The swearing-in of Admirals Souers and Hillenkoetter was the result of the recently enacted National Defense Act of 1947. Passed by Congress that July, it was a halfway house on the way to the creation of a united Department of Defense. It combined the old Navy and War Departments into one National Military Authority with three branches for the fleet, the army, and the newly independent air force. While it did establish a new post for a Secretary of Defense—which went to James Forrestal—the services retained a great deal of their autonomy and still had their own secretaries.
The only decisive thing the bill achieved was to decrease the authority of William Leahy. His position of chief of staff to the president was not sanctioned, mostly because he had fought against its inclusion. Because there was no mention of the chief of staff, Leahy was not given a place on the National Security Council, the new bureaucracy charged with guiding American strategic policy. Chaired by the president, it included the secretaries of defense and state; the secretaries of the army, navy, and air force; and the chairman of the National Security Resources Board. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency was put on the National Security Council, but as a non-voting member. The new committee was given the responsibilities of the abolished National Intelligence Agency. At the stroke of the president’s pen, Leahy’s influence over the CIA had evaporated.
At the same time that Leahy was losing a post, a successor was being groomed to take over his most important role.1 By creating an executive secretary of the National Security Council, the National Defense Act also set the stage for the first sanctioned national security adviser. Admiral Souers, whom Truman appointed, was set to take over the president’s morning briefing from Leahy when the older admiral retired.* With his authority weakening, Leahy was left trying to influence policy indirectly. From the summer of 1947 to 1948, that was Leahy’s life, sometimes involved in policy, sometimes not.
Leahy had selected Admiral Hillenkoetter, an ally, to be in charge of the CIA, but now he could no longer control the agency’s purpose and operations. When the CIA was founded, covert operations were a negligible part of its remit, as Leahy intended. The original charter drawn up for Truman’s signature did not mention covert operations.2 Leahy understood that covert operations would be something the CIA would do, yet he wanted to keep them, and the CIA as a whole, under control.3 Without the guidance of William Leahy, the National Security Council began to reimagine the CIA as a far more meddlesome agency.
As his influence continued to wane, Leahy grew ever more distressed about what the United States was on the verge of doing in the Middle East, and not doing in China. Throughout 1947, Truman continued to support Marshall’s embargo on aid to the Nationalists in the secretary of state’s quixotic quest to force a coalition with the Communists. The result was a continuing deterioration in the Nationalists’ position. The Chinese Communists, flooded with aid from the Soviet Union, extended their control over large parts of northern and central China.4
Leahy was briefly cheered that summer when Truman chose Albert Wedemeyer as a new special representative to China.5 Marshall had blocked Wedemeyer’s appointment as ambassador to China the previous year because he believed the man might offend Communist sensibilities.6 Truman, perhaps understanding that abandoning the Nationalists was not an altogether sensible policy, decided to let Wedemeyer have a shot.
When Wedemeyer got to China, he found the situation far worse than expected.7 A fanatical anti-Communist, he felt that US diplomats were undermining Chiang Kai-shek. When he returned to Washington in October, Wedemeyer went right to Leahy and said that without a complete change in American policy, including “munitions, spare parts, ammunition,” and economic funds to stabilize the economy, the Nationalists would soon be defeated.8 He begged Leahy to advise Truman to replace the American ambassador to China, John Leighton Stuart, a former missionary who was an enthusiastic supporter of forcing a Communist-Nationalist coalition.
Had Roosevelt been alive, Stuart would have been out within the week. Now Leahy hit a brick wall. Stuart, protected by Marshall, remained in office for twenty-one more months, until the moment of Mao Tse-tung’s final triumph. Leahy could also not help the Nationalists by getting rid of the arms embargo, though he did try, pressing everyone he could, including Forrestal and Truman, but the president would not budge.9 By early 1948, Leahy’s need to show that the US government had set itself up for failure in China became obsessive. He prepared a fifteen-page timeline on developments in China between 1943 and the end of 1947.10 It was a chronology of State Department errors and a primal scream of frustration.
