Truman Library - Robert G. Nixon Oral History Interview, October 29, 1970

News correspondent with the International News Service, 1930-58; served as editor of the service for a time. He first came to Washington, D.C., in 1938 where he served as their State Department and foreign relations correspondent. He was a war correspondent, attached to the British army in France and Belgium, 1940, during invasion of the low countries; evacuated from Dunkirk but later returned to France; evacuated with remnants of the British army from Brest, June 20, 1940; covered London Blitz, 1940-41; war correspondent, attached to United States forces in European theater of operations, 1942-1943; correspondent in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, and Mediterranean theater, participating in North African invasion and campaign. Covered Casablanca conference, 1943; Quebec conference, 1944; and Potsdam, 1945. Washington correspondent covering the White House beginning in 1944.

Bethesda, Maryland
October 29, 1970
By Jerry N. Hess

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 It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

From Omaha we had gone to Denver where the President made a speech on the steps of the state capital. He conferred with the Democratic leaders of the state at a famous hotel called the Brown Palace.

Averell Harriman had invited the President to stop over at Sun Valley, this famous ski resort in Idaho that he built. I guess it was the most famous ski resort in the United States. Averell Harriman, I suppose, was Chairman of the Board of the Union Pacific. His papa was before him, and he left him a hundred million dollars when he died.

Harriman was a great skier and polo player in his younger days. He would go to Switzerland

to ski, but he wanted to duplicate the Swiss ski slopes in this country. He employed a famous Swiss skier and ski architect to search the entire West for mountains with the proper configuration for ski slopes. Apparently you needed rolling terrain, without abrupt up thrusts, and that was common in the Rockies. They finally found what they wanted in Idaho.

Averell invited the President on his trip to stop over at Sun Valley as his guest for two or three days. We were scheduled to leave around 9 o'clock. Sometime after 7:30 in the morning (I had just sat down in the dining room to order breakfast), Bill Simmons, the White House receptionist, came tearing down the hallway into the breakfast room shouting, "Everybody leave, everybody leave, the President's ready to go."

to give my order to, not a crust of bread on the table, nothing. I knew that we had a long hard day ahead of us and heaven only knows when we would get any food. As it turned out, it wasn't until late that afternoon that I finally got back to the train to get some food. I wasn't the only one. Everybody else, including members of the President's party itself, found themselves in that predicament.

What had happened, was that the President, who was a very early riser, had awakened at 6 that morning. He had taken a little morning walk, had breakfast, and then announced, "I'm ready to go," much ahead of schedule. Incidentally, he was not staying at the lodge, he was in a private residence on the huge grounds of this ski resort.

So, we went away hungry in automobiles. We drove a few miles to this little town of

Carey, Idaho. Outside of the little crossroads settlement, there was a line of automobiles parked on the side of the road, and there we stopped. Over to our left was what looked like a cow pasture with a mountain on the far side of it. This turned out to be a country air strip for small, private planes. The President was in an open car, and the reason soon became apparent. He had agreed to stop there and make a little talk dedicating this air strip. It was being dedicated in the name of Wilma Coates, who had been killed in an airplane accident, sometime earlier when the plane flew into the mountain.

Truman was completely unprepared. As it turned out, he had been given the wrong briefing. All the President knew was that here was an air strip. He was under the impression that it was being dedicated to a young man who had been

He began making this little talk praising this war hero and dedicating the airport in his name. This had something to do with the American Legion, because the Legion veterans were out there in their split caps. As he talked, standing in this open car, there was a woman on the side of the road who started tugging at his coattails saying, "Mr. President, it wasn't my son, it was my daughter, and she was not a hero. She was killed in an airplane accident here at this airport."

As it turned out, she had been out joyriding in a small plane with her boyfriend. He had flown the plane into the mountainside killing them both. The name Wilma, which had been given the President, unknown to him, was spelled W-i-1-m-a, the feminine spelling, instead of W-i-1-m-e-r the masculine spelling.

He had taken it for granted that it was a man. The little information that had been given to him about dedicating the airport, apparently came not from Charlie Ross, but from General Harry Vaughan his Military Aide, who had been contacted by these Legion people in the small town, and it was agreed that the President would stop there and dedicate it. Everything was fouled up.

When this plaintive voice of the mother, finally got through to the President, that he did not have the proper facts at all, he abruptly wound up his little talk and said, "Well, she was a hero anyway."

Here was another foul up. It made the President look inept and his staff look inept (which they were). On top of the foul-up at Omaha, this was another disaster, widely reported in the Nation's press and on the

This was a very sparsely settled part of the country. For the rest of the day we went through very small towns, stopping to make speeches. We went through a national park there that looked like the surface of the moon. This was a volcanic area at one time and the ground for miles was covered with nothing but black lava and basalt. We went on through the potato growing part of Idaho where the famous Idaho baking potatoes came from, and where there's a farm vote. Late in the afternoon, we got to the little town of Ephrata, where the train was parked.

NIXON: I sat down in a semi-collapsed state and finally got some food. I understand that Charlie Murphy, one of the President's aides, was in a similar state, as were others. From then on I never went without a package of peanut butter crackers in my pocket, as a...

HESS: What else do you recall about the June trip? Anything in particular? One of the main stops that he made on that trip was in Berkeley, California. He delivered the commencement address at the University of California. Do you recall that?

It was a broiling hot day. This was the San Francisco area, just across the bay above Oakland. The weather was usually cool and moist in San Francisco. But this was a broiling hot day. First we went to the residence of the president of the university, a staunch Republican. Then he made his talk there in the football stadium to the graduating class, all their parents, other relatives, and well-wishers. The burden of the speech, I have no recollection of whatsoever.

