Truman Library - Robert L. Dennison Oral History Interview, September 10, 1971

Graduate of U.S. Naval Academy, 1923; Assistant Chief of Naval Operations, 1945-47; Commander of the U.S.S. Missouri, 1947-48; Naval Aide to President Harry S. Truman,1948-53; Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Command, Commander of the Atlantic Fleet, and Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic, 1960-63.

NOTICE
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

HESS: Admiral, to get under way, would you tell me a little about your personal background; where were you born, where were you educated and what are a few of the positions that you have held?

DENNISON: I was born in April, 1901, in Warren, Pennsylvania. That's a small town up in the northwestern part of the State. I went to grade school and then spent two years in the Kiski School, which is a preparatory school near Pittsburgh, and from there I went to the Naval Academy and graduated in 1923.

I have a bachelor's degree from the Naval Academy, a master's degree from Pennsylvania State, and a doctorate from Johns Hopkins. I've been in the Navy almost all of my life, 43 years, I think.

DENNISON: I found it tremendously valuable. Although I never actually practiced engineering I found engineering to be a way of analyzing and tackling problems and making decisions. I had some engineering duty, but not very much. I was director of the mechanical engineering laboratory at the Engineering Experiment Station while I went to Hopkins.

HESS: What were a few of the commands that you had in the Navy before your White House days?

DENNISON: Oh, I commanded a number of various type ships. A submarine-rescue vessel was my first command, and one of my most interesting ones, and I have commanded submarines, and destroyers, the USS Missouri, a cruiser division, commanded the First Fleet in the Pacific. Later I was Commander in Chief of the U.S. Naval Forces in Europe, then Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic for NATO, Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Command, and Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet.

DENNISON: The first meeting. I never asked him whether he remembered it, but Jim [James V.]Forrestal was supposed to go to Japan and China to look into the problem of reparations.Ed [Edwin W.] Pauley was to go out with

him and meet with various authorities, including Chiang Kai-shek. For some reason or other, Forrestal at the last moment couldn't go, so he had Artemus Gates, who was the Under Secretary, go. I was going along because I was then Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Political and Military Affairs, and adviser to Forrestal, then Secretary of the Navy.

Well, somebody told me that President Truman was very fond of maps, which was certainly true. So, when Gates and I returned from the trip, we had seen Chiang Kai-shek, we had gone to Chungking to see him, spent the night there, and had seen a good many other people as well. I had a full account of this trip written up and I had made a number of maps, or marked up a lot of them. So, Gates and I were sent to the White House (I suppose President Truman invited us), to report on this trip. And he truly was fascinated by the maps and spent quite a little time with us. That was the first time that I met him.

HESS: When did you meet him the next time? Was that when you were Commander of the Missouri?

DENNISON: The next time I met him was in Rio. I was in command of the Missouri and also in command of a small task force and my job was to go down to Rio to meet

the President and bring him back. I had two or three destroyers and a supply ship, I believe.

I got there before the President, and soon after he arrived he sent for me. I went to his room where he was staying and my first impression of him (although I had seen him only a couple of years before), was to note the thickness of his glasses and the intensity of his eyes. He greeted me and said how glad he was to have the chance to go back with me. He was looking forward to it. So, we spent, as I recall, about eight days in Rio.

The occasion of his visit was the signing of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, called the Rio pact. It was signed on the second anniversary of the day that the surrender document was signed aboard the USS Missouri. We had a big reception on board, the President was there and President [General Eurico Gaspar] Dutra was there, and a lot of foreign dignitaries.And then I didn't see him again until he came aboard to sail. It was a perfectly marvelous voyage. I've never seen the ocean so calm.

HESS: I have heard that Mr. Truman enjoyed that voyage a great deal. Is that right? Do you think that he had a good time on the way back?

did everything possible. The weather was just great. We had a very elaborate crossing-the-line ceremony, and he spoke to the crew, describing himself as a Democrat with a little "d" I think he said. We had a whole gang of reporters on board. They had sweat shirts with "Truman Athletic Club" on them, and went out for calisthenics every day and worked out with the crew. He had a chance to relax, play cards, and nobody could bother him.

All presidential radio traffic came through me. It came over a high level Navy circuit and was very highly classified. The only people who knew the contents of the incoming messages were my decoding officer and myself.

One evening I received a message that was of some importance, so I took it to the President who was in his cabin, sitting at a table surrounded by some of his staff. I believe they were playing poker. I've forgotten that detail. But at any rate, I handed the President a sheet of paper containing the message. He read it and didn't tell anybody at the table what it was. He simply handed the message back to me and said, "Tell the son of a bitch he'll have to shoot his way in."

Well, the message was that Tito was reported to be massing a large number of troops on his northern border, apparently with the idea of moving into Trieste. We and the British, and I forget, perhaps some other allies, had forces in there, more for stabilization purposes than anything else.We had garrisons there, I forget the number of men, probably not over five thousand. But at any rate, this was the President's reaction to any possible move on Tito's part.

I've forgotten what I wrote and sent back, but I would imagine I probably sent back exactly what he said because there wasn't any way to paraphrase that. That said it. But whatever it was, I've forgotten. Nor did I know what the State Department did about it, how they got a message to Tito and what that said. But perhaps that's in the State Department records or files some place. But I do know that that was the end of any rumblings from Yugoslavia. Whatever message Tito got,he certainly understood it.