It was not until early 1948 that Truman and Marshall seemed to comprehend the disaster that they had helped precipitate. It finally dawned on them that the Nationalists were about to be defeated, and much sooner than expected.11 The embargo was revealed to be what it had been all along, something that punished the Nationalists and rewarded the Communists.12 There was also a realization that the administration would suffer politically if it were to be seen to have done nothing as China went red, which set off a last-minute scramble to support the Nationalists.13 In April, Congress authorized $338 million in military and economic aid for China, with the president given an additional $125 million to dispense if he thought it necessary.14 The simple fact that the amount given was identical to the money allocated to Greece and Turkey revealed once again to Leahy how the administration had its priorities upside down.
For as the United States was watching China fall, the administration seemed to Leahy to be moving decisively into the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean. Jewish immigration, which Truman supported, led first to tension and then bloody confrontation in Palestine. The British, who had a mandate still in operation from the League of Nations, were keen to wash their hands of the crisis. One idea was to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab sections. When this occurred in late 1947, US policy makers debated whether America should recognize, and thereby legitimize, the move.15 Leahy was convinced that the partition might lead to decades of war, which would “dwarf” the present local dispute.16 In October 1947, from his position as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he argued that the United States should avoid any interference in the growing conflict between Jews and Muslims. If America became the guarantor of partition, he insisted, it would “prejudice United States strategic interests in the Near and Middle East and that United States influence in the area would be curtailed to that which could be maintained by military force.”17 Leahy understood that the Middle East’s oil reserves would make it increasingly important for the United States and the world, but felt that the region’s stability could best be guaranteed by preventing it from becoming an area of direct US-Soviet competition.18
Leahy’s stances on China and the Middle East, both of which conflicted with President Truman’s positions, contributed to his loss of influence. The president, knowing what he would hear from the admiral, and perhaps unwilling to listen, turned to him for advice less often. Leahy still briefed Truman every day and chaired the Joint Chiefs, but otherwise he had much less to do. Others still consulted him, but less frequently, and more and more often decisions were reached without his input.
With less to keep him occupied, Leahy spent more time with his family and his past. On December 30, 1947, DC society descended on the Washington Club for the coming-out party of Louise Beale Leahy.19 Louisita, now nineteen, was a sophomore at Hollins College in Virginia. Her devoted grandfather arrived to a reception of seven hundred guests, many of whom were faces from his own past. Though he never would have said it, the fact that he was the senior military officer and a major personality in the capital made the party a big event, and many in attendance had come to pay respect to him as much as to his granddaughter.
During a stopover in Puerto Rico while on a weeklong presidential tour of the Caribbean in February 1948, Leahy returned to La Fortaleza, the mansion in which he had lived with Louise after President Roosevelt had appointed him governor of the island in 1940. Looking out over the beautiful gardens, his thoughts turned to his late wife, and waves of emotion came over him as he remembered one of the happiest years of his life. That night, a formal reception was held in the president’s honor, and as Truman regaled the crowd of five hundred with an impromptu performance of “The Merry Widow’s Waltz,” Leahy caught up with as many old friends as he could find. The president’s party departed the next day, headed to the US Virgin Islands, but Leahy was determined to get back to Puerto Rico as soon as possible.20
The next month, the admiral returned to the Caribbean for a conference in Key West, Florida, to help referee an ongoing crisis set off by the ambiguities of the National Defense Act. The different services, especially the navy and air force, continued to operate as independently as possible, and Secretary of Defense Forrestal, who had been appointed to the new cabinet position in order to allay some of the navy’s concerns, became frustrated by the overlapping areas of authority between himself and the service secretaries. Leahy was particularly unhappy, believing that air force general Carl Spaatz, army general Omar Bradley, and chief of naval operations Adm. Louis Denfeld were too prejudiced by their selfish service interests and missed the big picture.21 Eventually it was decided to sit the key people down and force a solution.
Leahy knew that President Truman wanted an agreement, and if one were not forthcoming, he would force one on the services. Just as when Roosevelt was alive—but rarely now—at Key West Leahy would become the voice of the president.22 The debate revolved around which of the navy’s capabilities the fleet could keep, and four days before the conference Leahy wrote some preparatory notes.23 He wanted the navy to retain the Marine Corps and both its carrier and ground-based air capabilities, but he expected sacrifices. He wanted the air force to become the dominant player in strategic bombing and he wanted the marines to be more proactive in training with the army on amphibious operations.
