The Roosevelt-Daniels Tapes
Beichman, Arnold
Arnold Beichman The Roosevelt-Daniels Tapes I have been much troubled by a book I read recently. It is called White House Witness: 1942-1945,* by Jonathan Danels, last survivor of the staff...
...That would certainly be nice for a change...
...Somebody sold a sheet of stamps and they got a high price on the stamp market...
...It is called White House Witness: 1942-1945,* by Jonathan Danels, last survivor of the staff immediately around President Roosevelt...
...Even I denied it for the White House by saying that the charges were "malicious rumors and statements now being published by certain newspapers hostile to the government and to certain officials of the government...
...Early: "The trouble is to find a clean spot on Harry anywhere...
...I refused to do so, so Ickes asked me to lend him the stamps and he'd give me a receipt for them...
...There are complaints that due to the shortage of elastic, women can't keep their pants up...
...211-214) *4* These are some of the incidents recounted by Daniels...
...My question did not arise so that the answer would congeal into a cunning apology for ex-President Nixon and his unsavory crew...
...Roy Howard was offered these letters for publication...
...We went out and dug up some dirty stuff on Willkie, with photographs showing that Willkie's father had been buried in potter's field as a drunkard with whom Willkie would have nothing to do...
...My question did not arise so that the answer would congeal into a cunning apology for ex-President Nixon and his unsavory crew...
...Perhaps they could wash off the toilet seat with Lysol...
...Rotnem: You know I never trusted [Secretary of the Interior] Harold Ickes...
...I refused to do so, so Ickes asked me to lend him the stamps and he'd give me a receipt for them...
...You know the story about the Beaverbrook jewels...
...P.: We'll consider that, Elmer...
...P.: Let's try...
...I suppose what I'm trying to show is that human nature is neither Democratic nor Republican...
...Calvin Coolidge...
...I have seen them myself...
...Early: The story came out in the Washington Times-Herald about a bridal gift to Mrs...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 17 Briggs was later indicted by a Federal grand jury on charges of forgery, mail fraud, and getting money under false pretenses but he died before the case could be tried...
...Hopkins from Beaverbrook who worked with Harry on the Lend-Lease program...
...Nor was I looking to fabricate a to quoque argument...
...Somehow letters on spiritualism written on Department of Agriculture stationery had gotten into the hands of Republicans...
...P.: It wasn't bad, Jonathan...
...Hopkins from Beaverbrook who worked with Harry on the Lend-Lease program...
...Daniels: I'd like also to suggest that the FEPC fight ought to be settled before President Barclay [of Liberia] comes here for his visit...
...180) *** Wednesday, 13 January 1944: (Present: Stephen Early, FDR's press secretary, and Daniels...
...Daniels: I'd like also to suggest that the FEPC fight ought to be settled before President Barclay [of Liberia] comes here for his visit...
...There was a medium in the Department of Agriculture who had gotten fired...
...Nor was I looking to fabricate a to quoque argument...
...180) *** Wednesday, 13 January 1944: (Present: Stephen Early, FDR's press secretary, and Daniels...
...I must have lost fifty pounds in three weeks...
...He said, "Ten or 16 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 twelve...
...I did that...
...Early: The story came out in the Washington Times-Herald about a bridal gift to Mrs...
...Daniels: You're not the only one...
...elections would have lost my vote—surely to Wendell Willkie in 1940 and to Thomas E. Dewey probably in 1944—had I heard on tapes some of the things Daniels reports FDR or his associates said in private...
...Daniels: What did you do with that stuff...
...The President wanted to make it clear that no member of his Cabinet had sold the stamps...
...He asked the FBI to investigate...
...What troubled me was that the FDR I had supported in four successive `Doubleday, $8.95...
...Somebody sold a sheet of stamps and they got a high price on the stamp market...
...I did that...
...There's a rich Texas newspaper millionaire, Charles Marsh, who's a believer in spiritualism, like Wallace and his assistant...
...But then I thought: why would you have voted for FDR's opponents without knowing what their tapes might have revealed about them...
...Daniels: What did you do with that stuff...
...We were afraid that Wallace, being an honest guy, would say, 'Yes I wrote them, so what?' Daniels: Well, what happened...
...pp...