HESS: One further comment about Marshal Tito. Even though he is an avowed Communist, he is generally regarded as always having acted independently of Russia. He was one of the first major splits away from a monolithic

Communist Party. Was it discussed in the early Truman days that perhaps if we could not necessarily work with such movements, we might encourage such movements? Even though it would be encouraging a Communist Party, it would be encouraging one that was splitting away from the Russians. Was that discussed?

DENNISON: Yes, because it was well recognized at the time that anything we could do to fragment the strength of Soviet communism was probably to our advantage. Tito had done well in Yugoslavia with some help from us. He's completely nationalistic. He's not under the control of Soviet Russia. He is a Communist and I guess if he has to be a Communist it is better for him to be our Communist than the Soviet's Communist. But he's completely nationalistic, of course, as I just said, and we can't look to him to use any influence in the Middle East or anywhere else. I think what we want him to do is to generally approve of what we're doing and to say so, which he has, and keep out of the way.

HESS: All right. Before we move on further with Mr. Truman, you have mentioned your position on Mr. Forrestal's staff. Let's discuss Mr. James Forrestal just for a few minutes. What are your earliest

DENNISON: My first real contact with him was when I became Assistant Chief of Naval Operations and Admiral [Chester W.] Nimitz was the Chief of Naval Operations at that time.I had done some work with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the latter days of the war, and there were so many postwar problems appearing that involved the Navy and the Army, and the State Department. We didn't have any contacts with the State Department except for visas and things like that. So, I proposed to Admiral Nimitz that we organize a branch of his office to deal with the various committees and various people who were going to be handling some of these tremendously important problems.

So he said, "All right, draw up a charter and go ahead with it." He said, "You have my blessing."

Well, I had a hell of a time because in those days the word "diplomat" was a dirty word and the Navy didn't want anything to do with the State Department. I did draft what I thought this organization should be and what it should do, and got the charter cleared by all the top people in the Navy Department, all the ones that were senior to me, and there were a good many of them, and took it in to Admiral Nimitz.

He read it and said, "This is fine, Dennison, just exactly what we ought to have."

He said, "I don't want to hear another word out of you for a year about going to sea, and you're going to take this job."

I said, "Well, I'm only a Captain. It's written for a Rear Admiral. All the other services are going to have Generals on it to head their equivalent department."

Well, then Forrestal heard about it. He thought it was a great idea. They were organizing what was called the State, War and Navy Coordinating Committee, and we had to have a staff, we had to have papers, we had to have somebody review these documents. So, I became his politico-military adviser. My office was on the floor above his in the old Navy Department. I was hooked up with him by a squawk box and attended a good many meetings with him and in his office and at briefings.

I worked very closely with John Sullivan, who was his Under Secretary, and later Secretary. I went with him, Forrestal, to meetings of what was called the "Committee of Three." I'll tell you about it in a moment.

But to get back to my first impression of Forrestal. He never indicated what he was thinking and you had to guess it. He always asked a lot of questions. He'd never read a memorandum more than one page long, and I know of a great many memoranda he never read. He gave me the impression once he had a piece of paper that said something, he automatically knew all about it, put it in a drawer and forgot it, or put it in his files, which later became the Forrestal papers which I was also mixed up in.

So that was my first impression. He seemed to me to be very nervous and very unfeeling about his personal staff. He'd go out late in the afternoon and play golf, expect the men to stay there, and then he'd come back and work until all hours of the night without any regard for these people. But he had a broad knowledge of people, he knew a lot of people and put me in touch with a lot of people who were helpful to me in some of our problems. He wasn't without ability, but he was a very difficult man.

And incidentally, a year to a day after my conversation with Nimitz, he sent for me. Then he said, "Go and pack your suitcase. You are going to sea."

He said, "You're going to command the Missouri." It was the biggest and best command we had so it didn't take me long to get out of town. I can assure you of that. But this Committee of Three might be interesting to you.

This was the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy. They met once a week in the State Department. There were never any minutes kept. Nobody was to be there except these three people. Oh, the strangest things would happen. I'd get a telephone call from one of my opposite numbers in the Army or State asking, "When is the Navy going to do so and so?"

And they'd say, "Well, our Secretary told us that Mr. Forrestal said that he was going to do it."

DENNISON: No. It wasn't me. It was the whole Navy. And so he persuaded the others that each man ought to have somebody with him. The man with him wasn't to take any notes. They still didn't want any record of these meetings.

Another feature of these meetings was when they were through with this business they'd call on Admiral Leahy and immediately be transformed into the National Intelligence Agency, I believe it was called then, the forerunner of CIA.

But anyway Patterson had Howard Peterson who was Assistant Secretary of War, an attorney; Secretary of State had "Dot" [H. Freeman] Matthews most of the time and John D. Hickerson stood in for him occasionally; I was with Forrestal. Well, after the meeting of these three, Peterson, Matthews and I would get together to decide what these fellows should have said, who said what, who'd promised something, so that our own departments would know what had gone on. It was a lifesaver.

HESS: Were those men your opposite number on the State, War and Navy Coordinating Committee?

DENNISON: The Secretaries themselves were members of this committee. Our Under secretary, Sullivan, really represented Forrestal. Forrestal didn't go to very many meetings. They had a lot of subcommittees. It was quite a complicated setup and they handled some very important problems. One of them that was of great interest to the Navy was what to do with the ex-Japanese mandate. The State Department,wanted to give them back to the natives, practically the entire Navy, and certainly the War Department wanted to annex them. Well, neither one of those solutions was any good.

