conversation. thank you for your participation. and of course, thank you for david rubenstein being able to facilitate these types of conversations from the exhibit that everybody can enjoy here at the national archives and of course, the national archives foundation for their support as well. and thank you for attending an evening.

and thanks for joining us for congress investigates and american history tv series looking back at significant congressional investigations. this week the topic is waste, fraud and inefficiency in defense production. during world war two. well, it was in the 1940s that then-senator harry truman led a committee that traveled the country examining military sites and how the public's money was being spent. it became known as the truman committee and was said to have saved many dollars and lives and may even have shortened the war. joining us is steve drummond. he's with national public radio and he's the author of this book, the watchdog how the

truman committee battled corruption and helped win world war two. mr. drummond, thanks for being with us. what's the genesis of the truman committee? hi, peter. thanks. happy to be here. harry truman in 1940 was a virtually unknown senator in november of that year. he barely scraped by. as for reelection to the second term in the senate from missouri. and when he came back to washington in january that year, truman was getting letters from some of his constituents, letters from the ozarks, saying that something funny was going on at the site of an army camp construction up there. it's now called fort leonard wood. and it was being built at the time as the u.s. race to get ready for a war that franklin roosevelt and others knew the united states would eventually be drawn into. and the letter writers were telling truman, hey, there's a lot of funny business going on here. people sitting around doing nothing and drawing a paycheck

for it, materials going to waste, contractors getting rich. truman was a combat veteran himself, a local government official in missouri in the 19s, and he took his public service very seriously. and this was concerning to him. one of the things that's fun about truman is he didn't send his aides out to check this out. he didn't get on a plane with a congressional delegation. truman walked out of his apartment. one morning in january 1941, got in his car, and he drove to missouri and he showed up at this construction site, a small man in a very nice suit, double breasted suit, wandering around asking questions. and he saw there what the letter writers had told him. people sitting out playing cards and drawing a check for it, materials going to robbing in the snow. and from there, truman kept going. he visited several other states and several other construction sites, and he saw the same

thing. harry truman came back to washington extremely angry. he got up on the senate floor in february of 1941 and he said, hey, we should have an investigative committee to look into all this. and that's that was the birth of the truman committee. was it controversy racial at the time? oh, very much so. so imagine a little known senator making the proposal to investigate the conduct of the presidential administration from his own party. nobody, including franklin roosevelt, was at all a wild about this idea. but it quickly became clear that if the democrats didn't do it, then the republicans were perfectly happy to take on this investigation. so the senate ended up a essentially throwing truman a bone. they gave him $15,000, barely enough to hire a lawyer and a couple of secretaries and said, go, here's your committee. truman took that tiny appropriation and turned it into probable only the most powerful investigating arm that congress

had seen. so seven members of the truman commission committee, formerly known as the senate special committee, to investigate the national defense program. five democrats, two republicans. was there an eagerness among the senators at the time to serve on this committee? truman only in the sense that truman, though relatively unknown, was a well-liked senator. he had a lot of friends in the senate. there was a lot of back and forth of choosing the senators who were who would serve on this committee. i say in my book that it's a bit of a senatorial b-list. there were none of the current rock stars in the senate, but they were solid public servants. a bipartisan commission as you mentioned. there was some negotiations with the administration to make sure that there was a couple of staunch advocates of the new deal there to keep an eye on truman. but for the most part, they served. they serve honorably and and largely because of truman's leadership, they all managed to

get along and and do you know, do a lot of good. along with harry truman, the other democrats, tom connally of texas, carl hatch, new mexico. james mead, new york. monroe and walgren of washington state. the republican owens were joseph paul of minnesota and owen brewster of maine. any standouts there? mr. drummond? so, yes, a couple. brewster was actually, even though he was a republican, ended up being one of truman's best partners on the committee. truman often would hand off the chairmanship to him when he was away, and they ended up they ended up collaborating very well, even though eventually and of course, politics would intrude a little bit. james mead was also one of the leaders on the committee, was often cochairman and he would take over the leadership committee after truman resigned in 1944. steve drummond what years was the committee active on the truman committee operating from 1941, from march of 1941. and it went into, i think 1948

or 1949. harry truman was chairman of the committee until august 1944, when he was chosen to be the vice presidential candidate for franklin roosevelt's unprecedented fourth term. he resigned the next day, and the committee committee continued for several years under different leadership, first and under mead. and i think then under senator hatch, if i'm not mistaken. well, it was in the early 1960s after his presidency, that harry truman sat down with author merle miller to do a radio interview about how the committee was formed. here's a little bit of that interview. well, then i suppose the first national all when when you were a public figure, not only in new york, but in california and all over the country, was the defense committee. now, that was a new concept out of the committee to investigate some actual defense programs. let's talk about that for a

