Word: dawson
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Then reporters wanted to know about Presidential Assistant Donald Dawson, whose honor, ethics and uprightness had been questioned in the RFC scandal, and who had so far avoided the chance to straighten it all out before the investigating Fulbright subcommittee. Had the President asked Dawson to go clear himself? That, thought the President, .was the committee's business not his. "You don't intend to fire Mr. Dawson from the White House?" No, said Harry Truman curtly, gesturing at Dawson sitting three feet behind him. Dawson was right there, wasn't he? That was all there...
Soon, Dunham testified, he was caught up in a social whirl. Before he had been in his office four days, the ubiquitous Merl Young called on him. He soon found, said Dunham, that Dawson, RFC Director William E. Willett, Merl Young and Young's employer, Rex Jacobs, a Detroit manufacturer, were "all close friends, and that I was obviously regarded as a new member of their social group." He lunched with them and dined with them. Sometimes they were joined by Democratic National Chairman William Boyle...
...They Dropped Me." Dunham kept diaries, instructed his secretary to listen in and make notations of each call. There were 45 calls from or about Dawson, 151 from Boyle or his office. Mostly, Boyle or his men wanted him to see some "very dear friend" on an RFC matter. And in August 1950, the Democratic Committee called about a loan for Pacific Rubber Co., a tire company "wholly or partly owned" by President Truman's good friend Edwin W. Pauley. Mr. Dunham gave it-"I don't like to use the word special"-consideration because "we were anxious...
...change in management-just about the time that an engineering firm reported officially that Lustron was hopeless and should be foreclosed. Next, Dunham heard a report that a "grab" of Lustron had been plotted at a house party at Jacobs' Florida ranch. Among the guests: Mr. & Mrs. Dawson, Merl Young and his wife Lauretta, the mink-coated White House secretary. Said Dunham: "Out of this Lustron matter came my first feeling of doubt . . . Shortly thereafter, it became apparent that my old 'friends' had cooled. They dropped me." "They" included Donald Dawson...
...Goat. Dunham insisted that Dawson himself had never tried to influence him on a RFC loan. But, he conceded, "I think I have outlived my usefulness with the RFC." He had tentatively written out a resignation several weeks ago, he said, and gone to Florida for a vacation. There he got a call from RFC's Vice Chairman G. Edward Rowe. Rowe thought it "imperative" that he resign at once. "You just resign and say the committee crucified you," Rowe told him. "I think that will straighten out the whole matter." To be helpful, Rowe even dictated the letter...