811.113 Senate Investigation/32
The Peruvian Ambassador (Freyre) to the Secretary of State
Your Excellency: Press Agencies, reporting the hearings held by a Committee of the United States Senate on the sale of armaments effected by American manufacturers to foreign countries, have transmitted, and the Lima newspapers have published, a statement attributed to Mr. C. W. Webster, representative of the Curtiss Wright Corporation, to the effect that the Peruvian Government had lately purchased from other firms airplanes at a price high above the price quoted by his own firm, and that, in order to carry through this questionable transaction, person or persons not mentioned, presumably of Peruvian nationality, had received large commissions.18
My Government is anxious to obtain more explicit information with regard to the person or persons who are supposed to have received these [Page 433] commissions. If such practices are to be eradicated, it is essential that proper sanctions should be applied to those who may be guilty, and this my Government firmly intends to do; but no sanction can be applied until some definite person or persons may be brought to court. Moreover, since wide publicity has been given to so serious a charge, it is only fair to dispel suspicions and place the blame squarely upon those who should bear it.
The Embassy has therefore been instructed not to spare any effort in endeavouring to obtain an explicit statement as to the name of the person or persons who are supposed to have collected the commissions Mr. Webster is quoted to mention.
In pursuance of these instructions, I venture to request Your Excellency’s kind official assistance,19 so that my Government may be furnished with the evidence required and thereby enabled to co-operate in correcting an evil, that should not further be countenanced.
I have [etc.]