Read J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets Online
Authors: Curt Gentry
Tags: #General, #Biography & Autobiography, #United States, #Political Science, #Law Enforcement, #History, #Fiction, #Historical, #20th Century, #American Government
J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (118 page)
On June 13, 1971, the
New York Times
published the first installment of the “Pentagon Papers.”
*
Two days later Attorney General Mitchell, acting on the instructions of the president, ordered the FBI to investigate the leak of the top-secret report.
Ordinarily Hoover tried to avoid such assignments, since determining the source of a leak after it had occurred was, as the Kissinger taps had proven, usually impossible, but in this case the source was quickly identified as Daniel Ellsberg, a former researcher for the Defense Department and the Rand Corporation, who had turned from a “hawk” into a “militant dove.” All the FBI really had to do was identify Ellsberg’s accomplices, if any, to determine whether this was a solitary action or part of a larger conspiracy. Moreover, as J. Anthony Lukas has suggested, it is probable that Hoover saw this as a no-win situation, a battle between the administration and the press, “in which he could only get hurt,” and therefore decided against getting too deeply involved.
32
Whatever his reasons, Hoover gave the investigation a low priority.
What he failed to realize was the extent of Nixon’s anger, and his paranoia.
†
Although the Pentagon Papers dealt with the actions of only the Kennedy and
Johnson administrations, the president was convinced that their publication was part of a widespread plot to undermine his administration.
Further compounding the problem was a bizarre little misunderstanding, which was the result of the increasing illegibility of J. Edgar Hoover’s handwriting.
Louis Marx, Daniel Ellsberg’s father-in-law, was a wealthy, ultraconservative toy manufacturer. He was also a casual acquaintance of J. Edgar Hoover. In addition to occasional meetings at the racetrack, each Christmas Marx would send the FBI director a large shipment of toys, which Hoover would distribute to the children of friends and a few favored charities. Although far from a close friend, Marx was on the director’s Special Correspondents’ list, which meant that in letters he was addressed by and replied to on a first-name basis. Realizing this, Charles “Chick” Brennan, who headed the Ellsberg investigation, thought it politic to query the director before interviewing Marx.
*
Hoover denied the request, scribbling a blue-ink NO on the bottom of the memo, but he did so in such a way that Brennan mistook it for OK, and authorized the interview.
Learning his order had been ignored, Hoover had Brennan transferred to Alexandria, Virginia. Fiercely loyal to his men, William Sullivan protested Brennan’s transfer, first to the director and then, when that failed, to Robert Mardian, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Internal Security Division. Mardian took the complaint to Attorney General Mitchell, who asked Hoover to rescind the order, saying he needed Brennan in Washington on the Ellsberg case. Hoover acquiesced, but only after demoting Brennan to inspector, censuring him,
and
putting him on probation. He was also accorded the silent treatment: when passing Brennan in the hall, other FBI executives wouldn’t acknowledge his presence, for fear they’d be reported to the director.
Word of Hoover’s refusal to question Marx soon reached Nixon, who was infuriated. “Even as our concern about Ellsberg and his possible collaborators was growing,” Nixon later wrote, “we learned that J. Edgar Hoover was dragging his feet and treating the case on merely a medium-priority basis; he had assigned no special task forces and no extra manpower to it. He evidently felt that the media would make Ellsberg look like a martyr, and the FBI like the ‘heavy,’ if he pursued the case vigorously…
“I did not care about any reasons or excuses. I wanted someone to light a fire under the FBI in the investigation of Ellsberg, and to keep the departments and agencies active in the pursuit of leakers. If a conspiracy existed, I wanted to know, and I wanted the full resources of the government brought to bear to find out. If the FBI was not going to pursue the case, then we would have to do it ourselves.”
34
On July 17 John Ehrlichman assigned Egil “Bud” Krogh to head the leak
project. He was soon joined by the former Kissinger aide David Young, the former CIA agent Howard Hunt, and the former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy, forming what would become known as the White House Plumbers.
