INVESTIGATIONS: Dark Doings

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After the headline-making broadcast, Author Robert Sherwood, biographer of Hopkins, promptly labeled the yarn "one of the most amazing cock-and-bull stories I have ever heard." He declared that never, in his reading of thousands of Hopkins papers, had he seen any White House stationery bearing his name. In initialing documents, said Sherwood, Hopkins invariably wrote "H. L. H.," never "H. H." This week the House Un-American Activities Committee opened a hearing. On the stand, Racey Jordan repeated his charges; but this time said he had spoken to Hopkins only once. The committee's investigator pointed out (and the State Department acknowledged) that export licenses had been granted for shipment of some 1,500 Ibs. of uranium compounds (not the fissionable U-235) to Russia in the spring of 1943 before the Manhattan Project "cut off all sources of uranium material." But Jordan's story was of shipments occurring in 1944. Meanwhile Broadcaster Lewis kept the pot boiling by throwing in another prospective villain. He charged that Henry Wallace was the official who had overruled General Groves's protest and insisted that atomic materials be sent to the Russians. Snapped Wallace: "Sheerest fabrication!"

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