So, this was one of the problems thrown into this committee, and it turned out that the Navy took the lead in it and I actually drafted the trusteeship agreement myself with the help of a couple of young Reserve officers who were lawyers in my shop, establishing, if approved, a security trusteeship in the United Nations under the Security Council. This is the only such trusteeship in existence. It gave us what we wanted. It gave us authority to close off certain parts of the area if we wanted to, a number of privileges that wouldn't pertain under a trusteeship under the General Assembly. And in the end the Army sort of

dropped out because we seemed to know what we were doing. The-State Department, which had vigorously opposed this whole idea, was finally convinced and they changed course 180 degrees, and held briefings with newsmen and various groups. Ralph Bunche was one of the principal supporters. I was ordered, along with some of the State Department people, to go up and brief Warren Austin and to attend the meeting of the Security Council where this was to be considered.

We'd expected a veto from Soviet Russia. Instead of that they supported the whole idea and our main problem came from the British, but Austin stood fast. He finally said that he'd like to remind the Council of one thing, and that was that we captured the islands, our flag was flying over them, and if they wouldn't accept our proposal, which was in full accord with the treaty, provided for in the charter, then we would consider annexing the islands. So they voted and it passed.

DENNISON: Well, I have no idea what element went.into his selection. He was well-known and was a capable business man and he seemed to be a capable executive, and I don't

know whether they picked his name out of a hat, or just how it came about. I never knew.

DENNISON: Well, it takes somebody with courage, executive ability. Somebody who can appeal to people and get their cooperation. And remember, in those days we're talking about, before the National Security Act, the Secretary of the Navy was a member of the Cabinet, so it was an important Government position. Then, of course, we later had a Secretary of Defense. He and he alone was a member of the Cabinet. These three service secretaries were subordinate to him.

DENNISON: Well, Sullivan resigned because Louis Johnson, without consulting him, cancelled a contract for a large aircraft carrier.

John was a Catholic so Johnson had the bright idea that politically it would be just great to get as Secretary a super Catholic, which Matthews was; in spite of the fact that he knew absolutely nothing about the Navy and never found out. There are a

I remember one time, in the President's office, we were just discussing some man who was going to get an appointment to some government job. The President entered into the discussion and Harry Vaughan had some uncomplimentary things to say about this fellow and said, "Who’s for him?"

How would you rate the four men who served as Secretary of the Navy under Mr. Truman: James Forrestal, John L. Sullivan, Francis P. Matthews and Dan A. Kimball?

DENNISON: Well, remember they served in such different circumstances it's hard to tell how any one of the four would have performed in a different time frame. I think you would have to put them Forrestal, Sullivan, Kimball and Matthews, and Matthews was a distant fourth.

DENNISON: Oh, the best one for the times was obviously Forrestal, but Sullivan was a dynamo, a very able man, extremely capable, and he did a great deal of work for Forrestal.

HESS: Was the major reason that Mr. Sullivan left, the cancellation of the contract for the super carrier?

HESS: Also unification of the armed services was a big subject during this entire period of time. Do you think that some of the Secretaries of the Navy had difficulty going along with the policies of unification?

DENNISON: No, I don’t. Forrestal was very much for it. A good many of them could see that this was inevitable, but it got very emotional. Johnson was terrible. Anybody, he thought, who opposed the unification was just beyond the pale. He was just almost a criminal and the Unification Act, or the Defense Act, really didn't do as much unifying as it did establish things such as another service. The Army Air Corps was kicked around so badly by the Army itself that they had no place to go. The air arm of the Army was

getting so big, and even when they were part of the Army, one of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was General Arnold, a flier. A good many of us thought that if you can't lick them, join them, so I was for it. I wasn't for many of the things that people thought unification was going to accomplish.

DENNISON: Well, in establishing a third department, this wasn't, it seemed to me, probably the best solution, but the business of the armed services got so tremendous. The original concept, the concept that President Truman had, was that the Secretary of Defense would have no deputy and a very, very small personal staff, and he and the three Service Secretaries would act as a sort of management committee over the armed services. But he never saw, none of us really saw, what was coming. But there was just too much to be done not to have a deputy, and Steve Early was appointed by President Truman. And then we got this tremendous intervening layer between the Secretary of Defense and the services--the

tremendous staff in every field, and this became unworkable because they had too many subordinates who were really making policy decisions that were none of their business. The tendency was to make decisions for the services which should have been the job of those various services. But Johnson was the one who wanted a deputy, and he should have had one and he did.

DENNISON: Well, I thought so. They had going in those days, and I think they still do, an annual gathering of top business people. They are briefed in the Pentagon and they go to Fort Benning, or go to sea, or do something, and then they discuss national defense matters. Then they all go home.

Well, this was going on one time when I was in Johnson's office. He couldn't decide who to recommend for Under Secretary. He showed me a list of names and none of them seemed to be qualified. And for some reason or another, which I've always regretted, I opened my mouth and said, "Well, you've got a man right here in the building who ought to meet your specifications."

Now he thought that was brilliant; a strong Democrat who had served Roosevelt, a very capable man.

HESS: Hadn't his background been mostly in press relations? What made you think that he would do well in this particular field?

