U.S. At War: Intermission

So far as the Grand Jury was concerned, "The Hopkins Letter" was now "The Briggs Letter." Fat-faced little George N. Briggs, grammarian to Secretary Harold L. Ickes, was indicted for forgery, for using the mails to defraud and for obtaining money under false pretenses.

Briggs, the grand jury believed, had faked a letter from Harry Hopkins to Dr. Umphrey Lee, president of Southern Methodist University (who had never received it)—a letter that suggested that Hopkins wanted Willkie to get the Republican Presidential nomination. The literary hatchet-man who put it in a book thought it proved that Willkie was a New...