The Burglary

by Betty Medsger

  The two old friends, Nixon and Hoover, played a convoluted series of potentially explosive tricks on each other in 1970 and 1971. Their divergent priorities came between them. Nixon was obsessed with a desire to quash the antiwar movement. Hoover shared that obsession, but his other obsession, fear of losing his job, was his top priority. Given his friendship and political collaboration with Nixon over many years, he undoubtedly expected Nixon to endorse his continued service as FBI director at least as enthusiastically as President Lyndon Johnson had. In 1964, President Johnson had issued an executive order exempting Hoover from compulsory retirement at age seventy. Johnson hailed him then as “a quiet, humble and magnificent public servant … a hero to millions of citizens and an anathema to all evil men.…No other American now or in our past, has served the cause of justice so faithfully and so well.” Johnson’s high praise for his former neighbor was easily believed by the public, for by 1964 Hoover had long been an American icon. Under Nixon, the platitudes about Hoover continued, but the atmosphere was more treacherous, for neither Hoover nor Nixon felt an ethical imperative when loyalty competed with self-interest.

  Immediately after Nixon’s secret plan for intelligence agencies to collaborate—known as the Huston Plan for Tom Charles Huston, the young White House aide who designed it on Nixon’s behalf—was approved in 1970 by the heads of all intelligence agencies, Hoover informed the president he would not go along with the plan unless every request for illegal work by the FBI under the joint operation—bugging, wiretapping, home or office burglary, all of which the FBI secretly had been doing for many years—was first authorized in writing by the president.

  That did it. Rather than agree to Hoover’s demand for written presidential authorization for illegal projects, Nixon killed the intelligence collaboration plan before it started, as Hoover must have been sure he would. The president was unwilling to create a paper trail that would be evidence he had asked intelligence agencies to engage in illegal activities. Interestingly, Nixon did not exert the same caution with the massive recorded trail of evidence his White House tapes created daily—the definitive record that later contributed to public certainty about his criminal behavior and thus to his decision to resign.

  When the dispute between the president and Hoover became known years later, it was speculated that by that time in his life Hoover had become opposed to breaking the law. Comments he wrote to Sullivan make it clear that was not the case:

  For years and years and years I have approved opening mail and other similar operations, but no. It is becoming more and more dangerous and we are apt to get caught. I am not opposed to doing this. I am not opposed to continuing the burglaries and the opening of mail and other similar activities, providing someone higher than myself approves of it.…I no longer want to accept the sole responsibility. [If] the attorney general or some other high-ranking person in the White House [approves] then I will carry out their decision. But I am not going to accept the responsibility myself anymore, even though I’ve done it for years.…I am not going to do that anymore.

  IN HOOVER’S DEALINGS with the attorney general and the White House during the Nixon administration, he had found ways, as he often had in the past, to have his cake and eat it too—creating an impression that he was abiding by the law when actually he was conducting illegal operations. Even as he told the president he was unwilling to make unilateral decisions for the bureau to engage in illegal intelligence activities, he was in fact continuing such projects and initiating new ones, including treacherous dirty tricks.

  Mitchell’s refusal to respond to Hoover’s request at the time of the Media burglary that the Department of Justice go to court in an effort to criminalize distribution and publication of the Media files might have come from a desire to prevent discovery of the crimes then being planned at the White House. Seeing the high public interest in the information revealed in the Media files, the attorney general would have realized that this first public glimpse of the FBI’s domestic intelligence operations revealed the tip of a very large hidden domestic intelligence iceberg. As someone involved in both the failed 1970 intelligence collaboration plan and now, in the spring of 1971, in the plans for crimes to be carried out by the White House, Mitchell, and also the president, probably were desperate for the intelligence iceberg not to become visible, especially while they were in the process of making the iceberg bigger. That may have made them fear that an effort in court to suppress distribution and publication of the Media files might stimulate new interest and lead not only to more revelations about secret FBI intelligence operations but also to exposure of the unprecedented and bizarre criminal operations then being developed in the White House.

  Whatever caused the attorney general to ignore Hoover’s March 1971 request that he seek an injunction against publication of the Media files—excessive pique at Hoover’s 1970 behavior, excessive caution about exposing criminal operations being hatched in the White House, or excessive fear of the damage Hoover could cause because of what he knew and could reveal about demands for illegal operations he carried out at the president’s request—a few months later, in the fall of 1971, Mitchell gave the director reason to be optimistic when he gave him written approval to defy the law Congress had just passed requiring an end to the bureau’s maintaining lists of subversives to be detained.

  Hoover’s secret FBI had trumped Congress just seven months after the Media burglary. From inside the FBI, it appeared Hoover’s subterfuge might continue, despite the Media revelations. Even before the burglary, however, Hoover’s world had started to change. Some critics had surfaced, including a few former agents. They had aired complaints, but they had not revealed details of the bureau’s operations. Hoover thought he had easily discredited them as just a few disgruntled agents. Nevertheless, he no longer felt completely secure. He was seventy-six in 1971 and, bureau insiders later reported, feared his enemies might learn about his illegal actions and use that information to force him out of office. He had become meticulous about appearing to be abiding strictly by the law. But the Media files were a profound challenge. They provided the public with firsthand evidence—some of it in his own words—of how he operated the FBI. He was still able to fool Congress and to engage the attorney general as an enabler in violating the law, but he could not refute the truth of his own secret files now on display for the first time.

