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
Apparently the poison, though slow working, was effective. On December 18 Roosevelt asked one of his aides, Colonel Richard Park, Jr., to conduct a secret investigation of the Office of Strategic Services. Park recalled, “Certain information had been brought to [FDR’s] attention which made an investigation both timely and desirable.”
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Colonel Park held one of the most influential posts in military intelligence,
because it gave him almost daily access to the president: he was in charge of the White House map room, an appointment he owed to General Strong.
In his fifty-four page report, Park listed more than 120 charges against the OSS and its personnel—including incompetence, corruption, orgies, nepotism, black-marketing, security lapses, and botched intelligence operations, some of which had cost dozens of lives. By contrast, Park found only seven OSS actions worth favorable mention.
The Hoover-Strong alliance was clearly evident in Park’s final recommendation: that the OSS be dismantled and replaced by an intelligence organization modeled on the FBI-ONI-G-2 structure in South America.
Roosevelt didn’t live to see Park’s report, but he didn’t need to see it to reach his decision. That decision was made for him on the morning of February 9, 1945, when the president’s three least-favorite newspapers ran the same front-page story.
Washington Times Herald:
“Donovan Proposes Super Spy System for Postwar New Deal / Would Take Over FBI, Secret Service, ONI and G-2.”
New York Daily News:
“Project for U.S. Super-spies Disclosed in Secret Memo / New Deal Plans Super Spy System / Sleuths Would Snoop on U.S. and the World / Order Creating It Already Drafted.”
Chicago Tribune:
“New Deal Plans to Spy on World and Home Folks / Super Gestapo Organization Is under Consideration.”
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The article, which contained verbatim quotations from Donovan’s top-secret proposal, bore the byline of the Washington correspondent Walter Trohan. Trohan was known to be one of J. Edgar Hoover’s favorite reporters and the recipient of innumerable FBI leaks.
Quickly seizing the story, the anti-Roosevelt forces in Congress raised such a furor that the president was forced to table Donovan’s plan. Enraged, Donovan called the leak of the classified document “treasonable” and, demanding that the guilty party be exposed, requested that the JCS appoint “a judicial or quasi-judicial body armed with the power of subpoena…to compel testimony under oath.”
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But, like Donovan’s super-agency plan, this proposal was tabled; no one relished asking the director of the FBI to testify.
Donovan, of course, was convinced Hoover was responsible. If true, no one was able to prove it. Years later, after making an in-depth study of the episode, a CIA historian could conclude only that Hoover “had the motive, the means and the ability to carry out the deed.”
55
Walter Trohan, however, denied that the FBI director was his source. Interviewed long after the death of everyone concerned, Trohan claimed that Steve Early, the president’s press secretary, had given him the document, stating, “FDR wanted the story out.”
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Supposedly, his reason for doing this was to gauge public reaction before deciding whether to endorse the plan.
Trohan’s attribution seems highly unlikely. Although this wouldn’t have
been the first time Roosevelt floated a trial balloon in the press, his choice of the anti-New Deal Patterson and McCormick newspapers almost guaranteed that the plan would be shot down. Then too, this was during the same period when FDR had Louise Macy Hopkins, the wife of his most trusted adviser, placed under surveillance, because he suspected her of repeating White House conversations to none other than Cissy Patterson of the
Washington Times Herald.
By a stroke of luck, Donovan didn’t have to wait long to get his revenge against Hoover.
In late February 1945 Kenneth Wells, an OSS Far East analyst, was reading an article on British-American relations in Thailand in an obscure magazine called
Amerasia
when he experienced a strong sense of déjà vu. Whole paragraphs seemed familiar—which was not too surprising, since they were his own words, written months earlier, in a secret report.
Wells took the magazine and his report to Archbold van Beuren, the head of security for the OSS. Greatly concerned, van Beuren took the next flight to New York, where he showed the materials to Frank Brooks Bielaski, who was in charge of OSS investigations.
