The Old Familiar Fish

Into the beer-and-Braves tumult of Milwaukee, Wis. one day last week roared Harry Truman, ready to start Round One of his battle for Adlai Stevenson. With one Truman-type swing, he hit his own party's cause just above the belt. He sat down at a TV panel show with Dr. Anthony T. Bouscaren, professor of political science at Marquette University.

Q. Mr. President, is it true that you once characterized Richard Nixon's investigation into the Alger Hiss case as a red herring?

A. No, but it was. I never characterized it as that, but that's exactly what it was.*

Q. You didn't approve the investigation and exposure of Alger Hiss?

A. I didn't say that at all. I said the investigation was for the purpose of covering up the facts in legislation in which the Government was interested at the time for the welfare of the people. That's all it was intended to be. Alger Hiss was never convicted of being disloyal to the Government of the U.S.

Q. Well, I know, because the statute of limitations had run out.

A. It was not because the statute of limitations had run out; it was the fact that they couldn't prove anything, and they charged him with having not told the truth on the stand. That's all.

Q. Do you think he was a Communist spy?

A. No, I do not.

Having thus dragged his aromatic old red herring into the ring trailing the Hiss case behind it, Harry went on to assure Professor Bouscaren that neither Harry Dexter White nor Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, leaders of a Red cabal among federal employees during and after World War II, were spies. Said Truman: "Neither of them were guilty of anything."

Moving on to Washington at week's end to lash out at Dwight D. Eisenhower and hole up for consultations with Old Crony Harry Vaughan, Truman got to talking about his place in the Democratic campaign. "I've told 'em not to send me any place where I could do them any harm," he said. New Jersey's Democratic U.S. Representative T. James Tumulty thought he knew just the place. "Send him," he telegraphed Adlai Stevenson, "on a slow boat to China."

*In his press conference Aug. 5, 1948 Truman said: "[The investigations] are simply a red herring. [The Republicans in Congress] are using this as a red herring to keep from doing what they ought to do."

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