J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  Through it all the senator was treading on thin ice, despite the solicitude of the FBI. A restive staff was angry that he delivered speeches written for him by right-wing interests, pocketed large speaking fees, developed many relationships with the rich and powerful that were clearly prone to conflict of interest, and diverted funds from testimonial dinners and campaign contributions to his personal use. He found jobs for relatives, as well as for people who could give or lend him money. He charged his constituents for the routine services that senators provide.

  Finally, the activities of the FBI’s chief spokesman in Congress for the entire 1960s provoked his employees to take desperate action. Knowing that they could not trust Hoover, four of them, including Dodd’s administrative assistant, copied nearly seven thousand documents from the senator’s files and passed them along to the columnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. The twenty-three columns of investigative journalism that resulted were clear proof to most readers that a federal investigation was in order.

  Hoover agreed. He immediately saw to it that the staff members were interrogated by FBI agents in order to determine how the disclosures had occurred. Surveillance was instituted on employees. Dodd was soon given derogatory information, developed by Hoover’s men, on those who had blown the whistle as well as on the columnist Pearson.

  Once, Jack Anderson mailed a letter with anti-Dodd material to someone for fact checking, but it was removed from the mail collection sack in the lobby of his office building. Postmaster Lawrence O’Brien investigated and later implied to the president that the FBI was responsible. Dodd hired a private detective, another former agent, to go through the wastepaper baskets in Anderson’s office.

  Foolishly, Dodd asked the Senate to investigate the allegations against him and sued Pearson and Anderson. That only turned up the heat, both on him and on the FBI, with which he had become so closely associated over the years.

  The FBI then obtained an advance copy of an article with excerpts from a book to be published by the disgruntled administrative assistant. It highlighted the senator’s prediction that, in effect, LBJ was planning to give him either the FBI or the CIA post.

  That all along the senatorial ex-agent had been eyeing his job, and possibly even conspiring with LBJ to get it, enraged the director. It was the unpardonable sin.

  Hoover offered no more help to Dodd in his troubles and probably contributed to them by using the information in FBI files. Johnson, warned privately by Pearson that there were more damaging revelations to come, backed away from his longtime ally and fellow hawk on the issue of Vietnam.*

  On June 23, 1967, less than three years after he might have become vicepresident of the United States, the U.S. Senate censured Thomas Dodd by a vote of 92 to 5. His own state party denied him renomination in 1970, and his attempt to win as an independent failed. He died the following year.

  Robert Kennedy, now the junior senator from New York, stimulated a burst of activity at SOG with some evasive remarks to TV newsmen on June 26, 1966. The panelists were trying to get him to say what he would rather not: that the FBI had used wiretaps without his knowledge when he was attorney general. He would prefer to imply…

  “Well, I expect that maybe some of those facts are going to be developed,” Kennedy finally replied.56

  Fired by very similar expectations, Hoover began preparing the kind of offense that had always been his most effective defense. An FBI leak inspired a national news weekly to report that Kennedy had indeed overseen the Bureau’s bugging activities during his tenure at Justice. In this, Hoover had gone straight for the most vulnerable of the senator’s on-air answers. RFK had denied having authorized “FBI wiretaps of gamblers’ telephones in Las Vegas in ’62 or ’63.” An honest answer, so far as it went, but he had authorized the use of MISURs, a distinction made clear in the leak.

  But the leak did not attract as much attention as Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall’s admission to the Supreme Court that the FBI director had, in effect, a standing authorization to use his discretion in deciding when to install microphone surveillances. This was part of the Justice Department reply to the High Court that had caused the final row between Hoover and Katzenbach.

