Word: textron
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...with former President Nixon and the shadows of the milk-fund scandal certainly have not helped his cause. In an uncharacteristically hesitant tone, Connally recently sideswiped a reporter's question about how, as President, he would deal with the report that Treasury Secretary G. William Miller's onetime charge, Textron Inc., bribed foreign officials. "I wouldn't pass judgment on whether or not he knew or whether he should have known," Connally said. "That's something that I don't have the information on which to base an informed judgement...
WHEN G. William Miller was named to head the Federal Reserve Board, he testified he had tried to run a "super clean" company during his 22 years as an executive of Textron, Inc. An investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suggests Miller, now Secretary of the Treasury, may have soiled his hands while working for Textron...
...contends, first, that Textron made $5.4 million in improper payments in 10 countries, largely to government officials, between 1971 and 1979. It says unnamed Textron officials falsified records and lied to a Senate committee to cover up the payments, which were made by a division Miller supervised before he became the company's chairman in 1974. Second, the SEC alleges Textron often overbilled customers, remitting them the difference under the table. Finally, the SEC charges Textron with spending $600,000 to "entertain" Defense Department employees illicitly and without normal substantiation in company records...
...denies having had any knowledge of them, and he points to explicit orders he issued against such practices. No one has clearly proved that Miller knew or took part in the payments. However, the evidence for a pattern of improper conduct that would have been hard to hide from Textron's top manager is strong--strong enough to cloud the office of Secretary of the Treasury with the kind of doubt last raised there by the tenure of John Connally...
Even more serious, the SEC charges reopened-but did not answer-an old question: Did Miller also know about Textron's foreign bribery? Stories about such bribes began to circulate in 1978, just as Miller came before the Senate Banking Committee for confirmation hearings on his nomination to be chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Committee Chairman William Proxmire questioned Miller closely. "My company did not bribe anybody," said Miller. If it had, he implied, he should have known Said Miller: "I have insisted that I be fully informed about any question of ethics that comes...