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 (85 page)
The change in tactics may well have been inadvertently suggested by King himself, who was overheard on the Jones tap predicting that southern congressmen would attack Rustin’s politics and morals alike. His interlocutor, apparently agreeing, said, “I hope Bayard don’t take a drink before the march.”
“Yes,” the minister replied. “And grab one little brother. ‘Cause he will grab one when he has a drink.”
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Hoover was pleased to accommodate King by fulfilling his fears.
The campaign against Martin Luther King, Jr., was going well on all fronts but home. On August 23 Sullivan’s Domestic Intelligence Division gave Hoover a sixty-seven-page brief about the success of the U.S. Communist party in subverting blacks in general and the civil rights movement in particular. There hadn’t been any success, Sullivan said.
As for the upcoming march, the party was “not the instigator” and was at present “unable to direct or control” it.
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Sullivan later claimed—but not to universal belief—that he foresaw the tempest this would raise and intended to weather it, urging his researchers to “state the facts just as they are.”
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His superior’s cramped scrawl was indeed thunderous: “This memo reminds me vividly of those I received when Castro took over Cuba. You contended then that Castro and his cohorts were not communists and not influenced by communists. Time alone proved you wrong.”
*
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Sullivan’s report was fatally flawed by the same frankness that had characterized his monograph proving that the Mafia indeed exists—and shared its fate. Both were suppressed.
Another department effort was having greater effect.
“Martin Luther King Jr: Affiliation with the Communist Movement,” a report from the New York field office, was the first of many monographs the Bureau would send to the Justice Department. This one focused on inflammatory information provided by the brothers Solo, who had been watching the activities of Levison during his Communist period. It chilled RFK to the bone. “I am a Marxist,”
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it quoted King saying to his friend. The attorney general
sent back the top-secret manuscript, telling Evans that he would be impeached if it got out.
Hoover referred to Clyde Anderson Tolson, who was five years younger, as “Junior.” Tolson called Hoover “Boss” in public and “Speed” when they were alone together. Tolson joined the Bureau in 1928 and almost immediately became the director’s constant companion. Their closeness gave rise to rumors of a homosexual relationship.
National Archives 65-H-746.
Clyde and Edgar at Laurel racetrack, Baltimore, 1937. Hoover had a weakness for “hot tips.” Tolson played the skeptic, both at the track and at headquarters.
Joe Fleischer and National Archives 65-H-100-1.
In Miami Beach, at Arnold Reuben’s Restaurant, with Walter Winchell,
far right,
and two unidentified females. The vastly popular columnist and radio commentator did more than any other man to perpetuate the myths of J. Edgar Hoover and his G-men. In return, the FBI director rewarded him with inside information on ongoing cases and embarrassing tidbits about their common enemies. One such item, about the Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, cost Winchell his television show.
National Archives 65-H-563-1.
At Miami Beach, 1939, on one of their semiannual “nonvacations.” Hoover told the press they were in Florida to lead a drive against “criminal scum.” One of the FBI director’s bulletproof limousines can be seen in the background.
Wide World Photos.
Celebrating both his birthday and New Year’s Eve at Winchell’s table in the Cub Room of the Stork Club, 1935, Hoover agreed to a gag shot. But the thuggish-looking man he asked to pose with him refused, and hurriedly left the club. When heavyweight boxing champion Jim Braddock took his place, both Winchell and club owner Sherman Billingsley breathed sighs of relief. Unlike Hoover, they’d recognized the “poor sport” as Terry Reilly, a syndicate killer currently on parole for extortion and impersonating a special agent.
UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos and National Archives 65-H-182-2.
Hoover was usually careful not to be photographed with his Red-baiting protégé Joseph R. McCarthy, the junior senator from Wisconsin. However, this picture, taken at oilman Clint Murchison’s California resort, Del Charro, in August 1953, shows the pair vacationing together at the same time the Justice Department was supposedly investigating McCarthy’s finances. Hoover kept extensives files on his friends as well as his enemies. The contents of McCarthy’s were so explosive they would have ended his political career.
From left:
McCarthy, Tolson, Royal C. Miller, and Hoover.
National Archives H-65-141-1.
4936 Thirtieth Place NW, Washington, D.C., J. Edgar Hoover’s home from 1938 until his death in 1972. Improvements and maintenance of the residence were paid for by the taxpayers.
National Archives 65-H-1989-1.
The living room of Hoover’s home. There were oriental rugs atop Oriental rugs and so many antiques that finding a way around them was like navigating an obstacle course.
National Archives 65-H-1895-1-8.
Hoover’s basement recreation room. Male guests, including Republican presidents, were shown obscene drawings of Eleanor Roosevelt, which the director had “appropriated” from the comedian W. C. Fields.
National Archives 65-H-300-1.