Harry H. Vaughan, March 20, 1976 Oral History Interview

Notice
This interview was conducted by William D. Stilley and Jerald L. Hill as part of a intern and independent study project at William Jewell College in March 1976, under the direction of the Political Science Department of William Jewell College. 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 transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of William D. Stilley and Jerald L. Hill.

Opened July, 1985
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

[1]

HILL: General Vaughan, when did you first meet President Truman?

VAUGHAN: In March 1918. That was about...

MISS VAUGHAN: It was earlier than 1918 wasn't it? And, it was before you went to France wasn't it?

VAUGHAN: Well, yes, we went to France about the next month after I met him in 1918. This was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The 35th Division was training at Fort Sill, and they picked civilians for the first

[2]

[3]

So, if he had an officer's call for 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and he got there at ten minutes until 3, he'd start the meeting, and if you got there at five minutes till 3 you were late and he gave you hell. So we were going over, and this was about two days after I was commissioned, we were going over to this meeting, and three or four of us talking and laughing and we pop through the door and we're clear inside before we realized that big old General Berry had started the meeting. So we all snapped up to attention, and in those days you had to be a first lieutenant before you had any rank, second lieutenants were called "mister."

So he looked around at us and we were of course snapped up to attention, and I was the first one in, and probably making the most noise, I don't remember

[4]

And I said, "Vaughan, sir."

He said, "How long have you been an officer in the United States Army?"

And I said, "Two days, sir," with which he went into very minute detail as how he would doubt that I would ever be an officer if I lived to be 102." So he did quite a job on me. It took him two or three minutes, and while he was -- he had had a first lieutenant up in front giving him the devil about something. So, when he got through with me, he turned around and forgot what he was doing and this first lieutenant had stepped back in the ranks you see, and he went on with the meeting. And as we went out this lieutenant slapped me on the arm and said, "Much obliged mister, you took me off the hook nicely." And he went on. I said to the officer I was walking with, "Who's that fellow?"

He said, "That's the first lieutenant from over in the 129th Field Artillery, a guy named Harry Truman." That was 58 years ago. And we were associated from then on quite frequently. Of course, I saw him in

[5]

I was his campaign manager when he was reelected to the Senate, and then I was his secretary in the Senate for a couple of years before I went on active duty; and then I was his Aide as Vice President and his Aide as President, up until 1953.

HILL: How much contact did you have with him after the time you came back from France before he decided to run for the Senate? Did you see him very often?

VAUGHAN: Oh, I used to see him at camps at Fort Riley. We began those camps in 1920.

MISS VAUGHAN: Three weeks you'd go to camp, every summer for three weeks?

[6]

MISS VAUGHAN: What was that story about...

VAUGHAN: He was a very enthusiastic reservist. He was a good officer, good artilleryman, and...

HILL: Did he ever talk in those days about going into politics and this type of thing before he ran for the Senate?

VAUGHAN: Well, it was right about that time he got elected Judge of the County Court. They called him Judge but it was not a legal position. It was a county commissioner, like they have in so many counties, have in this county. I don't know whether they have them in Missouri or not. What's the governing body of a county out there.

HILL: It's still County Judge, a County Court with the judges.

[7]

I remember coming back from a convocation at Missouri University, I think it was. We were driving back -- to give him a Doctor of Laws degree. I think he had about sixteen of them, I think, and they also made him an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa. We were sitting in the limousine going to the airport and he had this little velvet box with this Phi Beta Kappa key in it, and he said, "Look there, Harry, that's ridiculous." He said, "That thing is supposed to be given for academic excellence," and he said, "I never went to college a day in my life." And he said, "Besides, it's no good to me, I wear double breasted suits."

He was county commissioner for about six years I think. He had a very excellent record and that's where he surprised everybody. Everybody thought he would do what -- Pendergast helped him get elected, no doubt about that, for the simple reason that Jim Pendergast, who was an officer with us -- in fact it was

[8]

Well, Truman didn't give one single road building contract to any one of Pendergast's friends, and Pendergast asked him to come over and talk to him and he said, "Why don't you give a contract to so and so and so?"

Truman said, "Well, this contractor built this piece of road, and this one built this piece of road, and those pieces of road have a tendency to be coming to pieces." And he said, "I'm not giving a contract to any of these guys that cheat on the material." So he didn't give a contract to a single one of Pendergast's friends. Oh, they raised hell,

[9]

Pendergast said, "Well, I'll talk to him, but he's a hard-headed guy, if he's got some reason he has to be for George, why -- " so he called Truman and Truman said, "No, Mr. Pendergast, I promised -- I've committed myself to Senator George, and I'm going to vote for Senator George." That's all there is to it.