DENNISON: Well, because he was a good executive and he knew people, and he knew Johnson, he knew the President. And when I realized what I had done, I went back to the White House and went in to see the President. And I said, "I've just done something terrible and I hope you will forgive me, but I opened my mouth when I should have kept it closed and suggested to Louie Johnson that he ask you to appoint Steve Early as his deputy."

And then the President said, "Well, I had other plans for Steve, but this sounds to me like a good idea, so just forget it."

DENNISON: Well, because he was the most valuable man around. He believed in unification and it seemed that if anybody could make it go, he could. He had

plenty of experience in the Government, he had a very important job as Secretary of'the‘Navy and a member of the Cabinet, he seemed like a natural.

HESS: At the time, there were several stories in the press, it was very widely reported that the Navy feared the loss of their air arm to the Air Force, and perhaps the loss of the Marine Corps. In other words, there were those in the Navy who did not look upon unification with favor. Correct?

HESS: Did you think that the Navy was in any danger of losing its air arm, there would be no more Naval Air Corps?

DENNISON: No, I never thought that, certainly not the Marine Corps, but the people who were opposed to it were responsible men. They had what were to them real good reasons.

Well, I remember the Navy Department resisted moving into the Pentagon in the very early days. If we hadn't, we would have been completely out of business.

HESS: Moving on just a little bit, why was Mr. Forrestal replaced? I have heard that he may have been on his

way out, even if his health had not broken, due to a pro-Arab, pro-oil and anti-Jewish attitude that he may have had. Would you care to comment?

DENNISON: Well, I think that is rather exaggerated. I don't think he was on his way out, but he was very much interested in Middle East oil. And I remember once he asked me to write him a report on Middle East oil and I said, "Mr. Secretary, I'm running practically a one-man shop."

HESS: What do you recall of the unfortunate mental breakdown that overtook Mr. Forrestal? Do you recall any early signs of that?

DENNISON: Yes, none of us thought it was so serious as it turned out to be. I remember one time the President asked me when I was in his office, "Do you know who the Secretary of Defense is?"

He said, "You're wrong. I'm the Secretary of Defense." He said, "Jim calls me up several times a day asking me to make a decision on matters that

And then I was in his office the morning that Forrestal was to be relieved by Johnson at noon. The President got a call from Forrestal. I could only hear one end of the conversation and the President said, "Yes, Jim, and that's the way I want it," and so on. Then when he hung up he said, "That was Forrestal wanting to know whether I really wanted him to be relieved by Louie Johnson this noon."

And then he went to Hobe Sound and he was in a very bad shape and none of us realized how extremely serious this was. We thought it was just fatigue, a lot of hard work and so on. After he had been there a short time the President sent for me and said, "We've been besieged by telephone calls from Jim. He thinks that his phone is tapped, and he's worried about his papers, his private papers." He said, "Do you know anything about them?"

He said, "I have had the Secret Service check out his telephones and nothing is tapped, and what about these papers?"

what he is talking about because I wrote some of them myself. It's a file cabinet which contains a lot of his notes and memoranda that he collected and I'll take care of it. Don't think anything about it." So, I got some (this sounds like cloak and dagger business), but I got some Secret Service men, got a truck and I called Kate [Katharine S.] Foley, who had been Forrestal's secretary, and went over there, over to the Pentagon, and took the cabinet out of what was then Johnson's office and brought it to the White House. And I had Kate open the cabinet and examine it to see that it was in fact everything she could remember, and sealed it, and I didn't want access to it except in some emergency.

Well, then Forrestal came to Bethesda and I was with the President when the President went over to see him in his room. And then, of course, shortly after that he committed suicide, and there we were with the so-called Forrestal papers.

DENNISON: Well, it was explained pretty well in the foreword that these are not papers, they are not a diary. Forrestal kept an appointment book. I remember one curious one. He opened up on.my squawk box and said, "What about the Kurile Islands?" That was the end of the conversation. "What about the Kurile Islands?"

DENNISON: So, in a case like that, I did what I always did, went down and looked at his appointment book to see whom he had been talking to on the phone, or whom he had seen, to get some kind of a clue as to what aspect of this problem he was interested in.

So, this cabinet was filled with some reports that I'd written and notes he'd made of conversations with people, but it wasn't coherent, it wasn't

a chronological account except for this daybook idea. And it got built up to a big thing as an asset to his estate.

Helen Ogden Reid knew I had the papers. She loved Jim Forrestal, was a great friend, and she wanted to help his family. So, as I recall it, she paid Forrestal‘s estate for the papers (they were still in the White House), and I think that if the Government wished to do it they could have made a claim that they were Government papers.

Well, how are we going to handle it? She appointed a couple of people (one of them had been a Reserve officer, or was a Reserve officer), to do the writing, and they were capable people. So I got a committee together. George Elsey helped me on that, and Adrian Fisher of the State Department, and I forget who we had from the Defense Department.

DENNISON: I can't remember whether it was Marx or not. He would have been a natural, I think. The idea was that we turn the papers over to these men with the understanding that when they were through with them

they would come back to me, that when they wrote a chapter they would send it to us and we would review it for security, then they would accept any changes we wanted to make. Well, there was some pretty touchy stuff in that so-called diary, just off-the-cuff comments about people, and in the end it turned out we had practically no changes. I took some documents out of the file myself because they were Atomic Energy Commission papers which had no business in anybody's private file.

