Miss QUEEN. I have not had occasion to throw out a bidder as an unresponsible bidder.

Mr. BROWNSON. Do you give any consideration to whether or not the bidder has manufactured this particular product in the past?

Miss QUEEN. No; because we have any number of dealers and jobbers that submit bids and we have no reason to throw them out if they are the low bidder.

Mr. JUDD. You said in the case of aureomycin, it is only made by Lederle and you get it from them, and in the case of terramycin, it is only made by Pfizer and you get it from them. Hexylresorcinol in the tablet Crystoids is made only by Sharp & Dohme

Miss QUEEN. Let me explain that. We did not advertise any of those for Crystoids. That is a Sharp & Dohme brand name and our policy in purchasing is, wherever possible, to advertise by the chemical name and not the brand name, so that the item is not limited to one company. We know and I think in USP Sharp & Dohme makes Crystoids. That is a brand name; but at least a dozen people make hexylresorcinol.

Mr. BROWNSON. Do not the tablet people make hexylresorcinol in the form of pills?

Miss QUEEN. Either in the form of pills or tablets. They are not in the form of capsules; Crystoids is.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Was Retort was one of those?

Miss QUEEN. Retort was one that offered hexylresorcinol. We never advertised it as Crystoids. When we do advertise as Crystoids, which is recently, nobody bids; because that is a patented item of Sharp & Dohme.

Mr. JUDD. Aureomycin is a patented item of Lederle, too.

Miss QUEEN. Nobody bids on aureomycin, except we have some foreign representatives of Lederle

Mr. JUDD. Maybe I should come down the next time and put in a bid, too, for aureomycin and go out and contract for it.

Miss QUEEN. If Lederle supplied it to you, you would be lucky. Some people do business that way.

Mr. BROWNSON. In other words, the extent of the supervision exercised by your superior, Mr. Peed, is that in general he accepts your recommendations, looks them over, and you can recall no time when he has reversed your recommendations?

Miss QUEEN. I cannot recall one right now. He may have from time to time. I think he has expressed an opinion sometimes. There may be times when he reversed my judgment. I do not know; I am

not sure.

Mr. BROWNSON. Are these invitations he assigns to you accompanied by an acompanying letter designating you as the agency officer to whom the bids should be returned?

Miss QUEEN. Let me hear that again.

Mr. BROWNSON. In other words, would Captain Maull of EPS, Director of Purchasing, send a letter accompanying the invitation for bids which would say to send the bids back to Miss Queen?

Miss QUEEN. Yes; that was under the old procedure under EPS where we handled every invitation to bid in rough draft form; rather, we made a stencil for every invitation to bid and then duplicated that in mimeographed form.

I remember you asked the question how can the bidder know this is open advertising. The bidder could know it is an advertised bid by the fact it is a mimeographed invitation. The only time it is not an open advertisement is if you type it; but a mimeographed advertisement is always an open invitation.

Mr. BROWNSON. Do you not think that calls for a little bit of detective work on the part of bidders?

Miss QUEEN. Not at all.

Mr. BROWNSON. Would it not be simple just to specify it as an advertised bid or a negotiated bid?

Miss QUEEN. I think it is very easy for a businessman to tell, because we have certain things we can throw out an invitation to bid and I think readily a bidder can understand.

Mr. BROWNSON. Why should we make a bidder be a private detective in order to do business with the United States Government? Why not tell him you are going to have a negotiated bid, and let him know you are going to have a negotiated bid?

Miss QUEEN. We have not had a negotiated bid. As I said, the only case of a negotiated bid is the original one under EPS. We did not have open bidding, so everybody knew they were not open.

Mr. BROWNSON. There was no open bidding under EPS at all?
Miss QUEEN. Not when I purchased for EPS.

Mr. BROWNSON. The only difference is when they come in to negotiate a bid, you do not open it to the public?

Miss QUEEN. That is the only difference in my handling of the bids.

Mr. JUDD. She says people in the trade will know from a certain phrase which is one and which is the other. Is there any objection to writing it so that other people not in the trade, Members of Congress, for instance, could know also?

