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
“The FBI is a proud organization,” Director Sessions told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. “It has sometimes been difficult for us to recognize that there is a potential for injustice in our own ranks.”
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The committee chairman, Don Edwards, himself a former FBI agent and one of the Bureau’s most perceptive critics, released figures showing that black agents were resigning at almost twice the rate of white agents.
Deputy Assistant Director John D. Glover, the Bureau’s highest-ranking black, disputed Edwards’s conclusions. Glover left the FBI that same month, to accept a job as head of security at Bristol Myers.
The year 1988 also brought the startling revelation that William Webster’s FBI had conducted a massive investigation of more than thirteen hundred organizations and individuals who were opposed to President Reagan’s South American policy. The main target was the Washington-based Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), but the investigation, in which fifty-two of the fifty-nine field offices participated, soon spread to include the National Council of Churches, the Maryknoll Sisters, the United Auto Workers, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It must have seemed like old home week to some veteran agents, except that it lasted for four years, from 1981 to 1985, and there was evidence it was still going on when it was finally exposed.
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The investigation had apparently begun in late 1981, when someone in the Bureau suspected that CISPES was acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Marxist groups in South America. No evidence of this was found, however, or any proof that the group had ties with Salvadoran guerrillas, as was for a time conjectured, and so the investigation seemingly lay dormant until 1983, when two FBI informants claimed that the group was supporting “terrorism” in the United States and El Salvador.
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With that the investigation mushroomed, to include nuns, college students, union members, church workers, and aliens. Although no terrorist connection was found, hundreds of people were surveilled and photographed, their meetings infiltrated, their families, friends, and employers questioned, their trash and financial and telephone records examined. Under the new guidelines, the rules for investigating terrorist organizations were less stringent than those covering domestic political groups.
David Lerner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a lawyers’ group which obtained evidence of the investigation under the Freedom of Information Act, stated, “In tone, some of the [heavily censored] documents do sound like the days of Hoover. Things were a lot more insidious under Hoover, of course. But what is similar is the same venomous attitude toward political activists.”
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The Senate Intelligence Committee, in issuing its 138-page report on the CISPES case, decided it was “an aberration among the thousands of counterintelligence and counterterrorist investigations the FBI conducts annually.”
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FBI Director Sessions admitted that the probe was “unnecessarily broad”
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and again asked for clearer guidelines. He apparently got his wish. In September 1989 Attorney General Richard Thornburgh announced that he had drawn up new FBI guidelines for investigations of U.S.-based groups suspected of participating in international terrorism.
They have been classified secret.
In 1988 Sessions also had to explain the Library Awareness Program, when it was found that FBI agents, in searching for Soviet spies, had contacted a number of librarians—at least twenty of them in New York City—and asked them to report on the reading habits of people with foreign accents or funnysounding names.
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The Bureau’s justification for this snooping was that there was a wealth of technical information in the public domain and that Soviet agents were taking full advantage of it; if the FBI could determine, for example, exactly what information a Soviet employee of the UN was looking for, it
could probably discern what the Russians already knew. Supposedly only specialized scientific and technical libraries were to be contacted, but some agents apparently didn’t make that distinction. When the American Library Association and other groups protested, Sessions explained that the program was “voluntary.” Actually the Library Awareness Program predated Sessions, Webster, Kelley, Ruckelshaus, and Gray, having been established by J. Edgar Hoover in 1962. The FBI had been trying to turn librarians into informants for a quarter century.
Sessions offered at least a partial defense for the Library Awareness Program in an interview with the
Nation,
saying, “Our efforts to identify and neutralize the threat posed by hostile intelligence services and their agents in the U.S. must be continued as long as a threat to our national security exists.”
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“Neutralize” was also one of J. Edgar Hoover’s favorite words.
