Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman   (Politician, Farmer)
Born	May 8, 1884 Lamar, Missouri, U.S.
Died	December 26, 1972 (Age 88) Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
Religion	Baptist
Children	Margaret
Spouse	Bess Wallace
Member of	Phi Beta Kappa
Party	Democratic
US President In office April 12, 1945 - January 20, 1953 Employer US Government Deputy Alben Barkley, David MacEachron, Alexander Menne Preceded by Franklin D. Roosevelt Succeeded by Dwight Eisenhower Against his better judgement, he was persuaded to create the CIA, something he later came to regret.  US Vice President In office January 20, 1945 - April 12, 1945  US Senator In office January 3, 1935 - January 17, 1945 From Missouri  United States Senator from Missouri In office January 3, 1935 - January 17, 1945  Presiding Judge of Jackson County Missouri In office January 10, 1927 - January 3, 1935  Judge of Jackson County Missouri's Eastern District In office January 1, 1923 - January 1, 1925

Unlike modern US Presidents, Truman evidenced considerable concern about the rise of the deep state. He was however, ultimately ineffective in stopping its more or less complete takeover of the US government.

FBI

Truman was concerned about the power of the FBI, writing in 1947: "Dear Bess... We want no Gestapo or secret police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail... Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him. I'm not and he knows it. If I can prevent [it] there'll be no NKVD or Gestapo in this country. Edgar Hoover's orgnization would make a good start toward a citizen spy system. Not for me."

National Security Act of 1947

Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 and reorganized military forces by merging the Department of War and the Department of the Navy into the National Military Establishment (later the Department of Defense) and creating the U.S. Air Force.

Russ Baker notes that Truman was very reluctant to sign the act since it also created the CIA and the National Security Council. He apparently didn't see the need for an organisation such as the CIA in peacetime, but was persuaded to sign off on it against his better judgment^[Why?][How?], something that he later came to regret.

“For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government.... I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations.”
Harry S. Truman

Call for reform

As if alert to the dangers of the crystallising deep state within the US government, one month after the JFK Assassination, Truman wrote a letter to the New York Times, in which he noted that "for some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government." He called for reform of the CIA, opining that "there is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it." It is unclear whether he was aware of its role in JFK's assassination, or whether this timing is coincidental. Either way, the letter was broadly ignored and the call for reform was not taken up.

 

A Document by Harry S. Truman

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)	Description
Document:Limit CIA Role To Intelligence	letter	22 December 1963	CIA	A letter just after the assassination of JFK which was published once and then vanished down the memory hole.

 

A Quote by Harry S. Truman

Page	Quote	Date
Encyclopedia of Domestic Assassinations	<nowiki>“[[[Secretary-General of the United Nations]] Dag Hammarskjöld] was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said "when they killed him."”</nowiki>	1961

 

An appointment by Harry S. Truman

Appointee	Job	Appointed	End
David Bruce	US/Ambassador/France	17 May 1949	10 March 1952

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Reflection on the Role of the U.S. Vice Presidency	Article	25 September 2024	Ludwig De Braeckeleer	On 12 April 1945, Vice President Truman was preparing to have a drink in House Speaker Sam Rayburn’s office when he received an urgent message to go immediately to the White House, where Eleanor Roosevelt told him that her husband had died after a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Suddenly, the ‘piano player’ was responsible for overseeing the final phase of World War II and shaping the postwar global order: Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, and the UN.

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