moment. they dated for a certain name, which they didn't want them to do. but go ahead. well, how how what, what, what made you think of it? how did how did you get into this area? well, as i told you before, that there background experience and previous stages. give me an idea on how contractors and people would deal with government funds in local, state and national has very little respect for me and i had made some investigations in the operation of county government and state government before i went. so and so one of after the first draft that this is all these tremendous appropriations are made for the construction of

these camps and things that had to do with the youngsters who were going to fight the war came up. i didn't know what went down to car and drove 30,000 march around the various places and i could see the school going on and i came back to cnn and introduced the resolution to have a committee set up that would make investigation on these constructions and the contracts that were being left for the probable program that might bring on a second world war in such a way that the government would have a proper return on what it was paying out because after the first world war, they didn't understand. 16 investigating committees after the fact.

i thought one committee before the sec would prevent that, and that's the way it worked out. did you? uh, i speak here in ignorance. how do you set up the committee? how do you get it approved? well, the first thing is, has to be done is to introduce a resolution. to you folks and bring the records. the resolution offering or authorize in a the appointment of a committee to investigate the national defense program. and as the author of the resolution after it has, it's customary the offer that they made the chairman of the committee. and that was done and the chairman of the audit and control committee was senator, whose ask alone for the name of james byrd and he made a recommendation that the

committee be set up and that it be authorized to spend. $50,000. well, the. well says that that was done, and i was made the chairman of the committee and i called up jackson, who is attorney general. and i said to jackson, i want the best investigator that you have on your payroll. and i'd like to interview if you send him to see me down here, sends out so well, he picked up the fellow who had sent a couple of federal judges to jail for misuse of their position, which is that's pennsylvania and his

name was who from was going to testify slip and so was like they're being asked to see and i said i want you to make an investigation for me on the expenditure in the national defense program. i said my salary, you get you said i'm getting a detail thousand dollars here. i said all right, i'll give you a five. i just came out with 15 notes and i want you to start right up now and then i'm going to go in there and i will you you made some investigations and came in with a report and i called a meeting of all the members of this committee. and it was a committee of seven members that and there were it was set up for the idea to be handed off from the committee in march.

and. i listened to all the facts that you -- presented and 14 witnesses as to witness what he said. and then i made a report with the help of the detail members of the committee and told the senators on the same day i was going make a report at the first hearing which we had, which i did, and told them that this was only a starter, that we needed further investigations, but that we had numerous they gave us $60,000. no, i know. and the next appropriation for me was $300,000. and that's all the appropriations that ever were made, about $305,000. so together and that was harry

truman and author merle miller from the early 1960s. we're talking withteve drummond, the watchdog. how the truman committee battled corruption and helped win world war two. yes. his book, take us around the country and tell us about some of the investing actions that the committee did. sure. the first one is the one we've mentioned a little bit was army camps truman, very early in the committee's time, wanted to score some early successes by not taking on anything too controversial. and he already hadllf these letters and his own investigatn. the committee sent out a questionnaires and sent investigators around the country to examine these army camps. and sure enough, they found incredible amounts of waste, fraud and corruption happening there. very first report on army camps documented what was estimated to be $100 million in waste that the government had wasted on building these army camps. and a couple of highlights. the truman committee, one of the

sound bites that was up, picked up by every newspaper or reporting on the committee, was the notion that the army camps were being built on civil war lines. the committee said basically many of these army camps are being built out in the woods without concrete pads to set up a 30 ton tank or without concrete roads to park heavy vehicles. and so they were, in some instances, sinking into the sand. they were built in swamps without adequate supplies of of of fresh, clean water. for example, they were built far away from water. some of the contractors were making four or five times their annual profits the year before. in one case, they found that the that the army had rented board trucks from a contractor for $500 when they could have bought them outright for $400 a piece. this went on and on, and that was the first major report that put the truman committee kind of on the map, both in washington and around the country. from there, they kept going. there were huge shortages of

materials and a lot of concerns in the defense buildup at that time. who would, for example, get steel? should the navy get it to build a new battleship? should the army get steel to build tanks? should the merchant shipping industry get steel to build all the merchant ships that were needed to get materials across the ocean to great britain or to the to eventually to the soviet union? so there were a lot of questions about material and shortages, rubber. that was a gigantic shortage of tires at the time and rubber for the war effort. tires were being rationed. the truman committee investigated that list probably most spectacularly was the truman committee's investigate section of a steel plant outside of pittsburgh. and this came about almost by accident. and january 16th, 1943, a brand new tanker ship, the ss schenectady, was sitting quietly at its moorings in portland, oregon, in a brand new shipyard there. it had never been it was getting ready for its first voyage.

