Memo Shows White House Interest in Wedtech
A top Army official urged his staff in 1982 to give special consideration to a military contract received by Wedtech Corp., in a memorandum that reflected White House pressure on behalf of the scandal-torn company, records showed Thursday.
Army officials acknowledged that Jay R. Sculley, assistant secretary of the Army, invoked President Reagan’s name in December, 1982, in instructing staff contract officers to “take all possible actions to avoid unnecessary perturbations” to Wedtech in overseeing its work on a $31-million contract to build small gasoline engines for the Army.
Sculley’s memo was written seven months after he had attended a White House meeting called to iron out a dispute between the New York-based manufacturing firm and Army officials who thought that Wedtech’s price for the job was too high. The meeting was called by James Jenkins, an aide to Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, who was then White House counselor.
Released by Army
Sculley’s memo, which was released by the Army after it was disclosed by the New York Times, is the second piece of evidence to emerge this week suggesting that White House officials went to unusual lengths to help Wedtech, a minority-owned firm that has since been accused of paying public officials and political consultants to help it win no-bid government contracts reserved for minority-owned companies. Wednesday, a former Small Business Administration official told the Associated Press that he was present at another 1982 meeting in which two White House aides pressed the agency to help Wedtech get the small engine contract.
The activities of Wedtech, which now is in bankruptcy, are under investigation by federal grand juries in New York and Baltimore and by James C. McKay, a court-appointed independent counsel in Washington. The investigations have largely centered on Lyn Nofziger, a former political aide of Reagan’s who was a paid consultant for Wedtech after he left the White House in 1982, and on some close associates of Meese. Nofziger allegedly contacted former White House colleagues to promote Wedtech’s application for the contract.
According to Col. Craig MacNab, an Army spokesman, the memo from Sculley, while mentioning the President’s name, did not reflect an effort by the Army to help Wedtech. Rather, “the whole point (to contract officers) was, ‘Don’t fool with (the terms of) this contract and undermine the hard-fought negotiations we went through” to reach a contract price with the SBA, MacNab said. The SBA operates the no-bid government contract program for minority firms.
Effect of Late Changes
Late changes in the contract specifications might have resulted in a price adjustment, Army officials said. “We fought for a fair price and agreed to the final figure,” MacNab said. “Sculley didn’t want any changes made at the lower levels (of the Army). He only mentioned President Reagan in the memo to impress upon Army folks the importance of this matter.”
Sculley’s memo said in part: “It is my desire that Welbilt (Wedtech’s former name) be given all appropriate support to insure the successful completion of this important effort.”
The memo said that Reagan “has noted this contract award and, I am told, plans . . . to present Welbilt an award for ’17 years of quality work.’ ”
No such award was given the company. But two years later the President, in a speech promoting free enterprise, praised Wedtech founder John Mariotta as “a hero for the 1980s.”
Earlier this year the former managers of Wedtech acknowledged in court that they had defrauded the SBA by claiming the firm was a minority contractor even after Mariotta, who is Latino, lost his controlling interest in the company.
Met With SBA Officials
On Wednesday, David V. Gonzales, a former SBA special assistant, said in an interview with the Associated Press that assistants to then-White House aides Nofziger and Elizabeth Hanford Dole met with SBA officials in January, 1982, to help Wedtech obtain the Army engine contract.
He said that the meeting was “the first time we ever had White House staff sit there and advocate for one company.”