HESS: Following that the President spoke at Los Angeles. I think it was a major political speech. Do you recall the stop in L.A.?

NIXON: I recall one stop in L.A. Again, there's the confusion of which trip was it.

On the occasion I recall, he made a speech at night out on a baseball diamond. My recollection is, that this was actually in Hollywood, because the place was just loaded down with various actors and actresses. I recall Lauren Bacall on the stage, Lucille Ball and her then husband, Desi Arnaz, and various well-known movie people. Again, it's impossible to remember what the speech was about.

HESS: Did you think that his speaking ability showed any signs of improvement during the June trip?

NIXON: Oh, yes. I mentioned much earlier that he told me one time that he seldom ever got on the floor of the Senate to make a speech. When the newsreel men would come around to ask him to make a talk about some piece of

legislation for their newsreel cameras, he said, "I'd always tell them to go away and to find somebody else who could make a speech."

When they got to the White House, they got a voice tutor for him. Everything got fouled up. They were trying to make a President Roosevelt speaker out of, what the President called, "a Missouri clodhopper," which was impossible. It just didn't go over. When he would read his speeches to Congress, it became obvious that this wouldn't work. If he was going to be an effective speaker, he would have to be let alone to be himself.

This began to take place on the June trip. His perfect platform was the whistlestop. He made these homey little five minute talks at whistlestops.

These talks were put together for him by George Elsey, one of the staff members.

They were carefully done. They were researched beforehand, so that any local happening that might have taken place as far back as the Civil War could be mentioned. It didn't matter what it was, as long as it was something regarding the town itself or some inhabitant. This was always included in these little talks. Obviously it was very effective.

Truman began to just talk. He spoke, in contrast to the conscious reading of words that were not his words at all. As I say, he began to talk, instead of orating. He used his Missouri dialect. He became natural in every way. His talks began to be highly effective and to go over. Mind you he wasn't talking to a Harvard commencement audience, he was talking to people just like himself--the country folk, the grassroots people, who have a way of very quickly spotting a stuffed

shirt. By the same token, they very quickly realized when someone was being natural and being himself.

It took a little time for it to happen, but it gradually came into being. It happened even in his prepared speeches like the ones at Berkeley and Los Angeles. He began to deliver them in a natural manner, rather than like a schoolboy making a classroom oration of the Gettysburg speech. From then on he became natural and ceased to be awkward on the platform. At times he simply tore up the set speech that he had prepared for him by his staff, and made his own speech right off the top of his head. When he did that he was most effective of all, because he was just saying what he wanted to say. He was dealing with subject matter that was in his own mind. He was particularly good later when

HESS: What do you recall about the events between the June trip and the convention in Philadelphia? One thing at this time we might discuss, was the fact that there were still elements within the party who were trying to take the nomination away from Mr. Truman. You mentioned Colonel Arvey in Chicago who wanted General Eisenhower on the ticket. One other group of people was also the ADA, the Americans for Democratic Action, who wanted Mr. Eisenhower at this time.

NIXON: Not specifically. The only recollection that I have is a general one and that is that

despite the fact that Truman did well on this first cross-country whistlestop trip, he had to fight, right up to the convention time, to get the nomination. These dissidents in the party, on the basis of his earlier record, were still after him. When I say his earlier record, let us be fair about this. Truman's record on the whole was not bad. He did some very courageous things, such as the intervention in Greece and Turkey.

Eddie Folliard of the Washington Post and I were talking about it later. Eddie said that when he read the President's proposal to intervene in Greece and Turkey, "It made my hair stand up." This was a very daring and courageous thing.

Another very fine and highly necessary thing, was the Marshall plan, both of these being to stop the further spread of Russian

There were mistakes. It seems, that in this world, evil gets more attention than good. The people in his own party who were gunning for him never remembered those daring and courageous things that he did. It was only the small and petty errors that they tended to magnify. He had to fight right up to convention time for his nomination.

NIXON: Again, it seemed like almost everything was going wrong. On this occasion it wasn't Truman's fault, it was the convention's fault. I will describe what I mean.

We went up by train to Philadelphia where the Democratic convention was being held that year, arriving sometime around mid-evening or

a little earlier. It was blazing hot. There was no air-conditioning in this enormous hall. It was sultry and overheated with hundreds upon hundreds of people jammed into Convention Hall adding their body heat to the very sultry summer temperature. When the President, his party, and myself got to the hall, we went in the rear entrance of the convention hall where he was to remain out of sight until the time for him to appear on the platform to make his acceptance speech. Had we entered the front of the hall, that would have disrupted the entire proceedings. Everybody would have had to have stood up, he would have been in view. That wasn't the way it was done. The President doesn't appear on the platform until he is introduced. At that time House Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas was running the convention. He was the man with the gavel on the platform. When he

introduced the President, the President would appear and make his acceptance speech.

So, Truman and members of his staff were taken up to a room to the side of the platform, out of sight. It was supposed to be air-conditioned, but the air-conditioning wasn't working. I understand that he, Charlie Ross, and others went out on a little balcony to get some fresh air and cool off until time for him to make his nominating speech.

