J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  Another witness supposedly told the Ervin committee, according to the Harvard Crimson, that he had heard that some of the men later involved in the Watergate burglary, led by a man familiar with the security of the FBI director’s home, had burglarized Hoover’s residence and that a poison of the thiophosphate genre was placed on Hoover’s personal toilet articles, inducing a fatal heart attack.

  Helen Gandy wasn’t the only one busily destroying documents in the hours after the director died. With the activation of the “D,” or destruct, list—which was then itself apparently destroyed—shredders were churning out confetti on every floor at SOG, from FBIHQ on five to the printshop in the basement. Similarly hectic activity was underway in the Old Post Office Building, where the Washington field office was located, as well as in every field office and legat in the FBI’s widespread empire.

  With the announcement on May 3 that the new FBI director would be an “outsider” and not “one of us,” the activity became even more frenetic. It was CYA time. There wasn’t an assistant director, or a special agent in charge, who didn’t have some documents that he didn’t want to have to explain.

  But there were oversights. “Do not file” memos that were filed, or put in special folders and forgotten. Part of Tolson’s own Personal File, as well as some fifty folders in Lou Nichols’s Official/Confidential file, were overlooked. A nearly complete record of “surreptitious entries” committed by the New York field office between 1954 and 1972 remained, unshredded and unburned. John “Stonehead” Malone had been a pack rat.

  Hoover’s FBI had generated so much incriminating paper that it was impossible to destroy it all.

  On May 4, 1972, two days after Hoover’s death, Helen Gandy gave Deputy Associate Director Mark Felt the FBI director’s Official/Confidential file. Felt moved the file, which filled twelve cardboard boxes, into his own office, where he transferred it into six two-drawer, combination-lock filing cabinets.

  The OC file consisted of 167 separate folders. At some time unknown, except to those involved, 3 of these folders disappeared. Each bore the name of a current or former FBI executive: one had, rather innocently, stumbled into a security breach; the second had, less innocently, been involved in various financial improprieties; while the third was suspected of, among other things, having links with organized crime.

  On being told, three years later, that the Official/Confidential file still existed, and that Attorney General Edward Levi had possession of it, William Sullivan told the writer David Wise, “Yeah, but he didn’t locate the gold.” John Mohr had removed the real gold, Sullivan maintained, which consisted of some “very mysterious files…documents that were in Hoover’s office, very sensitive and explosive files, containing political information, derogatory information on key figures in the country.”5

  Presumably Sullivan was referring to Hoover’s Personal File, though he told a House investigator that trying to understand the difference between the various files, was “a bucket of worms.”6

  The destruction of J. Edgar Hoover’s Personal File—if indeed it was destroyed in its entirety—took two and a half months. According to Helen Gandy’s sworn testimony, taken three years after these events, she destroyed about half of the file while still working at FBIHQ (between May 2 and May 12, 1972) and the other half while working in the basement of Hoover’s former residence (between May 13 and July 17).

  Miss Gandy never specified how large this file was. She did state, however, that some thirty-five file cabinet drawers were emptied and their contents placed in cardboard boxes, for transfer to 4936 Thirtieth Place NW. In addition, she also testified, six filing cabinets were moved, four containing information relating to the late director’s “personal business affairs” and two relating to the associate director’s.

  The Washington field office handled both stages of the move: hauling the materials from FBIHQ to Thirtieth Place NW; then—after Gandy had carefully examined them, page by page, and finding nothing of an official nature, or so she testified—taking them back across town to the Old Post Office Building for shredding and burning. No records were kept of these transfers. But there were recollections.

  Raymond Smith was one of the truck drivers involved in the first stage of the move. In a signed deposition, Smith stated that, in addition to the cardboard boxes, he personally hauled not six but twenty to twenty-five file cabinets to Mr. Hoover’s home. Since the cabinets were full, and he’d helped lug them down the stairs, he remembered the incident well. Moreover, he recalled, during the move one of the drawers had come open and he’d noticed it was filled with light-colored folders, each roughly about one inch thick.

