Feeding the Beast: How Wedtech Became the Most Corrupt Little Company in America [Hardcover]

Marilyn W. Thompson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

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.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 337 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1St Edition edition (September 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684190206
• ISBN-13: 978-0684190204
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,038,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Most entertaining way to get to know an industry, May 7, 2011

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Citizen John (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Feeding the Beast: How Wedtech Became the Most Corrupt Little Company in America (Hardcover)

I can think of 2 books that tell the story of a company's experience in federal contracting, and this is one of them. Both are about Wedtech, a good scandal story. It's telling that the only way you can read a book about a company in this industry is through scandal. But if you want to understand the industry, you can do worse than getting this book.

As a disclosure, I should state now that I'm in the industry. For the most part this is an unglamorous industry, government contracting. I suppose that's the reason it takes a big fraud story to create a book interesting enough to read.

To me, Wedtech's fraud is just a hook to get the reader's attention. It's not a literary device. This is a journalistic book. But the real story is the context. The reader gets to know how this enormous, insider's industry operates. All the characters are present: project managers, contracting officers, government customers, lobbyists, business development folks, operations staff, owner-CEOs, politicians and an accountant.

The motivations that drove the perpetrators to commit their deeds are universal. They all started out innocently enough with the possible exception of the politicians and lobbyists. Many people would find this an important book. Wedtech is not a household name. I can't find anybody that heard of it. The book is excellent and I recommend it.