Word: itt
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Back in the days before Watergate became the national preoccupation, one of the most prominent skeletons in the White House closet was the allegation that the Administration had quietly settled a 1971 antitrust case against ITT, the giant conglomerate, in return for an ITT offer of up to $400,000 to help defray the cost of the Republicans' 1972 national convention in San Diego (later switched to Miami). Columnist Jack Anderson published an ITT memorandum last year that appeared to substantiate the charge. But before ITT Lobbyist Dita Beard, the author of the memo, could give testimony...
...withdraw its nomination of Richard Kleindienst as Attorney General-a nomination that was subsequently approved by the Senate. Colson's point at the time was that the Senate investigation of Kleindienst might conceivably turn up copies of several memorandums that had been written by both Administration and ITT officials. These documents, said Colson, could implicate a number of Administration officials in the ITT case, including Vice President Spiro Agnew, Secretary of the Treasury John Connally and Attorney General John Mitchell. More important, at least two of the documents could "directly involve the President...
...various documents to which Colson referred all dealt with efforts by ITT in early 1971 to enlist the Administration's support in quashing three separate antitrust suits under way against the corporation. U.S. district courts had previously ruled against the Government in two of the cases, which involved two lesser ITT subsidiaries, Grinnell Corp. and Canteen Corp. But Richard W. McLaren, head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, who had strenuously pressed the litigation, had already made known the Government's intention to appeal to the Supreme Court. The third and most important case, involving ITT...
...August 1970, according to Colson, ITT Vice President Edward J. Gerrity Jr. had written to Agnew, an old friend from Army days: "Our problem is to get John Mitchell the facts concerning McLaren's attitude because . . . McLaren seems to be running all by himself." In a meeting between ITT President Harold S. Geneen and Presidential Assistant John Ehrlichman, Gerrity continued, Ehrlichman had "said flatly that the President was not enforcing a bigness-is-bad policy [against ITT], and that the President had instructed the Justice Department along these lines." This document, Colson noted, was embarrassing because it "tends...
Later in 1970 Ehrlichman wrote Mitchell of an "understanding" he had reached with Geneen. On May 5, 1971, Ehrlichman again wrote to Mitchell, alluding to the "agreed-upon ends" at the high level of the President and Mitchell in resolving the ITT case, and asking Mitchell whether Ehrlichman should deal directly with McLaren in the sensitive matter...