Official and Confidential

by Anthony Summers

  3. A copy of the official British history of the Stephenson operation surfaced in 1989 in Canada.

  4. Von Auenrode was using the name ‘von Karsthoff’ at the time. (Popov Papers.)

  5. ‘Good riddance’ was a characteristic Hoover phrase, one he used in writing when an agent he disliked quit the Bureau. (Davidson to Callahan re Nelson Gibbons, Sept. 24, 1962, FBI 67–528050.)

  6. Sir William Stephenson confirmed before his death that he did discuss Popov with Hoover. (Response to author’s question, 1988.)

  7. Popov’s private papers show Masterman addressed him as ‘My dear Popov,’ while Popov addressed him as ‘JC.’

  8. Popov’s ghostwriter, and his son Marco, said he was initially reluctant to include the anecdote at all, because it was such a bitter memory.

  9. The widows of two other British officers who worked with Popov, Ewen Montagu and Bill Luke, said in 1990 their husbands had no doubt Popov saw Hoover. Popov also discussed the episode with a friend, the Yugoslav author Branko Bokun, in 1946. ‘He told me then, and many times afterwards,’ Brokun recalled, ‘there are some things in life that shock so much they never leave you. It marked him for the rest of his life.’ (Ints. Iris Montagu, Anne Luke and Branko Bokun, 1990.) The official files neither support nor impugn Popov’s account. The British practice has been not to release intelligence records. One of the official histories of wartime intelligence, co-authored by former MI-5 Deputy Director Charles Simkins, says there is nothing in MI-5 or MI-6 files about Popov’s talks with Jebsen, nor about his confrontation with Hoover. It may be significant that, as official accounts admit, there were frequent turf battles between the foreign and domestic arms of British Intelligence. John Pepper, who worked for William Stephenson and who arrived in New York with Popov, said in 1990, ‘We didn’t tell MI-5 anything about the case.’ MI-5, which had handled Popov’s early European operations, lost effective control and contact once his American mission began. Popov’s U.S. sojourn may have been covered by the files of British Security Coordination – William Stephenson’s organization – but their contents remain an unknown quantity. (British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 5, by Michael Howard, London, HMSO, 1990, and British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 4, by F. H. Hinsley and C. A. G. Simkins, London, HMSO, 1990, [turf battles] ibid., p. 181, intl. Pepper, 1988, 1990.)

  10. According to Japanese sources, the Taranto precedent was a key factor in planning Pearl Harbor. By August 1941, when Popov arrived in the U.S. with his warning, Japanese pilots were training hard – in the words of a surviving pilot – ‘for torpedo bombing runs on an enclosed harbor.’ (And I Was There, by Edwin Layton, with Roger Pineau and John Costello, NY, Morrow, 1985, p. 72, int. Hirata Matsumura, International Herald Tribune, Dec. 7, 1991.)

  Chapter 13

  1. There were football (as opposed to baseball) teams thus named in 1941.

  2. These arrests were quite separate from the later internment of some 111,000 Japanese Americans and resident aliens, which Hoover rightly opposed as ‘based primarily on public hysteria and political pressure.’ As late as 1989, a special law was passed to ensure that surviving internees were paid compensation. (NYT, Jun. 30, 1985, WP, Oct. 27, and NYT, Nov. 9, 1989.)

  3. Popov and Hoover were to clash again. In 1946, in a signed article in Reader’s Digest, Hoover told a distorted version of the original Popov contact, implying his loyalties were to Nazi Germany and taking credit for the discovery of the microdot system. Confronted by a furious Popov, Hoover agreed changes would be made in future editions of the article. The FBI file records Popov’s visit to HQ that year, but suggests he met only with aides. He insisted he met with Hoover himself. (Reader’s Digest, Apr. 1946, Spy Counterspy, by Dusko Popov, St Albans (UK), Panther, 1976, pp. 176ff, Popov to H, Sept. 6, H to Popov, Sept. 11, Ladd to H, Sept. 11, 1946, unsigned memo, Aug. 16, SAC to Director, Aug. 31, Kelley to Dunn, Oct. 1, 1973, FBI 65–36994, Popov to Iverson, Oct. 10, 1973, Popov Papers.)

