J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (126 page)

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

Even after J. Edgar Hoover’s death, his files retain a posthumous power.

Although Tolson’s health continued to fail, he survived Hoover by nearly three years. There were more falls and more hospitalizations, and each time Tolson returned to 4936 Thirtieth Place NW he was a little weaker and, some say, more confused.

For a while he and one of his doctors, Joseph V. Kennedy, would go to the races once a week, but after he started having to use a walker and, finally, a three-pronged cane, these excursions stopped. The visits to the graves and Gifford’s ice cream palace also dwindled, then ceased.

Apparently his last years were mostly spent watching quiz shows and soap operas. Aside from Mohr, Fields, and Crawford, he saw few people. Don Whitehead, who had written
The FBI Story
and who now wanted to write J. Edgar Hoover’s authorized biography, was rebuffed. His brother, Hillory Tolson, called several times and left messages. They were never returned. Old friends and former associates who tried to telephone him got Fields. If they were persistent, they were referred to Mohr, who also received all the mail relating to Hoover’s estate.
^*

It is not known when the strange telephone calls started. Some half dozen people claimed to have received them, and there were probably more. Most were made at night, but several were at odd hours of the day, as if Tolson knew when their secretaries would be out. In some he identified himself; in others he didn’t, but his voice was recognized. A reporter for a national magazine who had once written a puff piece about the associate director was warned that one of his editors was spreading malicious stories about him. The reporter had suspected as much, and couldn’t have cared less, but was oddly touched by Tolson’s concern. A former aide, who was still with the Bureau, was told why he would never be promoted—there was a derogatory letter in his personnel file—and was advised to resign and collect his pension, which he did. In 1973 Tolson, or someone using his name, tried to call President Nixon several times but was not put through.
^†

Sometime after this, Tolson’s telephone privileges were apparently revoked. He could no longer call out, he told one friend whom he consulted about stock purchases. He still had a telephone in his bedroom, but it had been changed to a direct line to downstairs. When he tried to call someone, he always got Annie Fields.

The friend suspected he was getting senile. It never occurred to him, though it did to others, that perhaps Tolson was being held prisoner in his own home.

In 1974, the year before Tolson’s death, Bobby Baker, President Lyndon Johnson’s former wheeling-dealing aide, received an astonishing message, which was relayed via one of Tolson’s private nurses, a woman who, years earlier, had attended Baker’s children. “Your friend Bobby Baker should know,” Tolson had told her, “that his secretary, Georgia Liakakis, is a paid government informant and has been for years. She has supplied many of his documents to the government.”

Baker’s initial reaction was that “old Clyde Tolson must have lost his marbles.” Liakakis, who had been working for him since about 1968, was like a member of the Baker family. She looked after his children, had a key to his house, had the run of his files. “My life was an open book to her.”

And to the FBI, he soon confirmed, as well as to the IRS. In an in camera legal proceeding, Liakakis admitted that she had not only supplied information on Baker’s personal and business affairs to the FBI and the IRS but also recorded his telephone conversations and informed her agent-handlers (Tom Sullivan of the FBI, Francis J. Cox of the IRS) of his appointments, whom he was meeting and where and when, apparently so that they could monitor them. She had been pressured into becoming a paid informant, she claimed, because of tax problems. Sullivan and Cox, however, stated that she had approached them.
^*

Baker couldn’t fathom why Tolson, “virtually on his death bed,” had passed this information on to him, “unless it had to do with settling accounts in his soul before the end.”
²⁴

On April 10, 1975, Clyde Anderson Tolson, age seventy-four, suffered kidney failure and was rushed to Doctors Hospital. He died on April 14, with only a nurse and James Crawford at his side. Joseph Gawler’s Sons handled the arrangements; Dr. Elson delivered the funeral address; and Tolson, too, was buried in Congressional Cemetery, not far from where Hoover lay. Only a few attended the graveside rites. In its obituary the
Washington Post
described him as J. Edgar Hoover’s “seldom-seen and nearly anonymous alter-ego”—and then proved its point by mistakenly running a photograph of Lou Nichols.
²⁵

Clyde Tolson’s will was not as simple as J. Edgar Hoover’s.

Less than three weeks after Hoover’s death, John Mohr had obtained Clyde Tolson’s power of attorney, as well as his bank power of attorney, the two documents giving him control of both Tolson’s finances and the late J. Edgar Hoover’s estate.

Both documents were signed “Clyde A. Tolson,” in a very shaky hand, and were witnessed by two of the FBI’s top executives, Nicholas P. Callahan and James B. Adams. Callahan was the assistant director of the Administrative Division, Adams his assistant. Both worked for, and were poker-playing buddies of, John Mohr.