Oscar L. Chapman Oral History Interview, September 1, 1972

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened 1980
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

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HESS: To begin this morning, Mr. Chapman, I want to read a paragraph from Harold Ickes' article, "Farewell, Secretary Krug," that appeared in The New Republic of November the 28th, 1949, We have already cited this article in a previous interview, but in the article Mr. Ickes says:

Secretary Krug had run out on his chief during the desperately fought campaign last year. He hid in the sagebrush of the Far West where none could discover him. He failed to volunteer his services in the Truman campaign. He even refused to make speeches, except on one belated and inconsequential occasion.

Is Mr. Ickes' appraisal correct?

CHAPMAN: Unfortunately it is. I say it is unfortunate, but it was unfortunate for Secretary Krug to have made himself unavailable to that campaign. He traveled during most of that time around the country visiting fish and wildlife preserves, and parks, and outdoor places of the Park Service and other bureaus of the Department. He enjoyed those kinds

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of things. However, that was not a good excuse for--that was not considered a good excuse for him to not make himself available and useful for the campaign.

HESS: Were there times when the White House tried to reach him to ask him to participate?

CHAPMAN: It did. I was on the train with the President, going to the lower part of California at the time, and we were trying to reach Secretary Krug. I couldn't reach him through even the Department switchboard, and his own secretary here was not able to give me his phone number. And so I was unable to reach him myself.

Let me add a sentence for that. I know of several occasions in which the White House tried to get in touch with Mr. Krug during that time and was unable to reach him at all. This, of course, made it very embarrassing for me and somewhat difficult for the management and continuing to run the office and keep it going,

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because I was devoted, and arranged to devote full-time to the campaign, and have Mr. Krug to make special speeches and be at the office to take over the management of the office, but he did not choose to do that.

HESS: What was the President’s reaction? Did you ever hear Mr. Truman make a comment on Mr. Krug's lack of participation?

CHAPMAN: Well, he was very unhappy about the fact that Krug didn't make himself available to participate in the campaign at all. Had he made himself available for a few speeches he might have gotten by with it, but the President felt the way that he handled himself, he was deliberately trying to defeat him.

HESS: The President felt that way?

CHAPMAN: Yes, he did,

HESS: What is your opinion as to why Mr. Krug did not participate?

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CHAPMAN: He thought that Dewey was going to be elected and he had been working behind the scenes with Mr. [Bernard] Baruch, and Mr. Baruch was working behind the scenes with Dewey.

HESS: Do you think he thought that he could stay in the same position in the Dewey administration?

CHAPMAN: Yes, or something better.

HESS: Or something better?

CHAPMAN: If he thought there was anything better. There isn't anything better as far as I'm concerned than the Secretary of the Interior; that's the best job in the Government. I think he had in mind that he could stay on in his administration in some high position.

HESS: In the Republican administration?

CHAPMAN: Yes,

HESS: Did you ever hear him say that?

CHAPMAN: No, never heard him say it, in any respect.

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As a matter of fact he would never talk about the campaign to me, except to comment that Truman couldn't win.

HESS: He did make that comment?

CHAPMAN: Yes, he did to me. And I told him he was going to be a surprised man on November 5th, following the election day in November.

HESS: A11 right. Now to what extent did his lack of participation have in his resignation one year later?

CHAPMAN: Well, I think it had a very definite part, in the overall picture; that with other things.

HESS: Why did he stay there for so long? If the President was unhappy with him...

CHAPMAN: And he knew it

HESS: ...in November of 1948, and he knew it, why did matters drag on? He didn't resign until a year later, in November 1949. And a year in an

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appointive position is a long time.

CHAPMAN: What seemed to a lot of people that the White House was dragging its feet on Secretary Krug's action of not resigning right after election, had another reason for it that the public didn't know. There was an investigation that had started, that arose out of a trial that had been filed in New York. As I said, the public was not aware of what was going on in regard to that, and it was not appropriate to make it known, or to make it public at that time, because a hearing was underway on a suit that had been filed against Secretary Krug for the repayment of a rather large sum of money to a man in Philadelphia, who was the--who was in the textile business and had gotten what was considered by some people as favors, in the terms of favored position in getting priorities for material for his plant. Then in this trial it began to base itself on the fact Krug had paid back some seven hundred thousand dollars on this loan, and the public

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was not aware of it or anything until that suit was filed, and they wanted to let the investigation finish if they could. But when the suit was filed, the President I'm sure decided that he would move and take an action on this matter at the time. He didn't want the suit to become the opening thing on this first. So, he asked for his resignation at that time.

HESS: All right. Where were you on election night, and what are your recollections of those momentous times?

CHAPMAN: Well, it was a very pleasant time for me that evening. I was enjoying the evening much more than some of my friends were, because I had a different outlook of what was going to happen that evening than some of my friends did. And I was at my wife's uncle, Basil Manmouth Holmes, and we had quite a few guests in and we were looking at the television and discussing the campaign, during the course of the evening, and how many of them that were there had

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thought that he could win. And I must admit that most of them that were there, were quite honest about it and said that they had not thought that he could win.

My conviction was really firmed up by different incidents and things that were happening from the first of October until election. The month of October absolutely confirmed my conviction that he was going to be elected. What one of those incidents amounted to was a trip that I made through Iowa to check the different elements that were acting for the party and those elements that were in opposition to the party. I was absolutely certain that Senator [Guy Mark] Gillette would win reelection--he was running for reelection. I was certain he would run for reelection and win. He did, and then I was certain that if he ran, Truman and he would carry Iowa. As the month of October went along and I kept a check on it, my convictions became more definite and concrete that he

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was going to carry Iowa.

Now when I tell my friends about that back here, hardly any of them could believe it or would believe it; they thought it was my enthusiasm that was running away with me, but I never let my enthusiasm for my man be the basis for my judgment, because I always found you had to allow for that with everybody. You have a friendship for a man you work with like that, and you might say a wishing and hoping that he would win; you had to discount a certain amount for that, with almost anybody, including myself. I found that most of the people, a lot of the people, that I talked to in the first of September, or the last week of August, and during the month of September, had absolutely changed their minds in October. This was my own Gallup poll that I took and I found out how it would go. I made a little poll of my own in Iowa. I did this in several states, but this is a pattern that I followed. I would go into

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the State of Iowa; I would call somebody that was active in the Teachers' Association and get their reaction about this. It would usually be somebody that I knew.