  4. The intimate nature of Hoover’s relations with the officials Ketchum named makes it plausible that he dined with them regularly, as described. In light of everything else now known about Hoover’s Machiavellian activity over Pearl Harbor, Ketchum’s account cannot be dismissed. (Ints. Betty Rowell, Mrs Edward Tindall, Harold Jinks, Betty Keenan, Mrs Ernest Stevenson and Robert Donihi, 1990, Joseph Keenan to H, Sept 30, 1947, Keenan Papers, Harvard Law School Library, but see P, p. 544n59.)

  5. For his World War II service, William Stephenson became the first non-American to receive the Medal for Merit. He also received a British knighthood, as did William Donovan and, later, Hoover. Had he been British, Hoover would have been entitled to style himself Sir J. Edgar Hoover. Less than impressed, probably because of his poor wartime relations with the British, Hoover soon had the British honor deleted from the official list of his awards. (Intrepid’s Last Case, by William Stevenson, NY, Ballantine, 1984, p. 172, A Man Called Intrepid, by William Stevenson, London, Macmillan, 1976, p. 461, Washington Times Herald, Mar. 8, 1946, London Daily Telegraph and Times, Oct. 18, Business Week, Nov. 11, entry HSF 5, Time, Dec. 22, 1947.)

  Chapter 14

  1. For coverage of Hoover’s role in the Welles affair, see Chapter 9.

  Chapter 15

  1. Suspicion had first been aroused by a news story on February 9, 1945, suggesting that Roosevelt’s plans for intelligence, made with Donovan at his elbow, would lead to a ‘police state.’ The story was based on a top-secret Donovan memo that had gone only to a handful of officials, including Hoover. The Chicago Tribune correspondent who obtained it, Walter Trohan, has repeatedly denied Hoover was his source and said Roosevelt aide Steve Early gave him the lead. Yet Early was away from Washington for three weeks before the story broke and would hardly have leaked information certain to embarrass his boss. Trohan was at this time becoming close to Hoover – they would eventually become so pally that they addressed each other in jest as ‘Comrade.’ General Donovan, meanwhile, was said to have marked the various copies of the memo in question with tiny textual differences – and it was those inserted in Hoover’s copy that reportedly turned up in the Trohan story. (Donovan and the CIA, by Thomas Troy, Frederick, MD, University Publications of America, 1981, pp. 253ff, Chicago Tribune, Feb. 9, 1945, ints. Trohan, 1988, Walter Pforzeheimer, Larry Houston, Thomas Powers, 1991, [Early] FDR, by Ted Morgan, NY, Simon & Schuster, 1985, p. 744, [H/Trohan] int. Trohan, 1988, Trohan Papers, HHL, [Donovan belief] Thomas Troy, op. cit., pp. 258ff, [‘marked’] NYP, Oct. 11, 1959, int. Wm. Dufty, 1988.)

  2. See Chapter 9.

  Chapter 16

  1. It is clear that there was indeed a Communist espionage operation in the early forties and that documents were leaked by sources in Washington. Some of the Bentley/Chambers testimony fits the skein of evidence in the Rosenberg and Fuchs spy cases. There is still no certainty, however, that either White or Hiss was wittingly involved.

  2. For coverage of COINTELPRO, see Chapter 33.

  3. As of the 1948 elections, Mundt became a senator.

  4. ‘I never played poker in my life,’ Hoover claimed in a 1946 note. McGaughey’s account, and other anecdotes, shows that he lied. His congressional poker circle in the forties included Representatives Michael Kerwin, Thomas Martin and Ben Jensen, and Senator Stiles Bridges. (H notation, Jan. 16, 1946, OC 51, Cooper article, NY journal, Dec. 3, 1937, Infamy, Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath, by John Toland, NY, Berkley Books, 1983, p. 342.)