suddenly, at 1030 that night, a sound rang out that was heard more than a mile. a mile away. the earth shook. the police and firefighters and fbi raced to the scene, that being wartime, they suspected sabotage. it quickly became clear that it was not a bomb. it wasn't sabotage, nor had the nor had this ship been subject to extremely cold water or some unusual circumstances. basically, it was a mystery. if you look at the photo, it looked like a giant had picked up this 543 foot long ship and cracked it into and gently set it back down in the water. this was a mystery for several months until march of 1943, the industrial east, henry kaiser was testifying before the committee that day about why he'd been able to build ships so fast and and develop such efficiency in his shipyards. when senator brewster asked him the question, mr. kaiser, what about this ship that broke up broke up in one of your shipyards? what was the cause of that?

kaiser was very reluctant to answer the question. brewster pressed him on it. finally, kaiser responded. he had he had a report in his hand, and he said, what i'm told by the experts is that there is bad steel in this ship, bad steel from a plant at the carnegie, illinois steel company in pittsburgh. the discussion moved on from that point, but all the young staffers on the truman committee ship sitting there realized immediately. that they had in a file not far away from where kaiser was sitting, about 30 letters from an inspection supervisor at that factory, telling them of faulty steel being shipped out of that factory every single day. tons of it. truman sent three investigators up there. they went sort of undercover in the plant to see what was going on. they ended eventually had to subpoena the inspection records of the plant. they subpoenaed the head of the united states steel and carnegie, illinois steel corporation to testify in washington and the following week, the truman committee was

once again front page news around the country. the headline generally was fake steel going to the navy, and that was one of the one of the investigations where you realize that the truman committee's intervention saved potentially thousands of lives of bad steel, ending up who knows where in battleships, in tanker ships and merchant ships, all kinds of war equipment could have been affected by this poor steel. and the truman committee is still mentioned by members of congress as a model for congressional investigations. here's a sampling. madam speaker, this emergency surge in spending to confront the coronavirus is unprecedented. but the idea of what we're establishing is not, as i said, senate then senator truman proposed it at the dawn of world war two. it worked then, and it will work now as well. we need an entity like the truman commission during world war two to aggressively invest,

litigate contractors, punish war profiteers, and recover misspent funds by canceling any failed or fraudulent contracts. senator harry truman, who served in distinction in this body, conducted senate committee investigations into war profiteering during world war two. and here are something. here is something that then senator truman said later, president said on this issue, no one objects to a fair profit. it is our duty to protect the patriotic majority of war contractors against the stigma profiteering generated by the self-seeking minority. we intend to see that no man or corporate group of men should profit inordinately on the blood of the boys in the foxholes. so, steve drummond, what made this committee a model?

there are several factors, i think, that are seem surprising to us today that i was surprised to learn were kind of considered innovations by the truman committee, for example. well, at the time, generally, when one of these investigators began the job of chief counsel, which was very important, generally that went to a politician who was owed a political favor or who had recently lost reelection and needed a convenient parking place. oftentimes, it would go to a prominent gurney from private practice who would sort of do the job part time while they worked on other things. harry truman called the attorney general of the united states, robert jackson and he said, i want your best prosecutor. jackson thought about it and he sent truman, a young lawyer from new york city, 36 year old hugh alfred fulton, who became chief counsel of the truman committee. neither man was very excited about the other one when they first met. but eventually, fulton took the

job and it ended up being one of the best decisions that either truman or fulton made in their lives. so a really strong investigative staff was one thing. fulton did everything he could as a prosecutor to ground that committee's work in facts, not in political opinions, not trying to score political points, but just laying out the facts for the american people and letting them, as truman said, letting the chips fall where they may. and then a couple of key innovations as well. fulton started the practice, which was unusual of the time of letting witnesses know well in advance, probably two or three days in advance, that they would be called to testify. and then the truman committee gave them a chance to read an opening statement into the record. many of the journalism from the time comments on the unusual efforts at the truman committee we to to get the facts straight. and then after the testimony, truman and the committee would circulate drafts of the reports around to the navy or to the

army or to united states seal or the ford motor company and allow them to look over the document and identify factual errors or suggest changes. whathis meant was that the committee's reports tended to be grounded way more in facts than they did in political opinion. it enabled truman to achieve a remarkable level of bipartisanship. when the reports came out and it created a lot of trust, not only with the american public, but with the news media. when a report came out from the truman committee, the media learned that they could basically trust what it was saying. and as a result of sort of not seeking a lot of press. truman ended up getting getting very much of it. were they issuing reports pretty quickly after their investigations? sometimes it could take a while. all of this fact checking and all of this sort of wrangling, and they would sometimes sit in a little room off of truman's office, known as the doghouse. the other senators would sit in there and they would go over these drafts page by page. and if one senator had an objection or another, truman would often send them off to

