The German Connection

There is growing evidence that news reports linking several West German corporations to alleged Libyan efforts to construct a chemical weapons plant were on the mark. The German magazine Der Spiegel recently re-ported that Siemens AG, the West German electronics multinational, sent more than 10 tons of telecommunications equipment to Libya for use at a contoversial facility that the U.S. government says is a chemical weapons plant. The magazine also reported that Siemens falsified export documents relating to the equipment to lead authorities to believe it was intended for Hong Kong.

The problem is compounded by a Stern magazine report that, in addition to Siemens, a government-owned firm, Salzgitter Industriebau, also participated in the Libyan project. The Stern story alleges that Salzgitter produced blueprints for construction of the Libyan plant.

Although Salzgitter denies all charges, the Stern allegations struck a particularly damaging blow to the credibility of the conservative government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Having scorned initial U.S. suggestions that West German companies might be involved with the Libyan construction effort, embarrassed government officials now must face suggestions that even state-owned firms were in on the act.

It's O.K., George

In 1974, industrialist George Steinbrenner, chairman and chief executive officer of the American Shipbuilding Company, was convicted of felony charges of conspiring to make illegal corporate contributions to the 1972 reelection campaign of former President Richard Nixon, as well as to various congressional campaigns. Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees baseball team, planned and supervised an elaborate scheme whereby employees of his shipbuilding company would receive sham "bonus" checks. The employees would then cash the checks and "donate" the money as a personal contribution to specified campaigns. By this system, Steinbrenner ultimately delivered over $100,000 to the Nixon campaign coffers. When Watergate investigators caught wind of the scheme, Steinbrenner lied, destroyed documents and obstructed their investigation in other ways. For this, Steinbrenner was eventually convicted on an additional charge of being an accessory after the fact.

In his final week in office, former President Ronald Reagan pardoned Steinbrenner for these offenses. The gesture has been greeted with outrage from a number of quarters, most notably the Watergate prosecutors who nailed Steinbrenner in the first place. Said one, "It turns the concept of equal justice right on its ear. You pick out the rich and the famous and you pardon them and you just don't have a criminal justice system anymore."

Northrop's Paper Tiger

In this space several months ago, an item appeared concerning several ongoing investigations�by a federal grand jury, by a congressional committee, and by the South Korean government�into Northrop

Corporation's shady conduct during a 1984 campaign to sell its F-20 'Tigershark" jet fighter to the South Korean military. Among other things, U.S. investigators wanted to know if foreign payments (in excess of $7.75 million) that were made by Northrop during the sales campaign had been used to finance bribes for South Korean officials. Such use would violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

In a new development, investigators are now said to be looking into the possibility that some part of the $7.75 million wound up back in the pockets of certain Northrop executives. Northrop claims it has no idea where the money, which was nominally intended for a hotel construction project in Seoul, disappeared to after the company transferred it to agents in South Korea. But the Los Angeles Times recently reported that the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service suspect that the confusion surrounding Northrop's transfer of the money may have been a cover intended to disguise its eventual return to certain company officials. The Justice Department and the IRS are said to be investigating accordingly.

Ford's Worst Idea

The Ford Motor Company installed a defective, rupture-prone fuel system in more than five million cars manufactured between 1965 and 1986, according to the Maryland-based Institute for Injury Reduction (IIR). At a recent news conference, IIR asserted that the fuel system poses a devastating fire hazard, particularly in rear-end crashes. In disclosures made during lawsuits arising from the defect, Ford has admitted knowledge of some 450 cases of burn death and severe injury associated with the fuel system, IIR says.

IIR has launched a campaign to push Ford to recall all affected vehicles; the fuel systems can be modified to eliminate the fire hazard for as little as $50 per car, the group estimates. Ford's response to the campaign is dismissive: a Ford spokesperson said, "[IIR is] trying to sell the concept that whenever a company makes any improvements to its products, the company must then recall all its earlier products and add the improvements to those as well. If this argument were taken seriously, it would not only discourage continuous improvements and innovations which benefit consumers, it would eventually bring them to a halt."

Toxic Trash

The EPA recently announced with great fanfare that it had issued complaints against 25 companies, with accompanying fines totaling $1.5 million, in the first enforcement actions of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act. The EPA said it had acted against the firms because they failed to report the release of toxic chemicals designated under the Act as "extremely hazardous substances." Despite EPA's enthusiasm in announcing the fines, environmental groups responded cooly. The action against the 25 companies pales in compari son to the scope of non-compliance with the reporting provisions of the Act. To date,15,000 of the 30,000 companies governed by the provisions have failed to submit the required reports.

� Garth Bray