  5. The four convicted were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Morton Sobell and David Greenglass, all in connection with the Rosenberg spy case. For all the controversy, little doubt remains that the Rosenbergs did betray nuclear secrets. Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs, published in 1990, acknowledged the Rosenbergs’ ‘significant help’ in accelerating Soviet development of the atomic bomb. Hoover had been the first to suggest the prosecution of Ethel, in spite of a lack of hard evidence against her, in the hope that it would ‘serve as a lever’ to force Julius to crack. He never
did, but Hoover waited hopefully at an open telephone line until the very moment of the couple’s execution in 1953. At home in Virginia that night, according to his son, FBI propaganda boss Louis Nichols and the friendly journalist Rex Collier ‘went around the house turning off the lights, so they would have more electricity at Sing Sing to electrocute the Rosenbergs. It was symbolic.’ (Intl. Ann Ginger, Director, Meiklejohn Institute, and Gene Dennis, archivist, ILWU, San Francisco, 1992, Rosenberg File, by Ronald Radosch and Joyce Milton, NY, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983, Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myths, by Irene Philipson, NY, Franklin Watts, 1988, [Khrushchev] Khrushchev Remembers, ed. Jerrold Schecter and Vyacheslav Luchkov, Boston, Little, Brown, 1990, pp. 193ff, Anthony Villano, op. cit., pp. 25ff, int. J. Edgar Nichols, 1988.)

  6. In 1953, when the Republicans had returned to the White House, Edgar made a sensational congressional appearance in support of Attorney General Brownell’s claim that Truman had ignored FBI warnings about Harry Dexter White. Hoover claimed he appeared only because Brownell ordered him to, but Brownell said in 1988 that Hoover ‘volunteered.’ (Int. Brownell, 1988, OC 67, NYT, Nov. 7, 14–19, 22–27, 1953, Life, Nov. 23, 1953, P, p. 318, Drew Pearson Diaries, 1949–59, ed. Tyler Abell, NY, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974, p. 284.)

  Chapter 18

  1. There is no report that Hoover ever expressed any sympathy for the likes of Rockwell.

  2. In 1956, again before an election, Hoover would feed information on Stevenson to Richard Nixon. He would later tell a Kennedy aide that Stevenson was a ‘notorious homosexual.’ (Nation, May 7, 1990, citing FBI records.)

  3. A source interviewed for this book contradicted a note in FBI files suggesting that Hoover ceased providing McCarthy with information in the summer of 1953. The interviewee, an electronics specialist who bugged McCarthy and his aides on behalf of the military during the Army-McCarthy hearings, said the secret help continued to the end. ‘I was listening in,’ he recalled, ‘two, sometimes three times a day, to calls between Hoover and Roy Cohn. Cohn and McCarthy were still getting everything they had from Hoover.’ (Int. with source, anonymous by request – he still worked for the government, and Athan Theoharis, Secret Files, p. 264.)

  Chapter 19

  1. Former agent Woods was named as having been used by Hoover, in retirement, to offer material on Martin Luther King’s sex life to the press. He denied it in a 1990 interview and said he could not remember ever having filed a report on a senator’s sex activity.

  2. Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas resigned in 1969 after disclosures that he was taking money from a convicted criminal whose appeal was pending. In 1965, responding to pressure from President Johnson, Hoover had smoothed the way for Fortas’ Senate confirmation. In 1966, he and the FBI improperly exchanged information on a case then pending before the Court. (Cloak and Gavel, by Alexander Charns, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1992, pp. 53–57, et al.)

  3. There is indeed a mass of FBI material on Smathers, including allegations about his sex life. (Smathers FBI docs., FOIPA Release 293, 982/190–47115, Jul. 19, 1991.)

  Chapter 20

  1. During the furor, the file shows, Hoover engaged in a complex debate with Deputy Attorney General Kleindienst over precisely how to answer a press inquiry into whether or not the FBI had ever ‘instituted’ electronic surveillance of a member of Congress. Hoover tried to avoid answering at all, then settled for saying the FBI had ‘never installed’ a bugging device against a politician. According to a surveillance expert who then worked for the government, the FBI was at the time using a new, secret system, one that did not require a bug as such but functioned thanks to something normally present in all homes and offices. The system is still secret. (H to T, Apr. 13, 1971, TSF 8.)