work it out. they would send the draft back to hugh fulton, who would send it back to the staff to be corrected and revised. so in certain instances, like the rubber shortage, they could put out a report very quickly and others involving aircraft or faulty aircraft engines. the reports could take some months. while truman made sure that the facts are straight and the report was ready for publication. also, sometimes there were negotiations with the military leadership to make sure the committee wasn't revealing military secrets, and that also took time. steve drummond what personal qualities did harry truman bring to this success of this committee? first and foremost, i think, was his strong sense of ethics and the response ability he took as a public service. this sounds like, you know, especially in thwashington that i work in today, it sounds a little trying to say that. but truman took this very seriously. he was a combat veteran in world war one. he had led an artillery unit into battle. and he had he had taken that

combat experience very seriously. he had served in local government in missouri in the 1920s and 1930s. and there, too, he was very seriously considered himself an advocate for the taxpayers money or for saving and and making sure that government expenditure was weren't wasted. he was also very much a coalition builder. he could crossover the party lines in the senate with his colleagues and all of these qualities came together to make the truman committee a success. it's worth noting there were dozens of committees investigating various aspects of the war effort or the defense buildup during world war two. only one of them became front page news around the country. only one of them vaulted its chairman into the vice presidency. now you spend a bit of time in your book, the watchdog, talking about the staff on the committee. what do you what what stands out for you? it was really remarkable. and it's actually the way i came across the story itself was i stumbled across the oral history

accounts of many of these young staffers. decades later, these oral histories done for the truman presidential library in missouri. many of them after after truman hired hugh fulton, they began building a staff, and they hired a bunch of young lawyers and investigators, many of them in their first jobs out of college. and suddenly these young people found themselves in the middle, you know, in the capitol building, investigating, meeting with captains of industry and the heads of the military, admirals and generals, and going all around the country investigating the war effort. for many of them, this was the best job they had ever had in their lives. they felt they felt very much they had been able to make a contribution to the war effort. and their stories were kind of inspiring. and it's kind of what got me to write this story. there was a young lawyer named bob irvin who was fresh out of the university of michigan. he came to washington looking for a job and someone said, hey, i think they're hiring over at the senate. go talk to this guy. he he noted in his oral history

that no one during his job interview asked him what party he was from or who he voted for. they hired him on the spot and he found himself again in some of the biggest investigations throughout the truman committee over the next several years. steve drummond you alluded to this a little bit earlier, but does the work of the truman committee connect it with how we do business with the government today? very much so. i think we've all seen time and time again stories coming out of the $80 toilet seat or the $75 ranch in the pentagon budget. wherever we have giant federal expenditure, there's there's going to be the opportunity for waste or mismanagement or outright corruption. and we still see that today. i just saw a piece in the atlantic the other day. senator bernie sanders writing a piece saying criticizing defense spending and saying we need another truman committee. nancy pelosi, the house speaker, did the very same thing in nancy

pelosi did a very similar thing in 2018 at a $1.5 trillion appropriation bill. she went on the colbert report that night and said, we need another truman committee. it's often cited and i think of it as kind of the grandfather of so many of the significant congressional investigations from the key forward hearings in the early fifties to through watergate, all the way up into our current times, many of them trace their roots and their and their public service back to the truman committee. well, it was in 1941 with nbc radio that harry truman said, quote, there will be no attempt to muckraker the defense program. neither will the unsavory things be avoided. the welfare of the whole country is at stake in the successful conclusion of our national defense policy. mr. drummond, i don't know if this is something you have offhand, but do you know how much was spent on the military during world world war two?

no, i don't. if i say a number, it'll almost certainly be wrong. it's a couple of hundred billion, i believe. and how much do you estimate or how much is estimated that the truman committee helped to save? this is a really good question, and it's an it comes up a lot. truman himself loved to use later in life would use the term $15 billion. i would say that's about as good or a bad a number as could be, as there could be. many of the scholars who studied the truman committee have no doubt that the number was indeed in the billions. but it's really hard to put a value on it. it's really hard to put a value on the savings in army camps that came after the truman committee identified. the problems. it's really hard to identify the savings that came from renegotiating war contracts long after the fact to pull back some of the money that had gone to contractors. it's really hard to say how many times. just a phone call from the truman committee would get the military over to the war department to fix a problem or

clean up a mess without ever even making it into the newspaper. truman had no interest, as we just heard him say. he had no interest in embarrassing the government or embarrassing president roosevelt. and so a lot of the committee's work happened behind the scenes. truman was happy with that. so it's really hard to add that up and put a dollar figure on things that we might not ever even have known about. well, of course, fdr spoke to the american people and to congress throughout the war, regularly. here he is. one month after pearl harbor in 1942, in a state of the union address. this production of ours in the united states must be raised far above present level, even though it will mean that this location of the lives and occupations of millions of our own people. we must raise our sights along the production line. let no man say it cannot be done.