  15

  COINTELPRO Hovers

  ONE OMINOUS “message in a bottle” from the Media burglars remained a secret—COINTELPRO. Despite having demonstrated inside the bureau in September 1971 that he was still a master at subterfuge, it was not possible for the director and his top aides to rest easy that fall. They were determined to stay the course, but they also feared daily that the worst was yet to come. What if someone was able to figure out what COINTELPRO was?

  COINTELPRO hovered over the FBI.

  The possible exposure of the program was regarded inside the bureau as the most dangerous bureau operation that could be exposed. It was assumed by bureau officials that the public’s reaction to it would be much more explosive than the reaction to the Security Index had been. As threatening as the Security Index was, people inside the FBI realized that if COINTELPRO became known, people would realize that the bureau conducted operations far more controversial and damaging to Americans’ rights than creating lists of alleged subversives to be arrested during a national emergency. For that reason, FBI officials desperately hoped in the spring of 1971 that COINTELPRO never would become public, that it would remain buried in the bureau’s most secret files. But they lived with a grim truth throughout that spring: The Media burglars were still free and were able to distribute files at any time, and for all FBI officials knew, the burglars might have a file that would reveal the existence of COINTELPRO.

  Clever as the director had been through the years in protecting himself and the bureau, he would have realized that if COINTELPRO records became public, it would be impossible for him to avoid responsibilit
y. Unknown outside the bureau, there was a long trail of secret files that provided detailed evidence that Hoover himself created the COINTELPRO operations, sought proposals for them, and had authorized and monitored most of them. Not only that, but he had put a premium on the development of COINTELPRO projects. Only the best agents were to be permitted to conduct them, and they would be rewarded for doing so. He had kept these operations a secret from most attorneys general he served under, including the current one—not that Attorney General Mitchell would have opposed them.

  The only Media file that mentioned COINTELPRO arrived in my mailbox on April 5, 1971. The term was near the top of a routing slip that included the request that agents distribute the attached article that had been published in Barron’s, the weekly financial publication, on how campus protests should be handled more forcefully by college presidents. There was no clue about what the term “COINTELPRO” meant, but simply reporting about the file that contained the term set off an alarm inside the FBI. To bureau officials, a very important shoe had just dropped. As soon as my story about that file—written without the unexplained “COINTELPRO” term—was published on April 6, headquarters officials realized that one of their worst fears, public exposure of COINTELPRO, had just come closer to being realized. They had been waiting to see if that file would be released by the burglars. When it was, they knew then with certainty that the term existed outside the FBI for the first time. Something had to be done. My story on the files that arrived that day from the burglars emphasized the one with the COINTELPRO routing slip and was headlined “FBI Secretly Prods Colleges on New Left.” On a copy of the story included in the MEDBURG investigative file, Hoover handwrote three brief notes, each one a request for documents mentioned in the story.

  This document, a simple routing slip, had more impact than any other file stolen from the Media office. The term at the top, COINTELPRO, had never been seen before outside the bureau. It was the name of one of Hoover’s most carefully guarded secrets—dirty tricks operations conducted against dissidents.

  He acted quickly. On the same day the story was published, he wrote to the heads of all the field offices then conducting COINTELPRO operations and told them that the program’s “90-day status letters will no longer be required and should be discontinued.” That change suggested that the director was trying to increase secrecy about the program by eliminating one of the layers of reporting that documented progress in COINTELPRO operations. But in that same memorandum to field offices he also made it clear that COINTELPRO was still an important program despite the potential danger that could result from its name now being known outside the bureau. He told the agents in charge of the field offices that they must “continue aggressive and imaginative participation in the program.”

  Two days after he learned that the COINTELPRO routing slip had been released by the burglars, Hoover wrote a letter to the attorney general. His April 8 letter to Mitchell seemed to be designed as a warning that something new and controversial might emerge at any time from the Media files. Specifically, he expressed concern that the burglars might make COINTELPRO public, but he did not mention the routing slip that already had been released. He informed the attorney general that the term, used alone, did not make the program “readily comprehensible.” Perhaps still hoping that the routing slip would spark no interest and COINTELPRO would remain secret, even from the attorney general, Hoover did not explain the nature of COINTELPRO operations, only that they existed.

  By three weeks after the bureau learned from my story that the COINTELPRO routing slip had been released, concern at FBI headquarters apparently had increased dramatically about the possible exposure of the program. Hoover made a radical decision: he eliminated those programs he had started in 1956 and that he regarded as so important to his intelligence operation.