It was FBI Director William Steele Sessions who finally decided the longdebated question of whether the J. Edgar Hoover Building should be renamed. “Mr. Hoover built the FBI,” Sessions told reporters at the National Press Club. “It was his genius, it was his inspiration, it was his organizational ability that allowed the Bureau to become the pre-eminent law enforcement agency in the world. And I think it’s appropriate that it should be named the J. Edgar Hoover Building.” Sessions added, “The fact that there are circumstances that suggest that there were problems in his administration, I think is unfortunate.”
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Perhaps FBI Director Sessions should take a short walk up Pennsylvania Avenue and look at the simple inscription on the statue of
The Future,
which stands at the east entrance to the National Archives. From William Shakespeare’s
The Tempest,
act 2, scene 1, it reads, “What is past is prologue.”
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Although the FBI Laboratory failed at this, Bureau insiders presumed the anonymous letter writer was William Sullivan (who’d had considerable practice penning such missives during the COINTELPROs) or someone acting on his instructions. Although Sullivan had left the FBI nine months earlier, he maintained his own grapevine, often hearing of developments at SOG, or in the field, hours after they occurred.
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A popular novel by Robert Ludlum,
The Chancellor Manuscript,
published in 1977, has as its plot the murder of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. When one group arrives to steal the files, however, it finds that another group has already lifted them. If one excludes the murder, this bears a certain similarity to what really happened, with Gray and his forces arriving a day late.
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Both died within months after their master’s death. G-Boy, who was eighteen, died first; Cindy, who was half his age and who was Hoover’s favorite of all his dogs, because, as Hoover told Crawford, “she’s the most affectionate,” died some weeks later. “She grieved herself to death,” Crawford recalled. “She wouldn’t eat. She just lay there, by Hoover’s chair, all day long.”
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It was the custom in white southern families to give the deceased’s clothing to colored servants, whether it fit or not. Crawford had one suit altered but didn’t wear the rest. He explained, “My kids got me to get something a little more modern.”
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Another who disputed Hoover’s net worth was William Sullivan, who told Ovid Demaris, “If anybody ever gets into it, I think he was worth a cool million when he died. He had extensive—unless they’ve gotten rid of them very surreptitiously—holdings in Center and Snyder, Texas, and Farmington, New Mexico. I don’t know what they’ve done with this. There’s a lot of hanky-panky that went on for years…One time he got into serious trouble on his income tax manipulations, and we had to send an accountant from New York…to Houston, Texas, where apparently the operation existed. He told me afterward, ‘Good God Almighty! If the truth was known, Hoover would be in serious trouble, he was in clear violation of the law, but I think I got the whole thing straightened out.’ This man was supposed to be the best accountant in the Bureau—better than any we had in Washington. Apparently, he did straighten it out. But he did say that Hoover had done something that was a serious violation of the law.”
Sullivan had said earlier, “Hoover had a deal with Murchison where he invested in oil wells and if they hit oil, he got his share of the profits, but if they didn’t hit oil, he didn’t share in the costs. I was told that by somebody who handled his income tax returns.”
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Mead was chief appraiser for the district, Hagen his assistant. Averaging 750 estate appraisals a year, they were no longer awed by their intimate, albeit belated, contact with the lives of famous people. Ironically, two of the better-known estates they’d appraised belonged to Hoover archenemies: the former Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter and the former CIA director Allen Dulles.
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The folder, which Miss Gandy described as being about two inches thick, presumably contained, among other things, Sullivan’s August 28 and October 6, 1971, letters to Hoover and the director’s replies. Fortunately Sullivan himself kept copies of these letters, which he supplied to the author.
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But even Miss Gandy’s influence couldn’t always protect him from Hoover’s wrath. While serving in the plum assignment of legal attaché to Japan, Kunkel was ordered back to Washington, for promotion to chief of staff in Hoover’s office. However, one of his children was seriously ill, and he requested a month’s delay. For this he was demoted to field agent in Dallas, where he served three years’ penance before being allowed to climb back up the ladder again. Returned to the director’s good graces, as SAC of WFO, he was trusted enough to be allowed to check out the director’s stock tips.
