Reading Eagle (August 22, 1944)
Pegler: Bold conduct
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
If I have any ear for the language of the USA, RAdm. Husband E. Kimmel is calling Mr. Roosevelt’s running mate a liar when he writes a letter to Senator Harry Truman saying:
Your innuendo that Gen. Short and I were not on speaking terms is not true. Your statements alleging failure to cooperate and coordinate our efforts are equally false.
Any way you read that Kimmel is accusing Truman of intentional falsehood. He doesn’t say Truman is mistaken or misinformed. And when a man trained in the code of either of our service academies, as Kimmel was, tells another man that he lies, that means that he is willing to go to the floor with him. In this case, of course, Kimmel is not expecting a fistfight with Truman but he certainly does put it up to him to submit to a public examination of his statements and the facts.
This is very bold conduct for an admiral. He knows he is addressing a man who hopes to become Vice President of the country and who is now a member of the Senate. If there is any precedent for such impious language to a Senator from an officer of our Army or Navy, I have never heard of it and you have Kimmel daring not merely Truman but President Roosevelt to open the record and let the public judge who was most at fault in the greatest naval disaster in all history. He is willing to take his chances in a court-martial, knowing that if he were found guilty, he might be disgraced forever and deprived of his pension.
The Roberts Committee, which Mr. Roosevelt himself appointed to make a quick survey of the case, did not exonerate the President, and although it was shrewdly restricted in its mission so that it could not accuse any of the high civilians, its report leaves both the late Frank Knox, as Secretary of the Navy, and Mr. Stimson, as Secretary of War, in a doubtful position. Certainly, in the findings of his own commission, the President, as Commander-in-Chief, as he is so fond of calling himself, must have some responsibility for the kind of orders that were sent to Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short. Their orders were to take precautionary action and to avoid alarm and publicity and the program which they did adopt was the only one that could meet that restriction.
As to whether they were guilty otherwise of neglect or incompetence, Kimmel asks only a trial in which he can present all the evidence and cross-examine witnesses.
In the meanwhile, although this is a very dangerous political issue, Mr. Roosevelt has had all the best of the propaganda. I believe this is one of the very few discussions of the Pearl Harbor disaster which has recognized the possibility that a fair inquiry might blame the President himself.
Nevertheless, his partner on the Democratic ticket comes out with a magazine story again blaming Kimmel and Short although both men have asked to be tried and no fair judgment can be had without such trials.
Of course, the President can’t be tried whatever his error may have been unless you are thinking of impeachment which, of course, is out of the question. The Senate could make an investigation but there, politics would interfere and the verdict could not be clear and conclusive. But a court-martial, which Kimmel continues to demand, could reveal the degree of the failure and the error in the Navy Department, the War Department, and the White House.
To anyone who studies the Roberts Report, it becomes apparent that the committee permitted itself to be used for tawdry political business. It had no moral right to say as it did, in the end, that these officers were guilty of dereliction when it had refused them facilities for the defense of their reputations and had no legal authority to try them anyway. Although it couldn’t avoid revealing some obvious failures in Washington contributing to the disaster, the only men it actually condemned were the two commanders. In this war, it became a political document and now Adm. Kimmel is actually defying the President himself to let the people know the entire truth so that they may consider whether he did his own job well or made a horrible mess of it, in making up their minds whether they want four years more of him as Commander-in-Chief.