The Establishment of the Truman Committee marked Harry S. Truman’s move from relative obscurity in the Senate into national prominence. On February 10, 1941, he proposed a special investigation of defense contracts, making congressional scrutiny of wartime spending a task he had chosen for himself. The committee that followed was created amid political resistance, given meager resources, and expected to investigate a defense program already growing at extraordinary speed.

The proposal and its purpose

Truman’s initiative followed weeks of preparation. He consulted senators, friends, and staff, and told William Helm that greed among both major businesses and some labor unions had become intolerable. On returning to Washington, Truman had also met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who greeted him warmly and spoke with him at length. The meeting left Truman unsure whether he had made an impression, but he decided to bring the issue before the Senate himself.

On February 10, Truman addressed the Senate and called for a special committee to investigate the awarding of defense contracts. He argued that the War Department should not disregard information from members of Congress who might know the ability of local contractors. The proposal won an immediately favorable response. Resolution 71 went first to the Committee on Military Affairs, which reported it out unanimously within days, but was then referred to the Senate committee responsible for auditing and controlling contingent expenses. There, the measure risked being stalled.

Truman’s proposed inquiry was shaped by his concern that investigations could themselves damage a war effort. His study of the Civil War had led him to examine how congressional scrutiny of military decisions could cause delays, and he had checked the historical record at the Library of Congress. He also disliked the backward-looking investigations of Senator Gerald P. Nye, which he believed had fed isolationism and left the country unprepared. Truman’s stated alternative was to uncover problems during the defense buildup, while they could still be corrected.

A political route to approval

The proposal survived in part because Eugene Cox, a Georgia Democrat who opposed Roosevelt, introduced a competing House proposal for a joint investigation of all national-defense activities. At a White House meeting, James F. Byrnes argued that the administration would be better served by an inquiry under Truman, whom he considered a friendly choice. Roosevelt agreed. The episode showed that the committee’s creation was not simply a matter of Truman persuading the Senate: its prospects also depended on political calculations within the administration and on the prospect of a broader, less welcome investigation.

Byrnes sought to limit the committee’s resources to $10,000. Truman objected, but secured only an increase to $15,000, even though defense expenditures in 1941 were expected to exceed $13 billion. Resolution 71 was finally brought forward on a Saturday afternoon in March, with just sixteen senators present. Byrnes requested immediate adoption, and the Senate approved it unanimously. A week later, during a late-night session, senators defeated isolationist amendments and passed the Lend-Lease Act, which authorized another $7 billion in spending. The timing underscored the scale of the defense commitments the new committee was meant to watch.

Membership, staff, and early significance

The committee’s formal title was the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, but it was known almost from the outset as the Truman Committee. It had seven members: five Democrats and two Republicans. The Democrats were Tom Connally, Carl Hatch, Monrad C. Wallgren, and James Mead; the Republicans were Joseph H. Ball and Owen Brewster. Apart from Connally, they were junior senators, described by one observer as competent but unspectacular. The bipartisan group was not a collection of nationally prominent figures; its standing would depend on the work it did.

Truman understood that investigations required capable staff. Drawing on lessons from earlier railway investigations, and on advice from Attorney General Robert Jackson, he hired Hugh Fulton, a thirty-five-year-old Justice Department lawyer who had recently secured the conviction of a federal judge for fraud. Fulton asked for a $9,000 salary—more than half the committee’s initial appropriation. Truman hired him anyway, expecting that successful work would bring the necessary funding.

The committee’s establishment also created an oversight body that could encounter matters far beyond ordinary contract disputes. By 1943, staff investigators had picked up unexplained expenditures associated with the secret Manhattan Project. When Truman asked Secretary of War Henry Stimson about the matter, Stimson identified it as a highly important secret development. Truman accepted that explanation without pressing him further. The exchange illustrates both the reach of the committee’s investigations and the limits imposed on oversight when national security secrecy entered the picture.

Truman saw the appointment as a personal turning point. In a letter to Bess, he wrote that it looked as if he would get something done, and he recognized that the committee’s work could bring conflict with powerful people, including the President. Its creation did not make the committee powerful through its budget or its members’ prominence. It gave Truman a defined role, a staff, and a route to examine how the nation’s expanding defense program was being carried out.