“President Harry S. Truman’s efforts to keep secret the FBI’s investigation of FDR official Harry Dexter White’s illegal activities was the reason why White never became managing director of the Fund – and indeed the reason why the tradition of a European heading the Fund, rather than an American, began in the first place. What Truman, and indeed the FBI, had been unaware of in 1946 was that intercepted wartime Soviet intelligence cables would establish White’s culpability. Decrypting of such cables, part of the top-secret ‘Venona Project,’ took place over many decades, and the first one mentioning White’s activities was not known to the FBI before 1950.”