Miss QUEEN. No. What we do today is we take sealed bids on bids that go into the bid room. Bids that go into the bid room today have the words "sealed bids will be received in the Federal Supply Service at such-and-such a time, at such-and-such an hour." That is plain enough; there is no secret about that; it is open bidding. But what we did before is not open bidding. We said "informal" bids.

Mr. JUDD. When it says they have to be received by 5 o'clock on such-and-such a day, do people in the trade who understand the vernacular know at what time thereafter they are to be opened?

Miss QUEEN. On bids not opened in the bid room, we just set a day and I always have such a heavy program that although I have received the envelopes, I may not even open them for a day or 2 days later.

Mr. JUDD. If there is supposed to be a public opening, how can you have a public opening unless they are notified as to when the public opening is to be?

Miss QUEEN. The public opening is right at the head of the invitation to bid-sealed bids will be received in the bid room of the Federal Supply Service on such-and-such a date.

Mr. JUDD. And they are opened right then?

Miss QUEEN. If they are to be opened at 2 o'clock they go to the people in the bid room and they are opened by the man in the bid

room.

Mr. JUDD. And if they are to be opened at 5 o'clock

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Miss QUEEN. We do not have any 5 o'clock now. I think 3 o'clock is the latest. And they have a man there who opens them.

Mr. JUDD. When it says they are to be received at such-and-such time, I would guess that means they are also going to be opened at such-and-such a time.

Miss QUEEN. It says "will be opened." That is the way it reads "They will be opened."

Mr. JUDD. I think I misunderstood you. I thought you said “will be received at such-and-such time."

Miss QUEEN. I might have said that.

Mr. JUDD. As I recall the testimony of Mr. Kuryloski, maybe I was wrong there, too, but I got the impression he did not know when they were going to be opened; he assumed they would be open bids, but there was nothing in the invitation that said they would be open bids.

Miss QUEEN. At the time of those two cases it was at the time of emergency procurement when we did not have public bid opening. That was back in 1950 or 1951.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. How long is it since you have had this public opening?

Miss QUEEN. I do not know the exact date. About a year and a half ago.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. In the last 2 years, in other words; so when we are talking of these things we are talking of things that happened in 1951 and 1952.

Miss QUEEN. There has been a change in the procedure.

Mr. BROWNSON. Previous to those years the bids were received by you and not the service center?

Miss QUEEN. They were all put right into my incoming basket, sealed.

Mr. BROWNSON. In cases now where they are received in the Business Service Center, are they forwarded to you on the date designated for their receipt or the date of opening?

Miss QUEEN. The procedure now is on the day or hour they are opened in the bid room at the hour of opening, and if there are 95 bids on an article at the same time, usually they start about 2 o'clock and they might finish at 4 o'clock. A copy of the bid is held in the bid room for 24 hours for anybody who wants to see it. Two copies come in and are held in the bid room, as I understand it, for 24 hours, and as a rule people who are interested in their bid, they can sit down and copy the bids verbatim and after 24 hours the entire batch-I never see those bids until the tabulation has been completed; they are tabulated in the control center. They make 3 copies, 1 copy goes to the bid room as a permanent record, and 2 copies come back to the purchasing agent.

Mr. BROWNSON. What I would like to talk about now-we have discussed the old procedure and the new and from now on I would like to ask specifically about the procedure in 1951 at the time you handled this contract. In 1951 those bids were received in the Business Service Center, were they not?

Miss QUEEN. No; we did not have a Business Service Center at that time.

Mr. BROWNSON. In other words, they came directly to you?

Miss QUEEN. They were put in my incoming basket by the Control Section.

Mr. BROWNSON. They were put in there immediately upon their receipt?

Miss QUEEN. Whenever they made delivery of the mail.

Mr. BROWNSON. At the next mail distribution, they were put in your basket?

Miss QUEEN. That is right.

Mr. BROWNSON. Then what did you do with the bids?

Miss QUEEN. It depended on what my workload was at that time. If I was ready to proceed with that case, I would open the bids the day of the bid closing, because I did not have an hour set, and start my tabulation.

Mr. BROWNSON. Did you open any bids before the date of the bid closing?

Miss QUEEN. No.

Mr. BROWNSON. I thought it was indicated this morning that sometimes bids were opened in advance?

