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If there was solid evidence at that time establishing that White was engaged in espionage activity, certainly no one would contend that sound and proper administration required his advancement or even continuance in Government service simply because a criminal conviction could not be obtained.
White entered upon his duties and assumed the office of executive director for the United States in the International Monetary Fund on May1, 1946. What was known at the White House of his espionage activities prior to that date?
"Delicate and Dangerous"
On Dec. 4, 1945, the FBI transmitted to Brigadier General Harry H. Vaughan, military aide to the President, a report on the general subject of "Soviet Espionage in the United States." . . . This was a secret and highly important report of some 71 pages . . . This report . . . summarizes White's espionage activities in abbreviated form, but no reasonable person can deny that that summary, brief though it may be, constituted adequate warning to anyone who read it of the extreme danger to the security of the country in appointing White to the International Monetary Fund or continuing him in Government in any capacity.
As the subcommittee knows, copies of this report were sent to a number of Cabinet officers and high officials in the Truman Administration, including the Attorney General. It would be difficult to understand how under any circumstances a document upon so delicate and dangerous a subject would not have been brought to Mr. Truman's attention by at least one of his associates.
But in addition to that fact, I have here a letter from J. Edgar Hoover to General Vaughan a month before that, dated Nov. 8, 1945 . . .
It is a document of historical importance, and I therefore, with your permission, will quote it in full:
Dear General Vaughan:
As a result of the bureau's investigative operations, information has been recently developed from a highly confidential source indicating that a number of persons employed by the Government of the United States have been furnishing data and information to persons outside the Federal Government, who are in turn transmitting this information to espionage agents of the Soviet government.
At the present time, it is impossible to determine exactly how many of these people had actual knowledge of the disposition being made of the information they were transmitting. The investigation, however, at this point has indicated that the persons named hereinafter were actually the source from which information passing through the Soviet espionage system was being obtained, and I am continuing vigorous investigation for the purpose of establishing the degree and nature of the complicity of these people in this espionage ring.
The bureau's information at this time indicates that the following persons were participants in this operation or were utilized by principals in this ring for the purpose of obtaining data in which the Soviet is interested:
Dr. Gregory Silvermaster, a longtime employee of the Department of Agriculture.
Harry Dexter White, Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury.
George Silverman, formerly employed by the Railroad Retirement Board, and now reportedly in the War Department.
Lauchlin Currie, former