A very curious thing occurred after we got there. I had a platform pass, which permitted me to go onto the platform itself. If you needed to ask a question of any of those prominent personages on the platform, you were able to do so. Only a few of these platform passes were issued. My press association also had a large staff of other people there from the Washington office, the New York office,

and offices around the country, who were covering the entire convention. I had been there only a short time, when I got a written message, from the New York chief who was running the staff work there. The message said that a news broadcast had been made stating that in his nominating speech, the President would announce that he was calling the Republican controlled Congress back into special session. He asked if I could get confirmation. This was real big news. I knew nothing about this, nor did any other newsman that I knew. This was supposed to be the deep secret content of the acceptance speech.

What I learned was that this broadcast had been made by Elmer Davis, a well-known newscaster on the radio in Washington. During the war, he had been made head of the Office of War Information, by Roosevelt. He was a

well-known name, and not accustomed to going off half-cocked. In other words, he was a pretty good authority.

In trying to get confirmation on this story, I found that the President and members of his staff were not available. I tried to get up to the room where he was waiting, but I was stopped by Secret Service guards. No one was permitted access to either the President or to members of his staff. I finally got hold of Sam Rosenman, and I tried to get confirmation from him. I just got nowhere. This was a confidential matter involving the President, and despite the fact there had been a news leak on it, it was still the main content of the President's acceptance speech, which was not to be made for several hours. He could not violate a confidence, and so it remained. All the other newsmen in the convention hall were in the

NIXON: It is very difficult to pin a leak down. Elmer Davis was in the hall. My suspicion was that probably the President himself wanted this advanced information out, to create a stir in the convention hall before he made his nominating speech. This is only a guess. I think, he probably saw Elmer Davis, a well-known person to him, standing in the wings. He may have plucked his sleeve and whispered into his ear. Now, as I say, this is only a guess. It had to be a White House leak. That meant that it had to come from either the President himself or someone very close to him. Advanced copies of his acceptance speech had been put out, but they did not contain this announcement.

NIXON: The kicker wasn't there. It did not come out of the advance copies of the speech. There was not even a hint of it. This was thrown in at the last minute in the same way that the President announced at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Washington that he was not going to run again.

Anyway, this did create quite a stir. The reason that the leak was made to Elmer Davis, and not to a newsman like myself, was that the radio was the instant media for getting a piece of news like that out. The newspapers wouldn't be published until the next morning. For their own reason, they wanted the news to be fanned out immediately. The radio newscast that Davis made, was the means of getting instant action.

It was getting later and later and later. The President was supposed to have spoken at 9 o'clock or 9:30 so that his speech would be broadcast nationally by radio and heard by the entire Nation. It would also have made all the newspapers the following morning.

Speech after speech, after speech, of an inconsequential nature was made by people on the platform. Sometimes I thought people made speeches only to get themselves before the convention and get their name before the people. These were the sort of thank you speeches that are done, and so it droned on. It wasn't until around two in the morning that the President got to speak. Mind you, the President of the United States was being kept waiting all of this time because there was a foul up in the arrangements and convention schedule. Of course, the President's acceptance speech, was

By 2 o'clock in the morning most of the Nation's presses had all gone to bed. About the only thing he was able to get into the following morning was some of the West Coast papers.

This wasn't very helpful if you were running for election to the White House. He had virtually no radio audience. Not many people will stay up until 2 o'clock in the morning to hear an acceptance speech.

Finally, at long last, he was introduced by Speaker Rayburn and came to the platform. He received an ovation from the delegates, and made a speech. He put in the kicker, announcing that he was calling the Republican Congress into special session on "Turnip Day," which was only a few days later. This was one of his homey Missouri expressions. They did something

NIXON: It beats me. I don't know whether it's planting or harvesting at that time of the summer.

Truman said he was calling the legislature back so that they could pass the legislation that they had not passed so far for the good of the country.

This might not on the surface appear to be an untoward thing. It was only when you understand the nature of it that you realize what a shocking action this was to many people, and why it was such big news. The Congress had adjourned before the conventions. Every member of the House or Representatives in Congress had to run for re-election. Many of the Senators

also had to run that year. Except in wartime, Congress, which begins its meetings in January, would adjourn for the conventions. They would not come back into session until the following January.

Now, here was a President, with a national election campaign coming up, calling Congress back into special session. He was, in effect, preventing the members of Congress from conducting their own campaigns for re-election. This was a virtually unprecedented action, and it sure put the Republican controlled 80^th Congress on the spot.

This game could have been played right down to the end. They were being called into special session, in mid-summer to pass domestic legislation which the President had proposed. If they didn't pass the legislation, or some of it, they were a perfect target for the

President in his campaign later. It gave him perfect ammunition for his campaign. If they came in a special session and adjourned without taking action, all he had to do was call them back into special session again.

In other words, they couldn't win, and he could. That was, to many, the appalling nature of this action. He was accused of playing politics, and that was right. He was playing politics, but he was also trying to get needed legislation of a domestic nature passed. Everything was riding with him and the Congress, which had been controlled by the Republicans for two years. Truman was trying to get the Democrats back into control.

HESS: At the time that you were trying to check the authenticity of the leak, did you speak with any of the Democratic leaders? Did you ask them if they knew anything about the President

NIXON: Truman had chosen, the "Veep" as he was called, Alben Barkley as his running mate. Incidentally, that's the scoop I had.

We were here in Washington at the White House during the early part of the convention. There were a number of people who were rumored to be the President's choice. I got a full day's scoop on Barkley being the choice.

NIXON: I wormed it out of Charlie Ross. I was convinced in my own mind that that was so, and I said, "Charlie, I'm going to write this story whether or not I get confirmation from

HESS: One of the things was that Alben Barkley gave the keynote address at the convention. It was a rather stirring, fighting address. It is sometimes pointed out by historians that his fiery, peppy keynote address may have pointed the President towards him. Do you recall anything on that?

