But also by June 1952, the Truman administration was collapsing under the weight of corruption charges and the stalemate in Korea. Truman’s firing of the popular general Douglas MacArthur proved to be a political blunder, even if the president had correctly asserted the constitutional principle of civilian authority over the military. The Democrats were facing huge losses in both houses of Congress. It also appeared that Eisenhower, Franklin’s old commanding officer from the 301st Tank Battalion, was going to win the White House.
With a backdrop of bad poll numbers, Truman’s fight to get several million dollars back from the United States Lines grew more vitriolic.
For his part, Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer worried that if Truman and the comptroller general got their way, the United States Lines would walk away from the new superliner and the government would be stuck operating her. Sawyer felt that the two men were trying to turn United States, a ship that was already a huge hit with the American public, into a political football. In a year of civic turmoil—of McCarthyism and Cold War worries—the completion of United States was good news for the country. Why not just leave the liner alone?
Three months before the trials, the general counsels of the Department of Commerce and the Maritime Administration had concluded that “a suit by the Government to set aside the sales contract or a defense by the Government predicated on a claim of illegality would not be sustained by the courts.” Sawyer wrote Lindsay Warren that “the contract abovementioned between the Government and the U.S. Lines Co. is a valid and binding contract on both parties,” and that there had been “no suggestion that improper influences were exerted on any member of the Commission or that false representations were made by U.S. Lines Co.”3 The commerce secretary hoped that Warren would drop the matter.
He didn’t. In April, Warren wrote to Sawyer saying that “I will continue to employ every power of this office to prevent subsidy grants and national defense allowances which exceed those by law.”4
Sawyer tried one more time to convince Warren that what was past was past, and the public was happy with the ship. On May 6, Sawyer wrote to Warren saying, “It seems to me more important for the United States to carry out its contract already entered into than the Government be saddled with a ship it cannot run and a lawsuit which it cannot win.”5
Even so, to the delight of the president, Lindsay Warren developed a line of legal reasoning of his own. The General Accounting Office, not the Department of Commerce, he said, had the final legal say over the matter. Most of the $25 million in national defense features, he went on, had not been spent to further the interests of the American military, but to further a commercial quest for the Blue Riband by the United States Lines.6 Warren wanted the GAO to renegotiate the contract with the United States Lines. The new purchase price, Warren insisted, should be $38 million, half the liner’s total cost and $10 million more than the original contract price.
Sawyer then made a direct appeal to the president to stop Warren. Citing Maritime Board chair Admiral Edward Cochrane, Sawyer said that going after the United States Lines by cutting off their subsidies demonstrated an “immoral and unwarranted attitude” on the government’s part, and was not in line with American concepts of “fair play nor the traditions which have governed the relationship between the Government and its citizens since our republic was founded.”7
Cochrane had tipped off General Franklin about what Truman and Warren were up to, and Franklin came down to Washington to meet with the admiral and the Federal Maritime Board. “We could not agree to reopening of the contract and to pay more for the ship,” he wrote to Cochrane on June 6. “This decision has been ratified by the Board of Directors of the United States Lines.”
Franklin was deeply bothered by the controversy. It was more than just the possibility of forking over another $10 million to the government. “It is a pity that she makes her debut under a cloud of controversy,” he said in a letter to Cochrane. “From every standpoint of national prestige this vessel should be delivered under our contract.”8
Three days later, Secretary of Commerce Sawyer, who probably read General Franklin’s letter to Admiral Cochrane, wrote the president, saying that “there is no course open except for Admiral Cochrane to go through with the contract on June 20th in accordance with its terms.”9
President Truman refused. “As you know,” he wrote to Sawyer, “the maintenance of a strong merchant marine has always been of the greatest importance to me…. The construction of the S.S. United States has been followed with especial interest by me.” He then challenged the United States Lines to do what he felt was the right thing, or else face the consequences. “I sincerely trust,” he continued, “that the officers of the United States Lines Company will promptly accede to the renewed request for an exploratory conference without prejudice to any rights either party may have under the contract.”10
On June 20, one day before United States’ delivery voyage from Newport News to New York, Secretary of Commerce Sawyer defied the president and simply ignored Warren’s claim to jurisdiction: he handed the ship over to the United States Lines under the original contract terms. William Francis Gibbs and Commodore Manning attended the formal transfer ceremony. Sawyer then packed his suitcase, headed to Washington’s Union Station, and boarded the train for Newport News. The two-day voyage to New York would no doubt give his nerves a rest. There would be fresh sea air, cocktails, shuffleboard, and lounging in a deck chair. He planned to ignore any incoming telegrams or ship-to-shore phone calls from the comptroller general.
Just before leaving for his train, Sawyer fired off a letter to Congressman John F. Shelley, chairman of the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. Sawyer accused Warren of trying to give the impression to the public that he was a “knight in white armor… defending the taxpayers from some nefarious plot to which I and the Maritime Board are parties.” In reality, Warren was merely doing some “Monday morning quarter-backing,” a practice that “may be a pleasant pastime for sports writers but it cannot become a rule of conduct for officials of the Government of the United States.”11
“Mr. Warren has by his statement in effect dared to turn this ship over to the United States Lines pursuant to this contract,” the letter concluded. “Well, I turned it over. He claimed that it was in his power to tell me that I could not go through with this contract. ‘Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, That he has grown great?’”12
Chairman Shelley agreed, responding that Warren’s attacks on the Secretary of Commerce were “wholly gratuitous.”13
But Truman hit the roof when he found out about the sale. He sent a letter to Attorney General James P. McGranery the very day Sawyer handed over the ship to Franklin. The letter was released to the press and copies sent to Warren, Cochrane, and Sawyer.