Moralists at Work

Both Harry Truman and New Hampshire's Charles Tobey like to bugle about the deplorable state of U.S. moral values. Last week they blew at each other, and the noises sounded a little tinny all around.

Senator Tobey started things at a secret session of the Senate subcommittee investigating the Reconstruction Finance Corp. (TIME, March 5). The President, he told the Senators, had telephoned him last month to warn that the White House "had the goods on a great many" Congressmen who had taken fees for influencing RFC loans. This sounded like either the makings of a first-rate scandal or a brazen attempt to head off the congressional investigation, and Tobey hounded the White House for proof. Three weeks later, he said, the President called back to admit he had no such proof.

And how could Tobey prove all this? He had, without Harry Truman's knowledge, made a recording of the two presidential phone calls. There was nothing wrong about that, he insisted hurriedly (even though the Federal Communications Commission bans as illegal any recording device that doesn't give off a tell-tale beep every 15 seconds). The Senate sergeant at arms had installed the recorders, lots of Senators used them, and "it has been a great help to me . . ."

The White House quivered with righteous indignation. Said Press Secretary Joe Short: "The President thinks that the recording of telephone conversations is outrageous." Next day--the day that he was also busy firing MacArthur--Harry Truman was right back on Tobey's wire. He, like some Capitol Hill reporters, had heard that Tobey was talking impeachment over the RFC affair. No, said Tobey, he had intended "nothing of the sort." Replied Truman: "I've gotten that information from a source in whom I have the most complete confidence . . . Now let me tell you this, Senator. If you want to have me impeached you just go right ahead and I'll help you." Then he slammed the telephone on the hook.

It would have been a collector's item for anybody's album. But this time the Senator from New Hampshire had neglected to turn on his recorder.

One day last week White House Stenographer Lauretta Young put on the cloth coat she had been conspicuously wearing of late, and quit her job. Her ownership of an $8,540 royal pastel mink coat, which was conveniently financed by a Washington attorney who specialized in federal contacts, titillated the Senate investigation into RFC influence-peddling last month (TIME, March 12). To hear Presidential Secretary Joe Short tell it, Mrs. Young (after working for Harry Truman since his senatorial days) had simply decided "to devote more time to domestic duties."

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