NIXON: No. I knew at the time. There were a number of factors that convinced me that he would be the choice. It's just too many years ago to recall these little nuances.

At the time that you were on the platform that night, trying to confirm this leak, did

Sam Rayburn and Alben Barkley seem to know that the President was going to call Congress back?

NIXON: No, they didn't seem to know. In the first place, they said they didn't know anything about it. They appeared to be a little startled. I came away convinced that I could not confirm it because they didn't know anything about it. I don't believe the President had told any of the leaders of Congress that he intended to do this.

HESS: Who else did you speak to that night? We have mentioned Judge Rosenman, Sam Rayburn, and Alben Barkley. Do you recall who else you asked about this leak?

NIXON: Those are the only three that I can recall. As I've said, with the exception of Sam Rosenman, all of the President's staff were closeted with him. I couldn't get to any of them. I even

sent a message up with one of the Secret Service men to Charlie Ross. Of course, Charlie was in a spot. Here, supposedly, was a complete secret, a surprise in the President's speech, and it was leaked.

HESS: Did you say, you were informed of this leak by a note from your New York office?

NIXON: Yes, from my New York chief who was there in convention hall, managing our press association's coverage of the entire convention. This had been picked up in the news broadcast, and I assumed it was already on our wire. In those instances, unless a news story is copyrighted, a press association is privileged to say, "The New York Times said today," whatever the news is.

NIXON: If you cite the source, then you can say, "There has been no official confirmation of this by the White House," or wherever it's supposed to come from. In the same manner you can report that this was stated to be a fact, by a broadcaster, in this instance, Elmer Davis, in a radio newscast. As I say, I assume it was already on our wire, but the fact that this unconfirmed story had been put out didn't make it factual. It is not factual until you can get confirmation of it and write your own story giving the source of confirmation.

HESS: Since it concerned the President and you were the White House man, just how much pressure did you find yourself under at that time to get confirmation of that?

NIXON: Very strong pressure. My life was pretty miserable for those long hot hours that night.

I was the only one representing my press association, that could get to a White House source. This was part of the picture that we were just talking about, of Rayburn and Barkley. The other newsmen there at the convention, from my press association, were doing their dead level best. They were under pressure too, to get confirmation from some member of Congress, which they could not get, because nobody knew anything about it. That's the way it went.

HESS: All right. Anything else about the convention come to mind? The President's speech itself, perhaps?

NIXON: The only thing that I recall about his speech at all was what I have already described.

HESS: All right. On that subject, the President went to the Capitol to address the joint

NIXON: I have no recollection whatsoever, and I would have been there. Every joint session of Congress is like the same repeated photograph.

NIXON: They are all alike, they are precisely, alike. The only way they vary is in those who are present. By that I mean whether it's this President or that President. Whether a member of Congress is still a member of this Congress or that Congress. The foreign diplomatic people who attend, vary over the years, but they all look alike. It's part of the picture, and it just never varies.

HESS: Before we move into the days of the campaign does anything come to mind about the month

of August? We have mentioned the press conference of August the 5th in which the red herring remark came up. Then the press conference on August 12th in which one of the reporters mentioned the "do-nothing 80^th Congress." Those two events took place in August. Does anything else come to mind?

NIXON: No, days went very, very swiftly from the end of the convention to Labor Day when the campaign began.

HESS: The campaign began at Cadillac Square in Detroit. What do you recall about the campaign in 1948, starting with Detroit? Just what was it like to go on a campaign?

NIXON: It was so hectic that you wondered how anyone survived it, including the candidate, who I've often thought had the easiest time of all. While he was the center of this world and did all

the speaking, others did everything else for him. He was the man who stood out before the multitude and read prepared speeches. Seldom were these things on a off-the-cuff basis. There was a large staff churning this stuff out all the time. When the President's day was over with, he was able to go to bed and get proper rest.

Truman always took an afternoon nap. It was a mistake for a candidate to get worn out and haggard. Some candidates gave so many speeches that they lost their voices for a day or two. But, they were usually able to order their day, and when it was over with, they could go to bed and rest. Everybody else on the campaign train (and this is not just the newsmen, but the members of the staff) hardly had time to sleep.

I have spoken earlier of the pressure on staff members to churn out these speeches.

After all, they had to be written. While a lot of help comes from administration sources at the White House, a great deal of it has to be put together on the train and written.

Speechwriting is not a thing that you do in a great hurry. The contents have to be decided upon, then the speech has to be drafted. It has to be examined and rewritten many times. That means that members of the President's staff, who are charged with doing this work, are working pretty much all of the time too. As the expression goes, they are "burning the midnight oil."

Sometimes we were burning the 4 a.m. oil because the next day's speech was not give to us in time. When we finally got it, we had to immediately read and digest the contents and write a news story about it to be put on the wire at the next train stop on a release on delivery basis the next day. Then we were

confronted with the fact that the President gets up at 6 o'clock in the morning. If we were parked in a rail yard, he took his morning walk. So, it was the newsmen who got haggard. Their day just didn't seem ever to end.

NIXON: Six hours at the most, usually about four out of twenty-four. There were occasions when we would be so exhausted that if we sat down in the club car between whistlestops we would immediately fall asleep.

HESS: What type of accommodations did you have on the train? Did you have a Pullman car?

NIXON: Never. They would have one or two cars of that type for use by the train crews, but we all had compartments.

NIXON: We made his train possible, because all of us who were aboard, were paying the going rate of fares, not the Government. The Government paid only for the President's car which was not much of an outlay at all. We made the campaign train possible. Not many people realized that or understood that.