  Smith’s deposition was taken in 1975, during a secret “in-house” investigation ordered by Attorney General Levi and participated in none too enthusiastically by the Bureau. And it posed problems, since it contradicted the statements of Helen Gandy, John Mohr, Annie Fields, and James Crawford, all of whom agreed they had never seen that many filing cabinets in the basement. In an attempt at resolution, the FBI agents reinterviewed Smith, twice, but he adamantly stuck to his story.

  The investigating team eventually decided that although Smith’s work records supported his claim to have participated in the move, and although all the other details, including the color of the file folders, were correct, in regard to the number of cabinets, it stated, “We can only conclude that while honest in his belief Smith has a jumbled recollection of the facts due to the passage of over three years since Mr. Hoover’s death.”7

  Perhaps.

  J. Edgar Hoover left a simple, one-page will.

  He specified that his grave, and those of his mother, father, and sister Marguerite (who died in infancy), all of which were located in Congressional Cemetery, be given perpetual care.

  He also requested that Clyde Tolson “keep, or arrange for a good home, or homes, for my two dogs.”*

  No provisions were made for his heirs-in-law, his two nephews and four nieces, the children of his sister Lillian and of his brother, Dickerson, Jr.

  Helen Gandy was left $5,000; Annie Fields $3,000, to be paid over a period of one year; and James Crawford $2,000, to be paid over a period of three years. Crawford was also given half of Hoover’s personal wearing apparel, the other half going to W. Samuel Noisette.†

  Both George Ruch (Hoover’s first ghostwriter) and Louis Nichols (his longtime publicist) had named a son after the FBI director. The namesake John Edgar Ruch inherited Hoover’s platinum watch, with white gold wristband, and John Edgar Nichols his small star sapphire ring. Each also received two pairs of cuff links.

  To Clyde A. Tolson, whom he also named his executor, Hoover gave, devised, and bequeathed “all the rest, residue and remainder of my estate, both real and personal.”10

  The value of J. Edgar Hoover’s estate was estimated to be approximately $560,000.

  There were indications that this was a very low estimate. According to Hoover’s next-door neighbor and fellow antiques collector, Anthony Calomaris, who knew the house and its contents well, 4936 Thirtieth Street NW, which had an accessed evaluation of $40,000, was “worth at least $160,000,” while the $70,000 declared value of Hoover’s jewelry, books, antiques, and other household effects could be doubled, “and that would be conservative.”‡11

  Hoover also left $160,000 in stocks and bonds (a cautious investor, he rarely purchased more than a hundred shares of any one corporation); $125,000 in oil, gas, and mineral leases in Texas and Louisiana; and $217,000 in cash. Of this, $54,000 was on deposit in Riggs National Bank and American Federal Savings & Loan; $45,000 was in life insurance; $59,000 was due him from his retirement plan; and $18,000 was unpaid salary and unused terminal leave.

  His only debt—except for funeral expenses of $5,000—was a bill for $650, for two custom-made suits, which he’d ordered from Salvatori Candido, custom tailor, New York City, the month before he died.

  One reason why Hoover’s estate was evaluated so low was that Tolson, or someone represen
ting him, had begun quietly selling the antiques, through C. G. Sloane’s auction house, even before the appraisers arrived, as Maxine Cheshire revealed in the Washington Post.

  Thomas A. Mead and Barry Hagen were the District of Columbia court appraisers assigned to inventory the late FBI director’s estate.* Because of Hoover’s acquisitive nature, it was a mammoth undertaking, resulting in a list fifty-two pages long with some eight hundred separate items (one not untypical entry read, “5 doz. ashtrays with FBI seal”). Experienced appraisers, they finished the job in four days—July 11, 12, and 13, 1972, with an additional appraisal, on September 14, of some jewelry and stocks Hoover had kept in a safe-deposit box at Riggs Bank.