Leahy’s sketch was replicated almost identically in the final Key West decisions.24 Indeed, the agreement laid out much of the framework for the defense structure under which America operates to this day. The Marine Corps was left within the navy, with a peacetime strength of no more than four divisions (far larger than it had ever been in peacetime). Its operational plans were supposed to be limited to two division missions so that it would not become a rival army, though even this was open to interpretation. Perhaps even more important, the navy was allowed to fly aircraft from land if they were part of naval responsibilities, including antisubmarine operations. The air force was given control of strategic bombing operations and tactical airpower in support of ground troops. The fleet could attempt some strategic air operations as long as they could be justified as part of its sea control responsibilities. Forrestal, who chaired the discussions and subsequent follow-up talks, saw Leahy as his greatest support in reaching a deal.25
With Key West out of the way, Leahy was soon finally able to return to Puerto Rico. In April, the president sent him down to negotiate a relatively small matter, the transfer of different properties from the federal government to the island territory. After three days of talks, Leahy, using the flimsiest excuses, stayed for another week, catching up with good friends. Outside of his Annapolis classmates, it was the largest group of close friends he ever made at one time in his life.
Leahy probably wished that he had never left Puerto Rico. In May 1948, the Middle East once again flared into action as David Ben-Gurion, the head of the World Zionist Organization, declared independence for a separate state of Israel. Leahy, naturally, wanted the United States not to recognize the new state. He was joined by George Marshall, who also worried about the impact of recognition on US relations with Arab countries. If Clark Clifford’s memoirs are to be believed, Clifford convinced Truman to take the dramatic step of extending “de facto” recognition to Israel. It occurred after Clifford and Marshall each made presentations to Truman in the oval office—the president evidently finding Clifford more persuasive than Marshall.26 There is no sign that Leahy was in the room.27 One assumes that by this point Truman knew exactly where the admiral stood on the question.
For Leahy, it was another crushing defeat. On May 14, the day Truman publicly announced recognition, Leahy prophesied that the United States would soon find itself enmeshed in an unending religious war. “The Palestine situation at the present time, in my opinion, points directly toward a civil war between the Jews and the Moslems in Palestine and possibly in the Moslem inhabited areas of the Middle East,” he wrote. “It appears certain that recent developments have been disadvantageous to the interests of the United States and may drag the United States into a war between the two religious groups.”28
Leahy’s relative weakness would have been a huge shock to many Americans, where the perception persisted that he was a Machiavellian power broker, pushing militarism and interventionism on an impressionable Truman. Not long before he made his first trip to Puerto Rico, Leahy was publicly attacked by, of all people, Albert Einstein. The world-famous scientist was the coauthor of a public report released by the National Council Against Conscription entitled “The Militarization of America.”29 Along with a cohort of worthies from academia, the clergy, and commerce, Einstein attacked Leahy as the textbook example of the growth of military power under the Truman administration. From the Boy Scouts upward, they argued, America was being manipulated into preparing for war, including the possible use of atomic weapons. The report caused a minor sensation, with some newspapers picking up on the criticism of Leahy. The Washington Post weighed in, attacking Leahy’s influence over government policy and calling for his position as chief of staff to the commander in chief to be abolished.30
Leahy did his best to act unruffled, telling the president “that being attacked in the public press on a problem of National Defense by such a thoroughly established American as the German Jew Einstein, who acquired citizenship in 1940, or by his pink associates, is a high compliment indeed.”31 But the criticism hurt, especially at precisely the time when Leahy, contrary to Einstein’s assertion, was struggling to prevent the United States from adopting an atomic weapon first-strike policy. As relations with the Soviets deteriorated, the idea of atomic war had moved from the hypothetical to the alarmingly real, and US officials had begun discussing the use of atomic weapons against the Russians. Leahy used whatever bureaucratic influence he had left to block a first-strike policy, and it represented one of his few successes in the postwar era.