...Secretary of the Treasury Herbert E. Gaston] and said he wanted a statement from them to the effect that they were declared for duty and what about it...
...In each case I have given page numbers from the Daniels book should anyone want to check the original_ *** Friday, 30 April 1943: (Present: Marvin McIntyre, a secretaryto the President, Elmer Davis, head of the Office of War Information, President Roosevelt, and Daniels himself I have reconstructed the dialogue except for what is in quotation marks...
...I never owned an emerald and don't own one now...
...Towards the end of World War II, Daniels became FDR's press secretary, succeeding Stephen Early...
...elections would have lost my vote—surely to Wendell Willkie in 1940 and to Thomas E. Dewey probably in 1944—had I heard on tapes some of the things Daniels reports FDR or his associates said in private...
...It turned out that the letter on authentic White House stationery had been given to Sparks by an assistant to Ickes, George N. Briggs...
...It's a lie...
...Daniels: That was a grand speech you made last night, Mr...
...We went out and dug up some dirty stuff on Willkie, with photographs showing that Willkie's father had been buried in potter's field as a drunkard with whom Willkie would have nothing to do...
...Daniels: Steve, I'm worried about the bad publicity Harry Hopkins has been getting...
...President...
...That would certainly be nice for a change...
...After all, you'll excuse me he is coming here to the White House...
...Davis: Well, we've suggested to the War Department that if the Army kept its soldiers at home at night it wouldn't make any difference about elastic...
...But then I thought: why would you have voted for FDR's opponents without knowing what their tapes might have revealed about them...
...Davis: I wonder about President Bar-clay's condition...
...I never owned an emerald and don't own one now...
...182-184) *** Tuesday, 25 July 1943: (Present: Daniels and Victor Rotnem, attorney for a philatelist trade association and a Washington stamp-dealer...
...As I read the book I kept thinking to myself: "How would all these anecdotes and revelations have sounded had they been taped and then made public...
...pp...
...You know the story about the Beaverbrook jewels...
...I was talking to medical officers out there and they were appalled by the venereal disease rate among our Negro troops stationed in Liberia...
...The jacket describes the book as "an intimate diary of the years with F.D.R...
...209-210) *** Tuesday, 3 August 1943: (Present: David Niles, assistant to FDR, and Daniels...
...Perhaps they weren't emeralds but they were certainly diamonds...
...Sparks used this letter as proof that Willkie was the President's stooge...
...Where I quote directly—as shown by the use of inverted commas—it is either a direct quotation by Daniels himself or Daniels quoting someone directly...
...It turned out that the letter on authentic White House stationery had been given to Sparks by an assistant to Ickes, George N. Briggs...
...Towards the end of World War II, Daniels became FDR's press secretary, succeeding Stephen Early...
...P.: A good idea, let Mac handle it...
...Apparently that was real love but she died of cancer of the breast and he married this girl Louise Macy...
...We need to bring back to the White House the idea that a gentleman and a well-brought-up family live within its precincts, and that their private conversations, were they ever to be revealed, would show an alignment between private and public image...
...He then sent them over to Gaston [Asst...
...Harry didn't declare them and smuggled them into the country...
...Ickes then got a news item into the papers that Honest Harold had shown the President he still had the unperforated sheets...
...There are some conversations Ben Bradlee has reported in his recent memoir of John F. Kennedy which are sad to read, and Bradlee was a friend...
...Niles: "We let the Republicans know that if they used the Wallace stuff, we were going to use the stuff on Willkie...
...Hopkins denied everything, "I don't even own one emerald...
...182-184) *** Tuesday, 25 July 1943: (Present: Daniels and Victor Rotnem, attorney for a philatelist trade association and a Washington stamp-dealer...
...He then sent them over to Gaston [Asst...
...P.: I told them that I wanted those islands to produce more than "sugar and niggers...
...President...
...Daniels: That was a grand speech you made last night, Mr...
...Fortunately for Harry they were antique diamond clips which had been in Beaverbrook's family for some time...
...P.: A good idea, let Mac handle it...
...Niles: "We let the Republicans know that if they used the Wallace stuff, we were going to use the stuff on Willkie...
...As I read the book I kept thinking to myself: "How would all these anecdotes and revelations have sounded had they been taped and then made public...
