Authors: Lamar Waldron
days before JFK’s assassination. The contents of the note and the circum-
stances of Oswald’s visit were the subject of three conflicting stories that
Congress investigated in the mid-1970s, following Hoover’s death in
1972. The essence of Oswald’s note was that Agent Hosty should “stop
bothering my wife [and] talk to me if you need to.” The secretary in the
Dallas office recalled a phrase about “blowing up” the FBI office.7 How-
ever, surely a written threat to blow up the Dallas FBI office, delivered
in person by a former defector to an enemy of the US like Russia, would
have provoked a swift response in 1963, as it would today. We feel that
Oswald was simply trying to keep the local FBI agent from “blowing”
the deep cover Oswald had carefully maintained for so long.
We also noted that Hoover was able to tell Bobby Kennedy that
Oswald was not a communist, just an hour after Oswald arrived at Dal-
las police headquarters. This was probably a function of both Hoover’s
access to some of the additional surveillance on Oswald, and the FBI’s
thorough infiltration of the Communist Party USA by the early 1960s. It
has been claimed that one out of every four members of the Communist
Party by that time was an FBI informant, asset, or agent. Still, the initial
reports that Oswald was a self-proclaimed Marxist, a former defector,
and a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee were more than
enough for someone with Hoover’s mindset to believe Oswald was
guilty of JFK’s murder.
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Though America was nine years past the height of the McCarthy-era
blacklist—which gave rise to popular entertainments like
I Led Three
Lives
and
I Was a Communist for the FBI,
that had so enthralled a young
Oswald—its effects still lingered throughout much of the United States.
The first small crack in the Hollywood blacklist had occurred only three
years earlier, and even in 1963 many former film and TV stars and direc-
tors were still unemployable in Hollywood or working in exile. Many of
the film shorts produced ten years earlier, which claimed that freedoms
needed to be sacrificed to fight the communist menace, were still shown
in schools and on Sunday-afternoon local television. The John Birch
Society was at the height of its influence, courted and joined by promi-
nent politicians, judges, and other officials, even as it used anticom-
munism to mask what many saw as an undercurrent of racism. (Its
newsletters denounced any attempt at civil rights as a communist plot
and called Martin Luther King Jr. a communist who wanted to found a
“Soviet Negro Republic . . . with Atlanta as its capital.”)8
For Hoover, and many American newspapers and television stations,
initial word of Oswald’s apparent Soviet and Cuban connections was
all they needed to convict him. By Friday night, and into Saturday and
Sunday, many newspapers were in an odd state of duality. Their editori-
als, written in the immediate aftermath of JFK’s murder, denounced the
far-right paranoia and racism that many initially felt must have been
behind the shooting. But even as those editorials appeared over the next
two days, the newspaper’s front pages were trumpeting that JFK had
been murdered by a communist with ties to Russia and Cuba.
For someone like former FBI supervisor Guy Banister, it would not
have been hard to guess Hoover’s reaction, on two fronts. First, Oswald’s
seeming Soviet and Cuban ties would have made him a logical suspect.
Banister had long been an ardent anticommunist, first for the FBI and
then running checks for corporations to root out those with the taint of
communism, so he knew the mindset of someone like Hoover. Second,
Banister would know that because of the FBI’s participation in the tight
surveillance of Oswald (which probably involved Banister’s friends in
the New Orleans FBI office), Hoover would immediately have to begin
covering up any information that could reflect badly on the FBI. That is
exactly what happened in the coming days, weeks, months, and years.
The smallest step out of line by a reporter would bring a response from
Hoover, which might include having an FBI agent contact the reporter,
his or her editor, or even the publisher. Several examples of attempted
FBI suppression involved stories that emerged from Chicago, some
about the events in Dallas and others about the whispers among report-
ers regarding the attempt to assassinate JFK in Chicago.
What Hoover said publicly, or had his staff leak to reporters, could be
different from what Hoover said in private. Even as he told Bobby Ken-
nedy and others that Oswald had killed JFK, only sixteen hours later, on
Saturday morning, Hoover would tell new president Lyndon Johnson
that “the evidence that they have at the present time is not very, very
strong” against Oswald.9 We now know that saying one thing in pub-
lic and almost the opposite in private was consistent with the contrast
between Hoover’s own public and private lives. In public, he presented
himself as the personification of right-wing, conservative family values,
while in private he led a closeted gay life with his longtime companion,
Clyde Tolson. By 1963, Bobby Kennedy had finally dragged Hoover
into the war against the Mafia; in public, Hoover presented himself as
leading the FBI’s fight against organized crime, even as his New Orleans
office gave carte blanche to Banister’s patron Carlos Marcello.
Over the coming days, Hoover would no doubt learn more about
the JFK-Almeida coup plan and the other authorized, and unauthor-
ized, CIA operations against Castro. Though the FBI had no official role
in any of those operations, Hoover already had some information. Six
weeks before JFK’s death, Hoover had been sent a report from a Miami
FBI informant who said that Cubela was working for the CIA.10 Also,
the FBI had sometimes been in touch with Harry Williams throughout
the summer and fall of 1963, specifically after Harry’s encounter with
Trafficante in Miami (arranged by an associate of E. Howard Hunt) and
before Harry’s almost fatal trip to Guatemala City, when an FBI agent
warned Harry the FBI had picked up information that he was in danger.
In addition, Miami FBI informants (such as those code-named “MM T-1”
and “MM T-6”) provided information about Harry to the local office.11
Harry’s FBI file, like his CIA file, has never been released.