  He took that extreme step after FBI official Charles Brennan wrote a memo to him on April 27, 1971, recommending the closure of COINTELPRO. This should be done, Brennan wrote, in order “to afford additional security to our sensitive techniques and operations.…These programs involve a variety of sensitive intelligence techniques and disruptive activities, which are afforded close supervision at the Seat of Government [a bureau term for the national FBI headquarters in Washington]. They have been carefully supervised with all actions being afforded prior Bureau approval and an effort has been made to avoid engaging in harassment. Although successful over the years, it is felt they should now be discontinued for security reasons because of their sensitivity.” Beginning three years later, as some COINTELPRO operations were revealed for the first time, it would be discovered that the operations not only did not avoid harassment but were designed specifically to be harassment, often of law-abiding Americans, sometimes for years and sometimes by provoking violence.

  The director immediately agreed with the recommendation to close COINTELPRO. On April 28, he sent a memorandum to field offices ordering the immediate discontinuance of all COINTELPRO operations. Given the importance of COINTELPRO to the FBI, this would appear to have been a profoundly significant decision, one that would be disruptive to some of the major operations of the bureau. That was not a problem, however, for just as changing the name of the Security Index and its predecessor, the Custodial Detention Index, were ruses to cover his earlier defiance, the internal announcement that COINTELPRO was being closed was not what it appeared to be.

  When the details of COINTELPRO started to be revealed, more than two years later, reporters at first accepted the FBI’s official statement that the program no longer existed, that it had been canceled on April 28, 1971. That was not true. Consistent with past Hoover practice, his order to eliminate COINTELPRO was designed to protect and to deceive. Once again the devil was in Hoover’s nomenclature. The program was no longer called COINTELPRO, but the program itself, with all the same qualities and practices, continued. From now on, Hoover wrote when he notified FBI officials that he had “closed” COINTELPRO, such operations would be conducted on an ad hoc basis, each approved by the director. That was exactly how they had been operated before. The only difference was that now the operations did not have the COINTELPRO designation. Therefore, if someone asked—as people did, beginning a year after the burglary—FBI officials would be able to say—as they did—“That program doesn’t exist anymore.” But it did.

  New COINTELPRO-like operations, in fact, continued to be initiated at that time in 1971, including efforts to destroy the reputation of John Kerry, after he testified before Senator J. William Fulbright’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee and called the war in Vietnam “a tragic mistake.” The FBI eventually created a 2,934-page file on Kerry—the future Massachusetts senator, 2004 Democratic presidential candidate and secretary of state—and a 19,978-page file on Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the prominent organization of veterans returning from Vietnam he led in 1971. In fact, many such operations were conducted against individuals and organizations throughout the mid-1970s.

  Given that the COINTELPRO operations had not been revealed by May 2, 1972, the day Hoover died, a little more than a year after the term surfaced on a Media file, he may have remained confident until his death that the program, perhaps his darkest secret, would remain hidden forever. That COINTELPRO had not been revealed by then may have convinced Hoover that the legacy he had spent a lifetime developing might not be redefined by what the Media files revealed or by the accusations a few former agents made against him in the last two years of his life—or by the powerful secrets he knew had not yet been revealed. Maybe those secrets would remain sealed.

  HOOVER’S STRONGEST SUPPORTERS pulled out all the stops in the spring of 1971 to buoy his spirits. They encircled him with warm support and angry defenses in that year that was marked by harsh public criticism—a time that was what New York Times columnist Tom Wicker described in an April 15, 1971, column as “the worst period of controversy Mr. Hoover has encountered in his 47-year career.”

  Thanks to a campaign by the bureau
’s public relations office, on May 10, 1971, the forty-seventh anniversary of Hoover’s becoming director of the bureau, seventy-one members of Congress placed tributes to him in the Congressional Record.

  Some of the extremely critical reaction that spring was from unexpected sources. Two publications that over many years had written only laudatory commentary about the director, Time magazine and Life magazine, delivered harsh criticism after the burglary. There was evidence, Time reported, that Hoover’s “fiefdom,” the FBI, was “crumbling, largely because of his own mistakes. The FBI’s spirit is sapped, its morale low, its initiative stifled.” The FBI had become, according to Time, “a secretive, enormously powerful Government agency under dictatorial rule, operating on its own, answerable to no authority except the judgments—or whims—of one man.”

  On April 9, just a month after the burglary and two weeks after the first stolen files became public, Life ran a striking image of the director on its cover. It was a portrait of a sculpture of Hoover as a Roman emperor, complete with toga, with the title “The 47-year Reign of J. Edgar Hoover: Emperor of the FBI.” Inside the magazine, the headline was, “After almost half a century in total and imperious charge: G-Man under fire.” Pointing to reaction to recent revelations, Life noted that “the thrust of the criticism appears to be changing, and Mr. Hoover has drawn the attention of more powerful critics. Now he has been challenged—of all places—on the floor of the House. It has been widely charged that the director’s imperious disregard for any but his own views of the national interest diminishes his Bureau’s effectiveness and has even become a serious infringement on civil rights.”