MISS VAUGHAN: But he was a great friend of Mr. Barkley's later.

VAUGHAN: Well, he was a friend of Barkley's then. But George had come to him first and asked him if he would support him and Truman said, "I'll support you.”

[10]

VAUGHAN: No, and Tom Pendergast never did either, and that's why they had a mutual regard for each other. If Tom Pendergast said something, he'd do it. He'd do it in spite of everything, and that's all there was to it. If you promised somebody something, Harry Truman said, "You know, I'd like to be" -- I think it was in 1934 -- he said, "There is going to be a vacancy for Internal Revenue Collector here in Kansas City, I'd like the job."

Pendergast said, "No, Harry, I can't support you on that, I promised so and so I'd support him on that job, but how'd you like to be United States Senator?"

Truman said, "I wouldn't have the slightest interest in being United States Senator."

"Well," he said, "that's the only support that I've got open is for United States Senator." He said, "I'm going to support you for United States Senator. I think you'd make a good one." That was in 1934.

[11]

VAUGHAN: Not in '34 at all. I was down in St. Louis talking it up, but I didn't have any -- when he ran six years later for reelection, I ran that one. And simply because the people that should have run it all went fishing or left town, or hid out in the woods or something, because they didn't think Harry Truman had a chance to be elected.

MISS VAUGHAN: Now that was the split vote, wasn't it, [Lloyd] Stark, and who was the other one who was running?

VAUGHAN: Stark and...

STILLEY: Was there a Tuck Milligan?(It was Maurice Milligan. Jacob L. "Tuck" Milligan ran against Truman in the 1934 primary. -- J.R. Fuchs, Truman Library.)

VAUGHAN: Milligan, yes. Tuck Milligan and Stark and Truman. And Truman won out in a three-way race. And in the election, the Republican candidate, I don't think there's a living soul who remembers who it was. I can't remember who it was, because when Truman got nominated, that did it at that time.

[12]

HILL: Were Senator Truman and yourself pretty confident of that reelection, or did it look pretty bad there for awhile during that reelection campaign?

VAUGHAN: Oh, in '40?

HILL: Yes.

VAUGHAN: Well, it didn't look too promising. Lloyd Stark had plenty of money. He was worth a million dollars; the Stark Nurseries, you know, and his wife was a wealthy woman, and so Stark had -- I'm sure Stark spent $100,000 on his campaign. He had money enough to go on radio, which we didn't, because we didn’t have a dime. He came out about four or five days before the election, and said, "Harry Truman's campaign fund is being furnished by Tom Pendergast."

Well, of course, he knew that wasn't true, but there would not be time between that and the election

[13]

STILLER: My goodness,

VAUGHAN: Boy, that was money and jewels in them days. And then I sent out some more letters to the rest

[14]

HILL: How did Senator Truman work in the Senate? Did he like to work in committees with other Senators, or did he work with his staff, or how...

VAUGHAN: Well, his staff -- I think Stuart Symington's staff now -- I just use Stu, my friend Stu, because he's a Missouri Senator see, or Tom Eagleton -- they've got a staff, each one of them probably got a staff of 40. Harry Truman's staff consisted of me as secretary. I was his secretary and I got $6,000 a year. The job is now called "administrative

[15]

MISS VAUGHAN: Mr. Truman liked the Senate, he liked to work in the Senate; he liked debate and...

VAUGHAN: Well, with the Truman Committee. You see, the Truman Committee was an accident to this extent. I began accumulating letters from back in Missouri from people, Missourians, complaining about the great waste of manpower and materiel at the building of Fort Leonard Wood and Camp Crowder. And so I accumulated about a hundred letters on that subject and I wrote for Mr. Truman's approval a letter that would answer them all, you see. And I took them in and showed him this pile of letters and I said, "Here's a suggested answer. You can change that any way you want." And he called back in a few minutes and he

[16]

So he spent two days driving down through Lee and to Fort Eustis and Fort George Mead, and there was another one over here in Maryland, I've forgotten. But he went to four different installations that were being built. He came back; "Oh, boy," he said, "that's not the half of it." He said, "I actually saw two men, they only had one hammer, and one fellow would drive a nail and the other grab the hammer and drive his nail, see. It was the most ridiculous thing in the world." He said, "I'm going to suggest to the Senate that we have a committee to investigate the war effort and not wait until after the war is over and then try and send some people to jail for being crooks." He said, "Let's keep them from being crooks."

