From Publishers Weekly
How did a small Bronx machine shop, with no shipbuilding facilities or marine engineers, win a major Navy contract to manufacture pontoon boats? Wedtech Corp., with friends high in the Reagan administration, had the knack. Its bribe-peddling officers included Puerto Rican immigrant John Mariotta, an illiterate master-manipulator; Mario Moreno, executive v-p with a million-dollar casino-gambling habit; and Fred Neuberger, who was cruising glitzy discos within days of his third wife's mysterious disappearance. Thompson, who covered the Wedtech scandal for New York City's Daily News , strikes paydirt in this hard-hitting, gutsy, damning probe, a volume that complements James Traub's Too Good to Be True (Nonfiction Forecasts, May 18). Wedtech's officers, who claimed to have U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese in their pocket, also laid low old Reagan hand Lyn Nofziger, Congressman Mario Biaggi and Stanley Simon, "perhaps the stupidest man ever to serve as Bronx borough president." Though Thompson hews close to the facts of the case, one gets the feeling that the corruption unearthed by Wedtech is the tip of an iceberg.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Wedtech, as classic a scandal of greed, corruption, and illegal extortion as any since Teapot Dome, is carefully described by New York Daily News journalist Thompson . She clearly follows the payoff trail from the Wedtech gang, which included labor leaders, auditors, bankers, the Mafia, and politicians Mario Biaggi, Robert Garcia, and Edwin Meese, to those within the U.S. Navy and the Small Business Administration who arranged the approval of defense contracts to Wedtech. Similar in content to William Sternberg and Matthew C. Harrison's Feeding Frenzy ( LJ 11/1/89), Thompson's book is more crisp. Recommended for general readers.
- Ron Christenson, Gustavus Adolphus Coll., St. Peter, Minn.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
