DEFENCE VOTES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 January 1940, Page 5

DEFENCE VOTES

4 INCREASED IN UNITED STATES ANTI-ESPIONAGE WORK. DEVELOPED ON CONSIDERABLE SCALE. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received This Day, 9.30 a.m.) WASHINGTON, January 10. The House of Representative Appropriations Committee approved President Roosevelt’s recommendations of October 31 and November 14 for emergency defence and neutrality expenditure and the committee asked Congress to provide 267,200,000 dollars for the Army, Navy, Coastguard and Federal Bureau of Investigation, providing for the following increases in personnel: —Army. 16.969 to 277,000; National Guard, 41,000 to 251,000; Navy 29,000 to 145,000; Marine Corps. 6000 to 25,000 and the Coastguard, 2000 to 10,866. The Navy received 28.596,000 dollars, to buy 518 aircraft for use oh neutrality patrols. The Coastguard appropriation is chiefly for the recommissioning of inactive vessels. The neutrality patrol is now being extended to 800 miles out to sea. Mr J. Edgar Hoover (Chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation), giving evidence in support of the 1,475,000 dollars anti-spy and anti-sabotage emergency fund included in the above total, told the Committee that the Federal Bureau of Investigation he had compiled extensive indices of all persons engaged in activities possibly detrimental to internal security and could, in the event of war, identify individuals and groups immediately. He added that he was receiving 78,000 sabotage and espionage complaints annually. Plans had been made to protect 450 plants from foreign espionage. He described the theft and recovery of plans of an air corps bomber at a West Coast factory.