[17]

Bob said, "Oh, I haven't got time for that now." He said, "I haven't got time." So Truman said to hell with it. It was his job and if he didn't want to do it -- so he got up in the Senate and proposed a committee and it was accepted by the people in the Senate, thought it was a good idea. So, they appointed him chairman, and gave him as Democrats Harley Kilgore of West Virginia, Mon Walgren of Washington, and Tom Connally of Texas. On the Republican side, Warren Brewster of Maine, Homer Ferguson of Michigan, and I think, the other one was Harold Burton, if I remember, of Ohio, who Truman later appointed to the Supreme Court.

MISS VAUGHAN: How about Senator Tunnell.

VAUGHAN: Oh yes, Tunnel was in there, too. He was a

[18]

Democrat. So we had four Democrats and two Republicans that were in there. That was the committee. It had, I think, while Truman was chairman of it, he resigned -- oh, Jim Mead was on there, too, from New York -- he resigned when he was nominated Vice President, and Jim Mead took over. But while Truman was chairman they had about fourteen major reports to the Senate on major subjects like aluminum (was one subject), and synthetic rubber was another subject. I don't remember what they all were now. There was not one single minority report. Every report of that committee was unanimous, because they all agreed that if you got all the facts on any subject, men of goodwill would agree. So it was the only committee I ever heard in the history of the United States Senate where their reports were always unanimous. Which shows the way you work.

Well, of course, it gave Harry Truman publicity that he didn't need and that was what made him Vice President, and he didn't want that either. I can categorically say that Harry Truman had no desire to be Vice President, in fact, he was very

[19]

I got a letter from some fellow -- he had a very German name -- he was a professor of something or other at Stephens College, I believe, in Columbia. But he had done a lot of research, he thought, and he insisted that Harry Truman was campaigning to be Vice President, and wanted to be Vice President. Harry Truman had promised Jimmy Byrnes that he would nominate him for Vice President. Some of the labor leaders refused to go along with Wallace in 1944. Roosevelt picked Harry Truman, with a little coaching probably from Bob Hannegan; I don't know, but I imagine there was coaching from Bob Hannegan. Roosevelt called Truman in Chicago and said, "Senator, I would like for you to allow your name to be placed in nomination for Vice President."

Truman said, "Mr. Roosevelt, I can't do it, I promised Jimmy Byrnes."

So, he said, "Well, Mr. President, if you insist, why, I'll allow my name to be placed in nomination." And it was immediately placed in nomination and everybody ran to get on the bandwagon; and so he got the job, which he didn't want; didn't need.

[20]

VAUGHAN: Well, of course, it was a well-kept secret or he wouldn't have been reelected. But I remember after the convention Mr. Roosevelt invited Truman over to have lunch with him at the White House and they had a table set out under those magnolia trees from the south portico by the rose garden area; and Truman came back and he said, "You know, I'm concerned," he said, "Mr. Roosevelt looks terrible." He said, "I had no idea he was as sick a man as he is." He said, "In pouring the tea, he put more tea in his saucer than he did in the cup." He said, "He's in bad shape." So, that's the first indication. You see, Truman hadn't seen Roosevelt for months; and Roosevelt hadn't appeared on TV or hadn't appeared in the public much, and so it was a well-kept secret that he was in such a bad shape. Roosevelt knew that he couldn't possibly live out the next four years; I don't know why he wanted to run again. That's one thing I hold against Roosevelt.

[21]

Truman was for making out an agenda for the conference. The first day of the meeting, I sat right behind him at that big old table; the first day of the meeting he submitted his agenda. Well, neither Churchill nor Stalin had an agenda at all,

[22]

And Winston Churchill, who I think is probably the greatest mind that we've produced in this century, Winston Churchill was not beyond doing a little skullduggery for the interest of the British Empire, as you know, He saved the British Empire, but he took every advantage he could get, which is what he was paid for; I admire him for it. But he'd say, "Now, Franklin and I agreed on so and so." Well, we didn't know that Franklin and he had agreed on anything, but how can you say, "Now, Mr. Churchill, I think you're a damn liar." That's not kosher. So that was a terrible handicap that Truman had at that Potsdam conference, which really didn't matter too much for the simple reason that Russia never kept any agreements that they made at all. It was a gentleman's agreement that the free access to West Berlin, across the Russian held part of Germany at all times. Within a year we had to have this Berlin

[23]

Well, if you're playing with the Russians you don't play by the Marquis of Queensbury Rules. You play in there in the finest barroom fighting technique you can think of, if you don't want to get the hell beat out of you; and that's why it's so ridiculous for this press -- I could talk for the rest of my life on things I dislike about the fourth estate. In my old age I get a little confused on numbers. This seems to me a great similarity between the third degree, the fourth estate, and the fifth column. They are all about the same. The press would do anything they could do -- and I don't know to what advantage, except that's the natural tendency of the animal -- to discredit the FBI and the CIA. I have no doubt that they both did things that don't look too good in print now; but they're trying to discredit everything that J. Edgar Hoover ever did,

Well, Mr. Truman and his White House staff, he gave particular certain duties to each member of the staff, and he didn't want to hear anything

[24]

[25]

MISS VAUGHAN: I think Mr. Hoover's problem was that he stayed too long.

