Official and Confidential

by Anthony Summers

  James Lawrence Fly, former Chairman, Federal Communications Commission, 1956

  In the summer of 1937, Edgar celebrated his twentieth anniversary at the Department of Justice. He was presented with FBI Badge No. 1, in gold, an engraved watch and a cowboy hat courtesy of Tom Mix. He and Clyde were photographed, dapper in cream summer suits, up to their waists in a sea of flowers.

  The real cause for satisfaction, Edgar knew, was that he had not only survived to serve under Roosevelt, but was now flourishing. Better than that, he was tasting real political power for the first time. Once Roosevelt had grasped the public relations potential of Edgar as champion of an anticrime campaign, he exploited it to the full. He signed special new crime bills, with Edgar standing behind him. He came in person to open the great new colonnaded Justice Department building on Pennsylvania Avenue. ‘This modern mass of stone and aluminum,’ said the press, ‘this $11,000,000 dream of a crime-free America, dwarfs Scotland Yard, the Sûreté, all of them. It is America’s general headquarters in the crime war.’

  Even if the crime wave was overblown, Edgar’s FBI was indeed a vast step forward. The fingerprint operation, the technology of crime detection and the disciplined corps of respected agents were genuine assets. In the midst of all the hyperbole, however, the man responsible was glorified beyond all reason. Where mere praise was due, Edgar was idolized.

  A few voices were raised in protest. Tennessee Senator Kenneth McKellar accused Edgar before a Senate committee of using public relations to inflate his image. Edgar dodged the questions, concealing the fact that he had propagandists working full-time for him. Then the questions turned personal. ‘Did you ever,’ asked McKellar, ‘make an arrest?’ Edgar was forced to admit that he had virtually no field experience. It had been a somewhat meaningless line of questioning – like asking a headquarters officer whether he had ever killed an enemy soldier – but Edgar was shattered. He had done so much to ensure that the world heard about his macho attitude toward criminals, his ‘Babe Ruth’ build, his alleged fitness and his endless hard work. Now doubt was being cast on his masculinity.

  A second attack followed within days, when Congressman Marion Zioncheck mocked him as a ‘master of fiction … a dictator.’ In an astonishing riposte, Edgar called the congressman ‘a public enemy’ who should be driven from public life.

  Two days later, Edgar found an opportunity to prove his mettle. When agents in New Orleans located Alvin Karpis, a kingpin of the kidnap gangs, Edgar chartered a fourteen-seater aircraft – a remarkable initiative in those days – and flew south. He was on hand when an eighteen-strong Bureau posse captured Karpis, caught off his guard, on May 1, 1936.

  Edgar’s version of the arrest was that he personally disarmed Karpis. The gangster himself, on his release twenty-eight years later, claimed Edgar hid behind a building until agents gave him the all clear. Clyde Tolson even bragged later of having ‘ripped the joint apart with machine-gun fire,’ when in fact there was no shooting at all. It was, moreover, a Treasury agent who had tracked Karpis and told the FBI where to find him.

  Staged though it was, the arrest worked wonders for Edgar’s image. He was front-page news, in personal command as Karpis was flown in shackles to face trial in Minnesota. A week later Edgar was off in another chartered aircraft, flying with Clyde to arrest one of the kidnapper’s accomplices. He had silenced congressional critics and shown the nation he was a tough guy after all.

  Edgar had been working for some time to bring all law enforcement propaganda under his personal control, to institutionalize public relations in a way that would have been unthinkable in any other government agency. First he engineered the removal of Henry Suydam, the publicist hired by Attorney General Cummings. Then, while Courtney Ryley Cooper poured out flattering books and articles, Edgar picked the man who was to shape the Bureau’s public image for more than two decades.

  This was Louis ‘Nick the Greek’ Nichols, a college football star from the Midwest who had made the Bureau grade the classic way, with a law degree from George Washington University and membership in the Masons. Nichols’ personal files, preserved in filing cabinets with combination locks, reveal that he was both workaholic and sycophant, a man single-mindedly devoted to pleasing his master – both at work and with a stream of expensive presents.

