After Quebec, Roosevelt needed a rest. While Hopkins, Marshall, King, and Arnold returned to Washington, the president headed directly to Hyde Park, taking along only his secretary, his press secretary, and Leahy.1 For three days Roosevelt and Leahy relaxed, chatting in the president’s new study, and taking country drives together, which resulted in visits to some of Roosevelt’s distant cousins. When the party finally returned to the White House on August 30, the president and his closest adviser had been together almost every day for an entire month. During that time they had decided on grand strategy and participated in one of the most important conferences in World War II, doing more to direct the course of the war than any other top officials.
The personal time that Roosevelt and Leahy spent together was indicative of how the admiral had supplanted Harry Hopkins in the president’s affections, both personally and professionally. Leahy was vital to a functional White House, and a visit to his office on September 23 showed that Hopkins understood this new reality. Hopkins came by to tell Leahy a story as lurid as one could have imagined in the 1940s: rumor had it that Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, another Roosevelt insider, had been implicated in a drunken homosexual scandal. Hopkins felt he needed to get Leahy onside before convincing the president to act.
Though Hopkins did not realize this, Leahy had almost certainly learned of the story many months earlier, but perhaps understanding Roosevelt’s fondness for his old friend, he had never mentioned it to the president. The incident in question had taken place in September 1940. Welles’s cool demeanor was a mask to cover his homosexuality. Knowing that even hints about his desires could destroy his reputation, the thrice-married Welles’s life was built around the outward show of being heterosexual. Over time his repressed needs drove him to binge drink, during which time his self-control could evaporate and his urges emerge. Aboard an overnight train, a well-lubricated and emotionally liberated Sumner Welles propositioned a number of African American railway porters in his Pullman car, reportedly only stopping after all had refused.2
At the time, the story was reported to Roosevelt, who asked the FBI to investigate. When they concluded that Welles had in fact propositioned the porters, the president sat on the information, hoping the incident would melt away. For a while it seemed that it would, and Welles remained Roosevelt’s favored contact in the State Department. Yet Welles had enemies who were jealous of his access and influence. Cordell Hull was the greatest of these. Hull’s jealousy came from personal frustration at being increasingly marginalized during the war while Welles, his nominal subordinate, was far more involved in policy-making. The secretary of state started putting pressure on Welles to resign, though he never pressed Roosevelt as directly on the matter.
In his efforts to get rid of Welles, Hull was supported by the aggressive and self-destructive William Bullitt. Bullitt’s jealousy toward Welles was simple: he wanted Welles’s job. Having already served in two major ambassadorial roles, Bullitt was convinced that he had the ability and experience, to say nothing of the intelligence, needed to steer American foreign policy in such a crucial time. What he did not have was the faith of Franklin Roosevelt. After Bullitt returned home from his controversial ambassadorship to France in 1940, the president kept the wealthy, ambitious Pennsylvanian at arm’s length. He would send Bullitt on diplomatic missions, but he resisted giving him a permanent post. With his signature charm, Roosevelt would regularly dazzle Bullitt with promises of important jobs in the future, but nothing specific ever materialized. It was a superb example of Roosevelt’s mask of bonhomie being used to thwart a man’s ambition.
Eventually the nasty triangular relationship of personality and interest reached a crescendo. To put it simply, Hull and Bullitt set out to destroy Sumner Welles.3 The two first heard news of Welles’s drunken night on the train sometime in 1942 and started spreading the story around Washington, hoping that it would make it into the press.4 They claimed that incident made Welles such a security risk that he needed to be removed from the State Department. Hull clearly discussed the “scandalous rumor” about Welles with the New York Times journalist Arthur Krock.5 No newspaper was willing to print the story, yet whispers around Washington grew louder. In their nasty quest, Hull and Bullitt were able to take advantage of Welles’s personality. His aloofness meant that he had few supporters other than the president. His aristocratic nature, which made Roosevelt comfortable, led him to be detached from others. The way that Roosevelt favored him also led to lower morale in the State Department, where he had few colleagues willing to fight on his behalf.6
At first, Roosevelt did everything in his power to protect Welles. As assistant secretary of the navy, Roosevelt had called for strict punishment of naval personnel who were found to have engaged in homosexual activity, even authorizing a sting operation to catch homosexual sailors in the act.7 In the intervening years, he became aware of the role of physical desire in his own life as he engaged in numerous affairs with women who were not his wife. By the 1940s he was more than willing to overlook the sexual activity of those he valued. He even believed that making allowances for sexual urges was the proper, Christian thing to do.8
But by September 1943, even Roosevelt was losing the ability to protect Welles. The story was thought to be on the verge of breaking nationally. (It would, though not for many years, eventually being published in a gossip magazine in the 1950s.) As such, Roosevelt either had to face a complete break with Hull or reluctantly accept Welles’s resignation. That he eventually did the latter was something that Roosevelt never forgot, nor forgave. He had already marginalized Hull by this point, so there was little else he could do to the secretary of state but ignore him more obviously. Roosevelt’s open wrath was unleashed on Bullitt. In this case the mask that characterized most of the president’s interactions dropped. The sense of loss was so raw that Roosevelt’s darker side came out.
