Letter of Resignation by Secretary of the Interior Ickes to the President
February 13, 1946
My Dear Mr. President:
I have concluded to resign as Secretary of the Interior and this letter is for that purpose. I understand that hearings on the proposed Anglo-American oil treaty, which I have nurtured and raised by bottle from the beginning, will begin on March 4. I would like to be here for those hearings.
Moreover, it will be no easy task, shorthanded as I am in the Secretary’s office, after such a long tenure, to put the affairs of the department in order for my successor. For these reasons I propose that my resignation take effect at the close of business on March 31, but if you desire an earlier date I will be glad to comply with any wish that you may express.
In thus presenting my resignation without recourse, I am moved by compelling circumstances over which I have had no control. I cannot stay on when you, in effect, have expressed a lack of confidence in me.
I shall go somewhat at length into my reasons for resigning as Secretary of the Interior because I owe a full explanation, not only to you, but to the country, in view of the evidence that the political gnats in Washington are already swarming. Despite them, I cannot accept the theory that I should have told to the Naval Affairs Committee anything less than the truth. I have no apologies for having done so, although I did regret the unhappy personal position in which I involuntarily found myself.
You will remember that on July 6, 1945, I took to you personally my written resignation to take effect the following August 31. I told you that the 12 years of the great adventure that I had shared as a member of the Roosevelt administration had been an inspiring experience, adding that they had required me to remain in continuous Government service much longer than any man would wish and had left me beyond desire for further official work.
You insisted that you did not want me to resign and that your wish had been that I should continue as Secretary of the Interior. You had no one in mind to take my place, you said, and the office was a danger spot in the administration. So it was left that I would continue. If at any time I should feel that I could no longer remain, I was to tell you first and you volunteered that if you should decide that you would like me to resign you would tell me first and directly.
I had understood that this meant a personal conference between us. But since I have not been able to get an appointment with you from the time that I undertook to do so on Tuesday afternoon. February 5, I have decided that, while I would have preferred to talk with you personally, the only course left open to me is to write you this letter.
Several days have already elapsed since your press conference of last Thursday and I cannot remain longer than is necessary in the equivocal position in which certain of your remarks on that occasion placed me, although I shall continue to be available for further hearings on the Pauley nomination. Therefore, I feel that I owe it to myself to make my position known publicly before noon of tomorrow.
I deeply appreciate the wish that you made known to me on the occasion mentioned that I continue as a member of your cabinet. During the interval there have been other expressions of trust and confidence on your part that have meant much to me. Now, in view of your evident conclusion that you no longer feel as you did, coupled with the desire that I have had for many months to retire from Government service, my resignation seems to be in order.
You may recall the passing allusion to my possible retirement at our interview on Wednesday, January 30, on which occasion you told me that you wanted me to stay on to help you solve some of the problems, that lay ahead. At the previous cabinet meeting you had asked me not to wind up the affairs of the Solid Fuels Administration until May 1, and in explanation of this you told me, during this Wednesday interview, that, in the event of a strike of the coal miners on April 1, you wanted me to handle that situation.
However, since tnat interview, some of your close friends have felt moved to resent keenly the fact that when called as a witness by the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs to testify on the nomination of Mr. Edwin W. Pauley to be Undersecretary of the Navy I told the truth which I later verified.
I am at a loss to understand what these gentlemen think that I could or should have done in the circumstances. I am unwilling to believe that their view is that I should have committed perjury – it will be remembered that I was under oath – or that I should have spoken anything less than the truth. After all, the constitutional provision that calls for ratification by the Senate of a nomination of this sort imposes a duty upon all citizens, if called as witnesses, to speak the truth.
I feel that it my due that I should recall certain circumstances with reference to this nomination and my appearance before the Naval Affairs Committee upon a telegraphic summons by its chairman, Senator Walsh.
On no occasion did you ever tell me that you proposed to nominate Mr. Pauley for Undersecretary of the Navy. I had seen reports to this effect in the newspapers and this possibility seemed to be on the tongue of many people in Washington. Having the convictions that I have about the propriety of putting a man active in the oil business in a position in the Government, except under the pressure of necessity during a war emergency, where one of his important duties would be to deal with oil matters on behalf of the Government, and anticipating that you might have in mind the nomination of Mr. Pauley to be Undersecretary of the Navy, I suggested to you on two or three occasions, as you will doubtless recall, that the administrative responsibilities with respect to petroleum that lie in the Navy Department be transferred to a commission consisting of the Secretaries of Wai, Navy and Interior.
Your reply was that you had been thinking of doing this. Time continued to run and, not hearing from you further on this matter, I caused a suggested executive order to be drafted which I sent to you. The signing of this order would have removed this aspect of the question of oil so far as Mr. Pauley and the Navy Department were concerned. Unfortunately the order was not signed, so that when Mr. Pauley’s nomination went up there immediately arose the question of the propriety of nominating an active oil man for a job that carried with it responsibility for Government oil.
