Outside the Secret Service Podcast
Nov 3, 2026 · 1 hr 34 min · 11 segments
Joining us for this episode is Randy Sowell, archivist of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, whose knowledge and perspective help bring this remarkable chapter of Secret Service history to…
Dave McCullough writes, he says it was 85 degrees in the shade, which is an unusually hot day for November in Washington, D.C., Says President Truman had lunch with his wife and mother-in-law, then went upstairs for a nap.
His afternoon schedule included a trip, so later he was due to go to Arlington National Cemetery to speak at the unveiling of a statue of British Field Marshal Sir John Dill, who was a member of the Combined Chief of Staff during World War II and who had died in Washington, D.C. in 1944.
McCullough's book notes, and I love this anecdote, due to the heat, President Truman took off his clothes and stretched out on the bed in his underwear, new open.
Down below, you know, and this is just crazy, you know, and you mentioned this, people strolled by beneath the window, streetcars and automobiles traversed Pennsylvania Avenue.
And so it was then that they closed off Pennsylvania Avenue and then didn't get permanently closed down until President Bush came into office in 2001.
And to your point, you have no shortage of pedestrians walking up on the officers and agents there.
When he, after he was reelected or elected to his term that he was elected to as president in 1948, he won in 44 as vice president, succeeded when Roosevelt died in 1945.
But when he was elected in November 1948, he and Mrs. Truman and Margaret found out that the, around that time, that the White House was falling apart.
And late 1948, they took the step of moving the president, Mrs. Truman, and Margaret, when she was in town, their daughter, to Blair House, which is federal property.
And it's by the White House, by the West Wing, which remained open while they basically renovated the White House.
They kept the walls standing, the exterior walls, but they had to gut everything inside and rebuild it.
from a century and a half of neglect and all kinds of things that had been put off or not done.
So while they were doing that, it took like, gosh, three and a half years almost before he could move back in.
Dave McCullough writes, he says it was 85 degrees in the shade, which is an unusually hot day for November in Washington, D.C., Says President Truman had lunch with his wife and mother-in-law, then went upstairs for a nap.
His afternoon schedule included a trip, so later he was due to go to Arlington National Cemetery to speak at the unveiling of a statue of British Field Marshal Sir John Dill, who was a member of the Combined Chief of Staff during World War II and who had died in Washington, D.C. in 1944.
McCullough's book notes, and I love this anecdote, due to the heat, President Truman took off his clothes and stretched out on the bed in his underwear, new open.
Down below, you know, and this is just crazy, you know, and you mentioned this, people strolled by beneath the window, streetcars and automobiles traversed Pennsylvania Avenue.
And so it was then that they closed off Pennsylvania Avenue and then didn't get permanently closed down until President Bush came into office in 2001.
And to your point, you have no shortage of pedestrians walking up on the officers and agents there.
When he, after he was reelected or elected to his term that he was elected to as president in 1948, he won in 44 as vice president, succeeded when Roosevelt died in 1945.
But when he was elected in November 1948, he and Mrs. Truman and Margaret found out that the, around that time, that the White House was falling apart.
And late 1948, they took the step of moving the president, Mrs. Truman, and Margaret, when she was in town, their daughter, to Blair House, which is federal property.
And it's by the White House, by the West Wing, which remained open while they basically renovated the White House.
They kept the walls standing, the exterior walls, but they had to gut everything inside and rebuild it.
from a century and a half of neglect and all kinds of things that had been put off or not done.
So while they were doing that, it took like, gosh, three and a half years almost before he could move back in.
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