HESS: Why did you single out the Teachers' Association?

CHAPMAN: Well, I was going to follow and tell you that the teachers were one, the American Legion was another, and I would pick different organizations in different states.

HESS: Labor unions?

CHAPMAN: Labor unions. I checked labor union officials and I'd check the officers or friends, not necessarily officers--friends of somebody I knew well, where I knew they knew their own people well in their own organization.

HESS: Did you also try to contact business organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce, or did you figure that those were too far Republican?

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CHAPMAN: Oh, no, I never passed up a chance to talk to them if I could. I would make a talk to them if I could, and usually I would be interesting enough. I'd get invitations to speak to Chambers of Commerce in a lot of places. I was not making many speeches; I couldn't, because my time schedule was such that I just didn't have the time to prepare my speeches and to keep a schedule with any of these organizations very much. So I didn't make many speeches of any kind, but often I'd get caught in a town, and the Chamber of Commerce was meeting that day or something and they'd ask me at the last minute if I would address the Chamber of Commerce that day. It was their regular luncheon meeting and so it wasn't even a special occasion, of any kind.

Now, I met with them in circumstances that didn't have any political overtones at all, because I was invited at the last minute. There was no publicity to it, or hardly any, that I was going to be there, because it wasn't known until so late that we hardly

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got any publicity about my going to most places.

Now I would check two or three of those people at that luncheon that I would know. I knew them; that was always so much better if I happened to know them, and I did have some very good contacts among the young Chamber of Commerce people and I really got some surprisingly good help from a lot of them, from the young ones in the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce, of course, didn't come out, shouting and endorsing Truman.

HESS: You didn't get quite the support there that you did when you would speak to a union?

CHAPMAN: No, you didn't get the same enthusiasm. And as a matter of fact, they would be afraid to applaud for fear the other fellow would see them.

HESS: And report them.

CHAPMAN: And report them. That would happen in place after place that I saw it happen. Now those were little meetings that would hardly be publicized;

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there wasn't time. They were done on the spur of the moment in most cases, and I would fill in at the last minute. It was when I saw we weren't going to leave town until 3 o'clock or 4 o'clock, and I'd have time to have lunch with them and go on. Now that's what I did in my way. That was not a planned idea and I made no effort to try to get appointments to speak to that group per se. Oddly these invitations came to me by the fact that I was there that day and they were having a luncheon and they thought, well, they always wanted to get somebody from Washington. I had lots of fun discussing things with some of those younger Chamber of Commerce people. I found we had much more sympathy in that group than people have given us credit for. The old-timers in that group weren't giving us any help at all; that was very obvious, but I didn't let that bother me. I'd talk to the younger ones and others when I could.

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HESS: Among the group that you were with on election night were you pretty well in the minority of people who were confident that Mr. Truman would win?

CHAPMAN: Oh yes.

HESS: Before the returns started coming in?

CHAPMAN: I was in the minority when the returns started coming in. The time difference between here and Iowa and here and California was a very innocent thing. I was sitting there and there were three or four fellows in that group; one of them was a regular professional gambler. I mean professional; he always gambled on every election, and he wanted to get some good bets up, and he had by telephone got some good bets put up here. Finally he said, "Man, don't talk to these people for a minute, talk to me. Get me on this story on Iowa. You said they could carry Iowa," he said; "I could get a good bet on Iowa, and I could get a good

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margin on that." He said, "Give me the story why you think they will carry it, and if you do think Truman will carry it." I'd explain to him why Truman was going to carry it, and when I explained to him the circumstances of that state and what was happening, he began to see that I had a lot more information checking on that state than the average poll would get of the picture. I had gotten very close-in to this and wanted to follow through the close contact that I had with those different people in some of these states.

Anyway, I did have close contact with individuals and that could give me very accurate information. They could give me, and I could tell from past experiences in the campaign, what they could do and what they had done before, and these estimates were very accurate. I could get them.

One fellow got up and went to the telephone. I don't think I should bring all of that story in; it's pulling in too much that isn't a good story to tell that way. I'm not a

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good storyteller from the point of view of history.

HESS: Well, you do a good job.

CHAPMAN: But I have many things of memory in my mind, not well-coordinated as it should be or as I want it to be.

HESS: Mr. Truman was in Excelsior Springs and the Kansas City area. When did you first see him after the election?

CHAPMAN: I think that he took the train the next day I believe...

HESS: That's right.

CHAPMAN: ...and came back here.

HESS: And came back here. Did you see him when he got back?

CHAPMAN: Yes, I saw him when he got back. I went down to the train.

HESS: What was his attitude? What did he do and what

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did he say? What do you recall about that occasion?

CHAPMAN: He says, "Well, you and I told them." This was his good joke; he says; "You and I told them." And we have of course a lot of fun with the Tribune.

HESS: The "Dewey Defeats Truman" issue.

CHAPMAN: "Dewey Defeats Truman." And they had put that thing over so hard; they would try to influence a few more hundred votes in Illinois. I've forgotten now whether we carried Illinois or not. I've forgotten the history of that; I've forgotten the story of what happened.

HESS: Illinois went for Truman. 1,194,715 to 1,961,103, so it was very close.

CHAPMAN: Very close.

HESS: Pretty close, Illinois usually is though isn't it?

CHAPMAN: In my reporting on Illinois I have quoted we carried by 85 hundred. Now there's a man who was--that

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publisher and editor of the Chicago Sun, a Marshall Fields publication, and he used to work in the Department with us as our public relations man.

HESS: Who was he?

CHAPMAN: Pete Akers. And Pete was a fine newspaperman; he was really a man that plugged desperately to get the real truth of a story. He'd try to get around all the fallacies that surrounded these exciting stories. People would get excited and say a lot of things they aren't sure they hadn't repeated before, you see, and he would try to run these down to get the truth about them. Pete was one of the best newspapermen that I think I ever worked with, in the way of getting accuracy into his stories. Now on a yellow pad, like this one, like this yellow pad here...

