Official and Confidential

by Anthony Summers

  Three years later a congressional committee would make what it could of the stories told by Gandy, Mohr, Felt and others. It would conclude only one thing for certain: that a mass of documents were trucked to Edgar’s home in the weeks that followed his death. According to Gandy, these were merely Edgar’s personal files, containing private correspondence, investment records and the like. In line with Edgar’s known wishes, she said, she sorted through them, then sent them to be destroyed in the office shredder.

  The staff of Congress’ Government Information Subcommittee, which heard Gandy’s testimony, were convinced she was lying. Surviving records indicated that the truckload taken to Edgar’s home had included official records. Gandy, who said the consignment consisted of just four file cabinets and thirty-five cardboard boxes, was contradicted by Raymond Smith, the truck driver who made the delivery. He said he transported at least twenty, possibly twenty-five, cabinets from headquarters to the basement of Edgar’s house. A file drawer came open during the transfer, and he saw that it was crammed with folders, each about an inch thick. Edgar’s housekeeper Annie Fields told neighbors the files were kept under tight security from the moment they arrived.

  Finally, it is clear that in Edgar’s office the label ‘Personal’ had a significance quite different from the ordinary sense of the word. Early in his tenure, Edgar had established a procedure designated ‘Personal and Confidential,’ under which senior officials could communicate with him in total secrecy, outside the central records system.

  In the opinion of the scholar who has done most to expose FBI secret dossiers, Professor Athan Theoharis of Marquette University, the Personal and Confidential files probably contained material even more explosive than the Official and Confidential dossiers that have since so shocked the public.

  It is not certain that all the files removed to Edgar’s home were eventually destroyed. Newsweek reported in 1975 that dossiers ‘very, very damaging to the Nixon White House’ remained in Clyde Tolson’s custody. When he in turn died, Newsweek said, FBI agents descended on the house to cart the documents away. Clyde’s former secretary, Dorothy Skillman, told a story similar to Helen Gandy’s. She destroyed Clyde’s correspondence, she said, and it was ‘mostly birthday cards.’ Anthony Marro, the Newsweek reporter, stood by his story.

  ‘I find your testimony very difficult to believe,’ Congressman Andrew Maguire told Helen Gandy when she testified in December 1975 about the fate of the files. ‘That,’ she answered haughtily, ‘is your privilege.’

  ‘You’re beating a dead horse,’ Mark Felt told congressional investigators. ‘So what, you won’t find out what was destroyed. Only Miss Gandy knows that. And what if you do?… There’s no serious problem if we lose some papers. I didn’t see anything wrong, and I still don’t.’

  EPILOGUE

  ‘You know, he was the last reigning monarch in the Western World.’

  Tom Huston, former Nixon aide, 1975

  At midday Washington time on the day Edgar died, the Stars and Stripes slid down to half-staff on American government buildings, military installations and Navy ships around the world. President Nixon, relieved of his Hoover problem at last, was diverting the nation with a show of public grief.

  The President now claimed the man he had been trying to dump had been ‘one of my closest personal friends and advisers.’ Edgar, he said, had been ‘the symbol and embodiment of the values he cherished most: courage, patriotism, dedication to his country and a granite-like honesty and integrity.’

  Vice President Spiro Agnew, who would soon face trial for bribery and tax evasion, said Edgar had endeared himself to Americans for ‘his total dedication to principle and his complete incorruptibility.’ John Mitchell, who had urged Edgar’s dismissal, called the death ‘a great tragedy.’ Acting Attorney General Kleindienst, who used to hold the phone away from his ear when Edgar called, now thought him ‘a giant among patriots’ who never allowed the taint of political influence. Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California, declared that ‘No twentieth-century man has meant more to this country than Hoover.’

  In Congress, politicians rushed to praise Edgar. John Rooney, who had been party to many of Edgar’s abuses, spoke of Edgar’s ‘deep respect for his fellowman.’ Congressman Hale Boggs, who had called for Edgar’s retirement the previous year, now claimed he had never criticized him personally at all. Even Senator Edward Kennedy spoke of Edgar’s ‘honesty, integrity and his desire to do what he thought best for the country.’ In all, 149 representatives and senators eventually paid tribute.