So everybody was happy about it, but Mrs. Reid didn't know what I was up to and quite naturally she was suspicious. She came down to see me, and invited me to have lunch with her, and I found her to be absolutely charming. I said, "Well, I don't have any interest in these papers except I took them, they're safe, and I want to see them kept together in one place. They certainly don't belong in the White House, and I'd like to see them in the Forrestal Library at Princeton."

that's what I want, I'm sure the President will agree." And he did. "Let's do it."

So about the very last day of President Truman's administration, again I got a truck and we sent those papers up to the library. The Defense Department had put some kind of restriction on access to them. I don't recall now whether by certain specified time or what it was, but they are intact and that's where they are. So it turned out everybody was happy.

DENNISON: Well, I don't really know. I think the principal reason was that he was a prominent, very active member of the Democratic Party. But he certainly wasn't a Secretary of Defense.

DENNISON: Well he nearly wrecked the armed services. And one thing he did, cutting down on money and running them downhill much too fast. Of course, he couldn't foresee Korea, but that's the kind of a situation

HESS: In his reduction of the armed forces, do you think he was just carrying out the orders that had been handed him and had been formulated by others, or was he carrying this out with the zeal that might indicate that he felt the services should be cut back?

DENNISON: Oh, I think the latter is undoubtedly the case. I'm sure the President never--as a matter of fact, he embarrassed the President one time because of his closing of some service hospital in Long Beach, a Navy hospital. He got all mixed up with this problem of what to do with paraplegics, and they got to be quite emotional. And I remember one motion picture actress, I believe it was Frances Langford, who actually tried to get aboard the President's train at one point to talk to him about this. Of course the Secret Service wouldn't let her come anywhere near the President. Then the President sent for me on this matter and said, "I want you to head a committee to look into this whole problem of veterans hospitals, and particularly this paraplegic problem." And he said, "I'm going to ask Howard Rusk to serve, and Dr.

We went to work and we visited a hell of a lot of hospitals to survey the facilities and talk to the people who were running them, to find out whether they had enough beds or too many beds or what the problem was.

We held meetings in the White House, we listened to every conceivable organization; the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the American Legion, on and on and on, and the Disabled American Veterans. They all had a chance to speak. They were speaking to some sympathetic ears.

Well, it turned out that there are many, many problems. One was a bumbling around by Congress about to what degree or to what extent should the Government offer medical attention to veterans. The policy was, for example, that they'd be given care on a beds available basis.

Well, how do you estimate in building a hospital what this means in terms of extra beds? This is just one matter. But in any event, this rapidly expanded to get into a study of the whole VA system. We persuaded the VA to appoint Booz Allen Hamilton to submit

a report leading to a reorganization of the VA. It was quite far-reaching, but it all came about through this arbitrary decision of Johnson's without any comprehension of what the impact might be. It involved the entire, not just the medical part of VA, but the whole system, and Johnson pulled this down on the President without the President knowing what was going on. Harry Vaughan described Johnson one time in what I thought very apt terms. He said, "He's the only bull I know who carries his own china shop around with him."

HESS: Now, General Vaughan had the title of Coordinator of Veterans Affairs. Was he also involved in this matter of the hospital and veterans hospitals?

DENNISON: You'd have to ask President Truman. I don't know because the President was the one that appointed me to get up this committee. I don't think he thought of it at the beginning, I know I didn't, as developing

into such an involvement of Veterans Administration itself. It started out simply as a fairly limited medical problem about how to care for paraplegics and where to care for them. but it sure didn't stop there.

HESS: On the subject of the cutback of the armed forces, do you recall President Truman's views on the armed forces being cut back at this time?

HESS: Another name that is often raised in this context is James Webb, who at the time was Director of the Bureau of the Budget. Do you recall his involvement in this area?

DENNISON: No, not specifically because I wasn't operating in that area myself. But I.knew Webb, and the Bureau of the Budget is one of the most powerful parts of our Government. They have all kinds of authority, and they had then and still do have extremely competent people. And I got a great deal of help from them on various things. One thing was this business I got into trying to coordinate the Federal Maritime Affairs. I have the highest regard for Webb.

DENNISON: Roger Jones and some of,his people. He's a fine man. He knows,more about Government than any man I ever talked to, except President Truman.

HESS: What were your duties on the maritime matter? Do you recall the situation?

DENNISON: I sure do. It all started with the miserable performance of the Maritime Commission and it centered on, in this instance, the granting of very high construction subsidies to several companies; American Export, U.S. Line, the President Line. Porter Hardy, who was a chairman of a subcommittee of the House (right now I forget what parent committee it was), conducted hearings on this. And it was perfectly obvious that these subsidies were very high, to the point of actually straining the meaning of the Maritime Act, mainly in the field of interpretation of subsidies for so-called defense features, such as the speed of the United States and the troop carrying capacity. It was very apparent that something ought to be done to recover the overpayments.

The first thing the President did was dissolve the commission by a Reorganization Act and create the Maritime Board and Maritime Administration in the Department of Commerce.

When you come to think of it, almost every department of government has some interest in maritime matters; the State Department, the Defense Department, Commerce, Labor, the Attorney General. All of them and others have minor interests.

There isn't in our Government any central office that can coordinate these departments. So that was my job, and it was a very difficult one, because all these people could see the problem from their own standpoint and were fighting with each other. We were having trouble getting any opinion out of the Attorney General.

