Vimalert licensing came from the executive offices of the White House (see p. 13). Pending passage of a Neutrality Act amendment, the State Department broadcast its sincere regrets that the original act had not quite worked. Among those Washington diplomats who received these regrets most graciously were Spain’s de los Rios and Russia’s Troyanovsky, whose underlings were vigorously denying that Vimalert nowadays has any further dealings with Amtorg. Meantime, nobody had actually set eyes on mysterious Mr. Cuse, the cause of all the commotion. At his Jersey City apartment, where he has a reputation for shyness and big tips, no reporter was permitted to talk to Mr. Cuse, his wife, ten-year-old son or maid. Photographers had to be content with his physical description given by apartment attendants: medium height, stocky, mustached. Out of sight though he kept himself, the “Jersey Zaharoff” was nevertheless well represented in print by statements handed out during the week at his office. To Roosevelt’s threat of new legislation, Mr. Cuse had these firm and practical last words: “Whatever new laws may be passed in the future, the fact remains that my company has purchased commercial airplanes for shipment to a country with which we are not at war, on the strength of and in compliance with the existing laws of our country, and the license for their export was granted accordingly.”

*0ne way to bootleg arms to a belligerent is to ship them through a partisan or unscrupulous middleman nation. Last week President Cardenas of Mexico proudly announced that, so far, from Mexico to Spain’s Reds had gone $1,465,658 worth of war material.