  Marshall also announced publicly for the first time that, since July of the previous year, the Justice Department and all other federal agencies had been following a new policy laid down by President Johnson. Neither bugs nor wiretaps were permissible except in cases “involving the collection of intelligence affecting the national security.”57

  By now the national debate on government surveillance was becoming intense. Hoover heard. The stubborn old bulldog might have an artery hardening here and there, but his political instincts had not gone awry, even in the rapidly changing America of the 1960s. He needed to protect himself. Happily, he could do so by damaging the evident presidential ambitions of his former boss, RFK.*

  As he planned his strategy, Hoover abruptly pulled the plug on “black bag” jobs. At DeLoach’s request, Sullivan had written an “informational” memo on the Bureau’s use of the technique and the kind of authorization that had been obtained. “Such a technique involves trespass and is clearly illegal,” Sullivan explained; “therefore, it would be impossible to obtain any legal sanction for it.” There followed two pages of praise for the results of several “black bag” operations that had netted membership and mailing lists “held highly secret and closely guarded by subversive groups and organizations.”

  Hoover’s comment: “No more such techniques must be used.”59 This was an oddly phrased directive from a man who prided himself on precision of language. Ambiguous or not, the order applied only to this one specific illegal activity.

  Why did he end the break-ins at this particular time? Was he merely laying a paper trail, in case the dispute with Kennedy led to hearings or other investigations?

  Those who had most reason to interpret the director’s meaning accurately did not apparently believe that he really intended to end illegal entries. As late as January 6 he was grousing to Tolson that “Bureau officials” were still requesting permission to do black bag jobs. “I have previously indicated that I do not intend to approve any such requests in the future,” he wrote.60 The experienced Talmudists of the Bureau would, of course, be parsing these words closely to see what could be read between them. “This practice, which includes also surreptitious entrances upon premises of any kind, will not meet with my approval in the future.”61 Okay, he would not give his “approval,” but did that mean he didn’t want them to break and enter on their own initiative? Everyone knew that the director was getting old and cautious. They knew he was proud of the cases that had been broken with the use of illegally obtained information. They knew he was under pressure from the civil libertarians.

  And so it was that the interpretations were not consistent. In Chicago, for example, the SAC immediately obeyed the apparent intent of Hoover’s original comment. There were no more black bag jobs in his jurisdiction. In New York, according to Agent Tony Villano, there was no change in procedure: “Perhaps [the ban] was true for the Bureau’s internal security squads, but if the ban included agents working with criminals, they kept that a secret from me.”62

  From SOG came directives ending all wiretapping, all mail interference programs, all bugs.* One of the Young Turks in the Chicago field office, Ralph Hill, lamented, “We pulled all the wires. It was like being in a cave and cutting off the lights.”66

  Was Hoover finally submitting to the Justice Department guidelines that Marshall told the Supreme Court had been in effect for more than a year? The director must have known that Johnson’s policy decision was deeply felt. It was no secret in the intelligence community that the president could become passionate on the subject, despite his well-known enjoyment of the results Hoover had obtained from taps on King and others. Attorney General Clark speculated that LBJ’s suspicion of wiretapping sprang from an incident in his past.

  Did Hoover finally recognize that his
Bureau’s activities could backfire and destroy his reputation? If so, his concern was oddly selective. Paradoxically, not only did the COINTELPROs continue, but new ones were soon created.*

  There were other signs of the walls closing in. Starting June 15 Hoover had been obliged to furnish the deputy attorney general with an annual statement of his employment and financial interests. The indignity was palpable. Some unimportant appointee now had oversight of his personal finances, at least to some extent. In several minor ways Hoover was beginning to feel, for the first, chilling time, the approach of official government probes.

  But he was still on offensive. Since the first leak alleging RFK’s authorization of bugs had not been effective, he sent DeLoach off to the Evening Star to try to plant the tale. Even that friendly journal wouldn’t go for it without at least the minimal attribution to an unnamed Bureau source.

  Then, in December, Hoover received a letter from Representative H. R. Gross that struck the FBI director as “most incisive.” And no wonder. Coached by Crime Records, the Iowa congressman had written to ask for Hoover’s side of the bugging controversy. “It had been my impression in the past that the FBI engaged in ‘eavesdropping’ and wiretapping only with authority from the Attorney General…” Conveniently, he asked for documentation of such authorizations.