I remember one little amusing incident on one of those trips. It was the custom to

let local reporters board the train and ride through their state so they could write a localized story. On one of these two trips we were in Spokane, Washington. A young woman reporter for one of the Spokane papers was permitted to board the train to ride over to Seattle. A short while after she got aboard the train conductor came up to her to collect the fare from Spokane to Seattle. She was astounded that this wasn't a free ride. She said, "Fare? What fare?" She said, "Aren't all these reporters riding free? Why do I have to pay a fare?" It was then explained to her that we were not riding free, that we were making the campaign train possible by the fare that we paid wherever this special train went. She couldn't believe it. It was just preposterous to her.

out on a strictly political campaign, wasn't his share of the train paid for by the Democratic National Committee and not the Government?

HESS: Weren't there times when the Democratic National Committee was rather short of funds and there was some doubt whether the train could progress because the Democratic National Committee might not have enough money to move the train?

NIXON: That is absolutely correct. We were down in Texas. The President went to Sam Rayburn's hometown...

NIXON: Yes, Bonham, Texas. There were no funds left to move the train beyond Oklahoma City,

In addition to the local news people who would be permitted to board the train and ride it, this was also a privilege granted fat cats to make them feel good and also to keep party support. The state party leaders, the well-wishers, the well-to-do contributors, and those always hopeful of receiving special recognition and privileges from the White House would be invited to board the train.

NIXON: No, no. No, they were invited to board the train as the President's guest. They were placed in a special club car that was in the rear of the train, immediately ahead of the President's private car.

HESS: Would the newsmen that got on at one stop to write a story and then got off at the next stop get a chance to talk to him?

HESS: It was merely the fact that they were being allowed to board the campaign train.

NIXON: Yes. They would go to the press car. If the President made a whistlestop speech, they would be there to cover it, but they were not permitted, normally, to go back to the rear of the train. The President's car and the adjoining car, where these guests were taken care of, were sacrosanct.

Democrats from that state, who were running for re-election, members of Congress, both Senate and the House, the candidate for Governor, and so forth.

This took place in Texas. There was a lot of oil wealth aboard. The Democratic Party was down almost to its last cent. There wasn't any more money to pay for that part of the train that the Democratic Party had to pay for. The fares were all paid, so that a good part of the train was taken care of, but not all of it. Word got around that we were going to have to call off the campaign trip. The train would be broken up, and we would have to make our way back to Washington on our own. That's how desperate it was.

The train pulled out of Bonham. We headed for Oklahoma City, some distance away. Perle Mesta was aboard as a guest of the President,

and she was from Oklahoma. After the train pulled out of Bonham, she went into the club car where these guests were, and she told them of the predicament that the train was in. She flashed a check, $5,000, her own check. She said, "And to keep this from happening, here's my check for $5,000," which she held up. Perle enabled the train to go on. Many of those aboard (as I say, there was a lot of oil wealth) also contributed a lot of money.

Interestingly enough I was told by a member of the President's staff later that Perle, after this grandiloquent gesture, tore up her check.

NIXON: Now, in fairness to Perle, I don't know that this was so. She was a large contributor to the party. Perhaps she had earlier made her own contribution. There is a law that governs the amount that you can contribute.

One of Charlie Ross' secretaries told me this, and there was no reason for her having gotten it wrong. She was on the train doing typing for Charlie so she knew what was going on. If it did happen, why, I suppose there was an adequate reason.

Perle was a quite wealthy woman. Her wealth coming, as I've said before, from the machine tool company that her husband owned. They made these enormous rigs for drilling oil wells. She was so influential in things like this that Truman made her Ambassador to Luxemburg.

The Democratic Party was scraping the bottom of the barrel throughout that campaign. It was only after Truman's astonishing victory that the money began coming in. They had an enormous debt to pay off. They borrowed wherever they could.

That was the single dramatic instance that I recall. If this was done more than once, it never came to my attention. I knew nothing about it. In any event, this gesture by Perle was effective. Otherwise there would have been no more campaign.

We got to Oklahoma City. Truman was scheduled to speak at the county fair grounds. This was to be a nationally broadcast speech. The contents of which had immense...

HESS: The speech on communism and Communists in Government. One of the important speeches of the campaign.

It was sufficiently important for it to be nationally broadcast on the radio. Mind you, they have to be pretty important to do that because the cost of a national broadcast

was something incredible. A hundred thousand dollars for thirty minutes on the air, as an example. Ten times a hundred thousand is a million, and you can burn up an awful lot of money in a great big hurry in a campaign.

The speech was to go on the air at 1 p.m. The train was late in getting to Oklahoma City. The President and everybody else, piled off of the train into cars at the station. We had motorcycle police, and we went roaring through downtown Oklahoma City at 80 miles an hour, sirens screaming. Why somebody wasn't killed you often wonder. We roared into the fair grounds with the dust flying, brakes screeching, and tires skidding. The President got to the rostrum where the microphones were with less than a minute to spare, but he made it.

NIXON: This speech on communism was an important one to get on the air at the proper time. You wonder what would have happened if he would have been five minutes later. He made it. Somewhat breathless, but he made it.

HESS: What do you recall about the duties of some of the White House staff members who were traveling on the train with the President at that time? Just what seemed to be Mr. Connelly's duties on the campaign train?

NIXON: The same thing that he did in the White House. He was an Appointments Secretary. The Appointments Secretary was the man who received the presidential callers and ushered them into and out of the President's office. He kept the schedule.