Word came to me indirectly that Mr. Pauley himself had told you of my probable opposition to his nomination. In the circumstances, it surprised me that you did not frankly ask me what might be the basis of such opposition. You will recall that, after the cabinet meeting on January 18, you stepped aside with me into the corner of the room. We discussed one or two matters relating to my department.
The nomination was undoubtedly it that moment on its way to the Senate, if indeed it had not already been received there. It was that same afternoon that I learned from the news ticker that the nomination had gone up. Yet during this interview you did not mention Mr. Pauley, although his nomination was no longer a secret and you already knew from Pauley himself that I had reservations about his qualifications.
On the day to which I have previously referred, January 30, as I was about to leave your office, I told you that I wished that, or occasion, I could feel that I might talk frankly and freely with you. There were, I remarked, situations arising from time to time that worried me.
Your answer was a general one to the effect that some day we would “sit down and talk things over.” Persisting, I brought up the name of Mr. Pauley, remarking that it was not true, as had been printed in an oil journal the preceding week, that I had inspired the fight against his nomination. You replied that you knew this. I added that it was not my intention either to initiate any opposition-to Mr. Pauley or to “plant” anything with respect to him. Mr. Pauley’s name was thus brought definitely into our conversation. Still you did not ask me what objections, if any, I had to him.
Late Thursday afternoon, January 31, I received a telegram from Senator Walsh, chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee of the Senate asking me, at the request of Senator Tobey, to appear before his committee on the nomination of Mr. Pauley the following morning at 11:30. The cabinet met at 10 o’clock that day. At almost exactly 11, as we were about to adjourn, I left my chair so as to reach you first and showed you the telegram from Senator Walsh. However, you still refrained from asking me if I had any objections to this nomination.
I proceeded to the meeting of the Naval Affairs Committee and I think that the record will show that I did everything that I could in behalf of Mr. Pauley except to foreswear myself. The committee, it seemed to me, had gotten off on a false scent by considering evidence about Mr. Pauley’s interest in building and operating a 100-octane gasoline refinery In Mexico.
I could not see that this had any bearing upon his qualifications to become Undersecretary of the Navy. However, this presented an occasion to criticize sharply Mr. Max Thornburg, at one time petroleum adviser to the State Department. When Senator Tobey asked me whether, in any conversation with me, Mr. Pauley had ever linked the proposition of campaign contributions from oil men in California with the possibility οf abandoning any claim of Federal title to the offshore oil lands of that State, my answer was “yes.”
At that time Senator Tobey did not pursue the matter further than to ask whether any one wu present at this conversation and whether I had made a memorandum oi it. My answers were that Undersecretary Fortas had been present and that I had made a memorandum.
Mr. Pauley followed me on the stand. Senator Brewster asked him whether he had heard my evidence that morning to the effect that he had suggested to me that if he could be assured that the tideland bill would not be filed, he could raise $400,000 or $500,000. Mr. Pauley replied, “that statement is not true.” Subsequently I received another telegram from Senator Walsh in response to which I attended a further meeting of the Naval Affairs Committee on the afternoon of Tuesday, February 5.
This summons required me to take with me all memoranda relating to conversations with Mr. Pauley with respect to campaign contributions and Federal title to offshore oil lands in California. Of course, I responded to this summons. On this occasion, under questioning from Senator Tobey, I read my memoranda – there were several of them on the subject – to the committee and introduced them into the record.
I followed your press conference on Thursday, February 7, at which you definitely aligned yourself with Mr. Pauley as against me, thus making my position as a member of your cabinet untenable. Of course this was your privilege but, if I may, I should like to question the propriety of your saying that I had not consulted you in advance of my testimony with respect to Pauley and particularly of your statement that “Ickes can very well be mistaken as well as the rest of us.”
It seemed to me clear from what you said at this press conference that you had prejudged this case without giving me a chance to be heard. In any other circumstances that I can conceive of I would have considered it my duty to continue in my present post until the issues had been finally determined. In the circumstances I see no such duty. On the contrary, I feel that as a matter of principle it is clearly my obligation to submit my resignation now.
As to your statement that I might have been mistaken in my testimony, my feeling is that, since you were not present at the hearing and presumably had not read the record, it was not proper for you, even although you be the President of the United States, to pass judgment on a question of veracity, between Mr. Pauley and myself.
After all, I am a member of your cabinet at your own request and I do not have a reputation for dealing recklessly with the truth. On the issue of veracity as between Mr. Pauley and myself, I am ready to appear before any competent tribunal at any time, although, of course, I should want one that would not announce, or even form, its opinion in advance of a full and careful consideration of all of the evidence.
