Exit Rieber

Into their handsome board room on the 26th floor of Manhattan's spike-topped Chrysler Building last week strode 15 grave directors of $661,067,033 Texas Corp. Eleven of them were there to debate the fate of their $100,000-a-year chairman -- hardheaded Torkild Rieber, Norwegian-born onetime tanker master. Three, officers of the company, had come to listen. In the witness chair was Oilman Rieber. Out side, in the anteroom, were war and Adolf Hitler.

For seven violent, often distressing, sometimes incoherent hours the eleven directors wrangled over ways & means of piloting Texas Corp. out of the search light beam its chairman had attracted by seeming to be friends with Nazi Germany. All were agreed that the New York Herald Tribune's three-week-old revelation of the connection between Rieber and Hitler's cumbersome ambassador-off-the-record to U. S. businessmen, Dr. Gerhardt Alois Westrick (TIME, Aug. 12), threatened to hit Texas Corp. in the cash register. Those who knew Cap Rieber were sure he was no pro-Nazi, although he had been keen to do business with Germany before the war. But they also felt his indiscretions and bad handling of the press had stirred prejudice and hysteria against him. Their explanation of the scandal was best put by Torkild Rieber himself: "My fault. I talk too much."

Debate. As talk cleared the way for more talk, the battle lines developed in the board room. On one side were the New Yorkers, more sensitive to the foreign issue. They were led by potent Manhattan Attorney Walter G. Dunnington, who had nursed Torkild Rieber along from promotion to promotion in his 36 years with Texas Corp., felt responsible. As the representative of Texas Corp.'s biggest single stockholder (estate of Empire Builder James J. Hill's son), Director Dunnington's opinion was important. Reluctantly, he felt that the chairman's tongue-wagging had made him unfit for so responsible a job. Solidly behind him were the company's other Manhattan directors, particularly Banker William Steele Gray Jr., Broker Henry Upham Harris, Charitarian Barklie Henry.

Squared off on the other side of the table were Texas Corp.'s hinterland directors--principally John H. Lapham (of San Antonio, Tex., whose father was one of Texas Corp.'s founders), Chicago Banker Walter Joseph Cummings. Sensing the nervousness of the New York crowd, they were willing to weasel the whole matter. Perhaps the chairman could go to White Sulphur, or somewhere, for his health until the unlucky incident blew over? Completely out of sympathy with such fantasies was Texas Corp.'s No. 2 head--reticent, Yale-bred, Anglophile President William Starling Sullivant Rodgers, chief executive of the company and responsible for Texaco's U. S. sales.

What the tortured directors could not escape was the ambiguity of Torkild Rieber's activities abroad. Recently the British, policing their blockade, asked Cap Rieber to pull over. Texas' sales of oil and gasoline to Axis-Partner Spain had been mounting toward 100,000 tons a month. The British thought 25,000 tons would be about right. Hard-boiled Salesman Rieber tried to compromise, argued that the Spanish, busy rebuilding their country, could not be transshipping any oil to Germany. But the British preferred not to take a chance. Those who knew Cap Rieber knew his motives were not to skunk the British, but simply to sell oil. But it was then that Franklin Roosevelt saw fit to proclaim his scrap iron and oil licensing regulations, and U. S. customs officials held two Spain-bound Texas tankers in the Gulf.

Breezy, blunt Cap Rieber, an office-bound sea rover who feels equally at home in any of the world's ports, was boss of Texas' tanker fleet, and made a specialty of pushing sales of Texaco abroad. Yet his company's revenue from all European sales was less than twice what it took from the Hitler-conscious New York area. That statistic the directors kept firmly in mind.

Rebuttal. From his uneasy seat on the carpet Chairman Rieber told his story. Not one barrel of oil had Texas Corp. sold, directly or indirectly, to Germany since World War II began. It had got delivery last winter on one or two tankers contracted for in Germany and paid for in oil before the war. This was done after Rieber had had a talk with Goring, but also with cheers from the British, who naturally preferred to see the tankers in the U. S. rather than in the North Sea. Texas Corp. had no permanent investments in Germany. "Under no circumstances could he [Richer] be identified with any kind of un-American activity."

So far as his relations with Dr. Westrick were concerned, Oilman Rieber explained they were strictly business. He had retained the attorney on occasion to represent Texas Corp. in Germany. When Westrick came to the U. S. recently, the Texas Corp. head had offered him a company car (which Herr Westrick refused), advanced customary business courtesies such as arranging for a Texas Corp. loan (because of exchange restrictions) with which to buy a car. He knew of no reason for the attorney's visit other than to promote better business relations between the U. S. and Germany.

Exit. Disturbed not only by the public hullabaloo but by the belief that he was becoming persona non grata in Washington, the eleven directors finally let chastened Torkild Rieber submit his resignation from the chairmanship, kept him on as a director to save face.

This week the Texas Corp. directors had to face a further decision: whether to sever Director Rieber from the company completely by taking away his directorship. For the rank & file of Texas Corp. employes, that question was academic. They knew it would be a cold day before they could forget the greying, generous, powerfully built man who slapped them on the back and said: "This is the best God damn company in the world"; who built the famed Barco pipeline in Colombia after they said it couldn't be done; who once exclaimed: "Hell, if they wanted to move the Chrysler Building to Colombia, we'd do it--if they'd pay us for it." And around Manhattan's 52nd Street, habitues of "21" wondered what the club would be like without the old salt and his stories.

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