HESS: A legal-size yellow pad.

CHAPMAN: Legal-size yellow pad; he took a pad with him

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and I had stopped in Chicago that night which was a--I think either a Wednesday or a Thursday night. I stopped just for the night there to do one more little checkup thing and to get $5,000 transferred to the Illinois area instead of letting it go to New York, and I cut it out of New York and gave it there.

HESS: You thought it could be put to better use in Illinois?

CHAPMAN: Well, I knew it wouldn't be put to any use in New York, because I knew Fitzpatrick had not supported us and was not supporting us. He had traded us off for everything under the sun, from a dog catcher on up to the Presidency, and he had traded us off completely as state chairman. I knew it and I had a close check on him. We didn't feel very happy about Fitzpatrick doing this. We thought that Paul had been given recognition and honors that goes with such recognition, and we had tried to help him in the State of New York

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as much as we could; we felt that he was unfair to us in New York taking the position he did in this campaign.

HESS: Did you ever talk to him about why he did not support the President?

CHAPMAN: I did on Saturday night before the election.

HESS: Before the election?

CHAPMAN: Yes.

HESS: What did he say?

CHAPMAN: He said, "I just learned this afternoon that you were the one that transferred $5,000 up here this weekend, and," he said, "we need 65 thousand."

"Well," I said, "Paul, time has come to be perfectly frank with each other now and we can quit kidding one another. I hope you don't think you've been kidding me all these months, that I don't know that you have absolutely sold us down the river in New York, and you personally have done it," and

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he had and I knew it. I said, "You have not turned your hand to help Harry Truman get elected President of the United States. You have traded him off for other jobs in this state, such state positions you wanted."

HESS: What did he say to that?

CHAPMAN: He said, "That is not true." He denied the truth in my statement, and he said I'd been listening to a lot of his enemies and it was totally unfair to him for me to say that.

And I said, "If I didn't have a couple of letters in my hand and the person is perfectly willing for me to make them public, I wouldn't say this."

HESS: Did you at that time call to his attention the fact that the American Labor Party had to pay the rent on Madison Square Garden for Mr. Truman's speech?

CHAPMAN: I did.

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HESS: And that the Democratic Party would not do that?

CHAPMAN: Now he claims that he was out of money and he claimed that it was my fault that they didn't send any money up there.

HESS: Is that what he wanted the money for?

CHAPMAN: No.

HESS: For Madison Square Garden?

CHAPMAN: Well, that was one of the things.

HESS: One of many things.

CHAPMAN: One of the many things, but he learned about the $5,000 that I shifted to Illinois and I got it shifted up there, rather than to spend it in New York, and [Ed] Flynn said, "Oscar, you're absolutely right." He said, "You're not going to win a thing in New York." He said, "You haven't a chance in the world." He said, "Kirkpatrick has absolutely been against us; he

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has sold us down the river." And he said, "You've got the picture exactly right, and that was the right thing to do, and I'm glad you did." And he said, "I know you were trying to get me on the phone the other day to tell me; I couldn't get to the phone, couldn't take the phone at the time, but," he said, "when I found out what you were doing, I was completely for it, was glad you were doing it." And he said, "It was difficult for me to take a part in that up here in New York," now it was based here. "So," he said, "it was a very good move for you to do that to get the benefit of our money." We didn't have much money anyway, and we had to spend it where it would really count.

I used to laugh. You see, I never collected any money when I was in that vast campaign, working in the campaign at all, and I would not accept contributions. I'd have somebody else to take it; they'd give it to somebody else that wasn't in the Government, and I just said, "I don't want

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anybody in my Department to accept any money, or anything at all."

HESS: Did you usually have somebody from the Democratic National Committee who could handle financial matters?

CHAPMAN: Yes. Well, in my case I had with me as my co-chairman of the eleven western states, old Governor [Nathan L.] Miller of Wyoming, one of the grand old men that you would ever talk to, and he was the greatest help in the world. These fellows that would come in and want to take a couple of hours to talk to you just to visit about everything and you'd be surprised how many of them would want to do it, and I couldn't take the time right then. I just couldn't do it.

HESS: You were a busy man.

CHAPMAN: I was busy working the program, in each of the eleven western states and getting them coordinated, mostly by telephone and sometimes by plane. And

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somebody would come in and say, "Well, I've got $5,000 I can get for you," say, "I can get it to you today."

Well I'd say, "What time could you be here today?" And if I could get them to come up to the hotel where I was staying, I'd have Mr. Miller there when they got there.

HESS: So that he could take the money?

CHAPMAN: And I'd have them to make the contribution to him and held sign the receipt for it, and we kept the closest records you ever saw. We kept absolutely tight records. And I refused to accept the money because I was still Under Secretary of the Interior.

HESS: Concerning your active participation in 1948, what weight do you think that that gave to your receiving the fob of Secretary of the Interior?

CHAPMAN: I think it gave the President an opportunity to observe me in my approach to people and in my

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efforts to really help him. I think it gave him opportunity to understand me and to know me, because I had been with Ickes, but I had never criticized Ickes to him. I had never criticized him to him at all and...

HESS: Or Krug?

CHAPMAN: No, Krug--I never criticized Krug.

I told him on one occasion how I couldn't be critical of these men because if I felt bad enough to do that, strong enough about it, I ought to resign and let you put somebody in my place that will run these things, or put somebody in the head place to run it, because I shouldn't be in that position. I said, "You can't undercut the man that is your immediate boss in running an organization if you expect to produce and do an effective job for giving service, and effective service," and they are a few of the little problems I had on that.

Now I had just to avoid criticism of both

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Ickes and Krug, one for different reasons. I was really very fond of Ickes in many ways; I was in the doghouse part of the time with him, and then I was friendly with him provided that he worked with me perfectly beautifully this month. Maybe next month I couldn't get to see him.

