Word: lobbyists
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...booming arguments and demands for more ships. Well-heeled, he was a generous entertainer. Quick of temper, he once threatened to "knock the hell" out of a Washington correspondent (Ray Tucker) who dared dispute his word. Quickly he was recognized as the most potent Big-Navy lobbyist in Washington. Whom or what he represented remained a mystery...
Last week the mystery ended when Mr. Shearer, to collect a pay claim, filed suit in Manhattan against his alleged employers?Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., Newport News Shipbuilding Co., American Brown-Bovari Corp. From these shipbuilders, Lobbyist Shearer said, he had received $51,230. He claimed they still owed him $257,655 for professional services. He had, he stated, been hired to prepare literature, information, data, to write articles, to interview public officials and press representatives, to make speeches in behalf of U. S. shipbuilding from 1926 to 1929. The dullest Congressman could see the connection: Big Navy?more cruisers; more...
Later that year Congress was plowed with demands for an investigation of the Navy. Such an inquiry, insisted Big-Navy men, would reveal the weak condition of the fleet, would hasten reforms?and new ships. Lobbyist Shearer was in the thick of that agitation. He began issuing what were supposed to be the Navy's military secrets: 1) the U. S. had had a spy aboard a British warship during maneuvers, who reported on secret methods whereby British guns could outrange those of the U. S. fleet; 2) maneuvers in miniature at the Naval War College at Newport had demonstrated...
These "disclosures" did not precipitate a Congressional investigation of the Navy, but they did stir up trouble aplenty within the Navy itself. Lobbyist Shearer explained that he had received his information from private and confidential letters exchanged between naval officers studying at the War College. Secretary of the Navy Wilbur convoked a court of inquiry at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Captain Hugo W. Osterhaus was suspected of '"leaking." Lobbyist Shearer went to the Pacific coast. too busy there with other naval affairs to help out of difficulty those who had given him his information...
...spent six weeks at Geneva during the arms conference. As an international lobbyist, he sowed seeds of statistical discord, sought to preserve the irreconcilability of the British and U. S. viewpoints on cruiser tonnage. When the conference failed, he considered his mission a complete success, took the "credit...