The invitations were sent out on September 4, 1953, and the bids were opened on September 22, 1953. It involved miscellaneous furnace and stove parts, consisting of 4,395 items at an estimated acquisition cost of $5,783.91.

The price that was received for these parts was $186, being the highest bid of three bidders. Most of these were new parts, is that right?

Lieutenant Colonel JENNINGS. These were the parts you saw in the warehouse. There was an addenda that deleted 22 line items, and the bid opening was put off from the 22d to the 28th of September, and the items that were deleted reduced that $5,700 down to approximately $5,100.

Mr. COTTER. To what extent did it reduce the parts?

Lieutenant Colonel JENNINGS. By 22 line items, I believe.

Mr. COTTER. They are listed by items rather than by line? Can anyone tell us what percentage of these original 4,395 items with this $5,700 valuation were obsolete for the stoves and furnaces that are being used on the post!

TESTIMONY OF MAJ. WALTER R. PASCHAL, POST ENGINEER, CAMP DRUM, N. Y.

Major PASCHAL. I cannot give you the figure you ars asking for there.

Mr. COTTER. Can you give us a rough approximation?

Major PASCHAL. No, sir. But I do know in several instances that some of the heating equipment on this camp is obsolete and no longer manufactured.

Mr. COTTER. But this declaration of these parts as surplus was not based on their being obsolete parts but on their being in excess of a level of authorized equipment for a standby operation?

Major PASCHAL. Yes, sir, and again there is no known winter requirement for which we will need these parts, the furnace parts.

Mr. COTTER. You have a warehouse which stores the parts remaining?

Major PASCHAL. Yes, sir.

Mr. COTTER. And those bins are nowhere near full, are they?
Major PASCHAL. No, sir.

Mr. COTTER. Actually you don't know what your known requirements will be, do you?

Major PASCHAL. As far as information received from the Army; yes, sir.

Mr. COTTER. But you don't know what your requirements will be next year or even this year?

Major PASCHAL. Yes, sir.

Mr. COTTER. Couldn't the status of things in the country as a whole change?

Major PASCHAL. Oh, yes, sir. Under those conditions, no, we don't know.

Mr. COTTER. Doesn't anybody take into consideration what you need for mobilization reserve in this camp, which would entail stove parts? Major PASCHAL. No, sir, that would not be determined at a performance level.

Mr. COTTER. You are doing as you are instructed?

Major PASCHAL. We were doing as we were instructed, plus our own initiative in declaring items excess.

Mr. COTTER. In connection with that, are you declaring anything in excess beyond what you were instructed to?

Major PASCHAL. No, sir.

Mr. COTTER. Can the First Army people tell us whether some of these items were declared excess and others left in the system, and what basis of consideration was used in determining that some items should be declared excess?

Mr. RUTMAN. Concerning the parts that were declared excess, we wrote our Army installations to determine whether they would need the particular items declared excess. At the time the posts were activated and constructed, at the initiation of World War II, we had to buy a variety of makes and parts of stoves and heating stoves. Therefore, for the most part, these parts could not be used by other installations.

Mr. COTTER. But you still have the stoves?

Mr. RUTMAN. Yes, sir, but they are required for winter heating. We don't know whether Camp Drum will be used again in the near future under conditions requiring heating. The heating parts we have not retained.

Mr. COTTER. Isn't that the point, that you don't know, and you are burning your bridges when you don't know?

Mr. RUTMAN. That would involve more warehouse space and the possibility that the stove parts may become obsolete, and also they may corrode and rust.

Mr. COTTER. Certainly they will not be worth anything to you?

Mr. RUTMAN. They cost $186 when we got them, and who knows whether they will be worth that much. Every time you retain stock in a warehouse you have to have warehouse space.

Mr. COTTER. You saw the bins this morning?

Mr. RUTMAN. That is right. Do you stock everything on the expectation that you will need them, or do you stock the items that you can use?

What is our biggest commodity today? Isn't it personnel? Isn't the highest cost of anything personnel? Isn't that more expensive than to dispose of things?

Mr. COTTER. But is your cost factor going to rise so sharply because you leave a few more items in a bin?

Mr. RUTMAN. If you are going to make a disposal of property, where do you stop?

Mr. COTTER. Where did you stop?

Mr. RUTMAN. We kept the items for the normal operation of the post for the wintertime, and to keep the post going for 10 to 12 months. But if we keep every bit of property and not dispose of it, that means we will have a post containing millions of dollars worth of property, and it requires space and personnel to maintain it.

Mr. COTTER. But at some time somebody bought the property with the anticipation that it would be used here.

Mr. RUTMAN. That is right.

Mr.COTTER. And what consideration is now being given to the possibility of the camp being reactivated? There may be a greater use being made of these parts than your immediate anticipation.

Mr. RUTMAN. We are anticipating that the camp will be used for summer operations. If we are going to retain all the heating repair

parts, that means that we are considering using it through the winter. As far as our information is concerned, Camp Drum will not be used for a winter installation.

Mr. COTTER. You you have not taken into consideration the possibility that this camp will be on full mobilization?

Mr. RUTMAN. Nobody has told us that. If you retain these various iron parts around they have a tendency to corrode, and if we do not use those parts for 5 years or more they cannot use them later.

Mr. COTTER. The ones that you are saving are rusting and corroding, aren't they?

Mr. RUTMAN. Those parts that we have saved, for the most part, will be used for the summer operation. They need stoves for the heating of water, but they are not the parts that will be used for the heating of the buildings in the wintertime.

Mr. COTTER. Would you get more for them now than if they were rusted and corroded?

Mr. RUTMAN. Of course. That is obvious.

Mr. COTTER. Do you feel that this $186 price that you got for these $5,700 worth of parts is a scrap value price or is a stove part price? Lieutenant Colonel JENNINGS. Those stove parts are what they call yard cost, which is f. o. b. Buffalo at $32 a ton in Buffalo.

Mr. COTTER. So you did sell it for scrap?

Lieutenant Colonel JENNINGS. Yes, sir.

Mr. RIEHLMAN. We do not want to leave any feeling with the military that we do not want obsolete equipment disposed of. We want to see that carried out and encouraged.

We have got a few saddles down in Texas that have been down there 75 or 80 years. There are other items we would like to see disposed of. But in a case where common sense can be the guide, and not merely some regulation, I think we should use some common sense in the disposal program too.

I am pretty certain that most of these camps could use many of these types of stoves for heating water and heating facilities rather than throwing a lot of this stuff away or giving it away for scrap prices and then finding ourselves confronted with the problem of buying again. I hope that the day will arrive when we can apply good common sense to some of these procurement programs and also in the manner of disposal where you run up against a situation such as you have here.

This is a pretty large camp, and you have a number of those stoves, and there is a minimum of surplus stove parts here. We looked at them today. I am not too worried about these stove parts rusting and falling apart. I know corrosion and rust have a bad effect on that type of metal. I wouldn't be too worried about saving a few of those grates instead of paying ten times what we get for grates on surplus sales.

Major PASCHAL. Due to our experience in the maintenance cost of the heating at Camp Drum, if we knew that Camp Drum would be used for complete mobilization, it would be necessary to replace 70 percent of the heating units.

Mr. RIEHLMAN. If you knew it would be used how long?

Major PASCHAL. For complete mobilization. It would be necessary to completely replace approximately 70 percent of the heating units in this camp because of the deteriorated condition of the fur