  The few that raised their voices in dissent included Martin Luther King’s widow, Coretta. She spoke of Edgar’s ‘deplorable and dangerous’ legacy and of a file system ‘replete with lies and sordid material on some of the highest people in government, including presidents.’ Dr Benjamin Spock was glad Edgar was dead. ‘It’s a great relief, especially if his replacement is a man who better understands democratic institutions and the American process.’

  At FBI headquarters, a telex went out to the furthest corners of Edgar’s empire, asking Bureau employees to offer up prayers. It was signed by Clyde, but probably penned by John Mohr. In Miami, Agent in Charge Whittaker said Edgar’s passing was ‘like losing a father.’ From retirement, Cartha DeLoach told the press Edgar had been ‘a great American, a compassionate man with unswerving loyalty and dedication.’

  In private, DeLoach had reservations. ‘I respected him,’ he recalled, ‘but I never loved him as a true friend.’ ‘For me,’ said Mark Felt, ‘it was no personal loss. I never did feel emotional about it. My main thought that day was about the problems created by his death.’

  There was little solemnity at FBI field offices around the country. In California, Agent Cril Payne arrived at a colleague’s retirement party expecting gloom. ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes,’ he recalled. ‘The place was packed! The older agents had showed up in record number. Had a stranger wandered into the room he might have thought it was the office Christmas party! Instead of the somber gathering I had envisioned, the luncheon became a time for joyous celebration. If the truth were known, I think the great majority of agents felt an overwhelming sense of relief …’

  ‘It was fitting,’ quipped another agent, ‘that the Director passed away in his sleep. That’s the way the Bureau was run lately.’

  For years now a joke had been going the rounds in the Bureau – about the day Clyde told Edgar how much burial lots for the two of them would cost. ‘I’m not going to pay that for a burial lot,’ cried Edgar. ‘I’ll tell you what you do. Go ahead and buy your own lot and rent a vault for me for three days. I’ll only be there three days.’

  When Edgar died, FBI Mafia specialist Neil Welch remembered that story. ‘The last resurrection had been sometime previously,’ he said dryly. ‘I wanted to see if history repeated itself. So a group of us in Detroit got together and flew to Washington, not out of a sense of great grief or anything, just out of curiosity to see the changeover. I wanted to see what machinations were going on in that temple of his over there …’

  In New York, at the Aqueduct Racetrack, three mobsters in the Gambino family spotted the news in the paper. ‘You know what I feel about this,’ shrugged the senior man in the group. ‘Absolutely nothing. This guy meant nothing to us, one way or the other.’

  At the tracks Edgar had frequented, people felt differently. His regular table at Pimlico was dressed out in black cloth. At Bowie, his table was adorned with his name card. Edgar’s lunch table at the Mayflower, where he had eaten the previous day, was draped with red, white and blue sashes.

  ‘The shock of Brother Hoover’s loss,’ a speaker told fellow Masons in Washington, ‘was felt far beyond the boundaries of our great nation … When Brother Hoover died, a giant fell and the gods wept.’

  The undertakers who handled Edgar’s body, from Gawler’s on Wisconsin Avenue, were used to the deaths of the famous. The company had looked after the remains of many of Edgar’s friends and enemies: J
oseph McCarthy and Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Estes Kefauver – a long list of prominent Americans. Even so, the half hour spent at Edgar’s house left them shaken.

  ‘The place was like a museum,’ recalled undertaker William Reburn, ‘like a shrine the man had made to himself. He must’ve had some ego. The picture of him at the top of the stairs was almost like the one of Napoleon with the hand inside the jacket.’ A colleague, John van Hoesen, remembered the statuary: ‘Busts, like Roman busts of Caesar, but of J. Edgar Hoover.’

  Edgar’s corpse was obese, a heavy burden to maneuver downstairs, onto a mortuary cot and out a side entrance into an old sedan – a subterfuge designed to conceal the operation from the press. At Gawler’s the body was embalmed, dressed in a suit and tie chosen by Clyde and laid out in a $3,000 casket.