VAUGHAN: He stayed too long.

MISS VAUGHAN: Everybody agrees that there is a time to retire.

VAUGHAN: It's fine for anybody in politics or in Government to quit when they're ahead. I wrote a letter to Stu [Stuart] Symington congratulating him on "quitting when you're ahead," because he's in high regard now and if he stays for another six year term, he's liable to drop his copybook.

MISS VAUGHAN: That was one of Mr. Roosevelt's problems, he stayed a bit too long.

VAUGHAN: Yes. I'm going to write a letter to my Senator Leonor K. Sullivan, too, for the same reason. She would be smart to get out while the going is good. Congressman Sullivan has done very well by the State of Missouri and I think she ought to rest

[26]

HILL: What were the press relations with the Truman White House? Did they get along very well, or was there...

VAUGHAN: Oh, Truman liked reporters. He liked them, he liked press conferences, and he liked the give and take of asking questions and trying to think up an answer. He never went for this business of submitting your question in writing ahead of time.

MISS VAUGHAN: He got along with the working reporters; he didn't get along with the publishers.

VAUGHAN; The publishers he took a pale view of. He said, "Those bastards, they editorialize their front page which is incorrect," He said, "A newspaper publisher has got a right to say anything that isn't libelous on his editorial page, but you have no right to editorialize the news."

[27]

Well, Warren got up and very graciously introduced the President, and he asked to drink a toast to the President, and we all stood up and drank champagne -- champagne I don't like anytime and in the middle of the day there ought to be a law. Well, anyway, then Truman made a short, about a one-minute talk -- he's good at these off-the-cuff speeches -- and, of course, everybody stood up and applauded, and I watched Bertie McCormick.

[28]

MISS VAUGHAN: He was, of course, known as a reactionary.

VAUGHAN: Bertie was, yes. He was a little to the right of Louis VI. You know it was his paper that had that headline "Dewey Defeats Truman." I got a copy of it on the wall there.

MISS VAUGHAN: It's fading.

VAUGHAN: I don't know how they preserve old newspapers. They've got some process of conserving them. They must have, because they've got newspapers a hundred years old.

MISS VAUGHAN: That isn't a newspaper, that's a Photostat, Dad. That's a Photostat of the front cover.

VAUGHAN: Well, all you can read right now is the headlines.

There are a lot of people in northern Illinois that confuse the Chicago Tribune with the Book of Psalms.

[29]

VAUGHAN: Oh, no, he never for a minute ever had the idea not to run for reelection, because he said, "If you can't get elected to a second term, that repudiates everything you did in the first term." But I knew four years ahead of time -- I could have made a little bit of money that he was not going to be a candidate in ‘52. Because in about December of 1948, he had been reelected but had not started his second term, I went in one day to his office to get his signature on something and he was writing a letter. I said, "'Are you going to run for reelection in 1952?"

He said, "Are you out of your mind? What are you talking about?" He said, "I haven’t even taken office for the second term."

I said, "Well, if you don't make a decision and make up your mind, the boys will come in and cry on your shirt and tell you that you owe it to the Party and you have to do this and you have to do that."

'Well, " he said, "let me tell you something.

[30]

The Democrats are working, I'm sure they don't have this in mind, but they are working as hard as they can to make a Republican out of me. They nominated a moron in '72, Mr. McGovern, who if he had had a little more sense he would have been half-witted, so I had to vote for Nixon, God help me. And it's fortunate Harry Truman was not alive, because he would really write me off. In about '73 or '74, whichever it was, anyway, when he sent troops into Cambodia, I thought that was a smart move and if it had been carried to a logical conclusion we would have won the war instead of losing it. So, I didn't write to Nixon, I wrote to our very good friend and fraternity brother Bryce Harlow. I told him that I thought that was very courageous of Mr. Nixon, and it took a lot of courage because he was going to catch hell from the press. I said, "If Mr. Nixon continues to do

[31]

HILL: In the '48 campaign did Mr. Truman expect to win all the time?

VAUGHAN: Oh yes, he never had any doubt. As I was saying, I sent this Xerox copy with no remarks on it to Truman and I got it back about a week later and down on the bottom was, "You son of a bitch, I've been suspicious of you for two years."

