There was something horribly wrong with the car. Daniel Boone wanted to find out for himself if what engineers were saying was true. As the attorney responsible for general litigation at General Motors, he had an interest in their Corvair model with lawsuits piling up. The Corvair automobiles released from 1960-1963 had been of particular concern; not only were people complaining of an exhaust smell seeping into the car, but it had a design flaw with its engine located in the trunk, which made it more susceptible to flipping over when taking sharp turns. Boone thought he had seen enough. “Call them all in,” Boone told Eileen Murphy, a colleague in the GM’s Detroit legal office. “Recall them.”
Boone was friends with Murphy and he was to be her escort for the office Christmas party in December 1964. He was late to the dinner but neglected to tell Murphy the reason for this delay. Another lawyer took Murphy aside and explained to her that Boone had been to the proving grounds earlier that day, where GM’s automobiles were tested. He had been driving a Corvair and flipped the car as the litigants had done. Boone was silent on the incident at the Christmas party. Several days later, Boone was driving alone with Murphy and she took the opportunity to ask him: “He confirmed that he had been driving the Corvair,” she recalled, “and that it had turned over. He didn’t go into details—he wasn’t the kind of guy you’d try to push if he didn’t want to give details.”
Three weeks later he was dead. Boone’s wife found his body in bed the morning of January 11, 1965. His death was attributed to cerebral thrombosis; one of the common causes for this type of blood clot is trauma. Since she was also a friend to Boone’s wife, Murphy relayed the proving grounds incident to her and immediately regretted mentioning it; Boone had not told his wife. Murphy did not know if the two events were causally linked, but Boone’s wife believed this to be the case as she became extremely upset. Boone died at 54 years of age and his death “was just as though a bulldozer had been driven through the GM legal staff,” Murphy recounted. There were few remaining lawyers at GM who were like Boone and wanted to take corrective action on the Corvair. A former GM employee revealed: “The problem I found with the GM legal department was really that these people didn’t think of themselves so much as lawyers as of loyal soldiers in the ranks of General Motors.”
A former GM engineer, Fred J. Hooven, working for Ford at the time had discovered the same problem as Boone in driving tests: “not only did the Corvair have a low limit of maximum permissible speed in a turn but once this limit had been exceeded, the vehicle became totally uncontrollable.” GM threw out their customer complaints on the Corvair from 1962 to 1965 the day after the U.S. House of Representatives passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966. The records were later discovered by junk dealers. Part of the law’s intent was to grant the Department of Transportation access to customer complaints. The junked records contained 17,000 customer complaints regarding the Corvair, including 688 related to fumes or odors. Rather than fix the issues with its products on the road, the company decided to expend considerable effort to silence its critics.
Shut Him Up
“I wish that bastard’s father had never met his mother!” Murphy was irate about a GM critic who was exposing the ills of the corporation. While working in the Detroit office on December 22, she called the Washington law firm Alvord & Alvord and asked for their assistance. There was a “kook” that needed to be looked into and ultimately stopped. Richard Danner at the law firm approached a private detective, Vincent Gillen, whom he believed he could trust with this sensitive investigation. GM had already procured a simple investigative report, but were dissatisfied with the results; there had to be more to the picture that they could use to discredit and silence this bothersome detractor.
Gillen, who had formerly worked for the FBI, was taking no chances and, unbeknownst to his prospective employers, recorded his conversations. In a meeting, Danner laid out the significance of the assignment. “This is a new client,” he told Gillen, “could be a very important one. They came to me and I’m anxious to do a good job because they have had trouble getting investigators. They want me to work with someone I trust. It concerns this fellow who wrote this book. They have not found out much about him. His stuff there is pretty damaging to the auto industry…”
Danner showed Gillen a copy of the book and explained what information Gillen was to discover: “What are his motives? Is he really interested in safety? Who are his backers, supporters? Some left-wing groups try to run down all industry. How does he support himself? Who is paying him, if anyone, for this stuff? How did he get all this confidential information, from government reports or committees? Was he put in there deliberately?”
Gillen wanted to know more of the critic’s background: “Is he an engineer?” Danner replied matter-of-factly: “No evidence of it; he went to Harvard Law.” Danner then referred to the unsatisfactory investigation GM had previously ordered: “They made some half-baked investigation in Connecticut. He is not there and apparently is or has been in Washington. I don’t know where he is. Strange, but he doesn’t show anywhere in any directory.” Danner handed Gillen a stack of papers. “Here is what they gave me on him. You take this with you and a copy of the book and take over from here…”
Gillen looked over the book’s cover. “This is dynamite,” he expressed. “I remember reading a review of three books on this stuff in the New York Times recently. This book got the biggest play.” Danner further explained the personal side to GM’s demands: “Yeah, that’s why they are interested. Apparently he’s in his early 30s and unmarried; interesting angle there. They said, ‘Who is he laying? If it’s girls, who are they? If not girls, maybe boys, who?’ They want to know.”
His tape recorder still running, Gillen had a premonition: “Wow, this is dynamite that might blow, Dick, you know that.” Danner was unfazed and remained focus on the target: “Yeah, he seems to be a bit of a nut or some kind of screwball…Well, they want to know, no matter what. They want to get something, somewhere, on this guy to get him out of their hair, and to shut him up. I know it is a tricky one. That’s why I called you. I told them [I] thought you could do this. You’re a lawyer, as I recall…”
Danner wondered if Gillen’s FBI experience could be put to good use. “How do you think you will approach this?” he asked. Gillen replied: “I have been trying to figure that out because you know we will have to get close to him to get what they want…You know…are they prepared for the worst? The subject is certain to learn of the investigation.” Danner understood his concern: “Yeah…that’s why I told them I would know just how you plan to go about it and I want your ideas to see if they fit in with my ideas.”
Gillen proposed a method he had in fact learned from the FBI: a background investigation of the detractor, pretending that a fake company wanted to hire him: “I think the answer will be found in a thorough pre-employment investigation. We make hundreds of them every week.” Danner was impressed: “That’s a good idea, about the safest. I go along with that…Excellent.”
Gillen remained cautious: “But, Dick, somebody must be in a position to say they authorized you to ask for it. If it blows, who will be there to say he is interested in hiring him? A lot of organizations would be glad to have this fellow with his research and writing ability, from what I see in the book right now.” Danner replied: “I’ll take care of that.” He never did. He nonetheless continued on a few moments later with his assurances: “I will take care of that and this idea will add an extra layer so we’ll be that much safer. Don’t worry about it.”
Danner explained how far this investigation needed to go in terms of surveillance methods: “If you can’t readily determine who his supporters are, who he is dealing with, his sources of income, we may have to put a tail on him. Don’t do it without my OK. I think a tail will show who he is contacting. His language in articles and the book is appearing in lawsuits in several parts of the country.” Danner finally revealed to Gillen who his client was and how they could get rich if they succeeded: “I’ll tell you in the strictest confidence, to be revealed to no one, even in your own organization: General Motors. If we handle this right, both of us will get a lot of business from them.”
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