(2 of 3)
The FBI then ran a detailed investigation of White. This made White's espionage activities an "established fact," Brownell said. A second report went to the White House (again to Vaughan) on Feb. 4, 1946.
The next day a Senate committee recommended White's confirmation, and the day after, the Senate, in ignorance of the reports, confirmed him in his job with the Monetary Fund. On April 30, White's last day at the Treasury, President Truman wrote White accepting the resignation "with regret," saying: ". . . You will have increased opportunity for the exercise of your wide knowledge and expertness in a field which is of utmost importance to world peace and security . . . In your new position, you will add distinction to your already distinguished career . . ."
In April 1947, White left his Monetary Fund job in a hurry; Harry Truman accepted the resignation "with, sincere regret and considerable reluctance." Later that year, White was called to testify before a New York grand jury. After the Bentley and Chambers charges against White and others were made public in 1948, Harry Truman tried to shrug off the accusations as "Red herring."
"A Sweetheart." Democrats responded to last week's Brownell shellburst with a scattershot of contradiction and cries of "politics"; they said that Brownell was merely trying to divert attention from the recent by-election results.
The Attorney General retorted by publishing the entire distribution list of the first FBI report, as recorded in his department's files. On Dec. 4, 1945: General Vaughan (marked for the President's attention), Attorney General Tom Clark, Secretary of State James Brynes; on Dec. 7: Navy Secretary (later Defense Secretary) James Forrestal, Assistant Secretary of State Spruille Braden; on Feb. 20, 1946: the President's Chief of Staff, Fleet Admiral William Leahy; on Feb. 26: War Department G-2 (later Chief of Air Staff) Lieut. General Hoyt Vandenberg; on March 5: Treasury Secretary (later U.S. Chief Justice) Fred Vinson; on March 15: the chief State Department security officer. Fred Lyon. Brownell also produced a note from the FBI, which accompanied Tom Clark's copy of the second report on White. Said the note: "... I have taken the liberty to similarly inform Brigadier General Harry Hawkins Vaughan ... of the information with respect to White."
Dramatic support for Brownell's story came from a surprising quarter. Democrat T. Lamar Caudle, the onetime Assistant Attorney General who rocked Washington with his frank and ingenuous accounts of tax-case fixing, told the Des Moines Register that he had given a copy of the FBI report on White, marked for the White House, to his boss, Attorney General Clark, now a Supreme Court Justice. Drawled Caudle: "It was a sweetheart. I jumped when I read that thing ... I said, Tor God's sake, Tom, don't let that appointment go through. It will come out some day and ruin us.' "