  Beginning at the top of the house, the attic, they worked their way down through all the antiques, oriental rugs, and autographed pictures to the basement, where, on the afternoon of the second day, they encountered Helen Gandy and John Mohr. Gandy, who was working at a secretarial desk off to one side of the main room, mostly ignored them, but Mohr showed more interest, sticking around that day and the next, watching them open the boxes containing Hoover’s possessions. Periodically Tolson would wander in and out, but mostly he remained upstairs.

  Questioned several years later, the two appraisers recalled seeing at least one and possibly two filing cabinets, plus some cardboard boxes, near Miss Gandy’s desk; while an anteroom off the stairway contained “one or two other file cabinets, and perhaps some additional boxes.”13

  Since neither recalled seeing twenty to twenty-five file cabinets, the testimony of Mead and Hagen does not support that of Raymond Smith. But then neither does it disprove it, since two months had passed since the move from FBIHQ, during which time any number of items could have been moved elsewhere—and were. Gandy was nearing the end of her task. The last pickup by the Washington field office was only days away, on July 17.

  Rather, their testimony is important for another reason: it directly contradicts that of Helen Gandy, and that of John Mohr, on one key point.

  Gandy stated that nothing of an official nature was transferred to Hoover’s home. Indeed, even the suggestion that an FBI memo or two might inadvertently have been misfiled in one of the personal folders brought an indignant protest from Hoover’s longtime secretary: “I destroyed nothing that would pertain to Bureau matters. I was very careful to be sure that nothing of that had gotten into the Personal File.”14 Likewise Mohr stated, “There were never any Bureau files taken to Mr. Hoover’s home after Mr. Hoover’s death.”15

  An altogether different version emerges from the sworn statement of Thomas Mead and Barry Hagen. On noticing the file cabinets and cardboard boxes, they asked Miss Gandy if they contained anything which should be inventoried.

  Mead: “When we asked about these, Miss Gandy indicated that all the things along that wall—from the desk she was sitting at, to the file cabinets in the anteroom, were Bureau property, government property. We were told not to go into that.”

  Q: “And did you examine the contents of the boxes or the file cabinets along the wall—the east wall of the basement?”

  A: “No, we did not. She was quite firm that they were government property.”

  Q: “Could you describe the boxes which you were told belonged to the government?”

  A: “They were plain, brown corrugated boxes. They looked like tomato crate boxes, you know, the long ones with handle holes on the ends.”

  Asked whether the contents of the desk were examined, Mead replied, “No, they were not,” explaining that the desk, like the file cabinets and boxes, was in that area of the basement which they “were told contained government property” and which “should not be appraised.”16

  Miss Gandy not only denied that she had told Hagen and Mead any such thing; she also claimed that John Mohr and James Crawford had all the answers for the appraisers, that she just sat on her stool.

  But then, in her several appearances before House and Senate subcommittees, Miss Gandy also denied—even when faced with evidence to the contrary—that Hoover had kept any files on political figures in his office. (A: “No, indeed.” Q: “How about anywhere in the suite?” A: “Nowhere in the suite.”)17 She also asserted, under oath, that Hoover had instructed her to destroy his personal correspondence when he died, but she admitted privately to the staff of one of the committees “that Mr. Hoover had never specifically told her to destroy his personal correspondence, but that she ‘knew’ this was what he wanted done.”18 She testified that Gray had given her permission to move these materials to Hoover’s residence, but when Gray denied this, she changed her testimony, saying it was Tolson who approved it, while he was still associate director. She also maintained, as noted, that nothing pertaining to Bureau business was moved, and nothing destroyed. However, in a conversation with a subcommittee investigator, she described how while going through the boxes in Hoover’s basement she’d pulled out a very thick folder consisting of memos to and from the former assistant to the director William Sullivan and how, on asking Mohr and Tolson what she should do with them, she had been told, by Tolson, “Destroy them. He’s dead now.”*19

  Such contradictions apparently bothered Helen Gandy little if at all. When questioned about various discrepancies, she snappily replied, “As I say, you just have my word.”20 Even if it could be proven that she had lied in her testimony regarding the files—in claiming, for example, that every folder in the Personal File had been destroyed—what elected official would be foolish enough to bring contempt charges against a seventy-eight-year-old woman who had spent over half a century in government service? Certainly not Senator Frank Church or Congresswoman Bella Abzug, before whose committees she’d testified.

