“SHOCKING SCANDAL”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26628, 26 November 1947, Page 5

“SHOCKING SCANDAL”

CHARGES AGAINST AMERICAN GENERAL WAR-TIME CONTRACT PROFITING Rec. 8 p.m. WASHINGTON, Nov. 24. The Air Secretary, Mr Symington, said to-day that the air force had stopped the retirement pay of Majorgeneral Bennet E. Meyers was taking steps to recall his decorations, and was preparing court-martial charges against him. Mr Symington said the evidence given to the Senate'War Investigating Committee about Meyers’s war-time relations with contractors was “one of the most shocking scandals ever exposed in the history of our Government.”

Meyers retired from the army in 1945 with a disability pension of 461 dollars a month. He is also likely to be prosecuted by the Justice Department on charges of war frauds, perjury, and tax evasion. The Justice Department announced that the Government would take the charges against Meyers to the Federal grand jury to-morrow. Mrs Mildred Lamarre said that Major-general Bennett Meyers’s testimony before the Senate War Investigating Committee that she had been his “ girl friend ” was a bold-faced lie. She added that she thought a suit for slander seemed the only answer. Meyers has been accused by the committee of profiting during war-time while he was an air force procurement officer through the secret ownership of the Aviation Electric Corporation of Vandalia, Ohio. Meyers, who denied the charges, said he started the corporation solely because he owed an obligation to Mr and Mrs Lamarre, and that with her husband’s knowledge and approval he had had an affair lasting five years with Mrs Lamarre, who was his secretary.