Heroes: Threnody & Thunder

In dank, dark weather, Douglas Mac-Arthur's body arrived in Manhattan.

There, in Park Avenue's 7th Regiment Armory, mourners moved past him at a rate of some 3,000 an hour. Next morning, a cortege placed the plain, steel Army casket aboard a train that took MacArthur, his widow Jean and son Arthur, 26, to Washington. It was raining as the procession headed slowly toward the Capitol, but tens of thousands lined the streets. In the rotunda President Johnson, his face working with emotion, placed a wreath at the casket's head. A dirge sounded as a military honor guard took its post.

But, already, behind the threnody was heard the thunder of controversy that had accompanied MacArthur throughout so much of his lifetime. Appearing in print were the reports of two decade-old, off-the-record interviews with MacArthur. One, by Scripps-Howard Reporter Jim Lucas, was published in the form of a memo sent by Lucas to his bosses at the time. The other appeared as a reminiscence by Hearst's Bob Considine. Both portrayed MacArthur as an embittered man who had held the Communists "in the palm of my hand," only to be "betrayed" by "those fools in Washington" and the British government.

Perfidy. According to Lucas, Mac-Arthur said that during the Korean War "every message he sent to Washington and every message sent by Washington to him was shown to the British by the State Department." Within 48 hours, the messages were "relayed by the British, either through India or through the Russian Embassy in London, to the Chinese Communists." Thus, said Lucas, the Chinese Communists "knew in advance every step he proposed to take," and, in fact, entered the Korean conflict only "after being assured by the British that MacArthur would be ham strung and could not effectively oppose them." MacArthur had long since made similar charges. In 1956, he publicly charged that British Spies Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean, who had defected to Moscow five years earlier, had been part of the pipeline to the Communists.

Both Lucas and Considine reported that MacArthur was disappointed in Dwight Eisenhower, whom he described as "once a man of integrity." General George Marshall, who was Secretary of Defense during the Korean War, was "the errand boy of the State Department." General Matthew Ridgway, who took over command of United Nations forces after MacArthur's dismissal, was a "chameleon," who "did a complete flip-flop in 24 hours" when he discovered that Washington opposed Mac-Arthur's war strategy. General Maxwell Taylor was "an ambitious man who will never do anything to jeopardize his career."

By the Lucas account, MacArthur had a grudging respect for Harry Truman. The President had been in Inde pendence, Mo., when the Korean War started, recalled MacArthur. Truman "reacted instinctively, like the gutter fighter he is—and you've got to admire him." But once Truman got back to Washington, "Dean Acheson brought him back under control." All in all, MacArthur said, Truman was "a man of raw courage and guts—the little bastard honestly believes he is a patriot."