Thus, as Richard Nixon explained it in his memoirs, seven years after the fact, it was J. Edgar Hoover who forced his administration to embark on the road to Watergate.
Denied access to the president by his aides, Hoover remained unaware of how seriously Nixon took the Ellsberg case. Not until the second week in August did the FBI director upgrade it to a Bureau special.
And by this time he was preoccupied with fighting a rebellion within the Bureau itself—the first ever—led by the man he’d once treated like a son, the third Judas, William Cornelius Sullivan.
*
During this period, Anderson was also being investigated by the CIA, IRS, Pentagon, and White House, all of which were trying to determine the sources of “leaks” appearing in his columns.
*
Each year the GSA purchased a new Cadillac chassis, which was shipped to Hee and Eisenhardt in Cincinnati, where armor plates, bulletproof windows, and specially built tires were installed. The preceding year’s model was then sent to New York City, Miami, or Los Angeles, to update the models the director kept there.
*
The fact that the repairman found physical evidence of a tap would indicate that this was probably
not
an FBI-authorized wiretap, since the actual tapping of such lines usually occurred in the Old Post Office Building.
Then too, Hale Boggs’s disenchantment with the FBI dated back at least a year, when he, his friends, and various associates had been questioned by the Bureau in connection with the Justice Department investigation of Victor J. Frankil, the Baltimore contractor who had filed a multimillion-dollar claim against the government for cost overruns on the construction of the Rayburn Office Building garage. A friend of Boggs (as well as Cartha DeLoach), Frankil had remodeled the House majority leader’s own garage, at substantially below cost. Although a Baltimore grand jury had voted to indict Frankil, and had named Boggs and others as unindicted coconspirators, Attorney General Mitchell had declined to prosecute.
*
Both the origin of the tape and Biaggi’s sudden decision to withdraw it remain a mystery. What role, if any, the FBI may have played in suppressing the tape is purely a matter of conjecture. Interviewed by the author in 1976, Representative Biaggi refused to discuss the tape and immediately terminated the interview as soon as it was mentioned. The former congressman Gallagher declined to be interviewed. Representative Hale Boggs disappeared while on an airplane flight over Alaska in 1972 and is presumed dead.
*
The sculptor, Neil Estern, saw the FBI director as “a man both unloved and unloving. But because Hoover has never had to hide his thoughts or feelings there is a truth in his face you don’t find in the average public figure.”
26
†
Some 41 percent wanted Hoover to stay in office, and 8 percent “didn’t know.” However, 70 percent of those polled thought Hoover had done an excellent or good job as head of the FBI, with only 17 percent rating his performance fair, poor, or bad, while a Harris poll, released a few days later, had an even split, 43 percent to 43 percent, on the question of whether Hoover should retire.
*
All others, down to the lowly “brick agents,” were encouraged to send the director letters or cards. Although some of the SACs kept tabs on who complied, most of the agents didn’t bother, unless they were hoping for a transfer or promotion.
*
The official title of the study, which had been prepared under the direction of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967-68, was “History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on Viet Nam Policy.”
†
Nixon wanted everyone who had a top-secret clearance, whether the number was “one million” or “three or four or five hundred thousand,” polygraphed. “Listen,” he told Ehrlichman and Krogh, “I don’t know anything about polygraphs and I don’t know how accurate they are but I know they scare the hell out of people.”
33
*
A longtime assistant to William Sullivan, Charles Brennan had become head of the Domestic Intelligence Division when Sullivan was named to the number three spot.
The Third Judas
E
ven William Sullivan was unable to say exactly when he decided to do battle with J. Edgar Hoover.
It may have been as early as 1957, when he tried to persuade the director that there was indeed a Mafia. Or a decade later, in 1967, when he suggested that the Ku Klux Klan was a far greater threat than the CPUSA. It was certainly in the wind by June 1970, when he played a double role in drawing up the Huston Plan, and it was definitely well under way that October, when he made his Williamsburg speech. And there had been signs of it in a dozen large and small disagreements since.