  It was Nichols who masterminded the formation of the FBI’s Division 8, euphemistically known as Crime Records and described by Edgar as ‘the blood plasma of the Bureau.’ So it was – though not as a mere record system. The documents in Nichols’ file cabinets and in FBI files, from potted biographies of crooks and lawmen to movie scripts and lecture drafts, reflect a herculean effort to manipulate the American mind to the greater glory of J. Edgar Hoover.

  There was no attempt to be evenhanded. Feature articles in major league newspapers were ‘facilitated’ only if Edgar approved of the publication concerned. His favorites were those of the Hearst, Copley and Gannett chains, the San Francisco Examiner, the Washington Star and, at one stage, the Chicago Tribune.

  By contrast, as explained earlier, Edgar had a lifelong loathing for The Washington Post. ‘If I ever find myself in agreement with that paper,’ he once told a colleague, ‘I’ll reexamine my position.’ In the sixties, at Clyde’s suggestion, he formally ruled that no background information on himself should henceforth be provided to The New York Times, Time or Newsweek, thus discriminating against three major press institutions at a stroke.

  The handling of individual reporters – the wooing of some and the persecution of others – became a constant preoccupation. Favored contacts were carefully cultivated, even showered with gifts, such as luggage and golf clubs. Some accepted gratefully, and obliged with the sort of coverage Edgar wanted.

  ‘Dear Chief,’ wrote NBC newsman Raymond Henle, thanking Edgar for sending along Masters of Deceit, one of several books on Communism churned out by Crime Records in the Director’s name. ‘Many thanks for the handsomely autographed copy … Once again you have gone into the forefront in defense of our nation against the Commie rats. Three-Star Extra will be right there plugging for this fine volume on March 10 …’

  FBI files would refer to an approved reporter as ‘a very reliable contact’ or ‘a close friend of the Bureau.’ One such friend, in later years, would be Jeremiah O’Leary, who then worked for the Washington Star. When O’Leary wrote a ‘hard-hitting review’ of a book by an author Edgar regarded as an enemy, the FBI distributed thousands of copies around the country. For his part, according to the file, O’Leary once even helped the FBI when it was trying to identify another reporter’s sources. He also submitted an article for review and, according to the file, ‘any changes we desired.’

  Contrary to FBI denials, approved reporters were allowed access to files. Karl Hess, sometime Goldwater speechwriter and founder of the National Review, since turned left-winger, remembered: ‘The difference between being just a reporter and being an anti-Communist crusading reporter – with regular assists from the “secret” files of the FBI – was considerable in terms of vanity alone …’ Such favorites were provided with information on unwatermarked paper, to conceal the source.

  ‘The way they handled public affairs,’ recalled the journalist Fletcher Knebel, ‘can only be described as blackmail. Nichols told me, “Look, we can do a lot for your career – if you’ll play ball with us …” I later found out what that meant. When I wanted to interview the mighty Director for Look magazine, they’d agree only if I wrote the piece before I did the interview, which is of course all wrong. I’m sorry to say my bosses eventually agreed, and Nichols went through it all like a schoolmarm. The story that came out was really watered down, but not enough for them. The next time I bumped into Hoover, he wouldn’t speak to me.’

  Reporters who did not appreciate the Bureau, Edgar told the Society of Former Agents, were ‘journalistic prostitutes.’ He carried on a courteous correspondence with Drew Pearson – who for thirty-seven years wrote a Washington Post column sp
ecializing in ‘inside’ stories – while railing against him in private. He built up a 4,000-page file on Pearson and, according to Roosevelt’s Vice President, Henry Wallace, kept him under surveillance during World War II.

  The columnist remained uncowed, and persistently criticized Edgar – notably over his laissez-faire attitude toward organized crime. By 1969, when Pearson died, Edgar had been reduced to impotent scribblings in the file. ‘This whelp,’ he raged, ‘still continues his regurgitation.’ The columnist was ‘a jackal,’ his writings ‘psychopathic lyings.’

  To Edgar, New York Post editor James Wechsler was ‘a rat.’ The illustrious Walter Lippmann became just another ‘coyote of the press’ when he displeased Edgar. Tom Wicker, at The New York Times, would be described as a ‘jerk’ with ‘mental halitosis,’ Art Buchwald as a ‘sick alleged humorist.’

