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...
...Roy Howard was offered these letters for publication...
...Daniels: You're not the only one...
...After all, you'll excuse me he is coming here to the White House...
...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...
...None of them really touched FDR—not even remotely—in the same way that Watergate besmirched Nixon and led to his downfall...
...That would certainly be nice for a change...
...Rotnem: And then Ickes returned the sheets to my stamp company...
...The President wanted to make it clear that no member of his Cabinet had sold the stamps...
...Who, say, since Woodrow Wilson...
...He said, "Ten or 16 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 twelve...
...The letters were finally purchased by Paul Block, the publisher, and he sent a reporter to confront Wallace with the letters...
...pp...
...211-214) *4* These are some of the incidents recounted by Daniels...
...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...
...There was a medium in the Department of Agriculture who had gotten fired...
...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: "Every day the Democrats expected the story to break...
...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...
...He stole right out of Wallace's files letters which showed that Wallace got his directions as to government policies from the spirit world...
...Daniels: But what has all this to do with the diamonds...
...You've been having some trouble with the War Department, haven't you...
...Ickes then got a news item into the papers that Honest Harold had shown the President he still had the unperforated sheets...
...Hopkins from Beaverbrook who worked with Harry on the Lend-Lease program...
...P.: A good idea, let Mac handle it...
...It is called White House Witness: 1942-1945,* by Jonathan Danels, last survivor of the staff immediately around President Roosevelt...
...I said to one of the doctors, "I suppose it must be ten or twelve per cent...
...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...
...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...
...209-210) *** Tuesday, 3 August 1943: (Present: David Niles, assistant to FDR, and Daniels...
...Harry didn't declare them and smuggled them into the country...
...Rotnem: Yes, I remember that...
...Towards the...
...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...
...One of the best ways to do this is with tourists...
...P.: Let's try...
...Perhaps they weren't emeralds but they were certainly diamonds...
...Roy Howard was offered these letters for publication...
...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...
...He said, "Ten or 16 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 twelve...
...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...
...He then sent them over to Gaston [Asst...
...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...
...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...
...My question did not arise so that the answer would congeal into a cunning apology for ex-President Nixon and his unsavory crew...
...I refused to do so, so Ickes asked me to lend him the stamps and he'd give me a receipt for them...
...P.: I want to talk to"you about the airline situation after the war...
...Fortunately for Harry they were antique diamond clips which had been in Beaverbrook's family for some time...
...Niles: "We let the Republicans know that if they used the Wallace stuff, we were going to use the stuff on Willkie...
...It turned out that the letter on authentic White House stationery had been given to Sparks by an assistant to Ickes, George N. Briggs...
...Perhaps Gerald Ford may demonstrate that there can be a gentleman in the White House...
...Somehow letters on spiritualism written on Department of Agriculture stationery had gotten into the hands of Republicans...
...Rotnem: And then Ickes returned the sheets to my stamp company...
...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...
...Davis: I wonder about President Bar-clay's condition...
...That would certainly be nice for a change...
...Niles: "Every day the Democrats expected the story to break...
...You've been having some trouble with the War Department, haven't you...
...I never owned an emerald and don't own one now...
...There are complaints that due to the shortage of elastic, women can't keep their pants up...
...Daniels: Steve, I'm worried about the bad publicity Harry Hopkins has been getting...
...Only after the 1940 Presidential campaign began did he have his body moved to a decent part of the cemetery...
...P.: We'll consider that, Elmer...
...182-184) *** Tuesday, 25 July 1943: (Present: Daniels and Victor Rotnem, attorney for a philatelist trade association and a Washington stamp-dealer...
...Which reminds me of my trip to Liberia after the Casablanca conference...
...I suppose what I'm trying to show is that human nature is neither Democratic nor Republican...
...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: I know the letter you mean, the one in the autumn of 1943, when C. Nelson Sparks published his anti-Willkie pamphlet...
...Hopkins denied everything, "I don't even own one emerald...
...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...
...Perhaps they could wash off the toilet seat with Lysol...
...180) *** Wednesday, 13 January 1944: (Present: Stephen Early, FDR's press secretary, and Daniels...
...Apparently that was real love but she died of cancer of the breast and he married this girl Louise Macy...
...Somehow letters on spiritualism written on Department of Agriculture stationery had gotten into the hands of Republicans...
...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...
...Somebody sold a sheet of stamps and they got a high price on the stamp market...
...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...
...I was talking to medical officers out there and they were appalled by the venereal disease rate among our Negro troops stationed in Liberia...
...Only after the 1940 Presidential campaign began did he have his body moved to a decent part of the cemetery...
...Rotnem: You know I never trusted [Secretary of the Interior] Harold Ickes...
...One of the best ways to do this is with tourists...
...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...
...President...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...P.: We'll consider that, Elmer...
...Daniels: Then Ickes took your borrowed stamps to the White House and showed them to the President...
...you just can't explain them away...
