The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World by A. J. Baime

Author:A. J. Baime [Baime, A. J.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2017-10-23T16:00:00+00:00

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ON MAY 28, Truman experienced for the first time the awestriking pageantry of a White House State Dinner. The regent of Iraq—Prince Abd al-Ilah—arrived in Washington with his entourage. The prince was his nation’s most powerful figure; he had “all the prerogatives of the King of Iraq,” according to a State Department memorandum to the president. White House chief of protocol George Thomas Summerlin sprang into action. Every detail down to the most minute had been planned out, as the prince’s visit was a performance in which everyone involved had a careful role to play. As host, Truman found himself confronting the affair with great anxiety.

A motorcade of officials left the White House to collect the regent and his party, who arrived by train at Union Station at 4:30 p.m. Strict instructions were given for the order of introductions. The Americans addressed the regent as “Your Royal Highness” and the prime minister of Iraq as “Mr. Minister.”

As instructed, Truman walked onto a White House portico at the exact moment the motorcade pulled up in front of it via the Northwest Gate. The president greeted the prince and his men, then both parties assumed a formation according to a diagram the protocol chief had produced. Photographers clicked away. Truman, in a black double-breasted suit, and the regent, in a light-tan officer’s uniform, stood three paces in front of their entourages, as the White House Marine Band performed military honors. Truman then led the prince into the White House to present Mrs. Truman. The prince—a thin, affable man with a delicate mustache and boyish features—spoke clear English. He presented the president with a gift: a silver coffee set. Truman found the gift rather odd but kept this notion to himself for the moment, thanking the prince profusely.

On the day of his death, Roosevelt had signed a letter inviting the prince to Washington. The Mideast was a knot of political and trade interests, the various strings leading back to capital cities all over the globe, notably London, Paris, Moscow, and Washington. Iraq was a nation that had grown out of the Fertile Crescent, the land of Baghdad and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The country was smaller than the state of Texas, and yet the United States had much to gain through Iraqi friendship. The State Department had instructed Truman to prevail upon the prince to allow U.S. airlines to make use of airfields in Iraq. “If such rights are given to us,” the State Department advised, “Iraq will become one of the crossroads of our post-war aviation system.” Confidential sources had revealed that the British were secretly trying to block the United States’ landing rights in Iraq, because of their own interests in the Mideast.

More important was the region’s black gold. “Iraq is extremely rich in oil,” the State Department advised. “Some geologists believe that the oil resources of Iraq are greater than those left in the whole United States.” American investment was extracting considerable profit from oil fields in the Mideast, and the British were doing well too.

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