it must be done. and we have undertaken to do it. i have just sent a letter of direct to the appropriate department and agencies of our government ordering that immediate steps be taken. first to increase our production rate of our planes so rapidly that in this year,. 1942, we shall produce. 60,000 planes, ten cargo. and 10,000, by the way, more than the goal that we set a year and a half ago. this includes 45,000 combat planes bomber by bomber pursuit plane. the rate of increase will be

maintained, continued. so that next year, 1943, we shall produce. 125,000 airplanes, including. a hundred thousand combat. second, we increase our production rate of tanks so rapidly that industry. 1942, we shall produce. 45,000 tanks and we continue that increase. so that next year, 1943, we shall produce 75,000 tanks. and we increase our production rate of anti aircraft guns so

rapidly that in this year, 1942, we shall produce. 20,000. and to continue that increase for the next year. 1943, we shall produce 35,000 and the aircraft gun and bob to increase our production rate of merchant ships so rapidly that in this year, 1942, we shall build. 8 million deadweight tons as compared with a 1941 completed production. of 1,100,000. and finally, we shall continue to battle in greece. so that next year, 1943, we shall build. 10 million tons of shipping

these figures and similar figures for a multitude of other implements of war. we'll give the japanese and the nazi is a level idea of just what they accomplished in the attack at pearl harbor. so author steve drummond what did fdr think of the truman committee? franklin roosevelt was not happy about the truman committee initially. he was reluctant to have this senator who had virtually no relationship with investigating his own administration. eventually the two men established a good relationship, and one of the first big reports, the first annual report that was going to talk that was going to say very clearly that

franklin roosevelt's sort of management structure for managing the defense program was a mess. truman was a wise politician, took it to the white house three days before it would be released. roosevelt took that head start. he the day before the committee's report came out, he announced a big shakeup in the defense hierarchy. he appointed a new production czar the very night before truman committee came out, came out with its report. truman said in his memoirs, i didn't care who got the credit as long as the work got done. and after he and he and roosevelt for, the most part had a pretty good relationship where truman would often use roosevelt would often use the truman committee as a as a vehicle for getting stuff done that he that was difficult for him politically otherwise. so there were politics involved with this committee? very much so. and especially later in life. there truman sort of talked as if they the truman committee had of risen above bipartisanship or

risen above politics. that, of course, is not true. truman was a politician himself, and the united states senate is a very political body. and in a couple of instances, the committee did get sucked into politics, having said that, i still think it's remarkable. and it was the thing that truman was most proud that during his time as the committee chairman, the truman committee put out 32 reports. every sine of them was bipartisan and unanimous, with the full support of the republics and the democrats on the committee. given the toxicity of washington that we work in today, this to me seems truly remarkable and truman was very proud of that fact. well, steve drummond the hearings were also held in washington. what were those like? yeah, some of them were very dramatic. one of them, one of the most one of the most spectacular hitler hearings that got a lot of press was the it was when the truman committee summoned the labor leader, john lewis, to testify before committee. he was head of the coal miners union. he was threatening or is

throwing out hints at the time that coal miners might walk out and strike most of the labor unions had agreed to forego any strikes during the war, but lewis was feeling like the roosevelt administration had not lived up to some of its promises. so this was going to be a dramatic showdown in the senate. lewis gave as good as he got before the truman committee. it was widely publicized. and across the country, it's just one of many, many, many very, very dramatic and power popular hearings that. the truman committee held in washington and around the country. so the media covered the truman committee pretty heavily. yes, truman love to say that he did not like care about the press and he didn't really worry about the press. a lot. often that would come in a letter to his wife, bess, right after he had just very clearly detailed all the appearances he had made in the media that like a lot of politicians, he said he didn't care about e press, but he cared deeply what he did,

though, was treat the press fairly. and this was something that the press came to recognize as in the truman committee. there no leaks, there were no favoritism to specific reporters and as i said before, the reports tend to be grounded in facts and not political opinion. so very quickly, the washing hand press corps realized that when a report came out from the truman committee, they could trust it. they could feel like they were they were translating good information back to the american people. and so, therefore and i should also add and truman himself, though he was nervous, uncomfortable around the press, he spoke of he he he avoided a lot of this sort of political jargon in political speeches. the reporters really liked them. one of them, allan drury, wrote that he found, you know, much to admire in truman. and so by sort of not seeking a lot of press, by not trying to grab headlines, the truman committee ended up getting a lot of them. and drummond, you talk about in your book the watched dog that the public responded to the

