An Angry Man

After a half-hour conference with Harry Truman, Democratic National Chairman Frank E. McKinney bustled out of the White House last week with the air of a hot-eyed reformer. The President, he said, was "angry over being sold down the river by some disloyal employees." There would be "drastic" action soon.

This setting of the stage was enough to jam 168 reporters into the President's press conference two days later. With a tight-lipped grin, Truman said he had nothing to announce, but he understood there were questions. The Washington Post's Edward Folliard opened the show: "Chairman McKinney told us you are planning to take drastic action toward a Government housecleaning."

Truman took the cue, but he abandoned McKinney's reformer line. Instead of showing indignation at the evildoers, the President seemed to have saved it for the U.S. press; his main points at the conference were to minimize the scandals and to insist that his Administration, not congressional committees, deserved the credit for what housecleaning has been done. In answering Reporter Folliard, he said that continued drastic action was a better phrase than drastic action. There is really nothing unusual or new in the current situation in Washington. This sort of thing is going on all the time. Some people go wrong and are fired. Oh, the trouble may be a little higher up in some places now, but a look at the record will show that there isn't any more of it.

All the wrongdoers were discovered and punished by the executive department long ago, and then congressional committees moved in and got a lot of headlines. "Wrongdoers," said Truman, "have no house with me . . ."*

To Show Honesty. The astonished reporters knew that, in many respects, the record did not support what Harry Truman was saying. In the past four months, 62 officers and employees of the Internal Revenue Bureau have been fired from their jobs. So far this year, the total is 113, including six regional collectors, key men in the system. In the twelve months of 1950, only 40 internal revenue employees were fired. Annual average for the past five years: 36. Exposures of corruption in the bureau can be traced clearly to the campaign started on May 28, 1948 by Delaware's Republican Senator John Williams. In most cases, investigations forced Administration action.

The New York Times's William Lawrence asked the logical question: "If it isn't anything new or unusual or any great numbers involved, why then are you even considering extraordinary action?" The real reason, replied Truman, is to show that the vast majority of Government employees are honest.

"Pete" Brandt of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch brought up the case of James Finnegan, St. Louis collector of internal revenue who is under indictment for taking bribes to fix taxpayers' accounts. Wasn't he exposed before the executive department acted? Didn't Finnegan testify that Truman even asked him to stay on the job? Truman snapped that he had consistently backed Secretary of the Treasury Snyder's request for Finnegan's resignation. Checking back, reporters found that in his Oct. 11 press conference Truman had said his recollection on the point was hazy, but White House aides had said that Truman asked Finnegan to stay on. At the same October press conference, Truman said he heard of Finnegan's questionable activities only a short time before. Now, Harry Truman, was changing the record.

The reporters had some questions about Frank McKinney. There had been a lot in the papers about how he made $68,000 in ten months on a $1,000 investment. In making the killing, he was dealing with a man Truman had criticized for attempts to use influence in Washington. Would McKinney be asked to resign? Truman's jaw shot out and his voice crackled. McKinney, he said, suits him down to the ground. The President isn't going to pull the rug out from under McKinney just because something happened that the newspapers didn't like.

Snaps & Barks. As the questioning went on, Truman snapped and barked at the reporters. He paused at one point and glared at the Bell Syndicate's Doris Fleeson, one of the Administration's most effective supporters among the working press. She hadn't said a word, but Truman demanded to know why she was looking at him like that. He asked the question with a force that shocked the newsmen. He asked if she wanted to run a sob-sister piece, and added that he didn't need any sob-sister pieces. Later, Reporter Fleeson said: "I wasn't aware that I was doing anything except sitting quietly trying to understand what was going on ... I thought I was looking pretty good. I had on a new Sally Victor hat."

Truman refused to be specific about what continued drastic action he would take. A reporter asked if there would be a special committee, like the Roberts-Pomerene Commission which investigated the Teapot Dome scandals. No, said Truman, thumping his chest with a forefinger, if there is going to be anything, it will be his own, a Truman original.

* No house, Truman told aides later, is an expression he has used since boyhood, but he does not remember the source. It is a colloquialism, at least as old as Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene V. Capulet, Juliet's father, is angry because she refused to marry his choice, Paris. He tells her: "Graze where you will, you shall not house with me."

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