Word: ica
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Last week the popular Rural Self-Help scheme, which gives villagers essentials such as nails, cement and simple tools so that they themselves can build schools, roads and small dams, had ground to a stop because U.S. funds had run out. ICA's new discipline requires strict accounting of first-quarter funds before second-quarter funds can be released. But Laotians, not accustomed to American accountants' techniques, were slow to comply with all the forms, despite lengthy pleas from Vientiane. Rather than see the whole program collapse before the rainy season stops all work in June, ICA Mission...
...after Washington's International Cooperation Administration bought and shipped $1,500,000 worth of road-building and repairing equipment and signed up an American engineering firm to teach Laotians how to operate the machinery. But the engineers arrived to find that, without Washington's knowledge, the local ICA mission had arranged for a Bangkok company, Universal Construction Co., to handle the job. One explanation emerged in testimony last week before a House subcommittee; Edward T. McNamara, husky ICA public-works officer in Laos from 1955 to 1957, admitted receiving stock and cash amounting to more than...
...also developed in testimony that McNamara and another former ICA official, William E. Kirby, accepted substantial favors in 1957 from a Hong Kong transportation firm that got a $275,000 contract to supply ferryboats for a transport system across the Mekong River, between Thailand and Laos. Kirby later quit ICA and took a job with the company. Until Congress took notice, ICA headquarters in Washington seemed almost indifferent to the shenanigans in Laos, and slow to investigate thoroughly. Representative Porter Hardy Jr. of Virginia, chairman of the subcommittee, last week indignantly suggested abolition of ICA altogether, and a fresh start...
Tightening Up. Under the glare of publicity on this old case, ICA has drastically tightened its procedures. They are now so tight, in fact, that the fresh team of Americans in the Laotian capital of Vientiane complains that "red tape strung about to prevent repetition, of the old mistakes has got the place tied up." Premier Phoui Sananikone, who, since coming to power in August has swept away much of Laos' old corruption and sloth, is happy over U.S. help but objects: "We are pressed for time here in Laos. We find ourselves going into interminable discussions here. Then...
...Attractions. The International Cooperation Administration, already irked by the bestselling success of the semi-fictional The Ugly American (which describes bumbling failures of U.S. diplomats and foreign aidsters in Asian countries), has something new to worry about. Universal-International is planning to film the book in Thailand, and harried ICA pressmen can already visualize reaction of worldwide movie audiences to an almond-eyed Elizabeth Taylor or Kim Novak being pushed around by a bumptious young U.S. foreign aid boy abroad, a banality-mouthing U.S. Senator in Asia, or a potty U.S. ambassador. The moviemakers are asking for State Department cooperation...