As to whether I had or had not consulted you in advance of my testimony on the Pauley nomination, my reply is that you had full notice of the probability of my embarrassment, plus several opportunities, in addition to those that you might create at will, to ask me the reason why I might oppose him.
After all, one may not thrust his unasked advice upon the President of the United States and I did not feel that I could go further than to indicate to you, as I clearly did, that I was willing to talk to you about Mr. Pauley, although, οf course, you did not need such an affirmative assurance.
Even at the risk of making this letter too long, I would like to explain why I was shocked by the suggestion that liberal campaign contributions might be forthcoming if the Government should forego whatever claim it might have to the oil-rich lands lying off the coast of California. Above all departments, the Department of the Interior must always be on guard against any association of money with politics, and even over-zealous, by the standards of some men, in defending the Government’s legal proprietary rights. The forces that ruined Secretary Fall will always be playing upon any one who is Secretary of the Interior.
It is not now certain that other departments will be immune to similar sinister pressures. And the forces that ruined Secretary Fall because he made the mistake of deciding that, politically, he had to yield to them will always be seeking to oust or to discredit any Secretary who will not surrender to them.
Always, in one form or another, they will be urging (a) that because of what it has to give out to the public treasure, the Department of the Interior can be made a flush source of money for use in politics, and (b) that a Secretary who insists upon protecting the public domain, as if it were his own property, from the encroachments of men politically and acquisitively ambitious, is an intolerable scold and a brake on progress.
The incapacity to resist this kind of political pressure spiritually wrecked the Republican party in the days of Secretary Fall long before its debacle in 1932. And so, as I leave the department, I feel that I ought to warn you of a cloud, now no bigger than a man’s hand, that my experience sees in the sky.
This cloud is the brash criticism of me voiced by party members other than yourself for the alleged failure of my department to make a contribution during the last national campaign of an amount deemed satisfactory. That I have found it necessary on occasion to decline to produce lists of the names and addresses of the department personnel to be used for purposes of political solicitation is quite true. My justification has been that such a procedure would be against my principles and, furthermore, would violate the law.
It is also undoubtedly true that my personal contributions have not been as large in terms of money as those of some others, although I have contributed within the limit of my ability to do so. Aside from financial contributions, I doubt if many members of the administration have given more than I. However, even if I could afford it, I would not care to enter into a competition for political favor on the basis of cash contributions made.
It continues to be a source of satisfaction to me to recall President Roosevelt’s word to me at my home on the Sunday afternoon following the last election. He said that he had come out to thank me personally for my services in the campaign, services which he appraised so generously that I refrain from quoting his exact words.
I need not emphasize the concern that I have felt about the oil situation along the Pacific Coast, where we have a steadily declining production with a paucity of new discoveries. For strategic as well as for domestic purposes, we need in the Pacific Coast States, a steady and reliable supply of crude oil.
Naturally, in view of my responsibilities as the head of this department, I have felt that the national interest in the oil lying off of the shore of California should be carefully guarded. It may be that our future supplies in this area will come more and more from under the waters of the Pacific Ocean.
I have felt that the national interest requires the determination of the ownership of this oil by the branch of government set up by the people to decide such questions, namely, the courts. It is for this reason that I have for a long time pressed for the prosecution of a suit so that the courts might say whether or not the Federal Government has any title in or to any part of this oil.
For the same reason I have opposed all proposals that, without waiting for the courts so to decide, Congress simply quit claim any interest of the United States to other and private interests. It would be strange if, in view of my interest in the oil situation along the Pacific Coast, I should not feel some concern about the business affiliations and the natural aptitudes of any man nominated for the critically important poet of Undersecretary of the Navy.
I cannot understand why any American should be afraid to entrust to the courts such a question as they were instituted to pass upon – and I am suspicious when I find such distrust. You must know how much I appreciated your instructions to the Attorney General to file an original suit against the State of California, to test this question directly in the Supreme Court of the United States, thus moving to resolve legal doubts much more quickly and definitely than could be done in the suit that was pending in the District Court of Southern California.
I will leave the department grateful for the opportunity that President Roosevelt gave me and humble in my appreciation of the help and loyalty that I have had at all times from as fine a group of public servants as can be found in the Government. ît is they who have moved the department forward into new ground.
I have been fortunate in being permitted to work shoulder to shoulder with the splendid men and women of Interior whose only politics have been the desire to accomplish for their country without self-seeking or partisanship. I thank you, too, for the opportunity that you have given to me to continue my public service to this date.
And so, Mr. President, I shall vacate my office on March 31, next, unless it is your desiy that I should retire at an earlier date.
Sincerely yours,
HAROLD L. ICKES,
Secretary of the Interior