...Rotnem: Yes, I remember that...
...Secretary of the Treasury Herbert E. Gaston] and said he wanted a statement from them to the effect that they were declared for duty and what about it...
...Rotnem: You know I never trusted [Secretary of the Interior] Harold Ickes...
...P.: It wasn't bad, Jonathan...
...He asked the FBI to investigate...
...One of the best ways to do this is with tourists...
...I suppose they all get it before they are grown, as I understand there is no such thing as chastity in Liberia after the age of five or six...
...Daniels: I sure do...
...Ickes tried to buy back the unperforated stamps or swap them back...
...The letters were finally purchased by Paul Block, the publisher, and he sent a reporter to confront Wallace with the letters...
...President...
...pages 165-166) *** Thursday, 29 July 1943: (Present: President Roosevelt, Welch Pogue, chairman, Civil Aeronautics Board, Daniels...
...The pamphlet had a letter supposedly from Hopkins to some educator, in which Hopkins was predicting that Willkie would again be Republican nominee for President in 1944...
...Rotnem: And then Ickes returned the sheets to my stamp company...
...Then the President asked his Cabinet members to show him their stamp sheets and that they hadn't sold them...
...Early: "The trouble is to find a clean spot on Harry anywhere...
...Fortunately for Harry they were antique diamond clips which had been in Beaverbrook's family for some time...
...It's 75 per cent...
...pp...
...I suppose they all get it before they are grown, as I understand there is no such thing as chastity in Liberia after the age of five or six...
...Pogue: Thank you, Mr...
...Rotnem: You remember the scandal where Jim Farley distributed unperforated sheets of stamps to members of the Cabinet and others...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 17 Briggs was later indicted by a Federal grand jury on charges of forgery, mail fraud, and getting money under false pretenses but he died before the case could be tried...
...Davis: I wonder about President Bar-clay's condition...
...None of them really touched FDR—not even remotely—in the same way that Watergate besmirched Nixon and led to his downfall...
...pp...
...Daniels: I know the letter you mean, the one in the autumn of 1943, when C. Nelson Sparks published his anti-Willkie pamphlet...
...Somehow letters on spiritualism written on Department of Agriculture stationery had gotten into the hands of Republicans...
...Hopkins denied everything, "I don't even own one emerald...
...None of them really touched FDR—not even remotely—in the same way that Watergate besmirched Nixon and led to his downfall...
...Perhaps Gerald Ford may demonstrate that there can be a gentleman in the White House...
...Niles: "Every day the Democrats expected the story to break...
...Niles: The story about Henry Wallace and the letters is quite simple...
...I said to one of the doctors, "I suppose it must be ten or twelve per cent...
...Welch, I'm glad you're here...
...For the hell of it, I have excerpted from the Daniels memoir some of his recitals and have turned them into dialogue where none exists except as indirect discourse...
...P.: I want to talk to"you about the airline situation after the war...
...Pogue: Good...
...Jock Whitney knows who she is...
...Ickes tried to buy back the unperforated stamps or swap them back...
...Rotnem: You remember the scandal where Jim Farley distributed unperforated sheets of stamps to members of the Cabinet and others...
...The jacket describes the book as "an intimate diary of the years with F.D.R...
...pp...
...Which reminds me of my trip to Liberia after the Casablanca conference...
...pp...
...Rotnem: Right, but in the meantime Ickes had sent out his stamp assistant [sic]—he's now the President's stamp adviser—to my company where I swapped the unperforated sheets for other stamps of equal value...
...P.: I told them that I wanted those islands to produce more than "sugar and niggers...
...It is called White House Witness: 1942-1945,* by Jonathan Danels, last survivor of the staff immediately around President Roosevelt...
...They weren't emeralds but they were certainly diamonds...
...It's a lie...
...A man who could do that could forge a letter from Harry Hopkins...
...Perhaps Gerald Ford may demonstrate that there can be a gentleman in the White House...
...The letters were finally purchased by Paul Block, the publisher, and he sent a reporter to confront Wallace with the letters...
...No doubt one could take conversations of Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower, and Harry Truman and find some god-awful things they had said in private...
...The more I've thought about the question, the more I've wonderedjust whose privately taped conversations in the White House might have been made public without creating what Theodore H. White has described as the "breach of faith...