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The most often repeated statement was that they had “insulated” the Bureau during Watergate. Exactly how was never specified, although William Sullivan implied that the files on Senator Ervin kept him from inquiring too deeply into the FBI’s role.
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Mary Meyer had been stabbed to death while walking along a towpath of the old C&O Canal in Georgetown in October 1964. A young black drifter was later tried and convicted of the crime. Meyer’s diary reputedly contained entries on her pot parties and sexual liaisons with Kennedy in the White House.
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Except for his neighbors—one of whom said of him, “He’s a cantankerous old man. And that’s as polite as I can be about Mr. Tolson”—few outsiders ever saw him.
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He was interviewed by two investigators for the Senate Watergate committee, R. Scott Armstrong and Philip Haire, but Mohr sat in and answered most of the questions for him.
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In 1974, during the Watergate hearings, the president did receive a letter bearing Clyde Tolson’s signature. It urged him not to resign.
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The government finally gave Baker copies of more than nine hundred documents that had been purloined from his files. A number of them, old records going back to Johnson’s 1960 campaign and earlier, predated Liakakis’s employment and came from files to which she did not have access, leading Baker to conclude that either she was not his first “trojan horse” or he’d been the victim of a series of FBI bag jobs. Significantly, many of the papers dealt with the personal and business affairs of LBJ.
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Special Agent John J. Kelley had been assigned to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, expressly so that he and his wife could look after Tolson’s mother.
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In 1964, following his open-heart surgery, Tolson spent two months recuperating in the guest room of 4936 Thirtieth Place NW. Annie Fields, who cared for the bedridden associate director, was tipped $10 for her trouble. After moving into Hoover’s home, Tolson had kept on Fields as his cook, housekeeper, and nurse, paying her a munificent $72 a week (if he paid her more, Tolson told her, it would just go for taxes). Each Christmas, Tolson gave Fields $20 and a box of candy. Crawford also received $20, and a tie. When Crawford chauffeured Tolson during his periodic visits to the graves of Hoover and the dogs, Crawford usually had to pay for the gas.
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After being informed, during a court-ordered deposition, that Tolson had been in Doctors Hospital on September 6, 1973, in critical condition, Mohr stated that the date of the codicil was in error.
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Even though the building was eventually named for the late FBI director, there would be no J. Edgar Hoover Room. Hoover’s desk, however, was put on display, as part of the FBI tour, appropriately elevated on a small platform.
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It was common knowledge in the Bureau that the Inspection Division was not immune to corruption. Neil J. Welch, a former Buffalo SAC who pioneered many of the ABSCAM techniques, has noted, “Inspectors from Bureau headquarters were universally dreaded visitors in the field, in part because of their reputation for arbitrary unfairness—but in larger part because the price of their approval was often quite tangible. Inspectors in the field expected and received free meals and entertainment, gifts and trips, and the agents under inspection knew that ‘samples’ of local industry and commerce, preferably wine and liquor, were always welcome tokens. Predictably, inspection reports showed a clear correlation between a field office’s generosity and its performance rating. The inspectors often returned to Washington with bulging suitcases, and their careful inventory of booty was one of the most closely studied statistics at headquarters—a benchmark to be surpassed in the next inspection of that office.”
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Diplomatically, Welch doesn’t mention that the “samples of local industry and commerce” often included professional companionship.
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The FBI had first begun dealing with U.S. Recording in 1943. By 1971 some 60 percent of the firm’s total sales were made to the FBI.
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The Justice Department report noted, “Mr. Callahan testified that agents are allowed to take home cameras for personal use to maintain their proficiency with them. Agents assigned to this investigation verified that this is the case, but indicated that the practice is intended to maintain familiarity with cameras more complex than the Polaroid.”
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Dunphy resigned the day before he pleaded guilty. Thus the Bureau could still maintain that no FBI agent had ever been convicted of a crime.