  Within forty-eight hours an FBI agent had tracked Gross down at a relative’s house in Mississippi with a reply: “All wiretaps utilized by the FBI have always been approved in writing, in advance, by the Attorney General.”

  Unmistakably, this was the attack Hoover had been trying to get before the public for months. “Mr. Kennedy, during his term of office, exhibited great interest in pursuing such matters,” the director reported, “and, while in metropolitan areas, not only listened to the results of microphone surveillances but raised questions relative to obtaining better equipment…FBI usage of such devices, while always handled in a sparing, carefully controlled manner and, as indicated, only with the specific authority of the Attorney General, was obviously increased at Mr. Kennedy’s insistence while he was in office.”69

  Prepared, or so they thought, Kennedy’s staff answered with a release dismissing the FBI director as “misinformed.” They had fired back before learning that his letter included a photostat of an August 17, 1961, memo that requested approval from the attorney general “to use leased telephone lines as an adjunct to our microphone surveillances.” RFK had signed off on it.

  When the Kennedy people did see the document, they released a letter from Courtney Evans. It had been prepared as insurance back on February 17. The former FBI liaison stated that he and Kennedy had never discussed bugging. As to wiretapping, he did not “know of any written material that was sent to [RFK] at any time concerning this procedure, or concerning the use, specific location or other details as to installation of any devices.”

  Hoover could not have been happier, terming this information “absolutely inconceivable.” As proof of the depth of his astonishment, he adduced two memos from Evans. On July 7, 1961, the liaison had written that the attorney general was “pleased we had been using microphone surveillances…wherever possible in organized crime matters.” On August 17 of the same year, he reported the zest with which Kennedy had signed the document Hoover had initially released: the attorney general “approved the proposed procedure in this regard and personally signed the attached memorandum evidencing such approval.”

  Kennedy stonewalled. “Perhaps I should have known, and, since I was the Attorney General, I certainly take the responsibility for it, but the plain fact of the matter is that I did not know.” His credibility had been shaken, however, and he tried to strike back: “Since Mr. Hoover is selectively making documents public, I suggest that he make his entire file available, and indicate under which Attorney General this practice began, whether any prior Attorney General authorized it, and whether or not they were as uninformed as I was.”

  Hoover realized that this was empty bravado. Kennedy had been knocked off balance. “I think we’ve released just about all the information we expect to,” the Bureau serenely replied.70

  Kennedy tried to get Johnson to intervene behind the scenes, but White House staffers said the president could not control the FBI director.* Kennedy’s wounds flowed so copiously that newsmen wondered if Johnson and Hoover had conspired on the letter to Gross. The White House did not issue a denial. LBJ was not averse to making pronouncements about the general subject, however. As newsmen and the public avidly followed the Kennedy-Hoover feud, the president declared in his State of the Union Message that he was against all forms of wiretapping except in national-security cases. Television cameras showed a gaggle of senators applauding the line while Robert Kennedy sat on his hands. Defeated, he later said that the feud had been “like having a fight with St. George.”72

  The hapless Senator Long was holding his hearings during this episode, and some observers thought that having Hoover and Kennedy testify about the matter was a good idea. The senator protested that he had indeed invited both men to appear before the panel: “The invitation to Senator Kennedy and to J. Edgar Hoover is still open, if either of them wants to testify.”73 Neither accepted the invitation.