In the meantime, Lindsay Warren, the Comptroller General, announced that he was going to take over the matter. Well, we didn't want that to happen, because surely the executive branch of the Government should handle it and to have Warren take over would put it in the hands of the legislative branch. He works for the Congress as you know. I knew Hardy. I didn't

know Warren, so I asked Porter one day if he could arrange for me to meet Warren and said, "How would it be if you came down with Warren and had lunch with me on the Williamsburg to talk over this problem?"

They did, and I explained to the Comptroller General what it was we were trying to accomplish, how we intended to go about it, the people that I was dealing with, and by God I did convince him that we meant business. Here again I didn't have any staff, and that's where Webb and his people were a tremendous help. I got some pretty good legal help, too, out of the Department of Justice, and this went on until President Truman left office. I don't know how many hours, and how many meetings, and how people were involved in all of this.

You might be amused by how he picked the first man to head up the Maritime Administration. He asked me one day, "Bob, who are we going to get to be the Federal Maritime Administrator?"

Cochrane had retired and gone up to MIT where he was having a great time--a place that he loved and he loved his work. But I got him on the phone and said, "Ned, how about being the first Federal Maritime Administrator?"

He said, "Oh, leave me alone. I'm up here and doing what I want to do and," he said, "I've done my job and I don't want it."

Well, I couldn't convince him. I said, "Well, damn it, it's your duty to take this. Can you think of anybody else?"

Well, he gave me a couple of names that both he and I knew wouldn't do at all. So I went back and told the President. He said, "Tell Admiral Cochrane that I'd like to see him sometime this week. You set up the appointment and tell him to come down here."

So I set the appointment up for some morning, and the President told me, "I want you to be here when I talk to Cochrane."

The three of us sat down in the President's office and the President said, "What's this I hear about your not wanting the position?"

Well, with that Cochrane started to talk. The President didn't say a word, just sat there and listened. He'd done his job, and he'd earned retirement, he was contributing to the country by the work he was doing, and on and on. Finally he said, "Besides, Mr. President, I'm too old to take all that responsibility."

And for the first time the President spoke He said, "Admiral, how old are you?" The President was older than he was.

DENNISON: Yes. Cochrane's jaw dropped and he said, "Okay, Mr. President, I'll take the job."

HESS: You joined the White House staff in January of 1948. Why, in your opinion, were you chosen as the President's Naval Aide?

DENNISON: Well, I can tell you what I was told happened. I don't know why I was chosen, but the President

wanted another Naval Aide. I don't know why, but he asked the Navy Department (I think actually he consulted Sullivan), to give him the name of the most capable captain they had who was suitable for this job. And I had at that time about the best Captain's job in the Navy, as Captain of the Missouri, and I loved every minute of it. And the President didn't ask for me, didn't suggest me, but when he saw my name he said, "That will be just fine. I'd like to have Captain Dennison."

So I got a call from the Chief of the Bureau of Naval Personnel saying, "When can you come to Washington?"

I said, "Look, I've had duty in Washington. I love this command and I want to stay here and stay at sea and command something."

And he said, "Well, we haven't thought of anybody yet, but turn it over to your exec. You're in the navy yard for a couple of weeks."

Well, it turned out I wrote my own orders, because you're supposed to read these to the crew and when it came to where I was being ordered to I just put down "ordered to Washington for duty." Well, when I read it nobody paid any attention. Nobody was listening, I guess.

DENNISON: Yes. So I went right down and reported to President Truman for duty, and then it came out on the news ticker, I guess, or something, where I actually was.

We almost had a hell of a flareup over that one, too, because not long after I'd been there Harry [Vaughan] held a press conference in the lobby, and

announced to all of the press people there that he was going to be the Defense Aide and that [Robert B.] Landry and I were going to be his assistants.

Well, that just infuriated me, and so I talked to Charlie Ross and Matt Connelly and said, "I don't want to get the President upset, but I was ordered here as a Naval Aide and I reported as a Naval Aide, and nobody ever told me about any arrangement such as this, and if it goes through I'm going to ask to be detached."

Well, Ross got madder than hell about Harry having the nerve to hold a press conference, and Matt Connelly was real upset about it. So they went in to talk to the President and told him this was really going to raise hell. So he just said, "Well, forget the whole thing."

HESS: President Truman had intended for General Vaughan to become the Defense Aide?

DENNISON: Well, he never told me. Other people have told me and I don't think that Harry would dream this up all by himself. And I think that Sullivan knew something about it too, but it was such a...

DENNISON: Yes. Such a hush-hush thing they forgot to tell me. Why I just got orders to report as Naval Aide, which I did.

HESS: What do you think is the main thing that threw the monkey wrench in the works, your attitude that you had reported there as a Naval Aide, or General Vaughan's announcement?

DENNISON: Well, I think it was a combination of both. Ross was really put out about it.

DENNISON: Well, he was just as upset as I was. I don't know whether he went as far as I did in saying what he was going to do. Maybe he was standing around waiting to see how much lightning I would draw.

HESS: All right, one other question about the gentleman you replaced, Admiral Foskett. Do you know if there

DENNISON: I don't know. I only know that the President made up his mind awfully fast, and then Foskett was really quite taken aback when I showed up.

DENNISON: I don't think he did. It happened awfully damn fast. I mean I got a telephone call one morning and went down there the next.

HESS: Have you ever heard anything about why Mr. Truman might have been dissatisfied with him?

DENNISON: No, I never really investigated it because it wasn't any of my business. All I knew was that President Truman wanted another Naval Aide and I was it.

