Official and Confidential (42 page)

Susan Rosenstiel has insisted she could not possibly have been mistaken, that Edgar was definitely the man in female dress at the Plaza. Her account remained consistent, and she signed a sworn affidavit that it is true.

She was permitted to witness Edgar and the others in such a situation, she surmised, ‘because they wanted a woman present. I guess it gave them some sort of extra thrill. And if I'd said anything, they'd have said I was crazy, that Hoover hadn't been there. It would have been my word against theirs, and no one would have believed it.'

People who knew Rosenstiel say he was bisexual. Roy Cohn was indeed homosexual and regularly hired young male prostitutes. The facts of Edgar's life, meanwhile, fit the Plaza scenario well enough. He regularly traveled to New York City, and without Clyde. Former Agent John Dixson, who served in New York during that period, often had the task of meeting Edgar when he arrived at Penn Station, after traveling alone from Washington. He would be taken by car to the Waldorf, his usual hotel, and left to his own devices.

Nor is it odd that Clyde Tolson was not present at the Plaza. Thirty years had passed since the first flower of his affair with Edgar, and he was no longer the handsome young man who had attracted Edgar in 1928. He was fifty-eight and, unlike Edgar, his health was failing rapidly. He was hospitalized repeatedly during the fifties for a serious eye ailment and for problems with duodenal ulcers. It was the start of a decline that would lead to open-heart surgery and several strokes.

Edgar and Clyde always remained intimate friends. When Clyde's mother was dying, Edgar traveled to be at his side in
Iowa. When Edgar made a token appearance at the funeral of his sister, Lillian, Clyde was there with him. At work, each could depend entirely on the other, and that was perhaps the real bond between them. Physical love, however, had probably run its course.

There is another account of Edgar's interest in dressing up as a woman, one that refers to an episode in Washington in 1948, ten years before the orgies at the Plaza. It comes from two men, successful professionals in their fields, both heterosexuals, who have requested anonymity. For several months that year, they said, they frequented a Washington watering hole called the Maystat that was noticeably, though not exclusively, used by homosexuals. At the Maystat they were befriended by Joe Bobak, a fifty-year-old Army Supply Sergeant serving at Fort Myers. ‘Bobak,' one of the witnesses recalled, ‘was decidedly gay, a bit swishy. He knew senior officers at the Pentagon, even senators and congressmen who were also gay. It was a strange group to us, and we were fascinated.'

One evening in 1948 the two young men sat in a car outside the Maystat with one of Bobak's regular companions, a younger man in his mid-twenties. With a conspiratorial air, the younger man produced five or six photographs for the others to examine. ‘The picture he showed us first,' one of the witnesses recalled, ‘was of a man dressed up as a woman – the whole thing, wig, evening gown and everything. It was easily recognizable as J. Edgar Hoover.

‘He was lying across a bed, in this evening gown. I think the wig was light-colored, or blond. But the face was completely recognizable. Hoover made an ugly-looking woman. Nothing sexual was going on, at least not in the pictures we saw. No one else was in that first picture. It was like he'd just laid down there. I think you could also see a bedside table in the shot. At first we thought it might be Hoover's head stuck onto another body, a sort of trick picture, phonied up. But the other four or five photos made it
clear to us they were authentic – they were taken from different angles, with other people visible, and Hoover was in all the shots. It was a party scene.

‘The way we were shown the pictures was all rather matter-of-fact. The people in that group knew, or behaved as if they knew, that he was gay. We also met two other guys, through Sergeant Bobak, who said they had been to gay parties Hoover attended. Bobak said he had been to Hoover's house. The boy with him had glommed on to the pictures somehow, swiped them or got hold of prints.

‘At that tender age, it didn't occur to us that anyone in the gay crowd intended to use the pictures for blackmail. It was more as if they were a curiosity, to be giggled about in the group. It sounds strange now, but at that age – we were only about twenty then – I don't think it fully occurred to us what it would mean to attach that kind of stigma to a major public figure. It seemed funny to us, kind of laughable. We just looked at the pictures and handed them back and talked about them once or twice afterwards. And that was all. We soon moved away from that circle of people.'