...It is called White House Witness: 1942-1945,* by Jonathan Danels, last survivor of the staff immediately around President Roosevelt...
...I was talking to medical officers out there and they were appalled by the venereal disease rate among our Negro troops stationed in Liberia...
...There are complaints that due to the shortage of elastic, women can't keep their pants up...
...P.: I want to talk to"you about the airline situation after the war...
...Rotnem: And then Ickes returned the sheets to my stamp company...
...18 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 Arnold Beichman The Roosevelt-Daniels Tapes I have been much troubled by a book I read recently...
...I discussed this with the British even when Chamberlain was Prime Minister and particularly the development of the West Indies, all of them, British, American, Dutch, and French...
...Daniels: Hopkins was furious and denounced the letter as a forgery...
...Daniels: I sure do...
...It's 75 per cent...
...Who, say, since Woodrow Wilson...
...That's how the scandal started...
...There's a rich Texas newspaper millionaire, Charles Marsh, who's a believer in spiritualism, like Wallace and his assistant...
...Ickes then got a news item into the papers that Honest Harold had shown the President he still had the unperforated sheets...
...Davis: Well, we've suggested to the War Department that if the Army kept its soldiers at home at night it wouldn't make any difference about elastic...
...Perhaps they weren't emeralds but they were certainly diamonds...
...Daniels: Hopkins was furious and denounced the letter as a forgery...
...You've been having some trouble with the War Department, haven't you...
...Daniels: Steve, I'm worried about the bad publicity Harry Hopkins has been getting...
...Pogue: Good...
...We were afraid that Wallace, being an honest guy, would say, 'Yes I wrote them, so what?' Daniels: Well, what happened...
...There are some conversations Ben Bradlee has reported in his recent memoir of John F. Kennedy which are sad to read, and Bradlee was a friend...
...We need to bring back to the White House the idea that a gentleman and a well-brought-up family live within its precincts, and that their private conversations, were they ever to be revealed, would show an alignment between private and public image...
...He stole right out of Wallace's files letters which showed that Wallace got his directions as to government policies from the spirit world...
...P.: We'll consider that, Elmer...
...Daniels: But what has all this to do with the diamonds...
...You know, Harry first married a Jewess and then threw her away to marry his secretary...
...Which reminds me of my trip to Liberia after the Casablanca conference...
...I said to one of the doctors, "I suppose it must be ten or twelve per cent...
...This same officer told me that venereal disease in Liberia is 100 per cent...
...The Wallace letters were never used, but they are still in the possession of the Republicans...
...Stupidity, avarice, arrogance abound everywhere, including Washington, D.C...
...Who, say, since Woodrow Wilson...
...Rotnem: Yes, I remember that...
...He stole right out of Wallace's files letters which showed that Wallace got his directions as to government policies from the spirit world...
...The pamphlet had a letter supposedly from Hopkins to some educator, in which Hopkins was predicting that Willkie would again be Republican nominee for President in 1944...
...Jock Whitney knows who she is...
...A man who could do that could forge a letter from Harry Hopkins...
...Stupidity, avarice, arrogance abound everywhere, including Washington, D.C...
...President...
...you just can't explain them away...
...I suppose what I'm trying to show is that human nature is neither Democratic nor Republican...
...Then the President asked his Cabinet members to show him their stamp sheets and that they hadn't sold them...
...The Wallace letters were never used, but they are still in the possession of the Republicans...
...pages 165-166) *** Thursday, 29 July 1943: (Present: President Roosevelt, Welch Pogue, chairman, Civil Aeronautics Board, Daniels...
...They had been appraised and examined and established the fact that they were antique and not subject to duty...
...You know, Harry first married a Jewess and then threw her away to marry his secretary...
...209-210) *** Tuesday, 3 August 1943: (Present: David Niles, assistant to FDR, and Daniels...
...One of the best ways to do this is with tourists...
...Sparks had been the Republican mayor of Akron and hated Willkie...
...Where I quote directly—as shown by the use of inverted commas—it is either a direct quotation by Daniels himself or Daniels quoting someone directly...
...Niles: The story about Henry Wallace and the letters is quite simple...
...I must have lost fifty pounds in three weeks...