But he must have known, in June 1971, when he wrote the first of his “honest memos,” that there was no turning back.
It was a sign of Hoover’s slippage that just when the president was most critical of the FBI for failing to wage an all-out war on his domestic enemies, J. Edgar Hoover decided the time was ripe to compete with the CIA overseas.
Goaded by Kissinger, Nixon made no secret of the fact that he was unhappy with the agency’s intelligence product. Picking up on this cue, and hoping to further ingratiate himself with the White House, Hoover decided to increase the number of the FBI’s foreign attaché offices. A memo to this effect was circulated among the members of the FBI executive conference, requesting comment. Although the executive conference invariably rubber-stamped the director’s “suggestions,” this time there was a dissent.
*
“Because of racial conflict, student and academic revolution, and possible
increase in unemployment,” William Sullivan memoed the director, “this country is heading into ever more troubled waters, and the Bureau had better be fully prepared to cope with the difficulties that lie ahead. This cannot be done if we spread ourselves too thin and finance operations which do not give us proper return for the dollars spent…”
Sullivan not only opposed the increase in legats; he favored a reduction. But he did so in words that he must have known would greatly disturb Hoover, by reminding him of his 1970 decision to break off liaison with the other intelligence agencies: “I am not unmindful of the fact that the Director pointed out that we could get along quite well without an expensive domestic liaison section and, therefore, he dissolved it. Applying the Director’s reasoning to foreign liaison, I think certainly the conclusion is valid that we can at least reduce it, with benefits to the Bureau.”
This was major heresy, but Sullivan didn’t leave it at that. He took on the entire executive conference: “I have read the comments of the above-named men. It was somewhat more than mildly distressing and saddening to me to observe the lack of objectivity, originality, and independent thinking in their remarks. The uniformity and monolithic character of their thinking constitutes its own rebuttal. While I am certain it was not the intention of these important Bureau officials, who occupy unique roles, to create the impression in the reader’s mind that they said what they did because they thought this was what the Director wanted them to say, nevertheless it seems to me that this is the impression conveyed.”
1
This was writing for the record, and J. Edgar Hoover, master of the art, recognized it as such. Sullivan was up to something and had to be slapped down as quickly as possible.
Not surprisingly, the executive conference agreed. Sullivan’s comments, which the director circulated, sent shock waves through the FBI hierarchy. Typical was the response of Rufus R. Beaver, who accused the assistant to the director of being “more on the side of CIA, State Department and Military Intelligence Agencies, than the FBI.”
2
Much as it may have pained him—for he still addressed his longtime aide as “Bill,” and started his communications to him “Dear Sullivan”—the director agreed. Sullivan was way out of line, and had been since the Williamsburg speech. But the director couldn’t fire him, not after the dismissal of one “disloyal” agent, Shaw, had touched off such a furor. Nor could he demote or transfer him. The removal of Sullivan’s name from the Bureau’s speakers list had already been reported in the press. (Hoover suspected Sullivan himself of this and other leaks, particularly items which appeared in the Evans and Novak column, including a recent, especially upsetting “piece of garbage” entitled “Capital Playing New Guessing Game: Who Will Succeed J. Edgar Hoover?”)
Under attack from a dozen external enemies, including Congress, the press, and the cabal in the White House, Hoover obviously didn’t need evidence of a palace revolution within the FBI.
Washington’s premier bureaucrat, J. Edgar Hoover came up with a bureaucratic solution, one that would demean Sullivan (just as Sullivan’s promotion had demeaned DeLoach), limit his power, and keep him muzzled until he was forced to retire.
On July 1 the director called in Mark Felt and informed him that he was promoting him to a newly created position: deputy associate director. The post would be just below that of Associate Director Tolson and directly over that of Assistant to the Director Sullivan. Although Hoover stressed that “containing Sullivan” was the primary reason for the appointment, Felt realized there was a secondary reason. Even though no mention had been made of the associate director’s health, someone was needed to take over Tolson’s functions.