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In explaining why he departed from precedent in this instance, Attorney General Bell stated:
“When reporting on disciplinary actions taken against government employees, federal agencies have traditionally made public the administrative action taken and the nature of the conduct which caused the action to be taken, but have not always identified the particular individuals involved.
“There are, however, certain instances of employee misconduct which call into question the integrity of the institution itself. If the agency’s mission is particularly sensitive, the misconduct serious, or the officials of high rank, then the public interest is best served by more extensive disclosure.
“It is this kind of wrongdoing which is described in the report I am releasing.”
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Officially the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, the committee was headed by Senator Frank Church of Idaho.
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After the publication of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s
All the President’s Men,
there was considerable speculation that “Deep Throat” had been an FBI official, with Mark Felt, John Mohr, and L. Patrick Gray III being the most often named candidates.
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The lone holdout was Wallace Estill, SAC of the Knoxville, Tennessee, field office, a Sullivan supporter, who suspected that the telegram was part of a plan to get Mark Felt appointed director.
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In 1976 Patrick Murphy told the author, “Underneath, Clarence is a fine, decent human being in my book. He’s not a cream puff either, as some people would like to imply. He’s got a damn tough job; he’s had one hell of a rough time. I think he sees clearly that the FBI has some very important functions—it’s a very important organization—and under such heavy attack now that the baby could go out with the bathwater…He wants to protect what needs to be protected, but he knows things have to change.”
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As if Hoover were still living, his aging cheerleaders reacted on cue to each of the congressional disclosures, as evidenced by a sampling of headlines from the
Grapevine,
the group’s monthly magazine: “Hoover Smear Protested”; “Attacks on FBI Undermining U.S. Security, Society Says”; “Society Executive Committee Meets at Washington to Consider Program to Counterattack Attacks on Bureau”; “Action Taken to Back FBI”; “Hoover Memorial Launched.”
However, when the Justice Department released its 1978 report on corruption in the hierarchy of the FBI, the society was strangely silent. For many of the ex-agents, the revelation must have confirmed what they had long suspected, that the “shoe clerks” on the administrative side of the Bureau had been violating everything the FBI stood for: Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.
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Following his retirement in June 1972, Mohr had become a paid retiree’s consultant to SAMBA. He later testified that the purpose of the Waldorf Astoria weekend “was purely social.”
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Kelley subsequently reimbursed the Bureau for the cost of the valances, returned the two TVs, and repaid Prudential for the costs of the New York trip.
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These probably included Callahan’s failure to inform him about the financial mismanagement of the various funds, as well as the destruction of these and other presumably incriminating records.
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Still feistily independent, he couldn’t resist telling Dean exactly what he thought of Watergate: “While it is probably unnecessary, I would like to say first that the concept underlying the operation, to put it mildly, reflected atrocious judgment and the implementation of the concept was even worse in its lack of professionalism and competency.”
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The hunter later described the incident as follows: “At approximately 6:10
A.M.
, I stood up…and saw a motion on the other side of the field. I picked up my rifle and through the scope I saw brown. I dropped my rifle down and saw a flicker of white. I’m not sure what it really was, but I thought it was a flag [the tail of a deer]. When I saw the white, it appeared to move a little further and I thought it had smelled me and was running. I picked up my rifle and through the scope I saw brown again and I squeezed the trigger.”
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He also appointed Neil J. Welch special agent in charge of the New York field office.
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On June 9, 1990, a veteran FBI agent with a twenty-year unblemished record filed a bias suit against the Bureau, claiming his security clearance had been lifted when it was discovered he was a homosexual. Two weeks later the FBI summarily dismissed the agent. If the suit is successful, others are expected to follow.
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Although the conviction was overturned on appeal, Miller was retried, convicted a second time, and sentenced to twenty years.
Other firsts followed. On June 12, 1990, Mark Runyon, who was assigned to the Pikeville, Tennessee, resident agency, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to sixteen years in prison, thus becoming the first FBI agent to be convicted of a homicide-related crime. Runyon strangled his pregnant girlfriend, an FBI informant in a car theft case, then hid her body for a year.