HESS: All right. Not long after you arrived, in June of 1948, Mr. Truman took his famous non-political trip, and according to the logs you went along. Correct?

most of it, but it was a real eye opener to me in many, many ways. I was fortunate because I had known almost all the White House reporters. They were with me in Rio. They were great guys and they never bothered me. They knew it would be stupid to try to ask any questions about what the President was thinking or what he was doing or anything. Well, I never got any unpleasantness from them, and some of them through the years have developed into real friends, like Charles Collingwood, for example, and others, Merriman Smith, poor fellow, and Tony [Ernest B. ] Vaccaro.

But this was a non-political trip. I've told you what the President told me when I reported that day, that he wanted me to understand that I'd have nothing whatever to do with the Democratic National Committee. And I never did, and I never got a call from anybody in politics the whole time I was there. But this non-political trip--I read the papers, and I saw things like this edition of Life showing what would appear to be an empty amphitheater.

in my life like the enthusiasm with which the President was greeted at some of these what he called "whistlestops." There were more people there than the population of the whole damn county. They came for miles, sometimes at the most ungodly hours, 5:30, 6 a.m., something like that. And you could tell that they loved the President and loved his family.

HESS: Do you recall anything in particular about the day that started in Sun Valley, Idaho? That was the day of the dedication of the airfield in Carey, Idaho.

DENNISON: Well, I remember a day we left Sun Valley. I never knew a place called Carey. I never saw any town at all. Well, it happened this way. For some reason, I never knew why, the President got up early and decided he was going to leave. None of us had had any breakfast. Most of us were scarcely dressed. The Secret Service came around banging on everybody's door and said, "We've got to get going."

Well, one thing that happened was that Charlie Ross had intended to brief the President on what he was to expect on this trip, and didn't have a chance. Vaughan, Landry and I were in a car not far from

the President. Two or three back, I guess. The Secret Service were, all over the place. We drove on a monotonous road and could see ahead a big banner across the road and a speaker's stand and a band and all that, and the name of some field. The President didn't have a clue. We never heard of it. We couldn't brief him. We didn't know anything about it.

So we got out of the car and went up to the President and he got the idea quite naturally. He was going to dedicate an airfield. So he got up and made a sort of short speech about honoring this veteran of the war or something. Well, somebody whispered, "It's not a veteran. It's a girl." Well, he didn't know why he'd be dedicating an airport to a girl. So he started to say something and then somebody had to correct him on that, that she wasn't in the service, she died in some commercial or private plane crash. Oh, it was so--really it wasn't anything to laugh at, but it was awfully funny just the same, but...

HESS: One of those things that you can laugh at years later after it's all over.

DENNISON: I asked Murphy one time about this trip. I said, "It seemed to me that the President was so well prepared everywhere he went to make his speech, and of course you remember the affair at the airfield, but that's the only one I know about."

Charlie said, "Well, there was another one." He said, "We went to some town in Nebraska and the President made a speech endorsing the Republican congressional candidate."

Also on that trip, in Eugene, Oregon, Mr. Truman in speaking of Joseph Stalin, used the famous statement, "I like old Joe," do you recall that?

DENNISON: No. I don't recall it, and I know it's attributed to him, and maybe he did say it. He probably did.

HESS: Where he said Stalin was a prisoner of the Politburo, and by himself he would be all right, but he was a prisoner of the Politburo is more or less what he said. Do you recall anything else about that trip?

DENNISON: Well, just endless speeches and endless crowds and a lot of discomfort. It was quite fast, not much chance to rest or get any laundry done or anything. The poor reporters were having a hell of a time, but the President seemed to be enjoying it. I told him one time that he was the hardest man I ever worked for or ever hoped to, most difficult. And he said, "Why?"

I said, "Well, I and the others know how fast you go and how hard you pound, but you never show it. You never look tired, and you never get impatient. You never scold us or anything. I know damn well that we're not perfect. We do a lot of things that are not the way you want. Why don't you clue us in, or clue me in?"

But it was true, as I wrote in that letter to Murphy that you read, he was able to surround himself with an almost impenetrable shell, and as I told Charlie, it took me two years before I felt, or knew, that I had his confidence, and when I did I had it completely.

But he fooled a lot of people with this shell he had, because the shell was of a simple, poorly educated man trying to do a job. He wasn't a simple man. He was the most complex individual I ever knew. He was well educated. He read all of the time, remembered what he read. I got into a discussion with him about capitals of columns. I didn't know the difference between an Ionic and some other thing and he told me. And I said, "Mr. President, where did you latch onto that information?"

He said, "Well, I was studying to be a Mason, and I just remembered it." That's how he knew.

And I remember when he told me himself that before he took over this Truman Committee, with which he did such a smashing job, he read every volume of the committee's reports on the conduct of the war in Lincoln's administration. Imagine that! Not only did he read these things, but he remembered them, and anybody who was stupid enough to question anything he had to say about personalities or American history had better look out, because he knew.

HESS: You also mentioned in your letter to Mr. Murphy (which will be in your papers at the Truman Library so

people can look it up and read it when they get to this point in the oral history interview and know just what we are talking about), that Mr. Truman had the ability to compartmentalize, to separate his political dealings, his political thinking from actions taken as President of all the people. Would you comment on that for just a moment?