President Lyndon Johnson, like Hoover, would learn much about
secret anti-Castro operations in the coming days. Because Hoover had
so many informants, prior to JFK’s death Johnson probably knew even
less than Hoover about the JFK-Almeida coup plan and the CIA’s other
operations. Yet Johnson’s new position allowed him to start learning
about those operations directly from CIA Director McCone. Close
friends Johnson and Hoover no doubt shared much of this information
with each other. However, the huge amount of data each man learned in
such a short time undoubtedly made it hard to keep all the operations
straight. After a summary that lasted only a few minutes, distinguishing
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
the JFK-Almeida coup plan and AMWORLD from AMTRUNK and from
AMLASH wouldn’t have been easy. Hoover would eventually have to
figure out where the assassination part of the Cubela operation fit in,
and how the CIA-Mafia plots were involved. (Hoover knew about the
earlier phase of the CIA-Mafia plots, and had informant reports about
the actions of Rosselli and others still involved in the fall of 1963.) In
addition, LBJ would learn about the detailed files for the “Plan for a
Coup in Cuba,” and the even more extensive US military invasion plans.
This mass of information would have been confusing to digest in the
best of times, let alone in the aftermath of JFK’s murder.
At 7:25 PM (Eastern time) on the evening of the assassination, Lyn-
don Johnson called J. Edgar Hoover “at his home, and requested that
the FBI take complete charge of the case involving the assassination.”
William Manchester observed that “this was one of the first calls that the
President made upon returning to Washington that evening.” Hoover
had already begun investigating on his own authority, but now the new
president had given him primary control of the entire case. Hoover
“also told the President that he was concerned about the great amount
of publicity coming out of Dallas.”12 We have only Hoover’s account,
to historian Manchester, of what was said that night, and the publicity-
savvy Hoover was well aware that his words would be published in
Manchester’s upcoming book
Death of a President
. No doubt Hoover
and LBJ discussed urgent national security matters that Hoover didn’t
share with Manchester. For example, some of the “publicity coming out
of Dallas” was about the possible role of communist Russia and Cuba in
JFK’s murder. Just a year after the tense nuclear standoff of the Cuban
Missile Crisis, this could have spelled disaster for the new president.
Journalist Jack Anderson knew both men well, and later said he was
confident that LBJ would have said to Hoover something like “Help me
save my country.”13 That would have meant keeping the investigation
from spreading into areas that could trigger a call for an attack on Cuba
or the Soviet Union. This concern helps to account for the actions of
the FBI as the investigation unfolded. While critics of the FBI and War-
ren Commission have long complained about FBI witness intimidation,
misrepresentation of statements, and missing or altered evidence, an
increasing number of former FBI agents have gone on record about the
pressure they were under.14 As recounted in
Vanity Fair,
“former agent
Harry Whidbee [said] the Kennedy investigation was ‘a hurry-up job’ . . .
we were effectively told, ‘They’re only going to prove (Oswald) was
the guy who did it. There were no co-conspirators, and there was no
international conspiracy.’” The retired agent says that he “had conducted
a couple of interviews, and those records were sent back again and were
rewritten according to Washington’s requirements.” Laurence Keenan,
a retired FBI supervisor, confirmed his account. He told
Vanity Fair
that
“within days we could say the investigation was over. ‘Conspiracy’ was
a word which was verboten. . . . The idea that Oswald had a confederate
or was part of a group or a conspiracy was definitely enough to place a
man’s career in jeopardy.”15
As even more information emerged in the coming days and weeks
that seemed to implicate Russia or Cuba, the pressure from Hoover to
contain the investigation only increased. Hoover had his own reasons,
aside from national security, to withhold information, and it’s impor-
tant to keep those motivations in mind as the various cover-ups unfold.
Some have tried to blame JFK’s assassination on Hoover because of these
investigative shortcomings, but they overlook the fact that Bobby Ken-
nedy also withheld similar information for some of the same reasons.
Also, if Hoover wanted to get rid of JFK before the 1964 elections, he
could have easily done so simply by leaking accounts of his affairs to
conservative press outlets, something Hoover had done in a small way
in October 1963 in order to secure his job throughout JFK’s current (and
any future) term as president.16
Several important phone calls to Hoover on November 22 show
just how powerful and influential he was at that time. That morning,
even before JFK was shot, former president Dwight Eisenhower called
Hoover. At 4:18 PM, just minutes after Hoover finished his call to Bobby
about Oswald, Hoover received a call from former vice president Rich-
ard Nixon, then seen as a probable contender for the 1964 Republican
presidential nomination. Coupled with the fact that the first call LBJ
made when he got back to Washington was to Hoover, this call from
Nixon confirms that Hoover had assumed the mantle of the second-
most powerful man in America after JFK’s death (which was especially
true since there was no vice president once LBJ ascended to the Oval
Office). That’s why it was important for the conspirators to have some-
one quickly blamed for the assassination who could force Hoover, as
well as LBJ and Bobby, to cover up any information pointing at suspects
besides Oswald. Once Hoover’s considerable media and political con-
nections were brought into play, the lone-assassin information Hoover
and the FBI conveyed would quickly become gospel.
But in the first hours after JFK’s death, Hoover (and LBJ’s staff) had
not yet begun to exert the more extensive spin control they soon would.
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This allowed some early reports to appear that did not conform to the
“lone assassin” scenario that would be prevalent by the following morn-