SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH
Suppressing The Truth THE hope that the Joint Congressional Pearl Harbor Investigating Committee would give the country a full, fair, and forthright inquiry is fading rapidly. Recurring delays,...
...Unless there is a decided change of heart, the Committee might better disband now and announce that it hasn't the integrity and the intestinal fortitude to get at and present the truth to the people...
...What else could have been in mind except to clear the records of certain individuals concerned...
...THE Congressional investigation into the Pearl Harbor disaster must not, in any sense, be a political lynching-bee, but just as clearly, it must not be the kind of cheap whitewash that some of the Administration leaders, in and out of Congress, are plotting to give us...
...It represented, on the whole, an encouraging reversal of his earlier judgment that the deep-going labor-management dispute over wages was "just a little blow-up...
...Truman's action in putting the finger on the two committees of the House of Representatives— Ways and Means and the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments—which are engaged in a sit-down strike against legislation for liberalized unemployment compensation and for full employment, was a heartening indication that he recognizes now that backslapping will not win the war on the home front, and that it will take a courageous willingness to wade in and slug it out with the reactionary forces in Congress and the country...
...Brewster presented official doucments showing that the then Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, ordered an Army officer to travel around the world to have Pearl Harbor witnesses change their stories in order to put the Roosevelt Administration in a better light...
...President Truman, apparently sobered by growing criticism into the realization that barnstorming will not solve any of the problems which plague the country, settled down last week to a series of preliminary conferences with labor and- management spokesmen in an earnest effort to lay a sound and solid groundwork for the conference...
...What kind of way is that to conduct an investigation...
...After reading from the documents and official instructions from Stimson, Brewster said: "I think I may summarize the results of Maj...
...But only the most frustrated cynic can avoid taking satisfaction from the fact that there is such a conference at all in so strained a period, that both sides agreed unanimously on the agenda, and that there is a genuine determination to come to grips with the fundamental differences which unsettle the nation today...
...Owen Brewster and Homer Ferguson that Army officials have been ordered to suppress knowledge they have of the Pearl Harbor tragedy, and, in some cases, to repudiate testimony previously given under oath...
...Sherman Miles, chief of intelligence at the time of Pearl Harbor, in which the latter contends that he was ordered by Gen...
...Only a professional Pollyahna can expect that the conference will solve all our problems and usher in an era of labor-management peace and goodwill...
...FERGUSON said he had on his desk a sworn statement by Maj...
...SEN...
...On the heels of this revelation came the charge on the floor of the Senate by Sens...
...Sen...
...They carried him entirely around the world in securing affidavits in which persons who had previously testified before the Army Pearl Harbor Board repudiated in substantial respects the evidence they had previously given...
...An Historic Conference THE eyes of thoughtful Americans are focused this week on the Labor-Management conference in Washington where the basic economic issues which divide the nation, and endanger the whole process of reconversion are being thrashed out across the table...
...7, 1941, attack...
...TRUMAN helped launch the conference in still another way...
...George Marshall, Chief of Staff, to refuse to divulge to the Army Pearl Harbor Board pertinent facts regarding the Dec...
...Any effort on his part to fix specific wage scales by Federal fiat could only have undermined the basic labor law of the land and created a precedent which might one day rise to plague labor...
...Recurring delays, the engagement of inadequate counsel, the mysterious disappearance of vital documents, and the intimidation of informed Army and Navy officials by the brass-hat hierarchy in Washington—all these are rapidly undermining the confidence of the country in the integrity of the investigation even before the Committee holds its first public hearing...
...His address to the nation on wages and prices (see Page 3 for a report of the speech) was, despite some obvious shortcomings, a statesmanlike analysis of the problem and a sensible approach to a solution...
...Charles A. Beard, America's most distinguished historian, made it abundantly clear in an article in The Progressive two months ago that the country must know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Pearl Harbor if it is to have the facts with which to formulate for the future an intelligent foreign policy, a better working relationship between the Executive and Legislative branches of the Government, sounder coordination between the civilian and military arms of Government, effective methods for keeping the people informed on foreign policies, and an efficient consolidation of the Army and Navy...
...The disclosure by Frank C. Hanighen of Human Events, carried in The Progressive last week, that important papers throwing light on the Pearl Harbor disaster have disappeared, was confirmed last week by the Committee's counsel, William D. Mitchell...
...Truman stressed in these private conferences a basic point long emphasized in The Progressive —that the peoples of the whole world are watching what America does to achieve economic stabilization at home, and that the extent of our success here will go far toward determining the effectiveness of our role in world affairs * * * MR...
...Clausen's investigations" [the officer sent to Army posts abroad to talk with men who had first-hand knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack...
...Unless the Administration, the War and Navy Departments, and the majority of the Committee change their present attitude, none of these constructive goals will be reached...
...The President's refusal to submit a specific scale of wage increases drew immediate fire from some of the critics, but we feel he was on sound ground when, after stating his basic premise that wages must be increased to take up the sharp reduction in take-home pay while prices must be held in line to prevent a dangerous inflationary spiral, he left the concrete determination of wage scales for the various industries to the democratic process of collective bargaining...
Vol. 9 • November 1945 • No. 45