For the first time, Leahy tried to define what a weapon of mass destruction was, and when or how such terrible weapons could ever be used. He circulated a paper to the Joint Chiefs with the most detailed definition yet given. Arguing that the very survival of humanity was at stake, Leahy believed that the country needed to define what was meant by “weapons of mass destruction,” and then do its best to limit their usage. In Leahy’s eyes, WMDs were practically any destructive force not capable of being delivered on a target with precision, a particularly all-encompassing proviso that would severely limit the use of military power:
Major Weapons Adaptable to Mass Destruction Are as Follows:
All atomic explosives.
All lethal chemical weapons.
All biological weapons
All missiles carrying heavy explosives or incendiary charges that are not so designed as to be capable of precision attack on military objectives.32
Leahy’s definition is more stringent than the official American definition of WMDs in use today.33 In this way, he represented something that we see now as very modern. He stood for tight, internationally based controls and norms on the use of any weapons that could be targeted on civilians, with the strongest possible limitations on nuclear, biological, and chemical armaments.
Leahy was just getting started. In July 1947, during a meeting of the Joint Chiefs with Marshall and Forrestal, the use of atomic weapons was analyzed.34 Eisenhower, Nimitz, and Marshall—or, as Leahy termed them, the army and navy, despite the fact that Marshall was now secretary of state—spoke in favor of the use of atom bombs against the Soviet Union in case of war, which would be a first strike, as the Soviets had not yet exploded their own weapon.35 Leahy opposed them, saying that “atomic bombs should not be employed by the United States in war, except in direct retaliation for their use by an enemy.” Soon, Leahy would be at odds with the air force. In November 1947, the air force proposed a war plan based on the immediate and massive use of atomic weapons in case of a Soviet attack into western Europe. 36 The admiral was not to be moved, and answered that it was his hope that atomic bombs would not be used by the United States in any way, as America should never “inaugurate such a barbarous attack on non-combatants.”
In March 1948, the air force upped the ante and proposed JCS-1854, a plan that in Leahy’s eyes endorsed a first-strike atomic policy. Using one of the levers of power he had left, his ability to block a move as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Leahy refused to send the plan forward. He wrote to the chiefs that because JCS-1854 was “based on an assumption that atomic weapons are necessary” and that the chiefs had not been given “authority” to use atomic weapons, that he was “unable to approve” the plan.37 A few weeks later, the air force returned with a new idea, the Halfmoon Joint Emergency War Plan, which was built around a massive atomic first strike. In the first days of war, the United States would have dropped fifty atomic bombs on the twenty largest Soviet cities, killing many millions of Soviet civilians.
When Leahy first read Halfmoon, he moved decisively to have it denuclearized. On May 12, during a meeting of the chiefs, he demanded a war plan based entirely on conventional weapons, claiming that it was a presidential order.38 The next day he sent Halfmoon back to the air force, saying that it must be reworked in a way “that does not necessitate the use of atomic bombs for its implementation, and in the consideration of a possibility that atomic bombs may not be available because of their having been outlawed or otherwise prohibited.” He then added, in a nice touch, “I am unable to approve JCS-1854/44.”39
The military establishment flailed around in reaction to Leahy’s obstinacy. On May 19, the secretary of the army, Kenneth Royall, wrote to the National Security Council calling for an entirely new discussion on the use of atomic weapons, in light of the ethical criticisms that were being made against them, complaining, “I understand that in some quarters the desirability of the United States initiating atomic warfare has been questioned, particularly on the grounds of morality.”40
Royall’s “some quarters” could only be William Leahy.
It is one of the last, and finest, examples of how William Leahy’s policy role has been missed. When Halfmoon is discussed, usually two things are stated: that the plan was approved by the Joint Chiefs on May 19 (and this was approval for an atomic plan) or that Truman was the reason there was a conventional alternative to a first use of atomic weapons in Halfmoon.41 The reality was different. Halfmoon was only approved by the Joint Chiefs after Leahy vetoed the initial version that was overly reliant on atomic weapons, and after he had it replaced with a conventional alternative. Leahy, after three years of lobbying against a first-strike policy, had succeeded in swaying President Truman.
A little over a month later, Leahy’s commitment to a prohibition against an atomic first-strike policy was tested like never before, when the United States and the Soviet Union almost went to war.