Confronted with the same problem posed by Donovan’s leaked proposal—thirty different people had been sent a copy of the report—Bielaski decided to take a shortcut, and on the night of Sunday, March 11, he, five OSS agents (most of whom were former special agents of the FBI), and an ONI locksmith did a bag job on
Amerasia’s
New York editorial office.
The ONI expert wasn’t needed: by flashing his credentials, Bielaski persuaded the building superintendent to let them in. Once inside, they found a treasure trove of government documents—Bielaski later estimated there were perhaps as many as two or three thousand. A single suitcase contained over three hundred documents, all originals, all classified, and all bearing stamps indicating that at some point they had been routed to the State Department. “I took this stuff and spread it around,” Bielaski recalled. “It covered almost every department in the government except the Federal Bureau of Investigation…There were documents from the British Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, G-2, State Department, Office of Censorship, Office of Strategic Services…There were so many we could not list them.”
*
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Removing the OSS documents and a few others as samples, Bielaski rushed back to Washington and presented them to Donovan. Donovan immediately grasped the importance of the find. Acting on its own, the OSS had discovered what appeared to be a huge spy ring—operating only a few blocks from the
FBI’s New York field office and obviously unknown to Hoover and his men. If ever there was proof the United States needed a new intelligence agency, this was it.
It was an argument he would soon use with the president. But before that, because of the State Department stamps, Donovan requested an urgent appointment with Edward Stettinius, who had replaced Cordell Hull as secretary of state. After examining the documents, Stettinius told his assistant Julius Holmes, “Good God, Julius, if we can get to the bottom of this we will stop a lot of things that have been plaguing us.”
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Donovan urged the immediate arrest of the entire
Amerasia
staff—this being wartime, certainly some charge could be found—and offered the investigative services of his agency. But Stettinius, ignoring both suggestions, simply informed the OSS chief that from here on the State Department would handle the situation.
Donovan’s revenge was too brief for him to savor. Immediately after Donovan’s departure, the secretary of state called Attorney General Biddle, who turned the whole matter over to the FBI.
Although the
Amerasia
case bedeviled the government for nearly a decade, and backfired on both the OSS and the FBI, it had one immediate effect. It gave Donovan the opening wedge he needed in order to persuade the president to reconsider his proposed intelligence plan.
On March 30 Roosevelt took the train to Warm Springs, Georgia, for a much needed rest. Although eager to return to the war zone, Donovan remained in Washington, awaiting the president’s decision. It came on April 4, in a brief note: “Apropos of your memorandum of November 18, 1944, relative to the establishment of a central intelligence agency, I should appreciate your calling together the chiefs of the foreign intelligence and internal security units in the various executive agencies so that a concensus [
sic
] of opinion can be secured…They should all be asked to contribute their suggestions to the proposed central intelligence service.”
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Roosevelt hadn’t approved Donovan’s plan; he’d merely reactivated consideration of the original written proposal he’d submitted back in November 1944. But Donovan took the note as approval, ignoring the fact that no consensus was possible, since State, War, Navy, and Justice remained unanimously opposed.
Convinced he’d won his battle—and sure he would be picked to head the new organization—Donovan hurried back to the other war. Flying to Europe, he immersed himself in the task of moving OSS headquarters from London to newly liberated Paris, where he commandeered the Ritz hotel suite formerly occupied by Hermann Göring.
It was there that he received the news of the president’s death.
In the United States it was the afternoon of Thursday, April 12, 1945. Eleanor Roosevelt had just finished a speech at the Seagrave Club in Washington when she was called to the telephone. “Steve Early, very much upset, asked me to
come home at once,” she would recall. “I did not even ask why. I knew in my heart that something dreadful had happened…I got in the car and sat with clenched hands all the way to the White House. In my heart of hearts I knew what had happened, but one does not actually formulate these terrible thoughts unless they are spoken.”
On hearing the news, she responded, “I am more sorry for the people of this country and of the world than I am for ourselves.”