The President had a daily schedule. Truman was an early riser. He got up and got the

morning papers, took his walk, came back, and went over the morning papers while he was having breakfast. He tried to keep informed of what was going on. He read, habitually. He read the Washington Post, the morning paper in Washington. At that time, I believe, there was still a Times-Herald owned by Cissy Patterson, which later went out of business. But he liked the Washington Post. He didn't have much patience with the Patterson newspapers or the Hearst newspapers. He read the Baltimore Sun, the New York Times, and to see what the Republican press was doing, the New York Herald Tribune. Those were the ones that he usually went over. He had breakfast and went to his office early.

When he was living over in Blair House he would go to the front door himself and get his morning paper. Others were delivered at the White House. Then he would go to his office,

and the staff conferences would be held around 9 o'clock, usually for about an hour. After that the callers would begin to come in. For the information of the news media, there was always a presidential calling list posted on our bulletin board which gave the time of the appointment and the name of the person coming in. This enabled us to know what was going on. It varied. Some days there would be very few callers, other days there would be quite a number.

HESS: Sometimes there would be people who would be coming in off-the-record. How did they get into the White House, do you recall? They did not come by where you were, is that right?

NIXON: That's right. There are nearly a dozen (I can count eight at the moment) ways to get into the White House. The West Executive

Wing was the wing where the callers on the calling list would come in. They entered the northwest gate, adjacent to West Executive Avenue, and would be admitted by the White House police on the gate. They had to have proper identification. They would come up the drive and enter the doors of the West Wing on into the lobby. If they were early, they would wait in Connelly's office. Then, at the proper time, they would be ushered into the President's office. Those people were in public view and our press room was fairly commodious. The entrance to it was adjacent to the entrance lobby, so we could see all those who came and went. However, when the President wanted to see somebody privately, they would come in any number of other entrances.

We could not watch more than just this one entrance. That was where we were supposed

to be. But they could drive in the south grounds, through either of two gates. One was on West Executive Avenue, the other on East Executive Avenue. If they came in the East Executive Avenue entrance they simply were taken on the ground floor of the White House from the East Wing clear across the White House to the entrance by the Rose Garden, under the portico by the indoor swimming pool, on into the West Wing and then up a hallway past Charlie Ross' office to the President's office. Mind you, this was not in view. The doors were all closed off in this area. If they came in either of the entrances to the south grounds, they could drive up to the portico, enter through the diplomatic reception room, and come and go in the same manner. The diplomatic reception room was in the center of the White House, right under the south portico, with these huge

columns and the Truman Balcony. They could (and many times did), come in the entrance to the West Wing, which is down on West Executive Avenue and goes into the ground floor of the West Wing. It was immediately opposite the Executive Offices Building. In such instances, they were usually within our view because we could go out onto West Executive Avenue and get a hold of them either as they came or left, usually after they left. So we could ask them what was up.

NIXON: If it was something of extreme importance not to be spoken of, you didn't get it. If they were there for their own advantage, yes, you would get something. If they had been in to see the President (and I might add Roosevelt used this device quite frequently),

and there had been an agreement between the President and the caller as to what he might say as he left, then we would get the pre-arranged statement. Whether it had anything to do with the reason for the call or not.

This entrance was used by many of the persons in the administration. They would be driven up in their car in this closed off block of West Executive Avenue, and they would go in and out of that entrance. People, like Henry Cabot Lodge when he was our special Ambassador in Paris during the Eisenhower administration would come in there.

HESS: Did Mr. Truman use that device of a pre-arranged statement--something totally off the subject? Did Mr. Truman use that same device very often?

Especially if you wanted to conceal or to float something. It's a lot simpler than someone coming out, glaring at the reporters, pushing past them, and going out as so many do. That immediately arouses your curiosity.

NIXON: Yes. This set in motion a whole chain of events to try to pin down what it had all been about.

The east entrance, however, was the place of concealment of unannounced callers that the President might want to see. When I later persuaded the President to give me an exclusive interview (finally matching the Krock interview), he had me come in the east entrance.

I didn't even come in to cover the White House that day. I sent a substitute over. So, ostensibly I was just taking a day off. He

had me come in the east entrance, walk through the White House on the ground floor and come to his office. It was all under wraps because they didn't want any other newsmen to know that I was seeing the President privately.

HESS: What subjects did you cover with him that day? That could be very easily determined by looking at the releases.

The one, that I do recall, was later when I went home with him to Independence. I was able to obtain a series of exclusive interviews from him. The main one involved the atomic bomb. It set off repercussions in Washington in both the White House and in Congress. It was of such nature that it impelled the new President, Eisenhower, to speak out

Sometime, two or three years earlier, the White House put out a very brief statement saying that an atomic device had been set off in Soviet Russia. This was a very cryptically worded announcement, which I kept hold of. In this exclusive interview with Truman, I asked him what the meaning of this was. I asked why the phrase "atomic device" was used and not atomic bomb?

He replied, "We did not believe the Russians had the secret of the atomic bomb. The setting off of an atomic device and an atomic bomb are two entirely different things."

He went on to say that he did not believe that the Russians had the atomic bomb because they did not have the "know-how" to build the bomb itself. So, I had quite a story.

As it turned out, he was entirely wrong. The Russians did have the bomb, and it wasn't very long thereafter until they had the hydrogen bomb. However, I was quoting the President of the United States who had just left office and who had had access to all the intelligence information possessed by this Government. So, as I say, I had quite a story. Speeches were made on the floor of Congress. President Eisenhower had to get on nationwide television and say, in effect, "Russia does too have the atomic bomb."