truman committee as well. what did they hear from the public? sure. in one of the very first radio speeches truman gave, he was not a good public speaker at this time in his career or ever, really, but especially in his early days in the senate. truman went on the radio and at one point he said he was talking about his committee and he said, hey, america, help us out here. if you see something going on down at the factory, something wrong at the shipyard, or if you have an idea for how you can, we could help win the war. write to me. send a letter in. and he gave his address and it office building, washington, d.c. and and the american people responded a few at first. but after the report on steel on army camps came out and some of the more excuse me after some of the more spectacular reports came out, the number of letters increased. eventually, the truman committee was receiving more than 100 letters a day. i've seen many of them there in the national archives in

washington, d.c., and many of them, while some of them were what the truman committee called crackpots or people sort of unusual or comical ideas for how to win the war, but many, many, many of them were from parents of of soldiers or airmen or sailors overseas, saying hey, thank you, senator truman. thanks for the good work you're doing. now, i understand you brought a couple to give us some examples of the letter. yeah, i have just two put two examples. and if you don't mind, i'll read them for you. dear senator truman, what is the matter with our that they allow such things as have been going on in our war plans, such as the fake tests on steel and faulty wire, etc. my god, man, our sons are over there dying, giving their all while these crooked, greedy bloodsuckers are sending out faulty materials for them to fight with and then they have the gall to say they had no knowledge of what was going on. i ask in god's name, what do you think we parents feel like doing when we hear of such things?

i have a son over there, and not only is he over there, but he is turning most of his little pay back into war bonds. think of this. and by the high heavens above. give those boys a chance by, seeing to it that no more of this crooked rottenness is allowed to go on. set the example by charging treason punishable by death to anyone found guilty and don't allow the head man to pass it on down to his employees as they have been doing. do that a few times and maybe this infamous business would stop. and these men call themselves americans. they are crooks. and are helping the enemy. i say, what would they do to one of our soldiers if they found him guilty of any one of these charges? our war plants have been getting away with mrs. seymour ollman, cincinnati, ohio. here's one other one. this is from a man named dugan jr in connersville, pennsylvania. my dear senator truman, on behalf of myself and i am sure millions of other fathers who have boys in actual combat

service. i want to congrats really you and your committee on the wonderful public service you have rendered the nation here in pittsburgh, right in the middle of it. the report of the committee is received with acclaim and universal condemnation, is visited on the heads of the united states steel company. any attempt to cover up acts which in effect are sabotage against our own boys by placing the responsibility on the so-called hirelings or underlings and permitted those that frame the policy of the concern to escape would be considered in the nature of a whitewash. i have to sons a brother and a son in law in the combat forces of the nation. two are at present overseas, and the others will probably go in due time. it's one hell of a situation when you and myself and millions of others who are boys risking their lives are compelled to submit to a thing of this sort that additional profits might fall into the coffers of the steel company. stay in there in pitch, senator. you and your committee have done

a swell job. very respectfully. yours, john dugan, junior. so, steve, what were some of the contemporaneous of the truman committee? i'm sure right after pearl harbor, there were serious concerns of whether the committee should continue at all when the japanese attacked pearl harbor, the nation had gone from being a defend in a defense build up mode to a war production mode. the secretary of defense. the assistant secretary of defense wrote to franklin roosevelt and said, hey, we need we don't have time for this. we need to get rid of this committee business. there's war on. we don't have time to be up on capitol hill testifying right now. truman had seen this coming. coming. he gathered the senators together and they put out a one page statement to the american people that was probably aimed just as much as to franklin roosevelt. and it said basically our work is even more important now, as he had done from the start, truman said the committee had no intention of poking its nose into military strategy or

telling franklin roosevelt or the military leaders how to run the war. basically, they were going to look at defense production and making sure the best materials were getting made. so that was one of the most common critiques of the committee, was that it shouldn't exist at all. oftentimes throughout the war, a report on this or that product or resource or material was criticized when truman came out. and then as we know happens today. giant corporations and the military do not like being criticized in public. and they learned. you can almost see this happening. they learned how to fight back. right after that steele report, within a couple of weeks, stories appearing in the press. oh, all this truman committee attention on steele inspections has slowed down steel production. there's a steel slop on and and trying to blame the truman committee for a lapse in production of steel. truman truman shot back and basically said, well, if your steel isn't any good, it doesn't help how much of it you're making. and by the way, he pointed out

that two months after the committee's report, steel production in the united states had set an all time record. so. so, as with today, there was a lot of back and forth in the media and public relations trying to spin the story, as it were. and there were a lot of criticisms of truman. and then one of the final criticisms was, truman had been a small man, a farmer. he had run a men's clothing store in kansas city and failed. and so one of his goals with the truman committee was to make sure that all the defense contracts did not go to the big giant corporation like u.s. steel or general motors or the curtis wright aviation company. there's some questions about whether truman succeeded very much in sort of the notion that small contractors were going to make fighter planes or tanks or whatever. but he did advocate that it played very well with the american people. but some of the criticism for that, he wasn't really all that effective in that regard. yeah. steve drummond going back to the steel issue, taking on henry

