Transcript: Chapter 08

NARRATOR: Slowly, Truman began to prove himself. But even as he became more and more independent, he remained loyal to Tom Pendergast. He kept a framed portrait of the Missouri Boss in his office, even though Pendergast was in trouble. Pendergast was seriously ill, his gambling out of control, his debts in the millions. In 1939, a grand jury indicted him for tax evasion. Convicted, he was sentenced to prison for 15 months and banned from politics for five years. The scandal tainted and it couldn't have come at a worse time -- in 1940, he was up for re-election. His opponents derided him as a fraudulent senator, elected by ghost votes, a Pendergast lackey. Truman tried to convince voters that President Roosevelt supported him, but Roosevelt never did.

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: Roosevelt wanted to distance himself from Harry Truman. Roosevelt considered Truman an embarrassment to the Democratic party.

NARRATOR: Without the support of the president, or Pendergast, Truman had to go it alone. Most observers didn't give him a chance. But he never gave up. And eked out a narrow victory -- he won by just 8,000 votes.

Truman returned to the Senate his own man, but he would remain a backbencher, until once again, a war would reveal his strength as a leader -- and catapult him into the limelight. Nineteen-forty -- Nazi armies swept across Europe. Great Britain was under attack. The United States wasn't in it yet, but America was getting ready, building planes, munitions, tanks, army camps. Back in Washington, Truman was receiving complaints about waste, mismanagement and even fraud, and all by himself, he decided to look into it.

WILBUR SPARKS, Truman Investigating Committee: Without letting anybody in his party know what he was doing, he decided to go see for himself. And he took a long automobile drive. As I recall, he drove a dirty old Dodge in those days. And he climbed in his Dodge, drove south. He must have had a list of camps that were being built...And wherever he went, he stopped in one of these. He went in and started asking questions. Nobody ever asked him who he was or why he was asking these questions. He'd talk to workers. He'd talk to foremen.

NARRATOR: Truman was appalled by what he saw. "There were hundreds of men," he said, "just standing around collecting their pay, doing nothing."

WILBUR SPARKS: He saw big piles of lumber just lying there. Nobody was using it. Trucks standing still and rusting.

NARRATOR: Congress had authorized more than 10 billion dollars for defense contracts in just six months. From his own highly personal investigation, Truman feared the money was being squandered. On February 10, 1941, Senator Truman proposed the formation of a committee to investigate the entire National Defense Program.

WILBUR SPARKS: The White House didn't like the idea at all. They didn't want anybody poking into what they were doing, but they thought that at the outset that they could probably control Harry Truman and that he would do just about anything the leadership of the Senate wanted him to do. They found out different.

NARRATOR: On December 8, America went to war. Truman was all at once thrust center stage. Labeled as the lackey of one of the most corrupt bosses in America, he would now move to stamp out corruption in the largest war machine ever assembled. Truman took on the most powerful men in America, and the country's largest industries -- steel, aluminum, rubber, airplanes.

DAVID MCCULLOUGH: He had a distrust of big business, a distrust of Wall Street and he went after the people who were really selling shoddy goods or doing things that were clearly unpatriotic...

WILBUR SPARKS: In a hearing he showed absolutely no fear. He made it clear that he meant business. He was not afraid to say anything to anybody. He was feared.

TRUMAN: The committee investigating the national defense program has found waste, inefficiency, mismanagement and profiteering.

NARRATOR: He questioned witnesses relentlessly, attacking them for bad planning, sloppy administration, graft. His reputation soared. The committee became known as the Truman Committee. He personally saved the nation billions of dollars. Reporters named him one of the ten most valuable men in Washington.

"The sudden emergence of Harry Truman in the Senate," Time magazine wrote, "is a queer accident of democracy."

Even President Roosevelt wanted some of the credit: "Yes, Yes," Roosevelt said, "I put him in charge of that war investigating committee, didn't I?"

KEN HECHLER: Here was one of the products of one of the most corrupt political machines in the nation, the Pendergast machine, yet he was able to rise above it. And that's one of the remarkable things about Harry Truman.

NARRATOR: At last, Truman had found a home in the Senate. Popular, nationally known, he became an insider, a respected member of one of the most powerful clubs in America. His private life, too, had settled into a comfortable routine. Margaret Truman -- "Miss Skinny," Harry liked to call her -- had begun singing lessons and was already talking of a singing career.

He looked always, his daughter said, as if he had just stepped from a bandbox. His suits were always cleaned and pressed, his style immaculate.

To Bess, he remained completely devoted.

"Dear Bess, Well, I doubt you will remember it, but tomorrow is an anniversary of vital importance.... 23 years have been extremely short and for me altogether most happy ones.... A failure as a farmer, a miner, an oil promoter, and a merchant, but finally hit the groove as a public servant -- and that due mostly to you and lady luck."

Senator Truman was content. But in the summer of 1943, he began to hear disturbing talk. Certain people wanted him to run for vice president.

Truman called them "blowhards."

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