HESS: When you were in the doghouse, what were some of the causes for falling out at that time?

CHAPMAN: It probably was because I had testified before a committee and didn't give him a copy of my testimony beforehand.

HESS: Did he like to keep pretty close tabs on what was going on?

CHAPMAN: Oh, yes, he did. He wanted to keep pretty close tab. Now this is the thing with him, he wanted to stay at the office and work; he didn't want to travel. Krug was just the opposite. He just hated that office; he didn't want to stay there, and when he could see that girl coming in

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around 4 o'clock in the afternoon to bring a stack of papers to be signed by the Secretary, he'd almost faint. In the first place he didn't know the least thing about them; he couldn't know. This is not against him, but as I say, no man could know. He just didn't dream that there were that many papers that a Secretary would have to sign each due, and you don't get a chance to sign them until late in the afternoon when you could cut your appointments off about 4 o'clock and start...

HESS: Then get into your paperwork.

CHAPMAN: Get into your paperwork. And that's what you have to do, and that will last as long as is necessary for you to finish, and that may be 7 o'clock, and many times it was 8 o'clock for me; but I tried to finish them by 6 and a lot of times I did. I'd finish most of the times about 6 or 6:30, but also probably as many times I'd finish at 7 or 8. I tell you this only to give

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an idea of the function of the Department of the Interior. People don't quite understand; the average public is not acquainted with the mechanism of that department.

HESS: It's so huge.

CHAPMAN: Well, it's huge and made up of a conglomeration of bureaus that operate with a conflict of interests with each other, because...

HESS: The Park Service and Reclamation...

CHAPMAN: That's right. That's right. The Park Service would want to kill a dam that was being built in some stream somewhere, and Reclamation was politically, and every other way, was trying to get support for it to get it built. Well, poor Ickes was like I was; we were trying to get information to make some judgment of our own, because we were trying to make independent judgment around the two respective parties, you see. We were trying to get enough information

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that we could make some intelligent judgment about this thing. Now that was one of the hardest jobs I had to do; that was to do all the research and talking I could, with someone on the conservation side, and the Park Service side, then someone involved with power development. There is where our friend Davidson had such a struggle. He was a strong power man, a public power man, and so was I. I was very strong for power, public power, but Davidson would fight a little bit, probably a little bit tougher than I would and sometimes a little bit more brash about it than I would be. That came from years of experience, of always knowing that the other fellow probably knows more about it than you do.

HESS: In your opinion, was there more coordination between agencies under Krug than there had been under Ickes? Did Mr. Krug try to get some sort of coordination between agencies?

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CHAPMAN: Well, you see, when Krug was made Secretary I was made Under Secretary, and he knew that he was taking an Under Secretary that he had never seen before, didn't know, and that I had been in the Department for...

HESS: Since May of ‘33.

CHAPMAN: Yes, since May of '33, May 4, and I had that many years of experience in working with the personnel of the Department, the key people especially, the key men in the bureaus I worked with. And I had gotten a long ways down on the lower echelon of operation in working with them, because I wanted to know all I could find out about this program, how it worked; and we had some mighty fine people in there, in the Department that really were dedicated people. They were not just in there picking a scrap all the time; some people think they were, they were not. They were dedicated people and hoping to accomplish something. Now their accomplishment--in one case there would be a

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conflict between their interests, and support for a project would come from opposite sides. We've been using the Reclamation Bureau as an example, but they're not the only ones wherein a difference of opinion would arise. The Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service often had a difference of opinion about how things should be handled and managed. You had to try to find out what was the best way to do this. You had to try to get the very best information you could and you had to do it fast; that's why I was always concerned whether I was doing it efficiently enough. It was a fact that I had to do it so fast.

Now our friend, Secretary Davidson, was an activist in every sense of going after a program, and a project, and working at it very hard. He really tried hard on some of these programs, particularly public power; he was especially good on that.

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HESS: One of the projects he had was to try to get the Columbia Valley Administration established. Right?

CHAPMAN: Ickes, of course, was supporting him on this, very strongly, because anything that brought something else to the Department of the Interior, Ickes would support him, any of it. To me it was the wrong time to get it done, because you had Lilienthal, who was running the TVA, Tennessee Valley project. He was running that post. Terrific powers had been given him, such as giving him a right to borrow money against the credit of the Government, to borrow money himself on notes of his own company, from TVA. That was a tremendous breakthrough for him, because it gave him the opportunity to have money to go ahead and proceed with his program.

HESS: We might discuss the methods that you tried

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to use to bring about better coordination.

CHAPMAN: Let me talk about that a little bit, about trying to develop the Department, allowing better coordination.

I felt that the Department of Interior should have the Forest Service and it should be put together with the Park Service. Those two agencies really should be together, and whether they should be in the Department of Interior or in Agriculture isn't too material one way or another, except there's a history to the Park Service in the Department of Interior since 1916. Since Teddy Roosevelt's time the Department of Agriculture has had the Forest Service, and [Gifford] Pinchot spent the latter part of his life fighting for the Forest Service.

HESS: He was quite a conversationist.

CHAPMAN: Oh, he was; he was a great friend of mine

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and I was very crazy about him. I got some nice pictures of him in his robe and pajamas when he and I were sitting out on the lawn up there at his farm at Milford. He had a very beautiful old home there, very beautiful thing.

HESS: Was that New York?

CHAPMAN: No, it's Pennsylvania, just across into Pennsylvania, Milford. Now his brother, Amos, was the financial genius of the two. He was a broker and handled funds for the family and he'd made a good deal of money for the family by pooling their money and having it together. He did a very fine job of it.

Now going back to the question of the Department of the Interior, it was a cross-section of functions including conservation of land and conservation of human resources, coordinated with land use resources. Involved with the latter is the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Eskimo people have a claim to a large amount of land that belonged to them in this thing.

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We have opposed it so long to keep them from getting their fair share of that land.

Governor Gruening became Governor of Alaska and he fought so hard for the state bill; he got everything in that he could for the Eskimos and other natives. He got everything he could for them. He put everything he could into that bill to give the natives a better share of the lands, and more of the wealth of the country than they had been given in other places, in other states. And he is still supporting a move with some of the Indian groups to pressure Congress, or anybody that they can, to get a bill through Congress to give them, identify their title, and give them title to a larger percentage of that land.