Yes, he was -- what I want to tell you. I was in Kansas City at that time, at the Muehlebach, at the penthouse of the Muehlebach where Truman always

[32]

HILL: Excelsior Springs.

VAUGHAN: Yes, over at Excelsior Springs. He said, "I'm going over there with a couple of the Secret Service boys, nobody is to know where I am until in the morning, be back for breakfast. But," he said, "I'll tell Mrs. Truman and she'll know where I went." So I talked to Jerry Reilly who was later head of the Secret Service. He was one of the two that were over there, had a sitting room and a bedroom, easy chairs in front of the TV, and had dinner served up in the sitting room to Mr. Truman and the two Secret Service men. Along about 8 o'clock Truman said, "Well, boys, you sit here if you want to, go to sleep in that chair if you want to, look at the TV," he said, "I'm going to bed." And went to bed. About midnight he got up, to go to the bathroom no doubt, and he came in and they were sitting there in front of the TV turned down low,

[33]

So, he got up about 6 o'clock, came out, and Reilly said, "Well, Mr. President, Mr. Dewey conceded about 4 o'clock, he conceded."

He said, "Oh, I thought he would, I thought he would. Let's go back over there," he said, "the boys will be waiting for us over at the Muehlebach for breakfast." So, he came over and got over there and had breakfast and along about 7:30, Truman and Charlie Ross, and the great friend of Truman's that died a year or so ago, he was the head of the Crown Drug Company, Tom Evans, Tom Evans who was on one of the Truman Library Board; there were about seven or eight of us for breakfast there, everybody was congratulating Truman. He said, "Well, that’s the way I figured it."

[34]

"Oh," I said, "he's got a chance, no doubt about that." I said, "There are a hell of a lot of people that are not talking that are going to be voting for him; he's got a chance." I said, "I'll make you one bet," I said, "I don't know about these great odds on Dewey, I don't know a thing about that, but I'll make you one bet that Harry Truman does better in his home state than Dewey does in his home state." I said, "I'll bet you $500."

He said, "Well, okay."

Well, Harry Truman carried Missouri by about 65 or 70 percent you see, and Dewey carried New York by a gnat's eyebrow, considering the fact that a million votes went to Henry Wallace in New York, and Henry Wallace, I don't know how it was, he got about 33 percent, Dewey got about 34 percent, Truman got about 31 percent or something like that, it was

[35]

He had all the jobs divided up amongst the staff members, and the same way with his Cabinet, he didn't want any confusion in the Cabinet, he didn't want any controversies in the Cabinet. Roosevelt kept his Cabinet in an uproar because he found that way he could keep his hands on the strings on everything himself, you see. He didn't have a Cabinet meeting but about once every three months. Truman had one once every week. He wouldn't hold still for any Cabinet member rocking the boat and causing -- that's why he got rid of Louis Johnson. Louis Johnson wouldn't mind his own damn business. He was just like MacArthur, wouldn't mind his own damn business. Louis Johnson was an able man and he would have been the best qualified fellow in the country to be Secretary of Defense, but he was pulling the rug out from under the State Department like MacArthur did; and Acheson was mad at him; he feuded with John Snyder

[36]

Truman had, I think, eighteen high staff members on his staff. I'm sure Ford has eighty-five or ninety. During the time that Harry Truman was President, the White House staff -- I mean the employees at the White House, including the gardeners and the waiters and the messengers, and the painter, and the plumber and everybody, and the White House police -- were between 450 and 500, never over 500. Eisenhower raised it to 900, Kennedy raised it to 1,300, Johnson raised it to 2,000, Nixon raised it to 2,800.I don't know, that's probably what it is now.

Now up at Shangri-La (it's now called Camp David, you know), Mrs. Truman and Margaret and the President were up there about three times in eight years; and the President was up there with his staff

[37]

[38]

Maybe we didn't spend all that money, just never occurred to us. We were just a bunch of small town yokels that just didn't know all the facts of life. I know this, though, I know if John Steelman and I, for example, had tried to get away with the things that Haldeman and Ehrlichman got away with, Harry Truman would have known about it by the next morning and before lunch we would have been flat out on the back of our laps on Pennsylvania Avenue. I dare say Nixon didn't know what all they cooked you know. Boy, Nixon absolutely belittles the great reputation of one of our great Missouri citizens, Jesse James. Now Jesse had to have a horse and a gun, he was old fashioned and inefficient. Nixon didn't need a horse and a gun, he did all right without it. A hell of a lot better than Jesse ever did.

HILL: What was President Truman's personality like? What was he like as an individual?