  Robert Kunkel was special agent in charge of the Washington field office. That he should cast doubt on the most important part of Miss Gandy’s testimony—her claim that all of Hoover’s Personal File had been destroyed—was especially ironic, for Kunkel was one of the “Gandy dancers,” those once young men whose Bureau careers were assisted at key points by a well-placed word from the director’s executive secretary. In Kunkel’s case, Gandy was credited with being a major force in his rise from Bureau clerk to SAC of one of the FBI’s top field offices.†

  Because of the sensitivity of this assignment, Kunkel personally supervised both stages of the transfer, as well as the shredding. Later, after having left the FBI, an early casualty of the Gray regime, Kunkel shared with an acquaintance the kind of confidence which once would have resulted in a transfer to Butte, Montana.

  Although he kept no records, it was his impression that his men delivered more documents to the basement recreation room than they hauled away.

  Few believed Miss Gandy’s testimony. It was widely rumored, both inside and outside the Bureau, that Hoover’s most secret files still existed and that, in the years following his death, they had been used in a variety of ways to protect the Bureau’s interests, to further careers and as insurance.* Investigators for the House and Senate subcommittees heard these rumors and tried to investigate them. Again and again, the talk seemed to lead them to the Blue Ridge Club near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, where John Mohr and his cronies held their poker parties. Senate investigators made an appointment to visit the club and interview its employees, but the night before their scheduled visit the club burned down. Arson investigators blamed the blaze on a nine-year-old boy.

  In the weeks and months after Hoover’s death, neighbors had noticed various people loading boxes into vehicles in the alley behind the Hoover-Tolson residence. One they identified as James Crawford, another as John Mohr. One neighbor recalled a third person, who he said bore a striking resemblance to the CIA’s legendary spy master James Jesus Angleton. Even though Hoover forbade such fraternization, Angleton maintained close contacts within the FBI. William Sullivan was one of his friends, as was John Mohr. Although not listed as a member, Angleton occasionally played poker with Mohr and his group at the Blue Ridge Club.

  John Mohr denied, under
oath, having taken anything out of the Thirtieth Street residence, with one exception. While being deposed in connection with the suit over Tolson’s will, Mohr stated that the only thing he had removed, and taken to his own home, was “several boxes of spoiled wine.”21 At the time, no one had thought to ask him why, if the wine was spoiled, he’d lugged it all the way home, instead of leaving it to be picked up with the other garbage.

  Neither the House nor the Senate investigators questioned Angleton, although it was common knowledge in Washington that following the murder of Mary Meyer, with whom President Kennedy had had one of his more durable affairs, Angleton, a family friend, had obtained and destroyed Meyer’s diary.† But the rumors persisted.

  Questioned by the author in a 1978 telephone interview, the CIA’s former counterintelligence chief would neither confirm nor deny having picked up any files. When asked if, as rumored, Hoover’s derogatory files on William “Wild Bill” Donovan had been exchanged for the CIA’s investigative files on J. Edgar Hoover’s alleged homosexuality, Angleton laughed and said, “First, you have to find out if they’re missing.” It was an interesting clue, if Angleton meant it as that, because most of Hoover’s files on Donovan are missing. Only a few hundred pages remain of what must have been thousands, and they do not include most of the derogatory material that aides say Hoover amassed on his longtime nemesis.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Angleton added with a chuckle, “and this is the last thing I’ll tell you. I didn’t haul away any spoiled wine.”22