Could he control Sullivan? the director asked.
Although it was William Sullivan, over the strong objections of John Mohr, who had persuaded the director to promote Felt to head of the Inspection Division, Mark Felt knew where his loyalties lay. He was sure he could, he responded.
“Watch everything that comes out of the domestic intelligence division very carefully,”
3
Hoover cautioned, unaware of how prescient his warning was. Judas’s betrayal was only days away.
Following Felt’s appointment, Sullivan’s home telephones were tapped and one of his secretaries was “turned.”
*
Bill Sullivan had handled such matters for too many years to miss any of this.
William Sullivan’s frequent meetings with Robert Mardian, head of the Justice Department’s Internal Security Division, had not gone unnoticed. Just a month earlier the FBI executive conference had cautioned Bureau officials to be “very careful” in its dealings with Mardian.
5
Hoover had put it even more bluntly to Sullivan, warning him to stay away from “that goddamned Armenian Jew.”
6
But Sullivan ignored this edict, as he often did others.
Shortly after Felt’s appointment, Sullivan again met with Mardian. Hoover was getting ready to fire him, he told the assistant attorney general. But before he did, he wanted to pass on a number of very sensitive documents which he had been storing in his office.
This was “out of channel” material, Sullivan explained, from wiretaps. He
was afraid that Hoover would use it to blackmail the president into keeping him on as FBI director. He’d used such materials similarly in the past.
Mardian was unaware of the Kissinger wiretaps, but he did know this was a matter bigger than he could handle, and he promised Sullivan he would get back to him just as soon as he’d talked to the attorney general.
*
Informed of Sullivan’s remarks, Mitchell apparently called either the president or one of his aides at the western White House, in San Clemente, because Mardian received a call from there instructing him to proceed immediately to Andrews Air Force Base to catch the courier jet to California. This he did that same day, July 12, briefing the president shortly after his arrival.
In response, Nixon told him to return to Washington, obtain the materials from Sullivan, and hold them until he received further instructions from the White House.
Upon arriving in the capital the following day, Mardian contacted Sullivan, and a little later Charles Brennan, whose office was in the same building, showed up in Mardian’s office with a beat-up old satchel bearing the initials “W.S.” Mardian hid it in his closet for two days, before receiving a call instructing him to deliver it to Dr. Kissinger and Colonel Haig at the White House.
When the pair opened the satchel, Mardian noticed that it was “crammed full” of documents. He didn’t examine them, but Kissinger and Haig did, carefully checking the contents against a master list Sullivan had provided. In addition to the seventeen wiretap authorizations, summaries, logs, and related correspondence, Sullivan had also included the documentation on the 1969 Joseph Kraft surveillance. After they were satisfied that everything was accounted for, Mardian took the satchel to Haldeman, in the Oval Office, who also compared the contents to the master list.
†
After Haldeman had checked them, Mardian gave the materials to either Ehrlichman or the president himself (he later refused to specify which). In any event, Ehrlichman ended up with them, placing them in a two-drawer, combination-lock cabinet in his own office.
Unknown to J. Edgar Hoover, part of his insurance had just been canceled.
Early one morning not long after the bag job on FBIHQ—the exact date is unclear, but it was sometime in July 1971—Mardian called Sullivan and asked him to come to his office.
Pointing to the wall clock, which read 9:45, the assistant attorney general told the assistant to the director, “At ten o’clock, our problem with Hoover will be solved. The albatross will be lifted from our neck. The president has asked Hoover to see him at the White House at ten, and he’s going to ask Hoover to resign.”
Sullivan’s reaction, as he later remembered it, was quite simple: “I was delighted.”
However, if Sullivan had anticipated being named Hoover’s successor, that hope was short-lived. Mardian also informed him that they had “a man ready to move into the job.”