DENNISON: This is a remarkable characteristic because he had the ability to make a very sharp distinction between the various roles that he had. When he took an action, he knew exactly what role he was fulfilling and there were three of them: Commander in Chief, the head of the Democratic Party, and the President of all the people. And in the various inscribed pictures I have, and even inscriptions in his books, he never refers to himself as the President. It's always "Your former Commander in Chief," or "Your Commander in Chief." Even in a simple thing like,that; and it's that simple, because you'd think he'd--here I was a trusted member of his staff, but I was, and he knew it and appreciated it, a professional naval officer. I wasn't a politician, had no aspiration to be one, although I learned that politics is a profession

Now, here's something I just remembered. During the Korean war I was in his office late one afternoon around 6 o'clock. It had been a long, hard day. I was briefing him on something to do with Korea that he had to know that evening. Connelly came in and said, "Excuse me, Mr. President. I have four people out here who don't have an appointment. I told them to come around late in the day and maybe I could get them in, and they won't take very long."

I started to edge forward in my chair to get up and he motioned me back and said, "Don't bother. This won't take very long."

Well, there were three or four of these men. The most dejected looking people. You'd think that all the woes of the world were on their shoulders. The President asked them to sit down, and he got up and shook hands with them, and then he said, "What's

Well, I forget what the problem was. Well, something like this: they are interested in some roads in their state, which were pretty horrible, and they had a bridge problem. One of the principal roads had to have a larger bridge, or a bridge, or something, and they didn't know how to raise the money. And the President would say, "Have you tried this, have you thought of this?" And then he got into more problems about roads, and finally they got up and left and thanked him, completely changed men. Not a damn thing had been decided--nothing. And it was all too much for me.and I said, "Mr. President, if you'll forgive me, I know what's on your mind. I know the decision you've got to make right now. How could you have the patience to listen to these people. This is not a problem that you can solve."

And he said, "Bob, I'll tell you something. Sure it's not a problem I can solve. It isn't a national problem, and maybe to you it isn't a problem, but believe me to these people it's a problem." He said, "I'm the President of the United States and I should listen to people like that who are in trouble,

Do you recall anything in particular about the efforts that were made by some Democrats to get someone other than Mr. Truman to head the ticket in 1948?

DENNISON: No, because not only did I not get mixed up in politics, but I knew enough to know that I didn't know anything about politics. I'd be the last one to know anything like that, anyhow. As a matter of fact, I never even heard of it before.

HESS: Well, the ADA, Americans for Democratic Action, for one, tried to get General Eisenhower to run as a Democrat in 1948, or at least they put that proposal to him.

HESS: Was that pretty universal for the Military Aide and the Air Aide also? General Vaughan and General Landry?

General Landry, yes, but General Vaughan was not a Regular officer. He had been in politics all of his life. But I don't believe that Harry ever went with the President either on a political trip. I'm not sure, but I doubt it. My message traffic to the President was handled, on that kind of a trip, by Commander Bill Rigdon, who did go.

HESS: That's right. He was your assistant, the Assistant Naval Aide. What would be your evaluation of him? Was he helpful?

DENNISON: Well, I wouldn't say he was helpful. I would say he was indispensable. He was really a terrific man. He was quiet and self-effacing and extremely capable. He was at one time, I believe, a Yeoman or a Chief Yeoman, and he was discreet, absolutely trustworthy, and I don't think that the White House would have been the same without him around.

HESS: Did he handle most of the arrangements for the President's trips to Key West, or the arrangements while they were at Key West; the Williamsburg?

DENNISON: Yes, except such things as the Little White House. I was appalled when I saw that the first time.

DENNISON: Yes. It was dingy and uncomfortable, and needlessly so, but the Navy didn't have any money and Mrs. Truman and Margaret hated it. So I said to the President, "Do you mind if I stir up the animals here a little bit and redecorate the Little White House, not lavishly of course, but in a quiet, dignified manner that is fitting to that kind of an environment?"

So I did. I got, through the Navy, a fine firm of decorators in Miami, and we just did everything to it. And in the end it was a beautiful job. It wasn't lavish. The colors were just exactly right. We had some very nice things in that house. The furniture was excellent. The room that Mrs. Truman and Margaret had was in white and had complete privacy. They had a porch there where nobody bothered them. The President's room was perfectly lovely, dark colors, dark blue, and the ceiling was painted a color of blue so that at night you had the impression you were looking up into the dark sky. It was just very cleverly done. And when Margaret and Mrs. Truman saw the rehabilitated Little White House they

HESS: The President took a trip down there just after the election. I think the dates were November the 7^th to the 21^st, but to keep things in chronological order, what about that election? Did you think President Truman was going to win, going to beat Tom Dewey that year?

But an interesting point there. When he came back after the campaign, before he went to Independence, he wanted to relax. Well, he wanted to go out in the Williamsburg alone, which meant me, and that's all. He was tired and we stood out on deck shortly after he got on board and I said, "Mr. President, how'd you make out in the campaign?"

He said, "Well, I'm a politician and I understand people and I can tell. I just know that I'm elected."

Anyway, I think when he did get to Independence he just went to sleep. Hell, he wasn't worried about whether he was going to be elected or not.

DENNISON: Yes. But he went on to say, "Well, I'm not worried about being elected, but I am very worried about the coming four years. They are going to be very rough."

HESS: We're almost through with this reel of tape. It's about 4:15. Want to knock off for today?

Oral History Interview with Admiral Robert L. Dennison

Oral History Interview with
Admiral Robert L. Dennison