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Also there is Lee Pressman, who admitted membership in the Communist Party, and Alger Hiss who has since been convicted.
Of course, no one could, with any validity, suggest today that there is any doubt that White was in this espionage ring . . .
The record, which was available to the Truman Administration in December 1945 and thereafter, should have been sufficient to convince anyone that White was a hazard to our Government. The question which had to be decided at that time was not whether White could have been convicted of treason. There was ample evidence that he was not loyal to the interests of our country. That was enough.
Government employment is a privilege, not a right, and we don't have to wait until a man is convicted of treason before we can remove him from a position of trust and confidence.
When I was first invited to appear before this subcommittee, I thought from what I had read in the newspapers that there was some issue of fact involved on the question of whether Mr. Truman knew about Harry Dexter White's espionage activities at the time he appointed him as executive director for the United States of the International Monetary Fund. I read in the newspapers that after being advised of my speech in Chicago, Mr. Truman stated to the press that he had never read any of the derogatory reports concerning Harry Dexter White to which I referred. I read later that Mr. Truman said that he fired White as soon as he discovered he was disloyal. On the basis of these statements I thought that the accuracy of what I had said in Chicago was being challenged.
However, it now seems in the light of Mr. Truman's television speech that it is conceded that on Feb. 6, 1946, the day on which White's appointment was confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Truman did read the most important of the reports to which I referred, and that he thereafter, even though he had a legal right to ask that the nomination be withdrawn, signed White's commission and permitted him to take office on the first day of May with full knowledge of the facts reported by the FBI.
It is, of course, extraordinary to learn from Mr. Truman, in view of his earlier statements, that he signed Mr. White's commission with the thought that it might help to catch him. I would think that the commissioning of a suspected spy to an office of such great importance would not be easily forgotten. It seems to me even more extraordinary to learn that Mr. Truman was aware as early as 1946 that a Communist spy ring was operating within his own Administration, when for so many years since that time he has been telling the American people exactly the opposite.
Indeed, it seems to me that this explanation of White's appointment—that is, that he was appointed and allowed to remain in office for more than a year in order to help the FBI trap him as a spy—raises more questions than it answers.
While under suspicion and surveillance, White was, we are told, appointed as the first United States executive director of the fund. He was also its chief architect. The opportunities afforded him in that capacity for betraying the country were very great. There were matters of great importance to the United States which were handled by the executive directors while White was a member. A first order of business was to plan