He belittled Hull as “an old fool” and accused Bullitt of leaking the story to “that bitch friend of yours,” Cissy Patterson, publisher of the Washington Times-Herald.9 A few nights after Welles resigned, an emotional Roosevelt held a small dinner party for six people, all of whom he could trust. Among those attending were his mistress, Princess Martha of Norway, Margaret Suckley, and Leahy.10 He went through the whole episode in detail, clearly viewing Welles’s actions as a drunken mistake. However, Roosevelt was still incandescent at the behavior of Bullitt, and it was evident to those around the table that he never again wanted to speak to the former ambassador.
This sting in the tail for Bullitt would last for as long as Roosevelt lived. The president set out to destroy him by sabotaging Bullitt’s political career. With no government job on offer from the White House, Bullitt decided to run for mayor of Philadelphia. Roosevelt told the leaders of the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania to “cut his [Bullitt’s] throat.”11 Bullitt lost. With no political future as long as Roosevelt was president, in 1944 he signed up to fight with the French Army; sadly, from Roosevelt’s perspective, he emerged unscathed.
This spectacular falling-out between Roosevelt and Bullitt put Leahy in an awkward position. Until the moment he resigned, Welles worked closely with Leahy, the two almost always bypassing Hull and going directly to Roosevelt on important questions.12 If anything, their relationship in 1943 seemed stronger. Not long after returning with the president after Casablanca, Leahy met twice with Welles for detailed surveys of US foreign policy, including relations with Vichy France, American policy toward newly occupied foreign lands, and the effectiveness of US propaganda.13 On the other hand, though Leahy liked Welles personally, there was no indication that Leahy advised Roosevelt to keep the undersecretary of state.
Bullitt, on the other hand, had gone to great lengths to cultivate Leahy and turn him against Welles. In March 1943 he invited Leahy to lunch à deux at his large house on Kalorama Street to discuss how he could fix a “completely disorganized and inefficient” State Department.14 Leahy would have listened to Bullitt’s ideas with interest, as he usually did, but also with a note of caution. He obviously enjoyed Bullitt’s conversation, but also thought the man was in need of greater self-control. As he later said, Bullitt “usually has interesting ideas about how to solve a problem, and some of them sound excellent.”15
Leahy greeted Welles’s resignation cautiously, commenting only that his departure would at least lead to greater harmony within the State Department, as Hull and he had worked so poorly together.16 There is no indication that Leahy ever passed moral judgment on Welles’s behavior. Certainly, if Welles’s crisis had been heterosexual in nature, it is unlikely that Leahy would have cared—at the time, Leahy was abetting Roosevelt in a string of affairs with several different women. On the whole, the admiral seemed rather forgiving of people’s personal tastes. Yet the fact that Welles’s scandal involved interracial homosexuality might have made a difference for the conventional Leahy. While he liked one openly gay person, Bernard Baruch’s lesbian daughter, Belle, he might have seen Welles’s homosexuality as a serious security risk. Following his resignation, Welles seems to have mostly disappeared from Leahy’s life. Leahy agreed with Hopkins that it would be unwise for the president to send Welles to Russia on a special mission—something Roosevelt considered to demonstrate that he still cared for his friend.17 In fact, Hopkins phoned Leahy before going to Roosevelt, to make sure that the admiral would support him in this move to block any Welles mission.18 Their lobbying probably kept the mission from occurring. Leahy certainly never condemned Welles, but neither did he seek him out.
With Welles out of his administration, Roosevelt became even more reliant on Leahy. Certainly, Hopkins was not up to the task. In October 1943, his malnutrition and anemia were found to be so serious that he was once again put on regular plasma transfusions.19 His growing weakness was accentuated a few weeks later when his wife finally convinced Hopkins to move into a family home in Georgetown. This physical distance increased the growing emotional chasm between Hopkins and Roosevelt. Leahy even admitted in his memoirs that Hopkins moving out of the White House had led to some strains with the president.20
Working together over the past few years, Leahy had grown genuinely fond of Hopkins, despite the latter’s leftist leanings. “Sure, he’s a pinkie, but he’s frank about it,” the admiral said, as recalled by the young Map Room staffer George Elsey.* “He’s for the proletariat and the underdog. I didn’t like him before I started to work with him, but I do now. By God, he delivers the goods. He puts his shoulder to the wheel and works.”21 It was high praise coming from a reserved military man like Leahy. Like himself, Hopkins was committed to winning the war because it was a moral fight that had to be won. Both men were focused on helping the president do this regardless of personal advantage. Even more admirable, Hopkins shrugged off the high salary his skills could have commanded in private enterprise and choose instead to serve his country. “He’s always been associated with the down-and-outers,” continued Leahy. “He doesn’t care about money.” The admiral clearly saw something of himself in the idealistic, determined Harry Hopkins.
