(See Cover)
A White House aide, leafing through a routine sheaf of wire copy from the news ticker, started with surprise. He had come across the report of Joe Martin's speech, made that afternoon in the House, containing General Douglas MacArthur's letter endorsing the employment of Chiang Kai-shek's troops to open a second front in China. The aide rushed in to the President's office. As he read, Harry Truman flushed with anger. As the White House leaked the story later, he made his decision then & there—Thursday, April 5—that Douglas MacArthur must go.
After the Cabinet meeting next day, Truman motioned to Defense Secretary George Marshall and J.C.S. Chairman Omar Bradley (who briefs the Cabinet on the Korean fighting) to stay behind. Truman told them his decision and explained his reasons. Marshall agreed that MacArthur must go, and Bradley added that the Joint Chiefs emphatically felt the same way.
For five days, Truman hugged his secret. The Joint Chiefs held emergency meetings to discuss MacArthur's successor. They decided on Lieut. General Matthew Ridgway, then picked Lieut. General James Van Fleet to replace Ridgway as Eighth Army Commander in Korea. The secret was so closely guarded that* Van Fleet himself, unaware of it, was vacationing on his brother's Florida farm when his appointment to Korea was announced. Monday, Truman saw his congressional leaders and met with the Cabinet, asked opinions of both groups, but told neither what he planned later. Secretary of State Dean Acheson undoubtedly already knew about it, but through the historic week, Acheson, architect of the Asia policy that MacArthur attacked, kept assiduously out of the press and out of sight.
The Order. Just before lunch Tuesday, Harry Truman again saw Marshall, decided with him that the time had come to act. He went to Blair House for lunch, took his usual nap, returned to the White House at 3 o'clock. He summoned Marshall, Bradley, Acheson and Averell Harriman to a final meeting, then told his staff to draw up MacArthur's firing orders —just as the afternoon papers bloomed with headlines from Tokyo: MACARTHUR DEMANDS FREER HAND IN WAR.
The problem was to get Douglas MacArthur fired at a time when Truman's case against the general would hit the public hardest and with the least immediate counterreaction. Classified documents were dug out of files, declassified and checked. One was a Dec. 6 memorandum directing that "officials overseas, including military commanders," were to "clear all but routine statements with their departments and to refrain from direct communications on military or foreign policy with newspapers, magazines, or other publicity media." Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk hurried over from the State Department, and General Omar Bradley arrived from the Pentagon. By 9:30, the documents and statements were ready and taken over to Blair House. Harry Truman looked them over and signed.