kaiser would not be for the faint of heart, would it? no. kaiser it's funny. henry kaiser is almost forgotten today. we only really know of him because of the health care plan that bears his name. kaiser permanente. but at the time, he was one of the most powerful and successful industrialists in the country. kaiser had figured out, and kaiser stepped into a giant void early in the war. the need for merchant ships to get materials across the ocean to great britain, which stood alone against nazi germany at the time. d in german submarines, the u-boats were sinking those ships at a very frightening rate. and so there was a desperate need for these merchant ships. henry kaiser had figured out a way to make it happen. almost overnight, shipyards were appearing up and down the west coast and all over the country. they were building a new kind of ship that had invented called the liberty ship. you know, before the war, it took seven or eight months to build one of these ships. henry kaiser had brought it down to within a couple of weeks, by the end of the war. these things were coming

together very quickly. he was a very powerful man. he actually got along pretty well with truman, and he he used the truman comtt to his advantages. but as with the steel committee report and the report about the ship that broke up kaiser as it took a beating in the press over that, well, here's harry truman from the early 1960s in a screen gems interview talking about the committee. but the proper thing in my opinion, at that time was to give the small man in business a chance. so he could start on a par with a big business when they got ready to start. it was not very popular, but it was an effort on the part of the war production board and the federal reserve bank to comply with what the committee on the investigation of the national defense program had to do. i was terrible, that committee and we investigated everything under, the sun and we finally got to the point where the members of the government,

including the president and general marshall and all the rest of them, had very great confidence in that committee. got to the point when i first started, the president didn't think i was any good and he didn't give it then it's a porter in a house, whatever. but after he had made two or three reports, changed his mind and he got to the point. so he called me up and asked me to come down to the white house, and i'd go down there and say, mr. president, what's on your mind? and he'd say, so and so over here is upsetting the applecart. we're trying to do something with him without ourselves upsetting the applecart. i want you to get after him. well, i'd usually get after him. really straightening out. he didn't have to do anything. or just have somebody say that. good for nothing. truman. truman's going to come and investigate you and. and then do the right thing. and that's all there was to it. and we're talking with steve drummond, author of the watchdog how the truman committee battled corruption and helped win world war two. this committee work stuck with

harry truman throughout his political career in life, didn't it? very much so. i think what i felt like, as i as i wrote my book was watching harry truman learn on the job in 1941. he was a virtual unknown, as i've said. by 1944, he had grown very accustomed to talking the truth and pushing back to, you know, the the chief of staff of the army, george c marshall or the secretary of defense sorry, the secretary, the war department or the head of the navy department or the head of general motors. truman would call these people to account before his committee. and if he felt like it, he would ask the answer. ask them very tough questions, and force them to it. also, i a a skill that served him well as president. he learned when to take a quiet approach, whether a phone call or a quiet meeting in his office would do the job and get the work done. and he was perfectly happy to do that. so can kind of see truman learning how to handle powerful leaders, learning how to handle the media, learning how to speak

to the american public. these are all things that you can really watch him grow. and certainly there were mistakes along the way. he slipped up a couple of times. he got himself in hot water with franklin roosevelt at one point, took him several months to sort of thaw the freeze that was coming from the white house, as he himself put it. now, our companion network, booktv, covered an event with you talking about your book at the truman library. at that event, you talked about the photo. oh, very much so, yes. one of the questions was, what would what what would be the cover photo for my book? truman, as you can imagine, wasn't that famous of a person at that time. and so he had not really been all that frequently photographed of sort of the very stiff, informal, sort of campaign photographs of the time where he's standing on the steps of the capitol, looking very posed and walking down a hallway in the truman library presidential library in independence, missouri. there was a photo hanging on the wall, and it was a picture of

truman at one of the truman committee hearings in 1943. i believe. he's sitting at a microphone and he's he looks very determined. and i immediately recognize it as a photo i thought would be great for the cover of the book. it's also worth noting we're a little bit more used to president harry truman was a little he was a little more heavyset at that time. he he his face had filled out. he's often smiling and it's sort of a little more elderly, sort of genial looking harry truman, this harry truman, to me, looks like a man who he proudly said during his wartime service could still fit into his world war one uniform. and he looks like a man who's ready to hold some military officials or corporate leaders to account. so we talked about how much money the truman committee is estimated to have saved about $15 billion. what was the full cost to the truman committee itself? truman loved this number, but during the during the period of the war, the truman committee