[39]

MISS VAUGHAN: The only thing I noticed -- I knew Mr. Truman as a child, because I was very young when Dad joined the White House over there -- many people don't realize this, you know. They talk about his profanity. He may have been a profane man, but he was also a very courtly man in the fact that he was a southern gentleman type, you know. You don't think of Missouri as being a southern

[40]

Tell them about that story when he appointed Mrs. so and so to her husband's post, and she showed up at the Cabinet meeting. Who was that?

VAUGHAN: What was that?

MISS VAUGHAN: Somebody died, somebody in his Cabinet died, and he appointed his wife.

VAUGHAN: Oh, that wasn't in a Cabinet meeting. Joe Short, his Press Secretary, died and he appointed Mrs. Short. You see it was only about three months. He appointed Mrs. Short to act in her husband's job, and he just expected her to accept the salary. He thought she would need the salary. No, she came to the staff meetings which he hadn't expected you see, and it kind of cramped our style a little bit.

And another thing, I'll tell you, Truman was profane, if he thought somebody was a son of a bitch, he called him so. He cussed like -- he drove

[41]

I remember Merriman Smith, one of the White House reporters; he played poker with us numerous times. He said, "One thing about the White House poker games, they are surprisingly free from the obscene remarks that are prevalent in many stag poker games,"

STILLEY: Were you present with President Truman when he went to Wake Island to meet General MacArthur?

VAUGHAN: That thing, collision course, all that, is purely fantasy, purely fantasy. We never waited a minute, I was on the damn plane, and I would like to have seen about thirty minutes delay because I was $400 behind in a gin rummy game with General Landry, and I thought in about thirty minutes I would get that money back. We never made it, we sighted the island, circled it, and sat right down, that’s all there was to it. MacArthur was down there on the beach; he had gotten there the night before, so

[42]

[43]

That Merle Miller, he and Susskind started this whole thing. Susskind had a brilliant idea about fifteen or twenty high points of American history, and Truman to narrate them like Alistair Cooke does some of that stuff, you know; and he went out and tried to sell the President on the idea and, of course, he had three or four interviews with the President and had a tape recorder. Of course, when Truman was talking off-the-cuff why he expressed some opinions he didn't want recorded. So anyway, Susskind couldn't sell the pilot film to a sponsor, he couldn't get a sponsor and so the thing died. The way he persuaded Truman was that he could raise two or three hundred thousand dollars for the Truman Library and Truman was collecting money to pay for the Library, you know, which he later turned over to the Government, So that was

[44]

That fellow that wrote this play, Sam Gallu, "Give 'em Hell, Harry," he interviewed me three or four times. We had lunch together a couple times and he got a lot of stuff from me, you know on the play. I think the play is well done. Have you seen it?

STILLEY: Yes.

VAUGHAN: I think it's very excellent, and, of course, it is excellent because of [James] Whitmore who is one of the best.

STILLEY: Where were you or when did you hear about the attempt on the President's life in Blair House?

VAUGHAN: Where was I? I was just five minutes from it. We were due to go over to Arlington Cemetery to dedicate a monument to Sir John Dill, who was the chief of the British mission here in this country. He said he thought Arlington was the most beautiful

[45]

MISS VAUGHAN: Would you tell about what the FBI man said when Mr. Truman looked out the window?

[46]

Truman had a new M-1 carbine, beautiful thing, probably useless, somebody had had all the metal parts nickel plated, you know, and oh, it was a very fancy looking job. He had it up there on the dresser. He said, "Here I was up here with this gun and not a round of ammunition." He said, "I could have picked them off."

MISS VAUGHAN: He was very upset about Private Cofelt.

VAUGHAN: Oh yes, the policeman was killed. Two of them were wounded and one of them was killed, White House police out in front. There were a couple of Secret Service men and they killed one of the…

[47]

VAUGHAN: Well, he said there was lot of magnetic noises. Well, it's no misdemeanor to be crazy in Puerto Rico.

MISS VAUGHAN: It's no misdemeanor to be crazy anyplace so long as you don't shoot somebody. It's just put down as a mild, you know, eccentricity; but if you go shooting people, that's an anti-social act.

VAUGHAN: Well, if I've been of any assistance to you gentlemen, I'm glad to do it. I never wanted to give William Jewell any assistance out on the football field, but anyplace else...

[48]

VAUGHAN: Oh, yes. Westminister quit playing varsity football.

MISS VAUGHAN: Cow pasture football, played it in a pasture.

VAUGHAN: We played well enough to be champions, won a couple of years back there, but...

STILLEY: What during the Truman administration was the President most proud of? What things that he was able to do, did he think were his greatest accomplishments?