Miss QUEEN. On the closed bidding, we opened them whenever they came in, if I was ready to start tabulating.

Mr. BROWNSON. In other words, the bid opening might be next Tuesday on one of those closed bids.

Miss QUEEN. Yes.

Mr. BROWNSON. And if my bid should come in today, you might open up my bid and put it in the file?

Miss QUEEN. Open it if it depended on my program for that day. If I had other cases I was working on, I would look at them another time, maybe; if I was ready, I would open them.

Mr. BROWNSON. Were you required to open all bids at the close of bidding on the last day, or the day following the date set for the bid opening?

Miss QUEEN. No; there was no requirement. If I could not get to it, it would stay in my file for maybe a month.

Mr. BROWNSON. Does your procedure regulate, designate or limit the period from the last date for receipt of bids and the opening date in such contracts as are assigned to you? In other words, do you specify any period of time in there between the last date for the receipt of bids and the opening date?

Miss QUEEN. On the date of receipt of bids, the bids are supposed to come in on a certain day; if the bidder sends it a day ahead of the time it is supposed to arrive, they are not processed until the date set in the invitation.

Mr. BROWNSON. Are you required to make a tabulation or a recommendation, or were you required in 1951 to make a tabulation or a recommendation the day you opened the bids?

Miss QUEEN. At that time there was no requirement as to when the tabulation was to be made. It was made when we were ready for it. Don't forget during that time we were at war, and there was a tremendous volume of work going on.

Mr. BROWNSON. Were you required by regulation to open all bids on a particular contract at one time?

Miss QUEEN. There was no regulation so far as I know as to when bids could be opened on closed bidding.

Mr. BROWNSON. Were you required under closed bidding to have your openings witnessed in any way?

Miss QUEEN. No.

Mr. BROWNSON. Was it incumbent upon you to post your tabulation of bids for public scrutiny?

Miss QUEEN. At that time the bid room had no contact whatsoever with the successful bids under FOA. At that time it was not FOA; it was ECA, or something else. They changed the initials every 6 months; so I don't remember what the initials would be. I think it was ECA at that time.

Mr. BROWNSON. But there being no requirement, you never posted the tabulation of bids?

Miss QUEEN. No; but anybody who wanted the information after the award was made was entitled to the information if he was a participatng bidder.

Mr. BROWNSON. If he was a participating bidder, he was entitled to the information.

Miss QUEEN. Only after the award was made.

Mr. BROWNSON. I thought I understood this morning that Sharp & Dohme inquired about the bid and was not entitled to the information because they did not get the contract?

Miss QUEEN. No; they inquired about delivery and we do not divulge the delivery or inspection delays to anybody but people entitled to that information.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. Do they call you directly and ask you, or are they entitled to come in and look at the bids?

Miss QUEEN. They can either call me or call anybody else in the Department, or come in.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. They can actually see the bids?

Miss QUEEN. Those who are proper bidders, or in our estimation, if you come in and want to see it, I would show it to you.

Mr. JUDD. Let us say, for instance, bids were to be closed next Tuesday. But you got one on the Friday before and you can open it then: Is that not a little loose procedure? You could open it on a Friday and somebody in your office could pass out information on Friday to somebody else who was going to submit his bid, maybe, the following Monday or Tuesday.

Miss QUEEN. There is always the possibility of somebody searching through the files for information."

Mr. JUDD. If you have a date on which there is to be the final opening, it would seem to me inadvisable for any bid to be opened prior to that time. It would be inviting trouble, would it not?

Miss QUEEN. As a rule it was not done; there were only times. when it was. It was only done in the event it was an emergency case, that is, it had to be awarded soon, or if I was ready to act in a case. Mr. JUDD. You mean you would act on a case while there were still 3 days in which to put bids in?

Miss QUEEN. I mean I would get my tabulation prepared, so that it would be ready.

Mr. JUDD. Have you ever had a case where information got out? Miss QUEEN. Not that I know of.

Mr. JUDD. Where bids were opened before the closing date?

Miss QUEEN. Not that I know of.

Mr. JUDD. You don't think this was one of those cases?

Miss QUEEN. Absolutely not, as far as I know. There may have been some hidden-what do they call those people that roam through buildings?