  When it could be done secretly, reporters were actively harassed. The huge file on Carey McWilliams, who became editor of The Nation, covers thirty-two years of investigation, surveillance and probing into his private life to establish whether he was a Communist. He was not.

  Once journalists were identified as enemies, Edgar stopped at nothing to discredit them. He would tell the White House that columnist Joseph Alsop was a homosexual, and Los Angeles Times executives that reporter Jack Nelson was a drunk. There is no evidence that either allegation was true.1

  Such tactics proved highly effective. In the first thirty-five years of Edgar’s directorship only one publication – The New Yorker – would attempt any reporting at all not harnessed to FBI handouts and grace-and-favor interviews.

  Edgar rarely had any trouble with broadcasters, who gobbled up FBI exploits for their entertainment value. This began in 1935, when, through tame reporter Rex Collier, Edgar negotiated a contract giving himself total control over ‘G-Men,’ a radio series about famous Bureau cases. Later, the propaganda became more ambitious. Louis Nichols organized the writing of the book The FBI Story, which became a Warner Brothers movie of the same name.

  Edgar had cultivated Jack Warner for years. As a matter of course, agents greeted him at airports and smoothed his path as he traveled around the world. The actor Jimmy Stewart, who starred in the film, got similar treatment. The television series ‘The FBI,’ which would begin in 1965, was totally controlled. Edgar and Clyde read the scripts, while an FBI agent watched over the shooting.

  Edgar learned that massive self-promotion paid off as early as 1935, when Time put him on the cover – the first of four appearances – and declared that his name was now a household word. Universities and organizations began showering him with awards. Edgar’s alma mater, George Washington University, gave him an honorary doctorate in law, and New York University followed suit.

  By 1936 millions of Americans were devouring G-Man movies and G-Man literature. Their children sported G-Man badges, toted G-Man tommy guns, slept in G-Man pajamas. One wrote to Edgar addressing him as an ‘American Jesus.’

  That same year, a survey of 11,000 schoolboys concluded that Edgar was the second most popular man in the nation, topped only by Robert ‘Believe It Or Not’ Ripley. President Roosevelt came in a poor seventh. Youngsters, according to the poll, would vastly rather be Edgar than President of the United States.

  A few brave voices in the press suggested Edgar was ‘stagestruck.’ ‘Some scenario writer,’ wrote Lee Casey of The Pittsburgh Press, ‘should do a burlesque on the G-Men. These federal agents have had things their own way so long there is a danger they will begin to believe they are half as good as people think they are.’

  Edgar, it seems, did believe his own propaganda. In the spring of 1936, as the Republican presidential candidates jockeyed for position, he sent agents out to take soundings on his own political chances. One of them, Charles Winstead, talked with William Sullivan about his assignment before his death in 1973.

  As Sullivan told it, ‘Hoover got the idea that he should run for president against FDR … He believed he had become a national figure. He thought that if he had the support of the entire law enforcement community – federal, state, city and county – he could run as a Republican and turn Roosevelt and his crew of liberals out of office … Hoover sent some of his most trusted veteran agents, including Charlie, most of them southerners, on a top-secret mission to test the political waters in the South and Southwest, where the Director thought his support was strongest. Charlie was told to approach local chiefs of police or sheriffs on some minor matter, then redirect the conversation to the subject of J. Edgar Hoover. “He’s a great man,” Charlie would say just as he’d been told to, “and he’s done an awful lot for law enforcement on every level in this country. Many people think we’d be better off if Hoover were president.” Then he would wait for the reaction.’

  The reaction, Winstead said, was ‘overwhelmingly negative.’ A surprised Edgar put his presidential ambitions aside. The election was a second massive vote of confidence in Franklin Roosevelt.

  A few months later Edgar received the writer Jack Alexander – a future editor of The Saturday Evening Post – in the grand octagonal chamber that was now his inner office. Alexander observed Edgar seated behind his huge mahogany desk, framed by flowers, exotic cacti and flags, and found the scene disquieting.

