J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  Of those 5,702, about a dozen were black. Faced with the loss of his drivers and office help, Hoover had appointed them special agents, thus keeping them for the duration, while at the same time deflecting the NAACP’s frequent complaints that the FBI was “lily-white.”

  Hoover, however, couldn’t take full credit for “integrating” the FBI. When appointed director in 1924, he had inherited one black special agent, James Amos, who had served as Theodore Roosevelt’s bodyguard, valet, and friend (Roosevelt died in Amos’s arms) and whose main job, under Hoover, was cleaning the weapons on the firing range. In addition to Amos, the FBI’s other black SAs included the director’s three chauffeurs (James Crawford, in Washington, D.C.; Harold Carr, in New York City; and Jesse Strider, in Los Angeles); and two SOG employees, Worthington Smith and Sam Noisette.

  Ebony, in a laudatory piece entitled “The Negro in the FBI,” later wrote of Hoover and Noisette, “The relationship between the two men virtually sets the race relations pattern for the huge agency.”6

  It was almost the only truthful statement in the article. Of dozen or so black SAs, “Mister Sam” had the most conspicuous job, serving as majordomo of Hoover’s office. His duties, not necessarily in the order of their importance, were to usher in visitors, hand the director a fresh towel when he emerged from his private bathroom, help him into his coat, and wield the flyswatter.

  Over the years Hoover developed an increasingly neurotic fear of germs, together with an obsession with flies. On one memorable occasion Hoover spotted a fly in his office and ordered in Noisette to kill it. Noisette raised the swatter, then, arm aloft, hesitated: the fly had landed on the director! “Hit him, hit him,” Hoover screamed, and Noisette did, bringing down the swatter—as he’d later retell the story—“a hell of a lot harder than necessary.”7

  Charged with escorting in new agents for their ceremonial first meeting with the director, Noisette often privately befriended them, warning them of the hazards of working at the Seat of Government. For example, when Norman Ollestad tried to strike up a conversation in the men’s room, Noisette abruptly cut him off. Once they were outside, Noisette cautioned him, “You know, son, the walls of Justice got ears.” He ought to be careful of anything he said anywhere in the building, but especially in the toilet, since it was under constant surveillance. “The truth of the matter is that the boss don’t understand queers, but he’s scared to death of them, and that’s why they watch you fellahs in the head.”8

  Prior to the war, Hoover had wielded almost dictatorial power over his special agents. Since the FBI was not under civil service, there was no appeal to a disciplinary action, however arbitrary or unjustified it might be. But one could always resign. With the war that option remained, but few exercised it, since leaving the Bureau meant being subject to the draft. Hoover’s power over his men was now nearly absolute.

  Although Harold “Pop” Nathan didn’t retire until 1945 (after forty-two years in government service) and Charles Appel and Frank Baughman remained until 1949, most of the legendary characters from the Bureau’s early days were gone by now.

  Hoover was not unhappy to see them go. Individuality was not a desired characteristic in the new FBI. He had put up with it when he needed their special skills, but he didn’t need them any longer. Class after class, with the uniform sameness of a mass production line, the FBI Academy turned out the kind of men Hoover wanted. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, John Keith had resigned in 1936 to become a security consultant at Philco.* Charlie Winstead, one of the last of Hoover’s “hired guns,” left in 1942. Hoover had tolerated his frequent insubordination this long only because Winstead had been banished to a remote resident agency where he could make the least amount of trouble. Still, he managed to offend a female reporter by telling her that her opinions of Russia were “not worth doodleyshit.” Although the director certainly didn’t agree with the reporter’s contention that “Russia is fighting our battles,” he jumped at the chance to discipline Winstead. Ordered to apologize and report to Oklahoma City, one of the Bureau’s least desirable postings, Winstead instead told the director to “go to hell” and resigned to take a captain’s commission in Army intelligence.9

  The new SAs did not make trouble. Many of those who joined the FBI during the war would remain in it afterward, a number of them rising to positions of authority, among them John Mohr and William Sullivan. According to Sullivan, he and his fellow World War II classmates developed a particular mind-set that would stay with them throughout their Bureau careers: “We never freed ourselves from that psychology that we were indoctrinated with, right after Pearl Harbor…It was just like a soldier in the battlefield. When he shot an enemy he did not ask himself: is this legal or lawful, is it ethical? It was what he was supposed to do as a soldier.

  “We did what we were expected to do. It became part of our thinking, part of our personality.”10

  Having been taught to disregard “the niceties of law,” they continued to disregard them through the Cold War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War and in the COINTELPROs—the FBI’s own war on dissent.

  By 1942 the FBI was committing so many illegal acts that the “do not file” system had to be expanded to hide their paper trail.

  In early December 1941, while still temporary director of censorship, Hoover asked the telegraph and cable companies—Western Union, RCA, and ITT—to delay the transmission of all messages to some half dozen countries for twenty-four hours, so that they could be copied and examined by the FBI. This “drop copy” program didn’t end with the war. As James Bamford notes in his book The Puzzle Palace, it only grew. “By the fall of 1946, the FBI was covertly obtaining, direct from the cable companies, cable traffic to and from some thirteen countries.”11 With only brief interruptions, the FBI continued to read foreign cables both to and from the United States until at least 1975.

