Washington Head-Hunters

Almost any night last week a small, trim man with a boxer's nose could be seen letting himself out of an office in the Pentagon Building and striding briskly down the corridor with a brief case heavy with homework. James Forrestal had served his country conscientiously for eight years--as an anonymous assistant to Franklin Roosevelt, as Secretary of the Navy, and finally as Secretary of National Defense. His face showed no expression but a kind of habitual pugnacity. In no way did he betray the fact that he had been marked as the victim of one of the biggest headhunts in the history of Washington politics.

The Pace-Setters. The hunt was a case history in government by pressure. The hunters were Communists, Zionists, Wallaceites, liberals, deserving Democrats who coveted his job, and gossip columnists--a faction as mixed as their motives. Henry Wallace was one of the earliest pacesetters, sounding the accusatory note: ex-Wall Street Financier Forrestal, onetime president of Dillon Read, was a conniver in a capitalist plot to plunge the country into war. The Communist Daily Worker joined in.

So did the New York Post and the weekly Nation, but they had a different reason. Forrestal had stirred them up by wanting to put Germany back on her feet, as essential to European recovery. He had enraged them in the Palestine dispute by urging that the U.S. be mindful at the same time of Arab friendship. As Secretary of National Defense he stoutly defended this policy as necessary to protect the U.S.'s Middle East oil supplies and its vital chain of Middle East air bases. His critics did not give him credit for that kind of reasoning, whether it was wrong or right; they merely shouted "Wall Street."

Standing at Valley Forge. Columnist Walter Winchell caught the scent. He echoed the baying from the far left, also saw Forrestal plotting a Wall Street dictatorship. Leaping on a civil-defense bill prepared at Forrestal's direction, he shrilled that if the bill passed, "you may be in jail for reasons they will not even tell you. You think you are sitting in your homes tonight but. . . you and your liberties are again standing at Valley Forge." The liberal St. Louis Post-Dispatch said of the plan: "The sooner it is enacted . . . the more soundly the nation can sleep at night." But wakeful Winchell repeated the cry of "Wall Street," and told his vast radio audience: "Demand that your Congressman send you the cross-examinations of Secretary Forrestal when his Wall Street firm was under investigation."

Winchell's. friend Drew Pearson, a longtime Forrestal enemy, and Pearson's old partner, Robert Allen, joined the chase. Presumably they were aided and abetted by dozens of Washington officeholders who have come to hate Forrestal for his views and his insistence on urging them. They turned their pressure on the White House: the President should demand Forrestal's resignation. When Forrestal did not resign, as they kept predicting that he would, Pearson implied ominously that Forrestal was hanging on to his job so that he could further "the Wall Street conspiracy."

Retort Prosaic. A reserved man, full of the knowledge that any Washington official has to dodge his share of flying tomahawks, Forrestal made little effort to counter the attacks. Goaded, he finally prepared a long, prosaic letter to send Congressmen who received anxious and puzzled inquiries from radio listeners.

Winchell's reference to an investigation of Forrestal's old Wall Street firm concerned a Senate committee hearing in 1933 on financial trading. Forrestal pointed out: "I stated that the applicable tax laws of the U.S. and Canada had led me to make" an investment in 1929 in a Canadian company. In effect, he had found a way to postpone tax payments. That same year (1929), said Forrestal, he had paid upwards of $300,000 in federal and New York State taxes. It was his behavior as a friendly witness in the Senate hearing which prompted Roosevelt to ask him to serve as one of his assistants. When Forrestal left Dillon Read to go into government, he sold all his interests in the firm.

Last week Forrestal was still in the Cabinet, Winchell, Pearson, Allen, et al. notwithstanding. He called on the President, and afterwards told waiting reporters, who asked him whether he expected to continue as Secretary of Defense: "Yes, that's right. I will continue to be a victim of the Washington scene."

Forrestal had not raised his finger in the election campaign, and in fact had embarrassed the President politically by his stand on Palestine. Forrestal plugged aggressively in Cabinet sessions for his policies, sometimes on subjects which the President didn't think concerned him. It was no secret that Harry Truman, while recognizing his ability as a Cabinet officer, would like to get rid of him in good time--perhaps after the military budget was settled.

Paradoxically, Forrestal last week still held his job largely because of the attacks on him. He himself wanted to get out, but he was unwilling to go out under pressure. Harry Truman was letting him stay on, at least a little longer, because the President also gets stubborn under pressure.

This situation was too much for Hatchetman Pearson, who likes to be influential, but not in a negative way. This week, in wrathful confusion, he broadcast: "The most important aspect of this incident is . . . the fact that Mr. Truman should let important decisions of state be made or reversed by a radio commentator, no matter who he is. It's probably going to make some of us think twice about criticizing inefficient public officials for fear Mr. Truman will then decide to continue them in office."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.