VAUGHAN: Well, I think he was the proudest of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall plan. Of course, the Marshall plan -- he devised the Marshall plan, but he persuaded General Marshall to let him use his name on it, because he said if he used his name, all the Republicans in the Senate would fight against it, and it would be just like Woodrow Wilson with the League of Nations.

MISS VAUGHAN: General Marshall had a lot to do with the Marshall plan.

[49]

MISS VAUGHAN: Well, it was well deserved, he was a very fine gentleman.

VAUGHAN: Well, and a brilliant man, and the only man in the history of the country that held four jobs, any one of which -- as chief of staff of the Army, as later -- much later -- Secretary of Defense. (Had to get a special act of Congress for a general officer to be Secretary of Defense.) As Secretary of State, as Ambassador, in a way, to China, commissioner to China. Oh, yes, George Marshall was a man of great ability. Another man of great ability that didn't get much credit for it, I think, was Fred Vinson, Fred Vinson was not a great lawyer, probably; I don't know. He was not a great judge, I don't know. But he had a great ability to get people to get along with each other, and he was a kind of a peacemaker over there in the Court, you see, and kind of kid them along. Yes, Fred was quite a guy.

[50]

MISS VAUGHAN: If you're going to die, that's the way to do it.

VAUGHAN: You bet your life.

STILLEY: Were there any decisions that the President made that he later regretted or wished that he hadn't made?

[51]

[52]

STILLEY: We are about to come to the conclusion or to the end of our interview, are there any comments or things that you would like to say about President Truman?

VAUGHAN: Well, I think the principal thing that the American people ought to remember about Harry Truman, he was just a guy like you, or your next door neighbor, and he got into a job that was too big for him. In fact, the job is too big for anybody to do it right. He knew that -- the only difference between Truman and some of the people that had come after him -- he hadn't any delusion that he

[53]

Lyndon Johnson, I don't know about Lyndon Johnson. I had some dealings with Lyndon Johnson before he was President. But any man who is worth less than half a million dollars when he goes into the Presidency, and is worth fourteen or fifteen million when he comes out of the Presidency, is a little suspect in my book. Now, I don't know, I'm not making any accusations, or anything; but Harry Truman had hardly any more money when he came out of the Presidency than when he went in. There wasn't any pension for the Presidents at that time. There wasn't any office allowance for the Presidents, Truman had a hell of a time paying for his office rent in Kansas City. The Library hadn't been built where his office was later. Eisenhower wrote his

[54]

STILLEY: Well, thank you very much General Vaughan.

VAUGHAN: You're entirely welcome.

Acheson, Dean, 35
Arkansas, 5
Arlington Cemetery, 44-45
Armed Services Committee, 17

Barkley, Alben W., 9, 50
Berlin Airlift, 23
Berry, General Lucien G., 3
Blair House, 44
Burton, Harold H., 17
Byrnes, James F., 19, 21, 22

California, 27
Cambodia, 30-31
Camp Crowder, Missouri, 15, 16
Camp David, 36-37
Casablanca, Morocco, 21
Central Intelligence Agency, 23
Chicago, Illinois, 19
Chicago Tribune, 27, 28
China, 49
Churchill, Winston S., 21, 22
Coffelt, Leslie, 46
Columbia, Missouri, 19
Connally, Tom, 17
Cooke, Alistair, 43
Crown Drug Company, 33
Crusade in Europe, 53-54

Dennison, Robert L., 45
Dewey, Thomas E., 28, 33, 34, 35
Dill, Sir John, 44-45

Eagleton, Thomas, 14
Ehrlichman, John, 38
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 36, 53, 54
Evans, Tom L., 33
Excelsior Springs, Missouri, 32

Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco, California, 27
Farley, James A., 13
Federal Bureau of Investigation, 23, 24-25, 45-46
Ferguson, Homer, 17
Field Artillery Brigade, 60th, 3-4
Field Artillery Regiment, 129th, 2, 4
Field Artillery Regiment, 130th, 2, 8
Field Artillery Regiment, 379th, 5
Field Artillery Regiment, 380th, 5
Field Artillery Regiment, 381st, 5
Ford, Gerald R., 36
Fort Eustin, Virginia, 16
Fort Lee, Virginia, 16
Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, 15, 16
Fort Mead, Maryland, 16
Fort Riley, Kansas, 5-6
Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 1

Gallu, Sam, 44
George, Walter, 9
"Give 'em Hell, Harry," 44

Haldeman, Robert, 38
Hannegan, Robert, 13, 19
Harlow, Bryce, 30
Hiroshima, Japan, 51
Hoover, J. Edgar, 23, 24-25

