(7 of 9)
There the case lay for five years, until Attorney General Brownell revived it with the charge that Harry Truman had known that White was a spy when he appointed him to the Monetary Fund. Truman blurted that he knew "nothing about" the FBI report that Brownell used as the basis of his charge. Then he said that "as soon as we found White was disloyal, we fired him." Three days later, a new witness entered the strange case of Harry Dexter White.
In a formal statement issued to the press, South Carolina's Governor James F. Byrnes, Secretary of State under President Truman, flatly contradicted his old boss. Byrnes said that while he was Secretary of State he had personally discussed the FBI report with Truman on Feb. 6, 1946, and that the President was familiar with it. A memorandum in State Department files confirmed Byrnes's memory. Having read the FBI report, Byrnes had urged Truman to withdraw his nomination of White for the Monetary Fund post. After a hurried check with the Senate, said Byrnes, Truman learned that White had been confirmed that afternoon. Byrnes had three solutions to offer:
1) have the Senate reconsider its action,
2) call in White, confront him with the FBI report and force him to withdraw,
3) refuse to commission him.
President Truman did none of these. At that time Harry Truman's popularity index in the Gallup poll was beginning to decline. The 1946 congressional elections were less than a year away. The Republicans were preparing to attack, and the left wing of Harry Truman's own party was doubtful about him. If Truman had withdrawn the White appointment, howls would have risen from the right and left. Whatever his motive, the President signed White's commission. When he quit. Truman and Treasury Secretary Snyder wrote him letters of praise that laid it on thick enough for Harry White's taste.
After Brownell's speech, Truman said that White was fired "as soon as we found out he was disloyal." When was that? The bulk of the information about White's spying was available to Truman in February 1946. Little new evidence against White was developed between that date and White's resignation 14 months later.
Action at Dawn. While Jimmy Byrnes's contradiction of Harry Truman was still echoing, Illinois' Republican Representative Harold H. Velde reeled into the controversy, firing subpoenas from the hip. At 5 o'clock one morning, after sitting up alone in his Pekin, Ill. home, Velde, with an eye on the headlines, issued subpoenas for Truman, Byrnes and Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark (who, said Brownell, also saw the FBI report at the time Truman saw it). Velde did not get approval of his Un-American Activities Committee for this action. Committee Counsel Robert Kunzig explained that the committee just "had to get into the act."