Now they got one bill through and got another in their hands, but not as much as they are entitled to be any rules of the game. They are entitled to more of that by any rules. You can say that maybe Alaskans are entitled to far

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more of the Alaskan resources than they are getting. It is my belief that they are entitled to more than they are getting of the resources of that country. The state has the power now to give it away or dispose of it in some other way. A lot of it will be state land.

HESS: What are the main pressure groups that come in to try to prevent the Indians and the Eskimos from receiving their just amount of land? The oil interests, and timber interests?

CHAPMAN: Well, you don't find those fellows out front; they work behind the scenes, very carefully, but well, the oil interests don't particularly bother too much; they have never got out in front too far on it. But the timber interests are primarily the ones, along with the fisheries. Those two have been the strongest interest groups of those that I know, and they have given tremendous time to this effort.

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HESS: Did you receive a good deal of pressure from those groups during the Truman administration?

CHAPMAN: Oh, yes. Oh yes, I got a lot of pressure. I got a lot of pressure from those groups during Truman's administration. But the wonderful part of working with Truman was he worked with his Cabinet officers. If he felt that that man knew what he was really doing and was really trying to help these people, he'd work with them, and he'd work with his Cabinet team, I thought beautifully. This was true if that Cabinet officer was working with him and was trying to coordinate to his policies.

So many people that go after the oil people go after them with such emotion that it's awfully hard to get them straight on the line, to get a factual story and statement in what they are charging. We felt if they are going to charge a company for violation of the law, they should do so with as much substantial evidence as possible and not just do it because they are major companies. The

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Government permits them to be major companies and do a lot of things we criticize. If I was ever in there again I would go and talk to the President and see what his policies tended to be, regarding conservation. The issue is pretty well cleared up legally now; not all, however, since some are still fighting that.

HESS: In your opinion, how interested was Mr. Truman in the general subject of conservation?

CHAPMAN: Well, I felt this, that he didn't want to be misled by a lot of the emotional people on the question of conservation, just for the sake of conservation. He wanted to take action, whatever action he had to take; he wanted to do it based upon a pretty thorough knowledge of that particular section of the country he was working on. I can't think of a single project that I was

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working on, in conservation, that Truman didn't support wholeheartedly. I don't know of a one. Now, I said I don't know a single project that I was supporting, and working for, that he didn't support me on.

Among the cases that came along one by one, I was not as enthusiastic for one case, I'll say, as a conservation officer is sworn to be.

HESS: What case if that?

CHAPMAN: Well, I had one case, the Dinosaur National Park. I was trying to handle that. There's a way you handle these things; you'd kill them without hurting yourself, if you'll handle them right. Well, I don't think the dam should have been built where they were proposing it, that is the...

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HESS: Bureau of Reclamation.

CHAPMAN. Bureau of Reclamation was proposing it, and to my chagrin, [Newton B.] Drury, who was director of the National Park Service at the time, got a secret memorandum of agreement with Mike [Michael W.] Straus in which the two of them had signed that they both would work together to try to put over this dam and the national park.

HESS: A secret agreement...

CHAPMAN: Yes.

HESS: ...between two of the bureaus of the Department of the Interior.

CHAPMAN: Right, and they hadn't told me about it.

HESS: Was this at the time that you were Secretary?

CHAPMAN: Yes.

HESS: They intended to carry out an action that the Secretary was not in favor of?

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CHAPMAN: That’s right, and they both knew it.

HESS: They both knew your views.

CHAPMAN: That’s right; they knew my views thoroughly on it.

HESS: How did you find out about that secret memo?

CHAPMAN: Purely by accident. You see they were planning to spring their secret memo--the Reclamation Service was, not the Park Service--Reclamation was planning to bring that agreement, signed agreement, between the two bureaus to present it to me when I held a public hearing on the matter here in the Department. And that would put me on the spot pretty bad. Fortunately for me I had got ahold of this information and got a copy of this thing. I had gotten a copy as soon as I found it was in existence; I got it. And I sent for Mike Straus; he said, "Yes, we’ve got a secret memorandum out." He said, "It’s not secret. We just haven’t given it out because

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we haven't sent it to you." He said, "We were supposed to give it to you before the hearing and he said, "that's all there is to it." He said, "You know I’ve been supporting that."

I said, "Yes, I know; you know I've been opposing it."

And he said, "I know it, but we've both had our own views and we express them."

Well I said, "You keep on expressing your own views through proper channels, and that's all I ask you." And Drury denied signing the memorandum, but Straus brought me the original and handed it to me at the hearing.

HESS: And both signatures were there.

CHAPMAN: Yes, both of them were there. Drury got terribly mad at me because, oh, he had cursed me. I sent for him a few days later and I said, "Newton, you are such an ardent conservationist. I want you to be promoted up to Assistant to the Secretary, have that title and with the same

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salary you are now getting and become my real adviser on all these conservation matters." Well, he was wise enough to the old tricks. He knew what I was doing; put him in there and I’ll take him out of line of operation, have another line of operation and he wouldn't have anything to do with administering, except for what I handed him each day, and that would be nothing.

HESS: Give him a nice office and close the door.

CHAPMAN: Close the door; that's what I was going to do. Now, see, he wouldn't accept it, and he kept on trying to talk me out of it, and I said, "No, Newton, we've talked a month over this now, and so the first of November I'm going to announce the appointment of Connie [Conrad L,] Wirth as Director of the Park Service." And I said, "Connie Wirth has been Associate Director of Forest, and he knows it. He knows it well, and he's well-liked on the Hill, and he's,''--I said, "I can't remember during all the time

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that I've worked here that he has ever signed a memorandum of agreement with another bureau on something that was in opposition to my policy, that he didn't bring it to me first, and discuss it with me." There's when Drury kept denying that he signed this memorandum. Well, there it was, I had it. I had the memorandum of an agreement that they had signed.

HESS: Did you show it to him at that time?

