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910 - 17th Street, N.W.
Washington, D. C.
June 18, 1947

Mr. David L. Behncke, President
Air Line Pilots Association
3145 West Sixty-third Street
Chicago 29, Illinois

Dear Mr. Behncke

Thank you for your letter of June 13 which came this morning. The post office apparently refuses to separate me from the Railroad Retirement Board and delivered the letter there day before yesterday.

I appreciate the spirit in which the letter is written and I want to assure that I shall do everything that lies within my power to work with you in getting a sound retirement system established for air pilots. The fight will be a hard one, not only because of the ordinary difficulties, but because there appear to be some who, for reasons which are beyond my comprehension, seem to be anxious to use the public prints to make targets of the pilots. I am glad to see that you have been able to get space for answering the kind of attack by innuendo which is going on. My knowledge of these matters is no more than any other layman possesses, but one can usually identify the character of certain occurrences by whether or not they are out in the open or underhanded. From what I have seen of the kind of opposition the pilots have to combat, I would judge most of it to be of the under-the-table and behind-the-back variety. I conclude that someone must be trying to cover something up and thinks that a smear campaign at the pilots' expense is the way to do it. 

There is one matter which with respect to the bills which is not in accordance with my understanding. The three bills which you paid did not include any of the work I did in the month of May. I had not made out any bill for this at the time of the meeting in Chicago because I could not know exactly what the expenses of the trip to Chicago would be until my return here. At Mr. Stiles' request, however, I gave him an estimate that the bill for May, including expenses of a trip to New York on May 8 and the trip to Chicago, would be $1783.93, and the total expenses through May 23 would be $5647.25. The actual bill for May, forwarded to Mr. Stiles on May 24, was $1781.51, which made the total through May 23 $5645.83, slightly smaller than I estimated.

Upon receipt of your wire of May 8, which I received while I was in New York in conference with the committee, I stopped all work for the pilots except what was absolutely necessary to be prepared for