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When the Senate adjourned, just before 5:00
P.M.
, the vice-president slipped into the unmarked office of Sam Rayburn to have a bourbon with the Speaker of the House and his cronies. Told Steve Early had called, he would remember, “I returned the call and was immediately connected with Early. ‘Please come right over,’ he told me in a strained voice, ‘and come in through the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance.’
“I reached the White House about 5:25
P.M.
and was immediately taken in the elevator to the second floor and ushered into Mrs. Roosevelt’s study…Mrs. Roosevelt seemed calm in her characteristic, graceful dignity. She stepped forward and placed her arm gently about my shoulder.
“ ‘Harry,’ she said quietly, ‘the President is dead.’ ”
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After a long stunned silence, Truman asked, “Is there anything we can do for you?”
“Is there anything
we
can do for
you?
” she responded. “For
you
are the one in trouble now.”
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The news reached the Seat of Government at about 5:40
P.M.
, by a circuitous route, a source in the Secret Service having informed one of the assistant directors, who in turn alerted Ed Tamm. Hoover and Tolson had left their offices a few minutes earlier, en route to Harvey’s for dinner, but, calling downstairs, Tamm was able to catch them as they left the elevator.
By the time the director and assistant director had returned to the fifth floor, Tamm was on the telephone, attempting to confirm the story with the White House. A month earlier, there had been a rumor that Roosevelt had died aboard ship while en route home from the conference at Yalta, when actually the death was that of his longtime military aide Major General Edwin “Pa” Watson. But Early’s line was busy. He’d arranged a conference call with the three wire services. Even though all were notified simultaneously, International News Service scooped Associated Press and United Press by nearly a minute, with a 5:47
P.M.
FLASH WASHN—FDR DEAD.
The director of the FBI was officially informed of the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, of a massive cerebral hemorrhage, at about the same time radio listeners all over the United States heard, “We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin…”
At that, Hoover learned the news before Donovan. The transatlantic cable was out temporarily, and it was several hours later, on the morning of April 13, Paris time, when an aide burst into the OSS chief’s Ritz hotel suite and interrupted his shaving to tell him there was a report that Roosevelt was dead.
Like Tamm, Donovan recalled the earlier rumor, and was skeptical, until he finally succeeded in placing a telephone call to his friend Ned Buxton at OSS headquarters in Washington.
Buxton confirmed the president’s death, then asked, “What will happen now to OSS?”
“I’m afraid it’s the end,” Donovan replied.
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Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had become one of the most important agencies in the U.S. government, and, with the president’s benign approval, its director had become one of the most powerful men in Washington.
If J. Edgar Hoover mourned Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s passing, there is no record of it. His first act, on returning to his office from that of Assistant to the Director Tamm, was to call Lou Nichols in Crime Records and order him to bring in all the files on Harry S Truman.
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*
The authority for conducting such investigations was a 1940 amendment to the Hatch Act, which made it illegal for an employee of a federal agency to have membership in any political party or organization which advocated the overthrow of “our Constitutional form of government.” Hoover, as usual, interpreted this rather broadly, investigating not only possible subversive affiliations but also “the background, qualifications, experience and reputation” of those being investigated.
1
Applicants for government positions were required to list character references. Presuming that none of the listed references was likely to provide derogatory information about the subject, the FBI interviewed them primarily to get the names of
other
persons who were more likely to reveal information about the subject’s life that he might prefer to have shielded from investigation. Those in this subcategory who proved cooperative were then often developed as regular informants.
*
The young agent, G. Gordon Liddy, who later attained more than a little notoriety in the Watergate affair, observed in recollecting the conversation, “Despite my puzzlement over the irrelevant monologue on Eleanor Roosevelt, I don’t believe I could have been more impressed had I been a parish priest after a private audience with the pope.”
7
†
On another occasion, according to William Sullivan, a headquarters supervisor at the time, Hoover returned from a meeting with the president looking upset. “The president says the old bitch is going through the change of life and we’ll just have to put up with her,” Hoover explained.