HESS: Fundamentally, Matt Connelly's job on the train was the same as in Washington, correct?

HESS: Who would you rate in that circle? The Special Counsel at that time was Clark Clifford.

NIXON: Yes. Before that it was Sam Rosenman. Rosenman had been a very close adviser of Roosevelt's. I believe, he was his counsel when Roosevelt was Governor.

NIXON: Then Roosevelt named him to the New York Supreme Court, I guess it was. He remained there in the position of a close adviser to

Roosevelt. He frequently came to Washington, and then later became Roosevelt's Special Counsel. At Truman's request, he continued in that capacity. So he was a very close adviser. Later, he was succeeded by Clark Clifford who had been brought into the White House as Assistant Naval Aide. He then became Naval Aide when Jake Vardaman disappeared from the staff. Because of the help that he gave the President, he became his Special Counsel. There's no question about it, Clifford was a close and influential adviser of the President.

HESS: Who else was on the train in 1948 that you could classify as a close adviser to the President?

NIXON: I would certainly list Charlie Murphy. He did a lot of work on the speeches. Young George Elsey, who sort of fetched and carried for

Clark Clifford, was Clark Clifford's assistant. He first served as Assistant Naval Aide for Clifford. Then after they both got out of the Navy he remained his assistant. He did a lot of Clark Clifford's work for him that Clark Clifford got credit for. He prepared all of the off-the-cuff rear platform whistlestop talks.

HESS: Do you recall if the Correspondence Secretary, William Hassett, was along in 1948?

NIXON: Oddly enough, I do not recall that he was. He had been Assistant Press Secretary under Roosevelt. Then he was made Correspondence Secretary by Truman. His duty was to go through the President's mail, decide which letters should be brought to the President's attention, and then to write the answers over the President's signature. From the time that he stepped out of the press job, it isn't my recollection that

he went on these campaign trips. He had a different job back in Washington, and I believe, that's where he remained.

NIXON: Yes, I believe he was. He was personnel director, or whatever his title was, dealing with presidential appointments to top jobs in Government.

HESS: What about John Steelman and David Stowe, do you recall them on the train?

NIXON: David Stowe, I believe, was on the train, but not John Steelman. He was handling the President's labor relations. He had offices over in the East Wing. He wasn't a political campaigner.

HESS: The man that you probably had the most to deal with was the President's press officer,

HESS: Do you recall Eben Ayers taking any of the trips? I think he was on the last trip.

NIXON: Yes. The reason I’m at a little loss on this is that somebody had to be left back in Washington to handle press relations there. If Ross was with the President, normally this would be Eben Ayers.

trips except the last trip to the northeast. It was a fairly short trip, just three or four days. Then he took that last swing, the one that ended at Madison Square Garden.

HESS: What do you recall about the stop at Cadillac Square? Anything in particular?

NIXON: Nothing particular. Truman used to say that political campaigns begin on Labor Day.

We went to Detroit, and he spoke in Cadillac Square to a very large audience, thousands upon thousands. This being Labor Day, the speech was a labor speech on labor relations. Because it was the opening speech of the campaign, it was important. It was carried on the air. The burden of it being to get the labor vote. Because Detroit is an automobile center, a manufacturing center,

There were no untoward incidents after his speech, which was in the early afternoon, sometime in the middle of the day. We went off in automobiles (unless I'm confusing this with some other trip to Detroit) and went out to hear the President speak in some of the suburbs of Detroit. Then when that was all over with, we went back on the train.

HESS: One of the speeches that the President gave shortly after that was his most important farm speech at Dexter, Iowa at the National Plowing Match. Do you recall anything in particular about the speech at the National Plowing Match?

NIXON: He tore into the Republican Congress because they had approved the Commodity Credit

This was one of their ways of getting back at the Democrats, but in so doing they cut their own throat. They had taken out of the Commodity Credit Corporation measure, funds to pay for storage in Federal warehouses of the farmers' products: wheat, corn, heaven only knows what else. This was a terrible blow to the farmers.

The crops were so large that they couldn't dispose of them immediately. They had nowhere to store their surplus crops. This turned out to be a boon for the Democrats. It was a blind ridiculous action by the Republicans. It was one of the things that cost them the farm vote. My recollection is that the farm vote was the deciding factor in Truman's reelection

Truman made it a point, during his administration, to go to the National Plowing Contest each year. That year it was held at Dexter, Iowa. Farmers were there from all over the Midwest and West, thousands upon thousands of them in their private airplanes and their Cadillacs. I might add, this meeting was held on rolling farmland where the Iowa farmers grew these enormous crops of corn and wheat.

A wooden platform had been set up for the President to speak from. The presidential seal had been taken along on all these trips. It was hanging from the front of the podium. A large tent with the sides open, had been put up to get people out of the sun, but the President spoke out in the open. The sides

This was another blistering hot day. By standing under the tent, I was able to hear and watch the President. I had already written my advance story on the basis of the text that was given us.

I was curious to talk to some of these farmers and find out what they thought about Truman. A farmer came over to me, knowing that I was a member of the press and the presidential party, and volunteered what I was hoping to learn.

He said, "Young fellow, I want to tell you something." He said, "We farmers here in the Midwest like President Truman. What he says and how he says it makes sense to us. We feel he is one of us. We don't care for this smart aleck fellow from New York, who doesn't know anything about our farm problems. He is

interested more in the welfare of the wealthy. I'm going to vote for Truman, and I think most of the other farmers will. Whether Democrats or Republicans, they are farmers primarily."

