Truman Committee Investigation of U.S. Defense Programs

The Truman Committee Investigation of U.S. Defense Programs turned Harry S. Truman’s concern about waste in wartime mobilization into a sustained congressional watchdog effort. Beginning with his own investigation of defense construction, Truman built a bipartisan Senate committee that examined spending and performance without claiming authority over military strategy. Its legacy rested not only on exposed waste and improved equipment, but also on the pressure its scrutiny placed on officials and contractors to do their jobs properly.

Origins and Establishment

The investigation began with Truman’s attempt to see the defense buildup for himself. Concerned about complaints of extravagance and profiteering at Fort Leonard Wood, a new camp for draftees in south-central Missouri, and about his home state’s share of defense contracts, he set out from Washington in an old Dodge. He drove south to Florida, continued through the Midwest, and eventually went north to Michigan, stopping at military installations and defense plants. Truman later claimed to have covered 30,000 miles, more than the distance around the world; the account considered that figure preposterous but judged that he probably traveled about 10,000 miles. What he saw convinced him that the boom in production was accompanied by waste on a large scale.

At Fort Leonard Wood, costly equipment and materials lay exposed to snow and rain, including items that would never be used. The contractor had no prior construction experience, while hundreds of men stood idle and collected pay. Truman took notes and listened to people at the sites, usually without identifying himself unless asked. On returning to Washington, he sought a meeting with Franklin D. Roosevelt, then spent weeks preparing a Senate speech and consulting senators, friends, and staff. On February 10, 1941, he proposed a special committee to investigate the awarding of defense contracts. The proposal was his own initiative, and its success would bring him out of national obscurity.

The proposal faced institutional resistance. Truman understood that an inquiry during wartime could obstruct the war effort: his study of the Civil War had taught him how congressional scrutiny could delay military decisions. He also opposed investigations that arrived only after a war, arguing instead for uncovering and correcting problems while they could still be addressed. A competing proposal by Eugene Cox, a Georgia Democrat who sought a broad inquiry into national defense, helped change the administration’s calculation. At a White House meeting, James F. Byrnes argued that Roosevelt would be better served by an investigation in friendly hands, and Roosevelt agreed to support a Truman committee. Byrnes sought a small appropriation of $10,000; after Truman objected, it rose only to $15,000, despite the scale of the defense spending it was meant to monitor.

Approved as Resolution 71, the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program was known almost from the outset as the Truman Committee. Its seven initial members were five Democrats and two Republicans. The Democrats were Tom Connally, Carl Hatch, Monrad C. Wallgren, James Mead, and Truman; the Republicans were Joseph H. Ball and Owen Brewster. The committee’s remit had boundaries: it would not determine military strategy, select military personnel, or decide the size or disposal of the defense effort. Findings were to be presented as the work of the whole committee, not as the conclusions of an individual senator or its chairman.

Inspections, Hearings, and Working Methods

The committee’s investigations began in earnest on April 15, 1941, when twelve senior military and civilian officials appeared, including Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Chief of Staff George C. Marshall. Discussion of Army seniority brought Marshall’s case for selective promotion into focus; Truman later traced the beginning of his respect for Marshall to this hearing. On April 23 the committee began inspections at nearby Camp Meade, Maryland, the first of nine camps visited on a cross-country tour.

The inspections gave the committee concrete measures of mismanagement. At Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania, costs exceeded the original estimate by more than ten times. Camp Wallace in Texas, projected to cost $480,000, ultimately cost $2,539,000. The Army had chosen some camp sites with what the committee characterized as fantastically poor judgment, and an estimated $13 million was wasted by renting trucks and other construction equipment rather than buying it at the outset. The committee also discovered that an Army study of camp construction waste after the previous war had been lost. Truman reported that if military campaign planning was comparable to the construction planning he had seen, the situation was deplorable.

A capable staff helped turn inspections into continuing inquiry. On the advice of Attorney General Robert Jackson, Truman hired Hugh Fulton, a thirty-five-year-old Justice Department lawyer who had recently convicted a federal judge of fraud. Fulton asked for a $9,000 salary, more than half the committee’s original appropriation, but Truman hired him, expecting that successful work would bring the necessary funds. Truman valued Fulton’s honesty and recognized his contribution, though the narrative identifies the driving force of the committee as Truman himself.

As the committee demonstrated its value, its resources and membership expanded. By fall 1941, its appropriation had risen from $15,000 to $50,000, and it had added Democrat Harley Kilgore and Republicans Harold Burton and Homer Ferguson. The staff eventually included fifteen investigators, along with as many clerks and stenographers. Hearings took place in Room 449 on the fourth floor of the Senate Office Building and, for special sessions, in the marble Caucus Room. A small room behind Truman’s office, nicknamed the Dog House, also served as a place to conduct business.

Truman invited any senator to sit in and participate. He generally arrived prepared, but did not monopolize the proceedings or deny other senators the chance to question witnesses. The committee’s hearings were marked by courtesy, time for witnesses to present their cases, and an avoidance of theatrical insults or threats. That restraint did not mean passivity: Truman could be persistent and tough, while insisting that witnesses receive a fair hearing. The investigation’s method joined close attention to detail with a deliberate refusal to turn oversight into spectacle.

Scale, Results, and Limits

The committee continued its work even after Robert Patterson, the Under Secretary of War, urged Roosevelt to abolish it following the attack on Pearl Harbor, warning that supplying information to the committee would impair the war effort. Roosevelt did not act on the recommendation. The committee’s first annual report went to the Senate on January 15, 1942. In time it produced fifty additional reports and held more than 400 hearings at which 1,798 witnesses appeared. All its reports were unanimous. Owen Brewster attributed that agreement to the fact that men could reach agreement once the facts were known.

The committee did not prevent every wasteful project or expose every case to consequence. The Canol Project went ahead and ultimately cost $134 million, consuming manpower and materials as well as money; at one point it involved 4,000 troops and 12,000 civilians. In other cases, corporations or government agencies found to have bungled work or committed fraud, including Carnegie-Illinois Steel, were let off to keep production moving. The committee’s experience therefore included a continuing tension between accountability and the perceived need to maintain wartime output.

Its broader performance was nevertheless judged outstanding. Later estimates credited it with saving as much as $15 billion, a figure the account treats as almost certainly exaggerated because no exact total can be established. The committee’s deterrent effect may have mattered more than any calculable savings: the prospect of investigation and public exposure encouraged people in industry, government, and the military to perform better, which the account connects in turn to lives saved. Its findings also went beyond criticism. After the committee pressed the issue, the Navy’s Bureau of Ships ordered the hinge-prowed Higgins landing craft, which could land troops on shallow beaches rather than only in established harbors. The committee helped replace an inferior design with equipment that increased mobility for amphibious operations and saved lives.

The committee also supplied the public with information about the conduct of the war. Its report on losses to German U-boats stated that 12 million tons of American shipping had been destroyed in 1942—one million tons more than the nation’s shipyards were then producing. The Navy disputed the figure publicly, but Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox acknowledged in executive session that the committee was telling the truth. Through such reporting, its watchdog role, careful hearings, and insistence on fair treatment of witnesses helped strengthen public confidence in the administration of the war effort. The investigation’s significance lay both in what it uncovered and in the expectation of scrutiny it made part of wartime government.