...No doubt one could take conversations of Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower, and Harry Truman and find some god-awful things they had said in private...
...What troubled me was that the FDR I had supported in four successive `Doubleday, $8.95...
...211-214) *4* These are some of the incidents recounted by Daniels...
...They weren't emeralds but they were certainly diamonds...
...Daniels: Regarding the Fair Employment Practices Committee where we've been having so much trouble, I'd suggest that we let the whole business be centered in McIntyre rather than have lots of people fooling around with it, Mr...
...He said, "Ten or 16 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 twelve...
...Bernie Baruch knows who she is...
...In each case I have given page numbers from the Daniels book should anyone want to check the original_ *** Friday, 30 April 1943: (Present: Marvin McIntyre, a secretaryto the President, Elmer Davis, head of the Office of War Information, President Roosevelt, and Daniels himself I have reconstructed the dialogue except for what is in quotation marks...
...Daniels: You're not the only one...
...you just can't explain them away...
...The more I've thought about the question, the more I've wonderedjust whose privately taped conversations in the White House might have been made public without creating what Theodore H. White has described as the "breach of faith...
...They had been appraised and examined and established the fact that they were antique and not subject to duty...
...Niles: "Every day the Democrats expected the story to break...
...Apparently that was real love but she died of cancer of the breast and he married this girl Louise Macy...
...Sparks had been the Republican mayor of Akron and hated Willkie...
...Welch, I'm glad you're here...
...You've been having some trouble with the War Department, haven't you...
...I discussed this with the British even when Chamberlain was Prime Minister and particularly the development of the West Indies, all of them, British, American, Dutch, and French...
...Daniels: Regarding the Fair Employment Practices Committee where we've been having so much trouble, I'd suggest that we let the whole business be centered in McIntyre rather than have lots of people fooling around with it, Mr...
...The President wanted to make it clear that no member of his Cabinet had sold the stamps...
...Daniels: Then Ickes took your borrowed stamps to the White House and showed them to the President...
...Chappaquiddick is no more a Democratic crime than Watergate is a Republican crime...
...For the hell of it, I have excerpted from the Daniels memoir some of his recitals and have turned them into dialogue where none exists except as indirect discourse...
...Harry didn't declare them and smuggled them into the country...
...Sparks used this letter as proof that Willkie was the President's stooge...
...Even I denied it for the White House by saying that the charges were "malicious rumors and statements now being published by certain newspapers hostile to the government and to certain officials of the government...
...Only after the 1940 Presidential campaign began did he have his body moved to a decent part of the cemetery...
...Daniels: Then Ickes took your borrowed stamps to the White House and showed them to the President...
...President...
...Imagine if all of Bradlee's reports had been on uncensored tapes...
...Calvin Coolidge...
...Rotnem: Right, but in the meantime Ickes had sent out his stamp assistant [sic]—he's now the President's stamp adviser—to my company where I swapped the unperforated sheets for other stamps of equal value...
...18 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 Arnold Beichman The Roosevelt-Daniels Tapes I have been much troubled by a book I read recently...
...Pogue: Thank you, Mr...
...Only after the 1940 Presidential campaign began did he have his body moved to a decent part of the cemetery...
...Imagine if all of Bradlee's reports had been on uncensored tapes...
...There was a medium in the Department of Agriculture who had gotten fired...
...That's how the scandal started...
...President...
...Perhaps they could wash off the toilet seat with Lysol...
...My views on the Watergate scandal were published in The Alternative in the June-September 1974 issue, well before Nixon's resignation...
...P.: Let's try...
...I have seen them myself...
...My views on the Watergate scandal were published in The Alternative in the June-September 1974 issue, well before Nixon's resignation...
...After all, you'll excuse me he is coming here to the White House...
...Towards the...
...Daniels: I know the letter you mean, the one in the autumn of 1943, when C. Nelson Sparks published his anti-Willkie pamphlet...
...This same officer told me that venereal disease in Liberia is 100 per cent...
...Daniels: But what has all this to do with the diamonds...
...Bernie Baruch knows who she is...
...Roy Howard was offered these letters for publication...
...Chappaquiddick is no more a Democratic crime than Watergate is a Republican crime...
Vol. 9 • December 1975 • No. 3