...Sparks used this letter as proof that Willkie was the President's stooge...
...Pogue: Thank you, Mr...
...The President wanted to make it clear that no member of his Cabinet had sold the stamps...
...We were afraid that Wallace, being an honest guy, would say, 'Yes I wrote them, so what?' Daniels: Well, what happened...
...211-214) *4* These are some of the incidents recounted by Daniels...
...Daniels: Hopkins was furious and denounced the letter as a forgery...
...Hopkins denied everything, "I don't even own one emerald...
...The Wallace letters were never used, but they are still in the possession of the Republicans...
...The letters were finally purchased by Paul Block, the publisher, and he sent a reporter to confront Wallace with the letters...
...Perhaps they weren't emeralds but they were certainly diamonds...
...Early: The story came out in the Washington Times-Herald about a bridal gift to Mrs...
...I did that...
...None of them really touched FDR—not even remotely—in the same way that Watergate besmirched Nixon and led to his downfall...
...President...
...Towards the end of World War II, Daniels became FDR's press secretary, succeeding Stephen Early...
...209-210) *** Tuesday, 3 August 1943: (Present: David Niles, assistant to FDR, and Daniels...
...Ickes tried to buy back the unperforated stamps or swap them back...
...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...
...Calvin Coolidge...
...I must have lost fifty pounds in three weeks...
...President...
...Ickes then got a news item into the papers that Honest Harold had shown the President he still had the unperforated sheets...
...I have seen them myself...
...P.: It wasn't bad, Jonathan...
...P.: A good idea, let Mac handle it...
...Hopkins from Beaverbrook who worked with Harry on the Lend-Lease program...
...What troubled me was that the FDR I had supported in four successive `Doubleday, $8.95...
...Daniels: Then Ickes took your borrowed stamps to the White House and showed them to the President...
...This same officer told me that venereal disease in Liberia is 100 per cent...
...You know the story about the Beaverbrook jewels...
...Sparks had been the Republican mayor of Akron and hated Willkie...
...Bernie Baruch knows who she is...
...Imagine if all of Bradlee's reports had been on uncensored tapes...
...Daniels: That was a grand speech you made last night, Mr...
...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...
...Niles: The story about Henry Wallace and the letters is quite simple...
...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: I know the letter you mean, the one in the autumn of 1943, when C. Nelson Sparks published his anti-Willkie pamphlet...
...Rotnem: You remember the scandal where Jim Farley distributed unperforated sheets of stamps to members of the Cabinet and others...
...pages 165-166) *** Thursday, 29 July 1943: (Present: President Roosevelt, Welch Pogue, chairman, Civil Aeronautics Board, Daniels...
...He asked the FBI to investigate...
...Perhaps they could wash off the toilet seat with Lysol...
...pp...
...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...
...Daniels: What did you do with that stuff...
...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...
...It's a lie...
...Welch, I'm glad you're here...
...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...
...I must have lost fifty pounds in three weeks...
...Daniels: But what has all this to do with the diamonds...
...Daniels: You're not the only one...
...You know, Harry first married a Jewess and then threw her away to marry his secretary...
...Daniels: Steve, I'm worried about the bad publicity Harry Hopkins has been getting...
...My views on the Watergate scandal were published in The Alternative in the June-September 1974 issue, well before Nixon's resignation...
...But then I thought: why would you have voted for FDR's opponents without knowing what their tapes might have revealed about them...
...The Wallace letters were never used, but they are still in the possession of the Republicans...
...Then the President asked his Cabinet members to show him their stamp sheets and that they hadn't sold them...
...P.: I told them that I wanted those islands to produce more than "sugar and niggers...
...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...
...Then the President asked his Cabinet members to show him their stamp sheets and that they hadn't sold them...
...Imagine if all of Bradlee's reports had been on uncensored tapes...
...They weren't emeralds but they were certainly diamonds...
...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...
...My question did not arise so that the answer would congeal into a cunning apology for ex-President Nixon and his unsavory crew...
...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...
...They had been appraised and examined and established the fact that they were antique and not subject to duty...
...Early: The story came out in the Washington Times-Herald about a bridal gift to Mrs...
...Who, say, since Woodrow Wilson...
...Stupidity, avarice, arrogance abound everywhere, including Washington, D.C...
...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...
...Niles: The story about Henry Wallace and the letters is quite simple...
...They weren't emeralds but they were certainly diamonds...
...P.: Let's try...
...pp...
...pp...
...You know the story about the Beaverbrook jewels...
...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...
...We were afraid that Wallace, being an honest guy, would say, 'Yes I wrote them, so what?' Daniels: Well, what happened...
...Fortunately for Harry they were antique diamond clips which had been in Beaverbrook's family for some time...
...It is called White House Witness: 1942-1945,* by Jonathan Danels, last survivor of the staff immediately around President Roosevelt...
...A man who could do that could forge a letter from Harry Hopkins...
