Mollenhoff, Clark R. The Pentagon. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1967. 450 pages.

Clark Mollenhoff was a Pulitzer-winning reporter who had been with the Washington bureau of Cowles Publications for seventeen years before writing this book. But a comprehensive study of the Pentagon requires more access than either the General Accounting Office or a slew of Congressional subcommittees has ever been able to muster, and is certainly beyond the means of a mere reporter. Instead Mollenhoff presents 35 short chapters, each of which amounts to a brief but suggestive case study of a different tip of the Pentagon iceberg.

After several short chapters that cover War Department corruption and mismanagement from the Civil War through World War II, he then gets into more current issues with chapter titles that include names such as Howard Hughes, Benny Meyers, Harold Talbott, Robert McNamara, Roswell Gilpatric, and Fred Korth. Other chapters concern various weapon systems procurement scandals, the Pentagon's "black" budget, kickbacks for generals disguised as consulting or travel-expense fees, nonprofits such as Aerospace Corporation that contract with the military and suck in huge amounts for questionable expenditures, and the "profit pyramid," where layers of subcontractors each add on their profit margins and pass the bill up to the next level until it finally reaches the Pentagon and the taxpayer.
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