CHAPMAN: Oh, I read it at the meeting; I read it at the public meeting I was holding. I said, "Now this would normally be embarrassing if I hadn't already known about this for some time," but not through the two principles involved.

HESS: Not through proper channels.

CHAPMAN: "Not through proper channels," the very words I used. And I said, "Now, you people who are interested in conservation, and you who are interested in dams and building of dams for the purposes of

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power and reclamation and things of that kind, I'm for these programs. I'm for building every one we can, and another thing we should do, we should raise the time limit on the project as to how long the credit could be given on any given project. It could be spread over twenty years, or forty years, or fifty; it didn't make any difference. It was a credit due the United States that will be paid to the United States by these people, due in that course, whether it was twenty or thirty or fifty years, would make absolutely no difference in the bookkeeping of the Government, or affect their bookkeeping in any respect at all." I said, "I've talked to the Treasury Department about that and they just said they would not oppose the bill at all and go along." And I was trying to get that kind of a bill put through, and we got a good deal of support for it at least there, when I broke the bubble on that Dinosaur National Park and they knew that I'd buy it. Drury, he was

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the only man I actually fired.

HESS: What was the outcome of that? Did they build the dam?

CHAPMAN: No.

HESS: Just one brief question about Columbia Valley Administration; we may want to discuss it further on other days.

CHAPMAN: Yes.

HESS: But did you mention that you thought that it was premature, that the CVA should not be established at that time?

CHAPMAN: I thought it couldn't be, I was torn...

HESS: Were you for it?

CHAPMAN: I was for the idea, but I was for us timing it better. We were not using our best judgment in planning the development of this; it was a good thing to do and still is.

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HESS: How would you have developed the timing?

CHAPMAN: Well, the timing was this; you look your field over and what group do you have supporting you. Well, it just didn't have any support in Congress at all from either of them.

HESS: They sure didn't have the Idaho Power Company behind it either.

CHAPMAN: No, they sure didn't! They were crucifying him; they really could. Well, those are the things that made me support him so far; the background was always after him. But it just didn't have any support among the Congress, both houses. Had he had enough support among them to carry this fight, I'd have been willing to have tried it, but we didn't have any support from the White House.

Roosevelt was for it, but Roosevelt was not going to take anything away from Lilienthal while he was there and they should have known that. I

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tried to stress it with my friend Jebby Davidson that that was our hardest part, the position of Lilienthal, and that his position with the public and with the Congress and with the President was so much stronger than Ickes'. Thus, they'll beat us before we get started, and you won't have a chance to present your case adequately or properly. And Congress was deathly opposed to this at that time.

HESS: Ickes left in February of '46 and then Krug was sworn in in March of '46, and the effective date of Krug's resignation was December the 1st of '49, the same day that you were sworn in. Did Krug have any better support in Congress than Ickes had had so that he might have been able to get something going on CVA?

CHAPMAN: He could have, had he not been such a good friend of Lilienthal. He wouldn't fight Lilienthal.

HESS: But hadn't Lilienthal gone to the Atomic Energy

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ommission by this time though?

CHAPMAN: I think he had; I think he had moved, but he was still carrying this fight.

HESS: He was still opposed to the Columbia Valley Administration?

CHAPMAN: That's right, he was still opposed to it.

HESS: What was the basis for his opposition?

CHAPMAN: He was opposed to it as...

HESS: He was an old TVA man.

CHAPMAN: That's right.

HESS: What did he have against CVA up in the Northwest?

CHAPMAN: Well, actually when you got right down to hard conferencing with him about it, his opposition I didn't think, was solid enough. It was only a temporary expediency that he was fighting, but not a permanent long-range development.

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Our position was so much sounder from the point of view of a long-range development. But Lilienthal was such a well-known conservationist per se that nobody would believe any of the stories that was written about him back east in the eastern papers.

HESS: Did he think that the establishment of a CVA out in the Northwest would somehow weaken TVA?

CHAPMAN: Yes, he did.

HESS: I see no connection.

CHAPMAN: Well, he thought that they both would be put under the Secretary of the Interior.

HESS: Oh, I see.

CHAPMAN: He thought that when we accomplished one, that we would go after the other, and we would.

HESS: And you would?

CHAPMAN: Yes. That's what we were going to do.

HESS: So that was the basis for his opposition?

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CHAPMAN: Yes.

HESS: One reason why I brought this up was that Mr. Truman had a special message in 1949, I think it was in February of 1949, just after the election, calling for the establishment of the Columbia Valley Administration.

CHAPMAN: That's right.

HESS: He had even mentioned it I believe in his State of the Union address in 1949. In other words, what I am saying is it was well-known that Mr. Truman wanted to establish the Columbia Valley Administration. There are those who say that people in Government dragged their feet.

CHAPMAN: Well, a lot of them did. A lot of them did.

HESS: In other words, they couldn't come out in open opposition to Mr. Truman and say...

CHAPMAN: No.

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HESS: ..."Okay, you want a CVA but I don't," but when Mr. Truman would make his pronouncement that he wanted a CVA, there were a number of people in high positions in Government who worked under cover to see that it was defeated, is that right?

CHAPMAN: That is perfectly right. Remember Anderson was Secretary of Agriculture for awhile and he was opposed to it, and he was close to Truman at that time, and he was I know...

HESS: What was the basis of his opposition; was he afraid that he would lose the Department of Agriculture's...

CHAPMAN: Forest Service.

HESS: ...Forest Service?

CHAPMAN: He'd lost it in the total overall picture; he would lose a lot of things that would go into this CVA.

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HESS: Were all of the Government organizations operating in that one area going to go into that one unit?

CHAPMAN: Not all, but most of them.

HESS: Well, that was Michael Straus' attitude over at Reclamation; he didn't want to go under CVA either.

CHAPMAN: He didn't want it; he didn't want it, and he was cutting it everywhere he could.

HESS: Now he didn't work so much under cover did he?

CHAPMAN: No, he didn’t.

HESS: He just said what he believed?

CHAPMAN: You know there's one thing he always liked about Mike.