...Pogue: Thank you, Mr...
...Early: "The trouble is to find a clean spot on Harry anywhere...
...That's how the scandal started...
...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...
...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...
...The jacket describes the book as "an intimate diary of the years with F.D.R...
...182-184) *** Tuesday, 25 July 1943: (Present: Daniels and Victor Rotnem, attorney for a philatelist trade association and a Washington stamp-dealer...
...Daniels: That was a grand speech you made last night, Mr...
...It's a lie...
...What troubled me was that the FDR I had supported in four successive `Doubleday, $8.95...
...Davis: I wonder about President Bar-clay's condition...
...180) *** Wednesday, 13 January 1944: (Present: Stephen Early, FDR's press secretary, and Daniels...
...P.: It wasn't bad, Jonathan...
...Towards the end of World War II, Daniels became FDR's press secretary, succeeding Stephen Early...
...Daniels: I sure do...
...It's 75 per cent...
...After all, you'll excuse me he is coming here to the White House...
...I did that...
...Perhaps Gerald Ford may demonstrate that there can be a gentleman in the White House...
...Chappaquiddick is no more a Democratic crime than Watergate is a Republican crime...
...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...
...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 jacket describes the book as "an intimate diary of the years with F.D.R...
...This same officer told me that venereal disease in Liberia is 100 per cent...
...Rotnem: You remember the scandal where Jim Farley distributed unperforated sheets of stamps to members of the Cabinet and others...
...Welch, I'm glad you're here...
...I have seen them myself...
...Niles: "We let the Republicans know that if they used the Wallace stuff, we were going to use the stuff on Willkie...
...I suppose what I'm trying to show is that human nature is neither Democratic nor Republican...
...But then I thought: why would you have voted for FDR's opponents without knowing what their tapes might have revealed about them...
...A man who could do that could forge a letter from Harry Hopkins...
...I was talking to medical officers out there and they were appalled by the venereal disease rate among our Negro troops stationed in Liberia...
...My views on the Watergate scandal were published in The Alternative in the June-September 1974 issue, well before Nixon's resignation...
...It's 75 per cent...
...pages 165-166) *** Thursday, 29 July 1943: (Present: President Roosevelt, Welch Pogue, chairman, Civil Aeronautics Board, Daniels...
...I refused to do so, so Ickes asked me to lend him the stamps and he'd give me a receipt for them...
...Chappaquiddick is no more a Democratic crime than Watergate is a Republican crime...
...Rotnem: You know I never trusted [Secretary of the Interior] Harold Ickes...
...Ickes tried to buy back the unperforated stamps or swap them back...
...Early: "The trouble is to find a clean spot on Harry anywhere...
...pp...
...Calvin Coolidge...
...Daniels: I sure do...
...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...
...President...
...Daniels: What did you do with that stuff...
...Stupidity, avarice, arrogance abound everywhere, including Washington, D.C...
...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...
...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 never owned an emerald and don't own one now...
...There are complaints that due to the shortage of elastic, women can't keep their pants up...
...That's how the scandal started...
...It turned out that the letter on authentic White House stationery had been given to Sparks by an assistant to Ickes, George N. Briggs...
...Which reminds me of my trip to Liberia after the Casablanca conference...
...Somebody sold a sheet of stamps and they got a high price on the stamp market...
...P.: I want to talk to"you about the airline situation after the war...
...Jock Whitney knows who she is...
...Sparks had been the Republican mayor of Akron and hated Willkie...
...Rotnem: Yes, I remember that...
...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...
...There's a rich Texas newspaper millionaire, Charles Marsh, who's a believer in spiritualism, like Wallace and his assistant...
...He asked the FBI to investigate...
...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...
...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...
...It is called White House Witness: 1942-1945,* by Jonathan Danels, last survivor of the staff immediately around President Roosevelt...
...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...
...Apparently that was real love but she died of cancer of the breast and he married this girl Louise Macy...
...Nor was I looking to fabricate a to quoque argument...
...Daniels: Hopkins was furious and denounced the letter as a forgery...
...President...
...They had been appraised and examined and established the fact that they were antique and not subject to duty...
...There's a rich Texas newspaper millionaire, Charles Marsh, who's a believer in spiritualism, like Wallace and his assistant...
...Pogue: Good...
...President...
...Pogue: Good...
...I said to one of the doctors, "I suppose it must be ten or twelve per cent...
...Harry didn't declare them and smuggled them into the country...
...Jock Whitney knows who she is...
...you just can't explain them away...
...Sparks used this letter as proof that Willkie was the President's stooge...
...Nor was I looking to fabricate a to quoque argument...
...pp...
...He then sent them over to Gaston [Asst...
...You know, Harry first married a Jewess and then threw her away to marry his secretary...
...Bernie Baruch knows who she is...
...There was a medium in the Department of Agriculture who had gotten fired...
...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...
Vol. 9 • December 1975 • No. 3