By contrast, Leahy was becoming even more damning about Cordell Hull. The secretary of state came off in Leahy’s eyes as supercilious and vain, refusing a state visit to Africa for fear of illness and griping constantly about the press.22 The admiral recorded in his diary:
At ten A.M. called by appointment with Mr. Hull . . . who spoke at length about the press attacks by some newspapers on the State Department’s foreign policy, which attacks he said are made for the purpose of aiding the opposition political party in the United States. He is particularly incensed at Mr. Drew Pearson whose articles which have wide distribution have been seriously critical of Mr. Hull’s Department. I received an impression that Mr. Hull is actuated in his attitude towards Mr. Pearson by personal irritation which is probably exactly what Mr. Pearson wants to accomplish. . . . I do not understand why he should permit the articles of opposition columnists to get under his skin.23
Hull’s incompetence led to his marginalization within the Roosevelt administration. When he needed important information from the White House, such as on US policy in the eastern Mediterranean, he usually had to go through Leahy to get it.24 He often found himself shut out. In August 1943 Hull heard a rumor that the United States was about to formally recognize de Gaulle’s Comité français de libération nationale as the legitimate government of France. Desperate to confirm the report, he called Leahy’s office, only to be told the admiral was fishing with Roosevelt in Canada and wasn’t to be disturbed.25
While Leahy was dismissive of Hull, he was building strong links with rising personalities in the strategic decision-making structure, including Averell Harriman and James Forrestal. Harriman became the new US ambassador to the Soviet Union just as the Welles crisis was unfolding. Another wealthy, ambitious financier who moved into diplomacy, the savvy Harriman had begun cultivating Leahy in 1942, when he started dropping by the admiral’s office for policy discussions not long after Leahy became chief of staff.26 In September 1943, once he heard that he would be named the ambassador in Moscow, Harriman came by for another chat. He wanted to get Leahy’s approval for his proposed plan of action in Moscow and in exchange asked the admiral to supply him with information that would allow Harriman to “acquire credit for giving such information in exchange before the Soviets get it from other sources.”27 The gambit worked. Leahy liked Harriman. They held similar beliefs on the best way to deal with the Soviets, and the admiral was willing to share important information with the new ambassador.28 Though it was never stated, there was certainly an unspoken agreement by which Harriman supplied Leahy with important information in return. For the next two and a half years, while Harriman served as ambassador, he stopped by Leahy’s office whenever he was in Washington.29
Leahy’s relationship with Forrestal was even closer. The assistant secretary of the navy was rising in Roosevelt’s estimation, seen as someone with much greater drive and intelligence than Secretary Knox.30 Another man of great wealth, Forrestal had served as one of America’s first naval aviators during World War I before making his fortune on Wall Street. A devout Roman Catholic of Irish background, Forrestal was also a committed New York Democrat, a sure way to get noticed by Franklin Roosevelt. In 1940 the president appointed Forrestal to be the navy’s assistant secretary. With the ineffective Knox above him, the workaholic and driven Forrestal became increasingly powerful in the Navy Department. Indeed, Forrestal often bypassed Knox (and at times even Ernest King) on sensitive issues and went right to Leahy. In September 1943 Forrestal wanted to rethink the entire naval building program. Most delicately, Forrestal wanted to cancel two of the super-heavy 45,000-ton battleships then under construction, which he knew were particular favorites of King’s. To get action he went through Leahy to the president, leaving both Knox and King out of the loop.31 Roosevelt, in his response, was more than willing to keep working directly with just Forrestal and Leahy. King remained completely unaware of the Leahy-Forrestal axis. In late October he claimed confidently in a meeting of the Joint Chiefs that only low-level members of the Navy Department could have possibly suggested canceling the 45,000-ton beasts.32
These kinds of relationships not only gave Leahy greater influence across the policy-making sphere; they were a key reason that Roosevelt was willing to delegate power through Leahy. The admiral had his own connections and could get things done. There was simply no one else in Roosevelt’s life who bridged the personal and professional so completely. He was, undoubtedly, top dog.