HESS: Even if you disagreed with him he was open about it.

CHAPMAN: That's right. He was open about it. He never

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tried to go behind your back and he would tell you that you're wrong. I think that this is right; I'm going to stick to my position, and you can't oppose a man that does that. You've got to give him credit for being an honorable man in his approach to basic principles.

You see these fellows think that they have accomplished a lot if they have gone around the head of the Government (in this case the President), because we had gotten the President's support for this thing. We had really gone after it and I always give Jebby great credit for that because Jebby did--he did a very fine job of promoting that.

HESS: He made a lot of speeches in the Northwest didn't he?

CHAPMAN: He did. He made a lot of speeches in the Northwest; he talked to a lot of officials about this, and he did a lot. And he did a fine job in promoting a wonderful project that would

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have been a great asset to the country in the future. It was a sound approach for another hundred years. You were putting together your resources of this area, and congealing them. You've got to find some mechanism for it to operate on, and this was the only thing that we could find that would do it really adequately. It would be something on this principle.

HESS: What's the main reason that it was not established?

CHAPMAN: Well, just that so many people were opposed to it; that's why they wouldn't do it. They were not opposed to Truman about it.

HESS: Weren't the power companies in the area bringing pressure on their Congressmen and Senators?

CHAPMAN: Oh yes. Oh yes, that was one of the...

HESS: I believe every Governor was opposed, every one in the Northwest.

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CHAPMAN: They were all opposed to it.

HESS: The Governors of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Nevada.

CHAPMAN: Well, I always give Jebby credit for a great deal of nerve of going out in that area and discussing it publicly. I thought, and he knew the Governors were opposed in that area.

HESS: And many of the Representatives.

CHAPMAN: Oh yes, many of the Congressmen were opposed to it.

HESS: And I believe Harry Cain, a leading Representative from that area, was opposed to it.

CHAPMAN: Yes, you're right.

HESS: Did Mr. Davidson's tendency to spend a great deal of time in the Northwest and his tendency to give a good many speeches, cause you difficulty at any time?

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CHAPMAN: Not especially.

HESS: What were your views on iris method of operation?

CHAPMAN: Well, I felt that he was losing a good deal of the value of his work by the fact that he was concentrating and centering himself in the Northwest and establishing another Secretary of Interior in the Northwest.

HESS: Did you feel that he was trying to do that?

CHAPMAN: Oh, I don't think that he was trying to do it; it just shows up that way on paper when you say it.

HESS: It just looks that way.

CHAPMAN: It just--it really just looks that way. I don't think he would really try to do it. I think he was honestly trying to establish this principle. He wanted to get it done, not that he got himself built up a great deal along with it. As far as he was concerned it was all

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right; he didn't care, he didn't mind that.

HESS: It was a secondary benefit:

CHAPMAN: Yes, I say he didn't mind that. But on the other hand, Jebby--Jebby's technique of approach was different from mine.

HESS: How would you characterize his technique of approach?

CHAPMAN: Mature and individual actions that he would take, and he would be doing one thing and he ought to have been working on the other one, because you had to keep the horse before the cart here. To move anything in Government as major as this is, requires a brilliant and physically active man that understands his subject matter basically. Jebby understood it; he had that quality. He understood it and he knew what he was trying to do, but he did not--in my mind, he used the wrong technique of approach to get his case sold to the public.

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HESS: Do you think that he would have liked to have been Under Secretary of the Interior at .the time you became Secretary of the Interior?

CHAPMAN: No, he wanted to be Secretary.

HESS: He didn't want the second job; he wanted the top job, is that right?

CHAPMAN: And I'll tell you this; I'd never be Under Secretary again to any Secretary in any department of Government.

HESS: You wouldn't want to be Under Secretary of...

CHAPMAN: Of any department.

HESS: Of any department?

CHAPMAN: Not again,

HESS: Is that the man who does most of the work?

CHAPMAN: That's the man that is being shot at from both ways; always has to take the responsibility; he's surreptitious by the nature of the

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office. The Under Secretary gets criticism. There are people below who think he's trying to get the Secretary's job. He wants to be Secretary next, and being Under Secretary all he has to do is just get one man out of the way. Now that's what a lot of folks will believe; they'll believe that you are trying that. I had an awful time fighting that kind of a thing all of the time. Unfortunately Krug didn't want to stay in the office in the first place. He didn't want to stay there; he wanted to travel. Well, the public didn't know that. They thought that I was staying there running the office because I wanted to run it. I didn't want to do all of that work. I wanted him to take part of it, but he just wouldn't do it. There wasn't anything I could do.

HESS: At the time Krug resigned, there was an article in the Oregon Journal, dated November the 11th, the day you got your phone call from the White

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House. The article was by Forrest Finely. I'll just read the first paragraph:

For this key Cabinet post, five names have been thrust forward: Former Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, Governor Mon Wallgren, Senator Joseph O'Mahoney of Wyoming, present Under Secretary Oscar Chapman, and the present Assistant Secretary of the Department, C. Girard Davidson of Portland.

So Davidson was named as one of the five possibilities. Did you think that it was possible that Ickes could be brought back in '49, as Finely thought?

CHAPMAN: No, that wasn't in the picture at all.

HESS: What about Mon Wallgren?

CHAPMAN: No.

HESS: He was a friend of the President.

CHAPMAN: He was a personal friend, but Truman knew him; he wouldn't have put him in that job anyway. You see, Truman had put him in what job?

HESS: Well, he had nominated him for a job had he not?

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CHAPMAN: Named him to something, some Federal job.

HESS: Wasn't it to the National Security Resources Board?

CHAPMAN: Yes,

HESS: And I don't think the nomination went through.

CHAPMAN: It wasn't approved or something about that.

HESS: A little difficulty about getting his name approved in Congress I believe.

CHAPMAN: I think there was some problem there.

HESS: But you don't think that he was considered seriously at this time?

CHAPMAN: No, I didn't take him seriously.

HESS: What about Senator Joseph O'Mahoney of Wyoming?