  ‘He looked very good,’ said Edgar’s niece Margaret Fennell, ‘but smaller than I remembered. I guess death does that to you.’ For the first time in years Edgar was without the various devices – the built-up shoes, the raised desk – that he had used to make himself appear taller than he really was. ‘My former colleagues,’ said DeLoach, ‘couldn’t stand to see that great dissipation of power in a man that should be revered. Miss Gandy talked to Mr Tolson and John Mohr, and they decided to have the casket closed.’

  Mohr and Gandy gave up plans for a quiet Masonic ceremony, which Edgar had said he wanted, when President Nixon decided to treat him like a national hero. The next morning, in heavy rain, a hearse brought the remains to lie in the Rotunda of the Capitol. The entire Supreme Court, the Cabinet and members of the Congress were on hand to receive the casket. It was laid, wrapped in the flag, on Lincoln’s catafalque – an honor that had previously been extended to only twenty-one people. Edgar was the first civil servant to be so honored, and 25,000 people flocked to the Capitol to pay homage.’

  It was Nixon, the following day, who delivered the eulogy at the funeral service in the National Presbyterian Church. ‘America,’ he intoned, ‘has revered this man, not only as the Director of an institution, but as an institution in his own right. For nearly half a century, nearly one fourth of the whole history of this Republic, J. Edgar Hoover has exerted a great influence for good in our national life. While eight Presidents came and went, while other leaders of morals and manners and opinion rose and fell, the Director stayed at his post … Each of us stand forever in his debt … His death only heightens the respect and admiration felt for him across this land and in every land where men cherish freedom.’

  The Watergate tapes show that ten months later, at the height of the crisis that was to bring him down, Nixon discussed Edgar with John Dean. The transcript runs as follows:

  DEAN: Now, the other thing is … everything is cast that we’re the political people and they’re not – that Hoover was above reproach …

  NIXON: Bullshit! Bullshit!

  DEAN: Total bullshit. The, uh, person who could, would destroy Hoover’s image is going to be this man Bill Sullivan … Also, it’s going to tarnish quite severely some of the FBI and a former president.

  NIXON: Fine …

  Policemen from across the country lined the route to Congressional Cemetery, where Edgar’s parents lay buried. Clyde had insisted that his friend’s wish was to be buried there rather than at Arlington, as Nixon suggested. The cortege was now reduced to ten limousines, carrying Clyde, Congressman John Rooney, a few colleagues and the handful of relatives, nephews and nieces and their children.

  The cemetery, one of Washington’s oldest, was somewhat neglected in those days – an unlikely final destination for a man of Edgar’s stature. The limousines inched their way between the narrow gateposts, and the mourners gathered for the final ceremony. Clyde was pushed to the site in a wheelchair. ‘I was shocked,’ said Edgar’s nephew Fred Robinette. ‘It looked like he didn’t know where he was. He had this vacant stare.’

  In the absence of a widow, it was Clyde who received the flag from the coffin. Then it was over. Minutes after the mourners had left, neighborhood children ran to pilfer the flowers from the grave.

  Clyde now became a virtual recluse. He refused to accept a condolence call from Acting FBI Director Gray, and he never set foot in the office again. His resignation letter, pleading ill health, was composed by another Bureau official, its signature forged by a secretary. Clyde moved into Edgar’s house and remained there for the rest of his life.

  He received the bulk of Edgar’s fortune, officially valued at half a million dollars – $2.3 million at today’s rates – although Justice Department investigators would later suspect that his true wealth was hidden by secret investment accounts. Clyde soon began selling off the myriad collectibles his friend had gathered over the years. They went under the hammer at Sloan’s Auction Gallery, with the vendor’s name concealed by the code name ‘JET’ – for ‘J. Edgar’ and ‘Tolson.’

  In his will, Edgar had entrusted the welfare of his two cairn terriers to Clyde. Clyde, however, soon had the dogs put down. He sank into a listless existence, whiling away his days munching candy – a longtime addiction – and watching television.

  In the time that remained to him, Clyde would be stirred to action only once, in 1973, when William Sullivan spoke out about the transfer of wiretap records to the Nixon White House. The administration, Sullivan said, had feared Edgar would resort to blackmail to hold on to his job – not least because he ‘had been of unsound mind for the past few years.’