Independence, Missouri, 31
Internal Revenue, 54

James, Jesse, 38
Japan, 51
Johnson, Louis A., 35
Johnson, Lyndon B., 36, 53

Kaltenborn, H.V., 33
Kansas, 2
Kansas City, Missouri, 6, 10, 31, 53
Kennedy, John F., 36
Kilgore, Harley M., 17

Landry, Robert B., 41
League of Nations, 48

M-1 carbine, 46
MacArthur, Douglas, 35, 41-42
Maine, 17
Marine Corps, 37
Marquis of Queensbury Rules, 23
Marshall, George C., 48-49
Marshall Plan, 48
Martians, 47
Mather, Cotton, 27
McCormick, Robert Rutherford, 27-28
McGovern, George, 30
Michigan, 17
Military Affairs Committee, U.S. Senate, 17
Miller, Merle, 43, 44
Milligan, Jacob L. "Tuck," 11
Milligan, Maurice, 11
Missouri, 25, 34, 35, 39
Missouri Senatorial campaign of 1940, 11, 12-14
Missouri, University of, 7

Naval Affairs Committee, U.S. Senate, 17
New York State, 34
Nixon, Richard M., 30-31, 36, 37, 41

Officers Training Camp, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 2
Ohio, 17

Pearl Harbor, 51
Pendergast, James M., 7-8
Pendergast, Tom, 7-10
Phi Beta Kappa, 7
Plain Speaking, 42
Poker, 41
Potsdam Conference, 21-22
Presidential election campaign, 1948, 31-35

Reilly, Jerry, 32
Reynolds, Robert R., 17
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 9, 19, 22, 25, 35

• • health of, 20-21
• Ross, Charles G., 33
  Russia, 21, 23

  San Francisco, California, 27
  St. Louis, Missouri, 2, 6
  Secret Service, 32, 46
  Senatorial campaign of 1940 in Missouri, 11, 12-14
  Shangri La, 36-37
  Short, Joseph H., 40
  Short, Mrs. Joseph H., 40
  Smith, Merriman, 41
  Snyder, John W., 5, 35-36
  South Carolina, 17
  Stalin, Joseph, 21-22
  Stark, Lloyd C., 11, 12
  Stark Nurseries, 12
  State Department, U.S., 52
  Steelman, John R., 38
  Stephens College, 19
  Sullivan, Leonor K., 25-26
  Supreme Court, 17
  Susskind, David, 43
  Symington, Stuart, 14, 25

  Teheran, Iran, 21
  Texas, 17
  Treasury Department, U.S., 5
  Truman, Bess Wallace, 32, 43
  Truman, Harry S., 19, 30, 38

  • accomplishments of, 48
    assassination attempt on, 44-47
    and Cabinet, 35-36
    cursing of, 39-41
    decision not to run, 29-30
    as judge, 6-7
    and MacArthur, Douglas, 41-42
    and Pendergast, Tom, 7-10, 12
    personality of, 38-40
    and poker playing, 41
    and Potsdam, 21-22
    and the Presidential Election Campaign of 1948, 31-35
    and the press, 26-28
    as a road builder, 8
    as a Senator, 10, 14
    and the Senatorial Campaign in Missouri, 1940, 11, 12-14
    and staff organization, 23, 36
    and Susskind, David, 43
    and the Truman Committee, 15-18
    and Vaughan, Harry, 1, 3-5, 14-15
    as Vice President, 18-21
  Truman Committee, 15-17
  Truman Doctrine, 48
  Truman Library, 43, 53
  Truman Library Board, 33
  Tunnell, James M., 17-18

  Union League Club, 27
  Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 21, 23
  University of Missouri, 7

  Vaughan, Harry:

  • and the Field Artillery Brigade, 60th, 3-4
    and Hoover, J. Edgar, 24
    and Truman, Harry S.:
    • as an aide for, 5
      assassination attempt at Blair House, 44-47
      as campaign manager for, 5, 12
      meeting of, 1, 3-5
      as secretary for, 5, 14-15
      and Senatorial Campaign of 1940, 11, 12-14
      staff duties of, 24
    and the Truman Committee, 15-18
  Vaughan, Mrs. Harry, 37
  Vinson, Fred, 49-50
  Virginia, 50

  Wake Island Conference, 41
  Wallace, Henry A., 19, 34, 35
  Wallgren, Mon C., 17
  Warren, Earl, 27
  Washington, State of, 17
  Washington and Lee College, 50
  West Virginia, 17
  Westminster College, 44
  Whitmore, James, 44
  William Jewell College, 47-48
  Williamsburg, U.S.S., 37
  Wilson, Woodrow, 48
  World War I, 2

  Yalta, 21