  ‘A few paces to the rear of the Director,’ wrote Alexander, ‘are two tall brass standards, topped by brass eagles and clingingly embraced by furled American flags. Much of the Director’s time is spent alone in the impressive quiet of this room, and in other quarters than the underworld there is uneasiness over what he may be thinking. Some persons of liberal and leftish beliefs are uncomfortably reminded by the symbolic eagles, and the magnificent distance between door and desk, of the official lair of Mussolini.’

  11

  ‘There is only one man in political life that FDR feared. He admitted that man was Hoover.’

  Former aide to Colonel William Donovan, Chief of the Office of Strategic Services in World War II

  Franklin Roosevelt did not live to record what he really thought of Edgar. Edgar, for his part, would claim years later that he and the President had been ‘very close – personally and officially.’ This was a compound of fact and untruth.

  In public Edgar played the loyal courtier. As always with presidents, he behaved immaculately in formal situations, plied the White House with respectful memos. He escorted Mrs Roosevelt on a tour of Bureau headquarters. After dinner with Roosevelt, in the wake of the Dillinger shooting, he wrote asking the President for an autographed picture.

  Yet, said William Sullivan, ‘Hoover didn’t like Roosevelt. He never passed up on a chance to make a snide remark when FDR’s name was mentioned, and he never failed to express his feelings about the president in internal memos … When I was assigned to the Research Division, I’d see those blue ink remarks about Roosevelt. One said, “He has an Emperor’s complex.”’

  Edgar thought Roosevelt suspiciously left-wing. ‘Hoover didn’t trust liberals,’ said Sullivan, ‘and FDR had surrounded himself with other liberals. Hoover hated Henry Wallace, Roosevelt’s Secretary of Agriculture. He hated Harry Hopkins, administrator of some of the most important programs of the New Deal; and most of the rest of the President’s staff was also unacceptable to the Director.’ Roosevelt’s New Deal, Edgar told his friend, future U.S. Senator George Murphy, was engineered by the Communists.

  Edgar’s attitude to the President was mild compared with his dislike of Eleanor Roosevelt. He had grave misgivings about the President’s wife, about her enthusiasm for left-wing causes and left-wing friends, and he let the President know it. Once, when American Federation of Labor leader Robert Watt complained that the FBI was investigating him, Roosevelt responded with a smile of resignation. ‘That’s nothing,’ he said, ‘to what J. Edgar Hoover says about my wife.’ Yet the President tolerated Edgar, even relied on him.

  Roosevelt, one historian remarked, had ‘a more spacious view’ of executive authority than his Republican predecessors. He saw t
he FBI as a tool that could be used for much more than law enforcement, that could be pressed into service for reasons of state and for his own political benefit. The President handed Edgar massive new powers, powers he would abuse for nearly forty years.

  A month before Roosevelt’s inauguration, Adolf Hitler had become German Chancellor. The first concentration camp opened soon afterward. As Edgar was celebrating the capture of Machine Gun Kelly, Hitler withdrew from the League of Nations and announced plans to rearm Germany. As Edgar celebrated the shooting of John Dillinger, the Nazis assassinated the Chancellor of Austria.

  By spring 1934, there were fears that rightist groups, including the American Nazi movement, were plotting to undermine the government. On May 8 Edgar went to the White House to discuss the problem with the President and senior members of the cabinet. The outcome was that for the first time, Edgar gained official sanction to conduct political intelligence.

  He began by investigating American Nazis, but soon had targets of a different political stripe. That fall Roosevelt ordered Edgar to investigate striking mill workers in Rhode Island. At Christmas, when the American Civil Liberties Union asked for a meeting with the President, the White House asked the FBI for a briefing. The ACLU was one of Edgar’s pet hates, and on his advice the President turned down the ACLU request. Roosevelt and his advisers soon fell into the habit of calling for Bureau reports on matters that had little or nothing to do with law enforcement. Edgar eagerly obliged. He was becoming, as one historian put it, ‘the President’s intelligence valet.’

  Stalin had murdered his way to absolute power in Moscow. The Nazis marched into the Rhineland, and civil war broke out in Spain. Roosevelt received troubling warnings, word of a home-based right-wing plot to topple him, and allegations of foreign espionage. On the morning of August 24, 1936, he summoned Edgar to a private meeting that would have far-reaching consequences. We have only Edgar’s version of what was said.