  Scenes from the sixties:

  It was “an affront to the quality and fairness of Federal law enforcement” said Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for the minority in a 4-to-3 decision. Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department “Get Hoffa” squad had achieved its mission only by using a secret informer whose testimony resulted in the Teamsters leader’s conviction in Chattanooga on March 4, 1964. The majority decision, announced in December 1966, disagreed: “The use of secret informers is not per se unconstitutional.”…74

  After the conviction two and a half years before, Kennedy’s men had held a victory celebration. FBI agents who had worked on the Hoffa case, though warmly invited, did not attend. They did not want to offend the FBI director by partying with the attorney general…

  The ultraconservative William Loeb, publisher of the notoriously biased Manchester Union Leader, was determined to prove in December that Kennedy had ordered the FBI to wiretap Hoffa. A beneficiary of loans from the Teamsters pension fund, he was working furiously to prevent the incarceration of the Teamsters leader. Through DeLoach, he offered Hoover $100,000 for himself, or for his favorite charity, in return for a telegram charging that RFK had tapped or bugged Hoffa. DeLoach told Loeb that such tactics would be beneath J. Edgar Hoover…75

  On March 1, 1967, Frank Chavez flew from Puerto Rico to Washington. Chief of the island’s Teamsters Union, he had traveled to New York City in 1964 to kill Robert Kennedy, but someone had changed his mind. In 1967 the idea was rekindled. On March 1 of that year the Supreme Court denied Hoffa’s final petition for a rehearing of a motion denied back in 1966. It was his last card. As he prepared to go to jail, the Department of Justice, which had learned about the Puerto Rican Teamster’s intentions from the FBI, asked the Bureau to set up contacts with the airline companies that Chavez might use. Hoover’s men explained that the agency lacked jurisdiction for this kind of activity…76

  Lyndon Johnson couldn’t sleep. Late at night he had his aide Marvin Watson telephone the DeLoach bedroom. The president had suddenly become convinced that the murder of his predecessor had been a conspiracy and wanted more information from the FBI. Hoover wasn’t about to reopen this can of worms, even for LBJ. DeLoach quickly replied that the White House already had all of the FBI information on Maheu, Giancana, and the CIA’s plots. What else could there be? Why was the president concerned?77

  Ramsey Clark was named attorney general on March 10. Five days later the man Hoover would call “a jellyfish” tightened the departmental limits on wiretapping.* On June 16 he made the rules even more stringent, requiring that all government agencies begin “tight administrative control” so that a bug or a tap would “not be used in a manner in which it is illegal and that even legal use will be strictly controlled.”78

  Ho
over and this latest pest had divergent views on the most effective approach to dealing with criminals. “It requires toughness to recognize many of our jails and prisons for what they are: temporary cell blocks which prepare inmates for further crime,” Clark said in a speech. This was not long after his FBI director had crowed publicly that he had sent criminals to jail for a total of forty thousand years.79

  Clark, perhaps the only attorney general in U.S. history who had nostalgic childhood memories of walking around the Justice Department,† tried a new tack with the Hoover problem. His idea was to have regular lunches with the FBI director and his top staffers. Hoover came alone. “He did not want any direct connections” between his underlings and Justice, according to Clark. At the lunches Hoover was polite, formal, and voluble, preferring a glass of sherry beforehand. Then he would dominate the conversation with several of his favorite hobbyhorses: the troublemaking Dr. King, the declining values of young people, the evils of homosexuality. If Clark was persistent, he might be able to interrupt with one item of business “through the amenities.”‡

  For communications of substance, Hoover continued to rely upon his gouts of memorandums. To Clark it seemed that the Bureau had “thousands of people to write memos. You’d get in a memo war. You wouldn’t have time for anything else.” The attorney general found the practice to be dangerous, wasteful, and conducive to an atmosphere of distrust. “It was a persistent practice to protect the Bureau,” he said. “No question about that.”82

  Sometimes wading through the memos, sometimes passing them along to staffers, Clark was able to get things done, nonetheless. To Hoover’s great annoyance, he would occasionally stop by a FBI field office on his official travels. Once, in Chicago, he was introduced to the ASAC as “the Attorney General.” “How are you, Mr. Rogers?” the agent responded.83 Another agent said that he had always known the name of the current AG from looking at his own FBI credentials. But by the 1960s Hoover was signing the credentials.