Salinger Vows To Save Troubled D-Day Wall

Pierre Salinger, chairman of the Battle of Normandy Foundation, says he will do everything he can to see that a wall listing the names of American veterans is built near D-Day beaches.

Donations of $40 each from tens of thousands of veterans to erect the wall on the Caen memorial site went astray, and the monument was never started as promised three years ago. The United States is investigating the Washington-based foundation, which collected an estimated $2 million, for possible fraud.

Salinger, a former White House press secretary and ABC newsman, blamed the foundation’s former president, Anthony Stout, for a “dramatic error” in spending the money sent in for the wall.

“The veterans have suffered in this affair, and we will do everything we can to see the wall built on the memorial’s esplanade,” he said Thursday during a tour of France to promote his book “Memoirs.”

Stout, a Washington businessman who founded the organization, said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that the foundation was “carefully and properly run.”

Tom Gantt, a former financial officer who quit the foundation in 1994, said $1 million was spent on wall-related activities and another $1 million diverted to other projects.