  Though rain, sleet, and snow couldn’t keep a postman from his appointed rounds, the FBI could. In 1940 censorship experts on Stephenson’s BSC staff taught a specially selected class of six FBI agents the techniques of chamfering (mail opening). Their initial targets were the Axis diplomatic establishments in Washington, D.C. Mail from both foreign and domestic points of origin was intercepted at the Main Post Office, brought to the FBI Laboratory for opening and photographing, then returned to the Post Office to be reinserted into the mail flow.* Bettering their English teachers, FBI Lab technicians developed a fairly simple device that enabled them to open a letter in one or two seconds.

  This initial program was code-named Z-Coverage. Once started, it, like all FBI programs, grew—to include New York City and the embassies and consulates of several supposedly neutral countries. Z-Coverage outlived the Axis, remaining in operation for twenty-six years. Although briefly suspended after World War II, it was reinstated during the Cold War, with a new set of targets. And this was just one of eight FBI mail-opening programs during this same period.† The other seven were of shorter duration but came to cover a much broader geographical area. Mail-opening devices, and training in their use, were made available to at least seven other participating field offices: Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Though most of these programs operated on the principle of “watch lists,” some were random. For example, between October 1961 and February 1962, the FBI conducted an experimental program in which all mail sent to San Francisco from either Washington, D.C., or New York City was screened.12

  It is not known how many letters the FBI opened in its search for foreign spies. But in 1976 the Church committee, after examining those figures which the FBI made available, concluded that “even by the Bureau’s own accounting of its most successful program, the mail of hundreds of American citizens was opened for every one communication that led to an illegal agent.”13

  No postmaster general, attorney general, or president was ever informed that the FBI was illegally opening both foreign and domestic mail. Nor were the thousands of U.S. citizens, organizat
ions, and businesses whose mail was opened and read by the FBI.

  Again, questions of constitutionality, legality, or morality apparently never arose. The FBI official William Branigan explained, “It was my assumption that what we were doing was justified by what we had to do.”14

  The Bureau’s use of “surreptitious entries” predated World War II. Older agents recall a limited number of officially sanctioned break-ins going back as far as 1926, two years after Hoover became director. But it wasn’t until 1939—after President Roosevelt gave the FBI “authority” to investigate subversive activities—that the practice became, in the words of a former SA, “a common investigative technique.” By 1940 the FBI was conducting special classes in “bypassing.”15 While the legal machinery of the U.S. government moved ponderously on the floors below, agent trainees practiced picking locks in the attic of the Department of Justice Building. Some became quite expert. “We had men who, if they went bad, would be the best second-story men in the world,” a former agent boasted.16

  In the period preceding Pearl Harbor, the primary targets were Axis diplomatic establishments. When war was declared, however, these embassies and consulates closed, and attention shifted to those countries which were known to be secretly aiding the enemy, such as Spain, Portugal, and Vichy France.

  These were not the only targets. Even though the USSR was now an ally, the Bureau’s interest in the American Communist party continued unabated, and it was only one of a large number of “domestic subversive organizations” which interested the FBI. Break-ins were also used in ordinary criminal cases, such as bank robberies, kidnappings, and hijackings. Though any evidence thus obtained was inadmissible in court, there were usually ways around this. Often a break-in provided leads to other evidence which was admissible. Also, knowing in advance exactly what they would find upon entering a home or business, agents had little trouble concocting enough “probable cause” to persuade a judge to issue a search warrant. If all else failed, they could always create a “reliable informant.”

  “Surreptitious entries” and “black bag jobs” were headquarters terms. In the field the SAs usually called them “bag jobs.” “But they were never ‘burglaries,’ ” one former assistant director heatedly explained “because nothing was taken.”17

  Usually nothing was—except information. Often something was left: a listening device. And, although former FBI officials are loath to discuss it, sometimes, in very special cases, break-ins were used to plant incriminating evidence which would then be “discovered” during a court-authorized search.*

  As was also true of various other illegal acts, Hoover kept a tight rein on surreptitious entries. Either he or Tolson had to approve them personally.

  If a SAC wanted to conduct a break-in, he first had to make a feasibility study, to determine whether entry or exit could be effected without detection. Only if the study showed negative risk would the request be considered. As far as Hoover was concerned, the security of the operation—and the avoidance of possible “embarrassment to the Bureau”—was more important than any benefit that might be derived from it.

  Once this was done, the SAC made two copies of his request: the original typed copy and a “tickler,” or carbon. Retaining the tickler, which he placed in his office safe, he sent the original to the assistant director of the appropriate division at FBIHQ for consideration. If he passed on it, he bucked it up to the director or associate director.