spent, i believe, less than $1 million in serving the public and it was definitely the return on the investment was many, many times what was expended did. the truman committee save lives during world war two and did it shorten the war in your view? i would argue yes to both questions and many comments at the time and half historians have studied the committee since then agreed. it's sort of like the dollar figure. it's really hard to say how much more bad steel might have come out of that factory and whether that bad steel might have gone into a ship and whether that ship might have broken apart and whether it would have done so as a result of that bad steel. there was another investigation involving aircraft engines at a factory near dayton, ohio. and at one point, the truman committee uncovered the fact that 300 engines were packed and ready to ship out of this factory with rusty and missing parts. improper daily made parts. and the concern was that these would have found their way into

airplanes. truman, again, late in life, lo to say that these air engines were causing the deaths of student pilots. and finally, the committee played a series, its role in making sure that the d-day landings in normandy on june six, 1944, was a success and that some of the offshore landings at pacific islands were a success by really making sure that the men going ashore those days had the best landing boats. the navy, early in the war, had a landing boat of own design thatasastly inferior. there was a shipbuilder named andrew jackson higgins in new orleans who had invented on his own a very landing craft. he was a bit of a brash, obnoxious fellow. the navy didn't like him, and he found that he couldn't get the navy to adopt his much better designs. he went to his senator, harry truman, and said senator would help me out here. truman came up with a really good idea. this was for a heavier landing craft that would land tanks. he said, let's take a 30 ton

tank, put one on this guy's boat, put one on the navy's boat and sail him through some rough, choppy water and see what happens. higgins but this happened down off norfolk, virginia. higgins boat sailed its tank to the beach, unload at the tank and then went around to circle around the navy vessel, which was nearly foundering in the waters. the navy suddenly that maybe they should buy this man's boats. and general dwight eisenhower credited the higgins boats as being one of the things that made the d-day landings a success. so there's no question that in many, many instances, like that, the intervention of the truman committee played a role in the conduct and the outcome of the war. and as a side note, mr. higgins knew orleans connection is one of the reasons that the world war two museum is in new york. new orleans, isn't it? very much so. again, he's another forgotten figure, sort of of world war two. but at the time, along with henry kaiser and some others. higgins was was one of the key industrialist.

key players on the home front that helped make the war a success. he made torpedo boats and his landing boats in a giant factory in new orleans. and, yeah, it's a very exciting museum down there that sort of acknowledged his contributions. steve drummond you said earlier that the truman committee helped to vault harry truman into the vice presidency and presidency. what was the impact. yeah, very much so. so by 1943, the week the steel commission investigation. sorry, the week the steel investigation came out. truman found himself on the on the cover of time magazine. the headline said, billion dollar watchdog a democracy needs to keep an eye on itself. truman was suddenly a national figure. his advocacy for small businesses, his willingness to be looking out for the taxpayers money, and also for the well-being of the fighting men overseas. that's really resonated with the american people. often, too. the truman committee was where

americans learned information thend how it was going that maybe they didn't really maybe wasn't really welcome news. they learned that sometimes the fighter planes that american pilots were flying were not as good early in the war as those flown by japanese or german pilots. they learned that way. more merchant ships were being sunk at night, landing ocean by u-boats than anybody had been told at the time. and so all of this built up a feeling of trust with the american people. by 1944, franklin was ailing. he was determined to run for a fourth term in office. and there was an equal determination in the democratic party that vice president henry wallace would not be the vice presidential nominee. there were a bunch candidates out there and the speculation in the press at the time was rampant as to who would be who would end up being the choice. there were many other candidates who were much more popular and much better known than truman. but gradually as their political weaknesses disqualified, one candidate or another, truman's

name slowly rose to the top until finally at the chicago convention in august of that year, finally at the chicago convention that year, in the summer of 1944, truman was truman was chosen by roosevelt, pick to be the nominee. and from there, as you know, they were elected president. truman served only 90 some days as vice president until the death of franklin roosevelt on april 12th suddenly found himself presiding. united states. so the truman committee continued after harry truman became president to things. what was it? what do think its legacy is? and did he follow their work? he did closely. the the times, the mood and the leadership of the committee had changed. there were still important work to be done under james mead and others in the committee to continue doing issue important reports. but everybody kind of agreed that the real driving force behind the truman committee had been truman himself.

and later on, as the mead committee and others, it continued. but it was never quite the sort of headline grabbing attention thing that it was during the war with truman as chairman. truman followed it closely, and he continued to be a big advocate for congressional investigations of this name nature. i think the most important legacy of the committee is what we talked about earlier of establishing this notion of, a bipartisan, fact based commission that would actually work in the public service and think we've seen that this committee sort of created the dna for successful congressional investigations, continuing all the way up to the present time. steve drummond when can people hear you on npr? i'm i i'm mostly a behind the scenes person, so i deal with our education coverage, but i pop up on the radio every now and then and it's always nice to hear from people who say they've heard my voice and steve drummond is not only with npr, but he is the author of this

book, the watchdog howhe truman committee battled corruption helped win world war two. we appreciate your being part of our series. congress