Soon after Pearl Harbor, the committee released its first wartime report—ten months’ worth of investigations into defense contracting inefficiencies. The report landed with a sonorous thud on desks all over the capital. “To thousands,” the Washington Post noted, “the first question after the shock of the Truman report must have been: ‘Who in the world is Truman?’” The Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program was now being called the Truman Committee, and the senator’s work hours knew no end.