  If approval was granted—either orally or with the initials “H” or “CT”—the original was placed in a special file in the assistant director’s office, and a coded telex sent to the SAC, who then copied the authorization number on his tickler copy and destroyed the telex. During the next field office inspection, one of the inspectors would check the SAC’s authorization number against a list of those on file in Washington, then destroy the SAC’s copy. Periodically, the assistant director’s file was also sanitized.*

  Because of this procedure it isn’t possible to determine exactly how many break-ins the FBI committed. Queried on this point by the Church committee, the FBI responded, “Since there exists no precise record of entries, we are unable to retrieve an accurate accounting of their number”; however “at least 14 domestic subversive targets were the subject of at least 238 entries from 1942 to April 1968.”19

  These figures are suspect for a number of reasons.† Perhaps the best was supplied by M. Wesley Swearingen, a former SA with twenty-five years’ service. “I myself actually participated in more than 238 while assigned to the Chicago office,” Swearingen stated. “The Chicago office committed thousands of bag jobs.” This was only one field office.21

  Again, as far as is known, no president or attorney general was ever officially informed that the FBI was conducting illegal break-ins, although some must have been very obtuse not to have guessed the source of many of Hoover’s reports.

  The justification for the break-ins most often cited was practicality. A single surreptitious entry netting a copy of the mailing list of a suspect organization, for example, might save hundreds of man-hours otherwise spent watching and trying to identify those who attended meetings. It was the sort of argument Hoover might have used before the House Appropriations Subcommittee—complete with graphs and statistics—except that Congress wasn’t informed of the break-ins either.

  Congress was told about some of the wiretaps. Each year when the director made his annual budget request an exchange such as the following would occur.

  Congressman Rooney: “What is the average number of daily telephone taps used by the Bureau throughout its entire jurisdiction at the present time?”

  Director Hoover: “The number of telephone taps maintained by the Bureau as of today totals 90. They are utilized only in cases involving the internal security of the United States. They are not used in the usual criminal investigations except in kidnapping cases.” Hoover would then go on to say that he personally did not authorize installation of any telephone taps. “That is done by the Attorney General. I submit to the Attorney General my recommendations for the installation of a telephone tap and he either approves or disapproves it.”22

  Although the stated number varied year to year, it never exceeded one hundred. Apparently Hoover considered this a safe figure; it was high enough to show that the FBI was monitoring the nation’s hidden enemies, yet low enough to indicate the FBI wasn’t tapping everyone.

  It was also a bogus figure. The key phrase in Hoover’s statement was “as of today.” Just before the director’s annual trip to the Hill, a number of taps would be removed; after he’d testified, they would be reinstated.

  Even the attorney general didn’t know how many wiretaps there were. Often wiretap authorization was requested only after a tap had already been installed and was producing useful information. This reduced the number of requests, as well as the number of nonproductive taps.*

  Nor did Hoover’s stated figure include the wiretaps installed by local police at the request of the FBI, or the taps installed by agents in the field without headquarters’ permission. The latter were called “suicide taps” because if they were detected the agents could say good-bye to their careers.†

  Most important of all, it did not include the “bugs.” Hoover was careful not to mention these—to Congress, the president, or the attorney general. Ironically, had he wanted to, Hoover could have cited Roosevelt’s May 1940 memorandum as authority for microphone surveillance as well as wiretapping, since the president’s use of the phrase “listening devices” was broad enough to cover both.

  This, however, was the last thing Hoover wanted to do, since that same memo required that each request be approved by the attorney general. And, however accommodating Francis Biddle might be, he would never approve something that required illegal trespass. To plant a bug, it was usually necessary to first commit a surreptitious entry, in clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. So Hoover said nothing, and continued to bug, secretly, on his own authority.

&nb
sp; Wiretapping and bugging were taught at the FBI’s “Sound School,” which, at various times, was hidden in the Identification Building in Washington and at the academy at Quantico.

  As usual, headquarters had its own terminology, derived from Bureau telegraphese. ELINT was electronic surveillance, of which there were two types: TELSUR, telephone surveillance; and MISUR, microphone surveillance. FISUR referred to physical surveillance. In the field they were commonly known as “taps,” “bugs,” and “tails.”

  The chief advantage of TELSUR was that they did not entail surreptitious entries. Since the local telephone companies supplied pair numbers and a location for monitoring, there was little chance the tappers would be caught in the act, as happened in the bugging of Harry Bridges. Besides, a tap picked up both sides of a telephone conversation.

  The advantages of MISUR, however, were far more numerous, and insidious. They did not require permission, from either the courts or the attorney general. They picked up not only telephone conversations, which were often guarded, but all the conversations, and any other sounds, in the bugged room.* Although they usually required two or more surreptitious entries (one to plant the bug, another to remove it, and, often, in between, return trips to repair or replace a malfunctioning unit), quite often actual break-ins were unnecessary. By “waving the flag,” that is, appealing to patriotism, agents were usually able to persuade landlords to give them access to targeted premises. Many of the major hotels (including the Willard in Washington, the Waldorf in New York, the Blackstone in Chicago, and the St. Francis in San Francisco) and some of the chains (among them, the Hilton Hotels and Holiday Inns) were especially accommodating, assigning subjects to prebugged rooms.