*
9
Sullivan returned to his office to prepare for the long-awaited announcement. But when Mardian called that afternoon, he could tell that something was wrong. Not trusting the telephone, Sullivan went directly to Mardian’s office. The assistant attorney general’s face was dark with anger. “Goddamn,” he swore, “Nixon lost his guts. He had Hoover there in his office, he knew what he was supposed to tell him, but he got cold feet. He couldn’t go through with it.”
11
Sullivan later read the director’s memorandum of the meeting and concluded that Hoover hadn’t stopped talking from the moment he entered the Oval Office. “It is his usual line of conversation, starring John Dillinger and Ma Barker and a cast of thousands, and he kept talking until Nixon ended the interview.”
12
Sullivan returned to his office to consider his options. There weren’t many. Actually there was only one.
Since Hoover wasn’t leaving, he’d have to. But he decided then and there he wouldn’t exit quietly: “I was going to go with a bang.”
13
On July 19, 1971, J. Edgar Hoover signed a new will, which was witnessed by two of the women in his office, Erma D. Metcalf (secretary to Helen Gandy) and Edna Holmes (the director’s office manager).
Although there were a number of small, specific bequests, the bulk of his estate was to go to Clyde Tolson, who was also named his executor. “In the event Clyde A. Tolson’s death should occur prior to or simultaneously with
mine,” Hoover stated, the estate was to be divided equally between the Boys’ Club of America, Inc., and the Damon Runyon Memorial Fund for Cancer Research, Inc.
Since the previous will was presumably destroyed—either at this time or following the director’s death—it is not known what changes were made or, equally intriguing, why he chose this particular moment to set his affairs in order.
One of G. Gordon Liddy’s first assignments after being recruited by the White House Plumbers was to expedite the FBI investigation of the Ellsberg case.
Liddy was considered the perfect choice for the job since he was a former special agent (1957-62), had been a protégé of Cartha “Deke” DeLoach (and thus presumably knew where the bodies were buried), and had the reputation of being a gung-ho type. Liddy was best remembered by older agents for two things: having run an FBI check on his wife before marrying her, and having gotten caught by local police while committing a bag job in Kansas City, Missouri. He’d been released, Bureau scuttlebutt had it, only after a call was made to the local police chief, and former special agent, Clarence M. Kelley.
Through Mardian, Liddy was able to circumvent the Justice Department sign-in requirements, thus supposedly keeping his visits secret from the FBI director. Reestablishing contact with some of his former comrades, Liddy learned that the Bureau had changed since he’d left it. Gone, he was told, were “the good old days of individual initiative,” such as the time a southern governor had refused to cooperate with the Bureau in its investigation of the Ku Klux Klan, until the FBI burned a cross on his lawn. “The picture I received of the Ellsberg investigation was bleak,” Liddy reported back to the White House. “Hoover, I was told…did not have his heart in the investigation. Further, Hoover was in poor shape physically and mentally, a result of the natural process of aging. The wife of a government employee, a nurse, was said to be giving him massive injections of some substance to keep him going.”
*
The
director’s feud with Sullivan, Liddy was told, had wrecked the Domestic Intelligence Division, “by causing people to choose sides or just be fearful of the fallout. Things were going rapidly from bad to worse.”
On August 2 Liddy talked to Sullivan, who appeared, to Liddy, “very insecure in his position, almost frightened. He gave the impression of a man doing his utmost to do his duty as he saw it, but under attack from above and below.” Because Sullivan was in charge of all the day-to-day investigative activites of the FBI, the whole organization was suffering.
At Sullivan’s suggestion, Liddy had lunch with Brennan, who introduced him to the two men immediately responsible for the Ellsberg investigation, Section Chief Wannall and Bureau Supervisor Waggoner. Waggoner seemed eager to cooperate, but it was otherwise with Wannall, whom Liddy suspected of being a “torpedo,” Bureau jargon for an informer for the higher-ups. When Liddy requested the investigative files on Ellsberg, Wannall told him he’d have to clear it with Hoover. “He also stated,” Liddy noted in his report to the White House, “that it was the FBI policy to regard the security leak problem of other agencies as their own business, and not something for the FBI to clean up.”