There is no question of collusion between these two witnesses and Susan Rosenstiel. The men who saw the photographs, moreover, knew nothing of Edgar's connection with Rosenstiel. It seems likely they did see the pictures, and did think they recognized the grotesque man in female garb as Edgar.

Sexual adventuring was folly for Edgar, and especially in the company of a man like Rosenstiel. Several sources told the New York Crime Committee that Rosenstiel had his Manhattan home wired from roof to basement with hidden microphones, so that he could spy on visitors and staff. The man who installed the system, security consultant Fred Otash, said it was rigged to tape conversations for hours on end. Conversations in the library, where Edgar met with Rosenstiel and his cronies, were recorded as a matter of
routine. The millionaire was quite capable of having the sex sessions at the Plaza bugged or arranging for Edgar to be photographed in his female costumes.

Meyer Lansky, who claimed Edgar was no threat, that he had been ‘fixed,' was Rosenstiel's close associate. Mrs Rosenstiel quoted her husband as saying that ‘because of Lansky and those people, we can always get Hoover to help us.' The mobster's insurance policy, according to associates, was photographic evidence of Edgar's homosexual activity. The evidence suggests that in the late fifties, at a difficult time for the mob, the episodes at the Plaza may have renewed that insurance.

In July 1958, soon after the first Plaza episode – and in order to be seen to be responding to the uproar about the mobsters' conference at Apalachin – Edgar asked his Domestic Intelligence Division to produce a study on organized crime. Though the full two-volume report remains classified, its summary conclusion stated:

Central Research has prepared a monograph on the Mafia for the Director's approval. This monograph includes the following points on the Mafia: The Mafia does exist in the U.S. It exists as a special criminal clique or caste engaged in organized crime activity. The Mafia is composed primarily of individuals of Sicilian/Italian origin and descent …

This, of course, was contrary to Edgar's stated belief, and his response was perverse. In private he seemed grudgingly to accept that the Mafia existed. He exploded, however, when he heard the report had been sent to other top law enforcement officials, including Attorney General Rogers.

Edgar ordered all the circulated copies to be retrieved within hours of delivery. No one outside the Bureau ever read the report, which Edgar referred to thereafter as ‘baloney.'
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In 1959, meanwhile, Edgar made public speeches saying he
hoped ‘to keep such pressure on hoodlums and racketeers that they can't light or remain anywhere.' In September, in Chicago, an FBI surveillance microphone hit the jackpot. Sam Giancana was overheard referring repeatedly to ‘the Commission,' the cabal that ruled organized crime nationwide. He even ran through the names of its members, ticking them off one by one.

Agents regarded this as a major breakthrough, but it did not move Edgar to change his stance. Three years later he would still be insisting that ‘no single individual or coalition of racketeers dominates organized crime across the nation.'

By late 1959, agents working on the new Top Hoodlum Program realized something was badly wrong. Agent William Turner, on an inspection visit to the Bureau's Los Angeles office, concluded the program was ‘dead in the water.' In Chicago, the specialist staff was cut from ten agents to five. ‘Mr Hoover seemed to lose interest,' recalled Chicago's Bill Roemer. ‘Organized crime was no longer his top priority.'

In New York, agent Anthony Villano was told by his superior that recent operations against the Mafia were probably ‘only a temporary operation designed to satisfy criticism and would be disbanded after the heat died down.' In New York, where 400 agents were working on Communism that year, just four were assigned to organized crime.

Edgar's much-trumpeted onslaught on the mob had turned out to be a phony war. It would become real enough, however, just two years later. In Attorney General Robert Kennedy the mob chieftains – and Edgar – would meet real opposition at last.

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‘Hoover passed along gossip to the President he served, and that practice could raise questions in a President's mind. What did Hoover know about him? In theoretical terms, that put Hoover in the position of a veiled blackmailer.'

Dean Rusk, former Secretary of State

I
n October 1955, Joseph Kennedy had returned from a foreign vacation to an America in turmoil. President Eisenhower had just survived a near-fatal heart attack, and many doubted whether he would be fit enough to run in 1956. Would the Democratic candidate be Adlai Stevenson? If so, would Kennedy's thirty-eight-year-old son John be on the ticket for Vice President?