9
*
Interviewed shortly before his death, Earl Miller, the former state trooper, denied the gossip about his relationship with the first lady. “You don’t sleep with someone you call Mrs. Roosevelt,” he said, adding, with characteristic bluntness, “Anyway my taste was for young and pretty things.”
14
†
As Walter Goodman put it, “Curran was innocent of Marxism-Leninism. He found in the Communist Party a ladder by which he could ascend, and when it had served its purpose, he kicked it over.”
15
*
The FBI had, in fact, done bag jobs on both the AYC and the ASU, netting, among other things, copies of correspondence with the first lady.
*
The telegram, which was copied before being given to Lash, read, “WILL CALL YOU FROM COLUMBIA MISSOURI BETWEEN THIRTY-SEVEN AND FOUR. LOVE. E.R.” Ever vigilant to possible subversive connotations, the officer who intercepted it wrote in his report, “The above is the original telegram…Whether it was mixed up in transit, or is in code, remains to be seen. It could have meant: ‘WILL CALL YOU FROM COLUMBIA MISSOURI BETWEEN FOUR AND SEVEN-THIRTY. LOVE. E.R.’ ”
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*
On his return from overseas, Lash married Trude Pratt; became a reporter for the
New York Post;
and later wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography
Eleanor and Franklin
(1971), which was followed by the companion volume
Eleanor: The Years Alone
(1972). Among his other books, two deal with the former first lady:
Eleanor Roosevelt: A Friend’s Memoir
(1964) and
Love, Eleanor: Eleanor Roosevelt and Her Friends
(1982).
†
Director Hoover’s Official/Confidential file on Joseph Lash, which runs to some two hundred pages, includes photocopies of all of the documents Lieutenant Colonel Boyer sent to Colonel Bissell, but it does not include the actual tape recordings, or the tapes and transcriptions of the Blackstone Hotel bugging. If these still exist, they have not yet surfaced.
*
How significant a part Hoover’s reports played in FDR’s decision to drop Wallace as his running mate in 1944 is unknown. Probably much more important were the predictions of Roosevelt’s advisers that Wallace’s presence on the ballot would cost the president between one and three million votes.
*
Mrs. Welles apparently had her own problems. Friends claimed that each night she would turn down her mother’s bed covers, though her mother was long dead.
*
In his book
FDR: A Biography,
Ted Morgan writes, “The Welles resignation had a devastating effect on the State Department. In Latin American affairs, Welles’s special preserve, it marked the end of Pan-American solidarity and the Good Neighbor policy. Welles was one of the rare career men in the higher echelons who was sympathetic to the Jews, and his continued presence might have made a difference on the refugee question.”
42
Welles lived another eighteen years, a pathetically sad and broken man. Although he would write several books on American foreign policy, in 1952 his lecture agency dropped him, reputedly because of his drunkenness and homosexuality.
As for William Bullitt, Roosevelt did offer him an ambassadorship, to Saudi Arabia, the leastdesirable posting he could think of, knowing Bullitt would refuse it, which he did.
*
Patterson’s dislike of FDR bordered on the pathological, while Roosevelt’s attitude toward her was little better. In a much told Washington tale, the lawyer Morris Ernst wrote the president that he had subpoenaed Patterson to testify in a libel suit filed by his client Walter Winchell, at which time he planned to “examine Cissy down to her undies.” Roosevelt begged off attending, claiming, “I have a weak stomach.”
44
†
According to Harold Ickes, prior to marrying Hopkins, Louise Macy had been the mistress of a number of wealthy men, including Bernard Baruch and Jock Whitney, both of whom had allegedly rewarded her with large financial settlements.
*
The documents ranged from a top-secret memorandum detailing the American strategic-bombing program for Japan to a report on “the intimate relations between Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang,” to quote Bielaski, who went on, “And that document I assure you was very intimate, and there were about three pages of it.”
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