  This moved Clyde to write a letter of protest to The Washington Post, dismissing Sullivan as ‘a disgruntled former employee.’ A month or so later, however, when Watergate investigators interviewed Clyde, they doubted his own ‘mental competency.’

  Clyde had become a pathetically lonely figure, visited mainly by thoughtful neighbors. One, Betty Nelson, came in to give him chocolate bars and a kiss on Valentine’s Day 1975. He was taken to the hospital in early April and died there of heart failure a few days later.

  A new FBI Director, Clarence Kelley, would say Clyde’s death left ‘a great void in the law enforcement field.’ The truth was that he was virtually forgotten. In his final three years, reportedly, his only excursions had been to visit Edgar’s grave at Congressional Cemetery. Now Clyde lay buried there, too, about ten yards from the man he loved. According to cemetery officials, each man had asked to be buried near the other.

  President Nixon had responded cynically on the morning of Edgar’s death as he wondered how to replace him. His first choice had been Clyde, not in spite of but because of the fact that he was a virtual invalid. ‘Tolson’s incapacity,’ the President told H. R. Haldeman – a thought duly minuted for the record – ‘may be an advantage.’ Nixon wanted the control of the FBI Edgar had denied him, and a sick man seemed just the candidate.

  ‘We have not used the power in the first four years,’ the President would remark to his aide John Dean. ‘We have never used it. We haven’t used the Bureau, and we haven’t used the Justice Department, but things are going to change …’

  It was when Clyde declined the Director’s job that Nixon decided on L. Patrick Gray as a stopgap, an uncontroversial Acting Director for election year. Gray was a former Navy man whose career watchword, unkind critics say, had been ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ For a long time now, the ‘sir’ in question had been Nixon himself – and the President liked that.

  Edgar had run his fiefdom as though he would live forever, and it remained in disarray for years, not least because of the chaos that followed Watergate. Gradually, however, first under Gray, then under FBI veteran and former police chief Clarence Kelley and – above all – during the nine-year directorship of William Webster, the Bureau entered the modern world. Women were admitted as agents, and staff across the country were released from the sillier of Edgar’s rules and regulations. Men no longer lived in constant fear of irrational punishment. The aging leaders Edgar had gathered around him were gradually forced out or left of their own accord. And, it is believed, the worst abuses of FBI power �
� against the Congress and ordinary citizens – have since been exposed and eradicated.

  ‘J. Edgar Hoover’s greatness,’ his old adjutant Louis Nichols wrote confidently in late 1972, ‘will grow with the passage of time.’ To fulfill that hope, loyalists busied themselves trying to perpetuate Edgar’s memory. They pressed Congress for a bill to create commemorative medals, commissioned portraits and sculptures. Edgar’s FBI badge – No. 1 – was presented to the Smithsonian Institution. His gun, a .32 Colt Pocket Positive, was solemnly preserved. FBI stalwarts, members of the old guard, made an annual pilgrimage to the cemetery. Their numbers soon dwindled, however, and Edgar’s grave was often seen to be untended, overrun by vines and weeds.2

  Even four decades after his death, however, the name J. Edgar Hoover can still stir controversy. There are Americans who either yearn for the certainties he seemed to embody, or wonder how it was that his abuses were tolerated for so long. To understand the phenomenon better, we may ask what drove Edgar, what led him to the narrow world of the mind he came to inhabit – the world in which, with some success, he sought to confine his countrymen as well.

  The vast library Edgar left behind, which was transferred to the FBI National Academy, offers few answers – just the predictable mountain of books on Communism, a stack of books on religion and health and some whodunits. There is no evidence that Edgar was steeped in any particular philosophy, nor that his life was the execution of any conscious plan.

  Leading psychologists and psychiatrists, however, asked to study the information gathered for this book, all recognize a distinct pattern in Edgar’s makeup, one that began forming in childhood and led to serious mental disorder in the grown man.3 Separated by twelve years from his youngest sibling, conceived when his parents were mourning the death of his infant sister Sadie, Edgar had been rather more than the apple of his mother’s eye.