The Kennedy political machine was beginning to roll. The prize that had eluded the father was now on the horizon for the son. That fall day, however, Joseph Kennedy enthused about a very different possibility – that within twelve months America might elect President J. Edgar Hoover. At home in Hyannis Port, the family headquarters in Massachusetts, he dictated this letter:

Dear Edgar,

I think I have become too cynical in my old age, but the only two men I know in public life today for whose opinion I give one continental both happen to be named Hoover – one John Edgar and one Herbert – and I am proud to think that both of them hold me in some
esteem … I listened to Walter Winchell mention your name as a candidate for President. If that should come to pass, it would be the most wonderful thing for the United States, and whether you were on a Republican or Democratic ticket, I would guarantee you the largest contribution that you would ever get from anybody and the hardest work by either a Democrat or Republican. I think the United States deserves you. I only hope it gets you.

My best to you always.

Sincerely,

Joe

The notion that Edgar might yet run for the White House was merely a flattering gesture by his old congressional allies. Yet Edgar framed Joe Kennedy's letter and kept it on his office wall for the rest of his life. It was part of a vast correspondence of mutual admiration.

The FBI file on the elder Kennedy suggests a man taking out political insurance. At sixty-seven, he was a figure of immense power but dubious history. Biographers agree that, like Lewis Rosenstiel's fortune, a great part of the Kennedy fortune derived from Prohibition bootlegging in league with organized crime. Frank Costello liked to say he had ‘helped Joe Kennedy get rich,' that they had been partners.

Kennedy's years as Ambassador to London, at the start of World War II, had sealed his personal political fate. He thought the Germans were the right leaders for Europe, opposed America's entering the war and believed Hitler was bluffing. He said he would cheerfully ‘sell Poland down the river,' and that influential American Jews threatened the peace of the world. Learning that Kennedy was also scheming against him politically, President Roosevelt summoned him home, persuaded him not to withdraw his support during the 1940 election, then fired him.

Roosevelt thought Kennedy a ‘thief,' ‘one of the most evil,
disgusting men I have ever known.' Harry Truman said he was ‘as big a crook as we've got anywhere in this country.' Kennedy and Edgar, however, had an enduring relationship.

They had met, some say, as long ago as the twenties, when Kennedy was financing movies in Hollywood. He introduced Edgar to a clutch of movie stars – decorative females who looked good at his side and belied the rumors about his homosexuality. A quarter of a century later, Edgar and Clyde had become occasional guests at the Kennedy winter retreat in Florida. When there were first discussions about setting up a J. Edgar Hoover Foundation, Kennedy promised a large contribution. He once offered Edgar a princely salary to join the Kennedy organization as ‘security chief.'

From 1943, for his part, Kennedy was a Special Service contact for the FBI, complete with Bureau symbol and running file, ready to use his influence in industry and the diplomatic world ‘for any advantage the Bureau might desire.' Years later, knowing Edgar's jealousy of the CIA, he leaked to Edgar what he learned as a member of Eisenhower's board on Foreign Intelligence.

From 1951 the FBI maintained a Resident Agency, staffed by four agents, at Hyannis Port. Since it had no other discernible purpose, unkind observers said it existed ‘solely to appease and serve the Kennedys.' Bureau agents buttered up ‘the Ambassador,' extended courtesies to the family – and kept Edgar briefed on what its members were doing.

Edgar's career seemed assured as the fifties drew to a close. He was already laden with honors, and President Eisenhower doled out a new one, the President's Award for Distinguished Civilian Service. Officials in Indiana declared a J. Edgar Hoover Day in 1959, and another was planned for Illinois.

Above all, Edgar remained close to the seat of power and to the man he hoped would be the next president. As politicians geared up for the 1960 election, Edgar was seen a good deal with his protégé of the McCarthy era, Vice President Richard Nixon. It was, rather, a matter of Nixon making sure
he was seen with Edgar. They went to the races together and, when Edgar celebrated his thirty-fifth year as Director, Nixon came to his office to pay obeisance.