Brehon B. Somervell

Brehon B. Somervell, a senior Army supply official known for efficiency and a forceful temperament, became a prominent opponent of the Truman Committee’s wartime oversight. His clashes with the committee centered on a recurring question: whether military urgency justified decisions made without civilian scrutiny. Investigations of Army camp construction produced substantial savings and changed administrative responsibility; the later Canol pipeline hearings tested the limits of Somervell’s authority and planning. Together, the episodes show the tension between rapid military procurement and accountable use of public resources.

Position and Approach

Somervell served as Chief of Services of Supply and was described as hot-tempered as well as efficient. He regarded the Truman Committee as politically motivated and objected to what he saw as interference with military administration. His position was not simply that oversight was inconvenient: he argued that time and money could not both be saved. That claim put him at odds with a committee investigating whether military projects could be delivered more economically without sacrificing their purpose.

Matt Connelly, the committee’s chief investigator, recalled Somervell as a brilliant general who resented intrusion and challenges to his authority. The recollection also drew a contrast between the general’s resistance and Harry S. Truman’s response: Truman proceeded with the inquiry despite Somervell’s objections. The conflict therefore involved more than different assessments of a project. It concerned who could question decisions made within the wartime supply apparatus, and whether a general’s operational authority placed those decisions beyond civilian examination.

Camp Construction and Oversight

The committee’s investigations of Army camp building arose against a background of waste and inefficiency that had also marked construction after the previous war. The Army had conducted a special study in response to that earlier experience, but the study had been lost. The discovery astonished Truman, who warned that military campaign planning would be in a deplorable state if it resembled the disorganized construction effort.

A central concern was the cost-plus contracting system. The government, the account reports, had not adequately compared proposed fees with what contractors earned in peacetime or were willing to accept. Some contractors made several times their usual annual profits in a matter of months, without taking comparable risks; one architect-engineer increased his income through an Army contract by 1,000 percent. These findings supply the context for Somervell’s objections: the committee’s examination reached into a procurement system that military officials considered necessary to meet wartime demands.

The eventual outcome qualified Somervell’s opposition. He later conceded that the committee’s investigations of Army camp building had saved the government $250 million. The committee had also recommended transferring responsibility for camp construction from the Quartermaster Corps to the Corps of Engineers, and that change was made. The episode did not erase the disagreement over oversight, but it provided a concrete result: scrutiny was followed by both major savings and a reassignment of responsibility.

The Canol Project

Somervell’s later appearance before the committee concerned Canol, a project named for Canadian oil. The scheme called for a four-inch pipeline running 1,200 miles from Canada to Alaska. Somervell had initiated it secretly, with little consideration of the terrain, climate, available materials and manpower, or the views of oil experts, the Corps of Engineers, and the War Production Board. A $25 million item had been placed in the War Department budget for military facilities in Canada and Alaska without describing the project itself.

The secrecy was intended chiefly to avoid interference from other civilian branches of government, especially Harold L. Ickes, who led the Petroleum Administration. Once informed, Ickes told the committee that the undertaking rested on a one-page memorandum from Somervell and judged the pipeline useless. The committee reached a similar conclusion after hearing from James H. Graham, Somervell’s chief adviser on the project. Graham had no clear idea how long the pipeline would be, had made no cost estimate, and did not believe that anyone else had estimated its cost. The record thus presented a large, technically demanding commitment without basic information about either its scale or expense.

The Hearings and Their Significance

Somervell arrived at the hearings with four brigadier generals and several majors. Allen Drury, a United Press reporter observing the proceedings, recorded a small but revealing exchange: when Somervell asked for water, the glass passed down the chain of rank until a major filled it and returned it through the same hierarchy. The scene captured the formal military structure surrounding the general, even as the committee questioned whether the project had been planned with adequate attention to practical details.

The questioning lasted four and a half hours, with Hugh Fulton and Harley Kilgore doing most of it. Truman listened quietly, then closed the day by reading a letter from the Navy Department. In response to Truman’s inquiry, a search of Navy files had found no indication that the Navy had been asked to review or join the project, and no Navy officials had been questioned orally. Somervell replied that he had not claimed to consult the Navy and treated Canol as outside its concern. Truman countered that ships used substantial quantities of oil, making the Navy’s perspective relevant.

The committee’s criticism and the War Department’s efforts to defend the project were described by Drury as a contest between scrutiny and institutional face-saving. For Somervell, Canol exposed the vulnerability of decisions made on his initiative and shielded from other civilian agencies. Read alongside the camp-building inquiry, the episode defines the limits of his approach: efficiency and command authority could not substitute for cost estimates, consultation, or evidence that a project served a sound purpose. The contrast between the camp investigations’ acknowledged savings and Canol’s weak planning made his encounters with the committee a consequential test of wartime accountability.