CHAPMAN: He would have been a serious man at any time. A President could have appointed him at any time. There were no obstacles in his way

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from any source. He could have taken it without any question. It was just a question of losing the chairman of our Interior Committee in the Senate, and we always want to have him with us if we can, but we had O'Mahoney and he supported Truman, and he was a good supporter of Truman's.

HESS: Finely's next statement is: "Of the five, Chapman's is the brightest, at least at the present." So the writer of this article--he didn't know that on that same day you were going to get that telephone call from the White House--thought your chances were the brightest.

Now, back to Mr. Davidson just for a moment. Was there no understanding that he might become Under Secretary?

CHAPMAN: None.

HESS: Now there was a period of time...

CHAPMAN: There was no understanding between Davidson

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and the President if that's who you mean now. I don't know who he may have had an understanding with; the President’s the only one who could appoint that man, so there is no one that he could have an understanding with but the President, and I know he didn’t have one with the President. And that's the way I was appointed Secretary of the Interior, as I told you about him calling me up and telling me.

I want to clarify if I can, and I have no way of doing it unless the President would wish to clarify it with a little memo for the record. I don't understand, and I didn't understand it when I left his office on that Wednesday morning, when he had answered Ickes' letter that was an insult to him, that had been sent to the President on Saturday afternoon, and said, in effect, "If I don't have an answer to this letter by Wednesday at 11 o'clock I'm going to call a press conference and live this letter out. If I don't have an answer from you."

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Well, that's an invitation for a President to fire you; that's all it is. I knew Truman wasn't going to take that. I didn't see that letter. I didn't know it was being written until almost that Wednesday morning; that's when I learned of it. I went in to see Ickes and I said, "Mr. Secretary, I understand that you wrote a very, very caustic and unpleasant letter to the President." I said, "I don't think your situation with the President is in that kind of a state, and I don't believe it justifies that." I said, "You haven't got an issue you can draw on as Secretary of Interior and to resign on that and become a great crusader as the man who saved the world from Truman." I said, "You're not going to get away with that. You might do it, and I'm terribly sorry that you sent that letter. Had I known it I certainly would have advised you not to have sent it, but to take the chance, go in and sit down and talk with Truman. I think you can work things out without

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any question." I thought they could have. Truman is always big hearted if you go half way, if you will make an effort to show your integrity and your honesty to him. Now the difference between the President and Secretary was based on nothing but a personnel problem, nothing else. Ickes was trying to make an issue out of Ed Pauley's appointment as Secretary of the Navy, or Under Secretary, I've forgot.

HESS: Under Secretary.

CHAPMAN: Under Secretary I believe, and Ickes fought his nomination very bitterly upon the Hill. He fought his nomination hard.

Now, they finally withdrew Ed Pauley's name, who was the man involved. Now I didn't think that was sufficient enough grounds; there was not enough of any unfavorable things that you could have brought into this, that justified him challenging the President's position publicly at that time and place. Now there is a time and

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place that you can do anything more effective than you can in other times and places. He certainly was not in good timing on his position with the President and I told him so. I said, ''The President will get the best of this without opening his mouth; he doesn't have to say a thing. He'll have enough press against you, enough Senators against you on the Hill, they won't support you."

And I was very fond of Ickes for his position on liberal things like conservation, public power, and things of that kind. I was very fond of him; he supported me on everything in that. He supported me very well on that, and he had quite a regard for Girard Davidson, and he liked him. But I think he felt--this is Ickes now--but I think Ickes felt Davidson might be moving a little too fast and not necessarily for the benefit of the program, but for the benefit of Davidson becoming Secretary of the Interior. Now I know he was--I feel confident he was suspicious of

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that, a feeling Davidson was making these speeches rather free handed out there and not coordinated necessarily with the Secretary.

HESS: What did Krug think about Davidson's speeches?

CHAPMAN: He didn't like them, but he didn't say anything. Krug didn't say anything, but he didn't like them.

HESS: I believe that there was a time that he debated an FBI man, wasn't that right?

CHAPMAN: That's right.

HESS: Did that cause any difficulty?

CHAPMAN: Well, to this extent--no; Davidson was right in his speech, but he was certainly wrong on his man and his time. You don't pick the lies when he's on top of the hill, when you're throwing rocks at him; you wait until you get him to the bottom of the hill.

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HESS: Did you ever talk to J. Edgar Hoover about that?

CHAPMAN: I did. I had a nice talk with him.

HESS: Did he ask you to drop over to his office?

CHAPMAN: No. No, nothing at all. I called him to see him about some Puerto Rican matters, on which he was extremely helpful to me.

I want to say this for Hoover; he began to let his people annoy our employees a lot by investigating them all the time under the Joe McCarthy regime and influence. I went to see Hoover about that myself and said to him that it was causing a great deal of loss of time and conflict with our other programs. And I said, "I can give you my word that any man or woman that you want to see, any employee you want to talk to about anything in this world, if you call me I'll give you a little room close to my office that you can come up and sit in there and have a conference as long as you want.

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Nobody will bother you at all, and that room is not bugged." I said, "It would help me to keep the suspicion from spreading in the Department that you are investigating the Department of Interior about something. You really are not investigating the Department of Interior about any wrongdoing, I know that. You're not, because there just isn't anything."

He said, "No, you're right. I haven't, and I'm not investigating for that." He said, "I am investigating some people over there on account of this Communist influence that we seem to think--some of the people seem to think--that is too close, some of the Communists."

"Well, Mr. Hoover," I said, "perhaps you would investigate those people very carefully and talk with them by themselves, not in their office where other people are coming in and going out. The rumor then goes out that an FBI man is investigating John Smith down in the Bureau of Mines." I said, "Immediately that becomes a sensitive area and it

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immediately flashes that you're investigating the Department. It gets them all confused and gets them terribly concerned about what is happening to their own situation."

But Hoover dealt with me in as fine and gentlemanly way as I have ever had a man work with me. He was most helpful to me in giving me information that I needed on the Puerto Rican situation, and he gave me that in the form of a memorandum. I said, "You use not names or titles; you use the phrase 'unidentified, but responsible informant,' all the time, but you never have used the name of anybody."