As it turned out, Iowa, normally a Republican state, did go Democratic in the ensuing election.

He went on to say to me, and we were standing alone, that the Democrats had been good for the farmers. "Back in the early thirties when President Roosevelt became President," he said, "I didn't have a pair of overalls that I didn't have patches on." He said, "We were in pretty sad shape after a long time of Republicans in office. The depression hit the farmer first and hit him hard." He said, "I had patches on my pants, all of my children had patches on their pants, and we found it very hard to sell our crops. We found it very hard to get along. If we hadn't been able to

Now look out over those fields. Hundreds upon hundreds of private airplanes that we own. They are ours. Hundreds of Cadillacs. I have my own airplane; my son has his own airplane. We both own Cadillacs. How has this happened? It has happened because we are no longer penniless. It has happened because the Democratic administrations have benefited the farmer and made it possible for the farmer to be pretty well off." And he said, "And today, I have more money than I know what to do with or even can count myself."

This was when I first began to question all the political wiseacres who were saying that Truman had not a chance to win. I began questioning in my own mind whether I had not been led astray in my earlier view.

to go any further to find out where the farm vote would go. If a man gets the farmer's vote in this country in a national election, he doesn't need much more. If this was the way the farmers were thinking, then Dewey wasn't going to get the farm vote. That, of course, was how it turned out in the end. Truman did get the farm vote.

In a political election, these things are not always certain. But there are indicator after indicator, and this was one of the indicators.

Truman got this enormous turnout of people, even at the little whistlestops in the small towns. They had a reason for coming out and listening to him and hearing what he had to say. It was not just because he was a curiosity as a President, but because they wanted to hear him talk and see what he had to say.

HESS: What was the general nature of the reception that Mr. Truman usually got at the whistlestops?

NIXON: I would like to answer that by giving a rather dramatic illustration. This was a thing that started out slowly, but mounted with ever increasing crescendo. It was particularly dramatic at the whistlestops in these small towns where there was a small population. It seemed that when the Truman campaign train stopped in these little towns, that everybody in the town was at the little railroad station, along with all the people who had come in from the surrounding countryside.

Perhaps the middle of the campaign, we went through Illinois and Indiana. Indiana was normally a Republican state, but in towns where you knew the population was twenty thousand, in several instances, there would be a hundred

thousand to see Truman. They would be jammed in for blocks around where loud speakers would have been set up. They had come from towns in the whole surrounding countryside, maybe as far away as a hundred miles, where the train did not go. They wanted to come in and listen to him.

If you watched these things carefully, as I was supposed to do, you didn't have to be very smart to say, "Look here, something is going on." As I've said, these are indicators. This meant to me, bit by bit as the campaign went on, that these supposedly very wise commentators and pundits and columnists were just dead wrong.

I did not cover Dewey. But I read what was going on on the Dewey train. One day when Dewey was on the rear platform of his train, the train was starting to pull out. Trains do not always move off smoothly because when

steam energy is applied to the mechanism that makes the wheels go around, the driving wheels many times spin before they catch hold of the track and move out. This occurred on one occasion when Dewey was campaigning. He lost his temper because it jerked him. He made some comment which went out over the loudspeakers something like, "What's the matter with that idiot that's driving this train?"

The engineer of the train was a member of one of the railway brotherhoods. This meant that he not only was a man who lost his temper without real reason, but he commented about it. He also alienated the union vote. Like the farm vote, it was one of the most important vote segments in the country. He evidenced that he might frequently lose his temper and, thereby, his judgment. At the same time he alienated labor.

I recall that when this happened, one of the reporters for the New York Times wrote a long final sentence describing this. He ended the sentence by writing: "and the train pulled out with a jerk."

It was also getting to where Dewey was being described as the candidate "with the china doll face." These are things that are very hard for a presidential candidate to overcome.

To me, things were beginning to rack up. I was beginning to use my own judgment, and two and two still make four.

HESS: Before the election took place, did you have occasion to write any columns on who you thought was going to win?

NIXON: Yes, I did. Two weeks before the election, I received a telegram from my New York office

asking just that. They made it plain that the man traveling with Dewey also was being called upon for his viewpoint. They also asked our chief political writer in Washington, the bureau manager.

NIXON: William K. Hutchinson, who, I might add, was always a Republican. Bill was a fine fellow. He was a close friend of mine, as close as you can be when you work for somebody, but his opinion was invariably Republican. He was like the bureau chief before him who died, George R. Holmes.

This should never happen to a reporter, but it sometimes happens. His opinion was tempered by the very complexion of his viewpoint. Perhaps it is not possible for it not to happen. I do remember that sometime in 1938 or 1939, George Holmes, who was a big

wheel in the Gridiron Club, invited me to be his guest when he was being inducted at the annual Gridiron dinner as president. That year the Republicans were touting Wendell Willkie as the next candidate for the Presidency. I remember that George Holmes, a man of fine judgment, a very fine newspaperman, introduced me to Willkie. It was nice of him to do that, and afterwards his comment was, "Bob, you have just met the next President of the United States."

Ho, ho! I really could have told George that he was wrong, just on the basis of my own judgment.

You don't tell your boss these things. It's really quite simple. Why did I have any better judgment than George Holmes? As it happened, I was in closer touch with the mood of Americans than he was. The same with

Hutchinson. I had come from the boondocks, from the grassroots. I was closer to these people than Holmes. That's the way an individual makes up his own mind.

Oral History Interview with Robert G. Nixon

Oral History Interview with
Robert G. Nixon