  2. Dowdy was being investigated for bribery and was eventually jailed.

  3. Illicit FBI tapping was reportedly not restricted to members of Congress. Robert Amory, a CIA Deputy Director in the fifties, said he saw evidence that the Bureau tapped his office phone. Secretary of State Dean Rusk suspected the FBI of bugging him. And, according to former Agent Norman Ollestad, Hoover sometimes bugged his own colleagues. (WP, Feb. 7, 1971, As I Saw It, by Dean Rusk, NY, Norton, 1990, pp. 197, 559, Waging Peace and War, by Thomas Schoenbaum, NY, Simon & Schuster, 1988, p. 280, Inside the FBI, by Norman Ollestad, NY, Lyle Stuart, 1967, pp. 68, 105.)

  4. Gallagher insisted that the bonds in the IRS case had belonged to the Democratic Party and brought him no profit. He believed the charges were a natural sequel to the Life magazine episode.

  5. Zicarelli was overheard in 1964 and 1965 – but not in 1960 – talking with a crony about asking for Gallagher’s help with a deportation case. The mobsters also mentioned other public officials in hopeful terms – three judges, a U.S. Senator and a Republican Congresswoman. (Newark Star-Ledger, NYT, Jun. 11, 1969.)

  6. As the Watergate tapes show, Smith’s close relations with the FBI were later discussed with President Nixon in the Oval Office. (Transcript, Feb. 16, 1973, p. 7, WHT.)

  Chapter 22

  1. Lombardozzi died in 1992. His comments were obtained through an intermediary, with the help of London attorney William Pepper, in 1990.

  2. In 1948, when Hoover received a Justice Department request for information on the racketeer Longy Zwillman, he said FBI records reflected ‘no investigation’ on the man. This circumlocution concealed the fact that Bureau files contained 600 pages on the mobster. (Gangster, by Mark Stuart, London, Star, 1987, p. 141.)

  3. A review of Anslinger’s FBI file suggests that – contrary to the mythology – he and Hoover were friendly toward each other. (FBI 72–56284.)

  4. McClanahan went to jail for thirteen months, following a trial featuring mob witnesses from Chicago to Las Vegas.

  5. In 1949, when members of the Licavoli mob family asked Davidson how they could thank him for having helped a relative, he suggested they donate $5,000 to a J. Edgar Hoover foundation then being set up to combat juvenile delinquency – no connection with the foundation of that name that exists today. The Licavolis made the donation. (H to T, et al., Jun. 29, 1949, FBI 94–8–350–371, Life, May 2, 1969, int. Davidson, 1990.)

  6. At Maryland tracks Edgar dealt with a Damon Runyonesque tipster called ‘Washington Jake.’ In California he dealt with Harry Hall, a bookmaker with a prison record. Hall recalled giving Hoover a tip while accompanied by Joe Matranga, son-in-law of a mobster high in the Detroit Mafia. (Int. Jimmy Raftery, 1988, ints. Harry Hall, 1988, 1990, corr. John Hunt, 1993.)

  Chapter 23

  1. Chuck and Sam Giancana’s 1992 book Double Cross attracted criticism for some of its claims about the assassination of President Kennedy. Portions of the book do appear to have been embroidered, but interviews with co-author Sam Giancana (Chuck’s son and his namesake, the mobster’s godson) indicate that its principal assertions are based on Chuck’s account of what the mobster told him. (Ints. Sam Giancana, 1991, 1992.)

  2. Guilemo Santucci, a confidant of Costello and Lansky, said much the same. He would talk, recalled his driver John Dellafera, ‘of the good old days, when Hoover and the other big shots would look the other way. He told me they would do Hoover favors and he would do them favors in return. Hoover agreed to this as if they had something on him.’ (Int. and written statement of Dellafera, 1991.)

  3. In the late forties, the FBI did carry out surveillance against Costello, planting bugs at New York’s Copacabana Club, where the mobster held court each day. This was highly productive until, out of the blue, the agents were suddenly called off. ‘We were never told why,’ recalled former agent Jack Danahee. (Int. 1988.)

  4. See end of Chapter 8.

  5. See Chapter 8.

  6. Police sources told Hamill they, too, had heard of the compromising photographs.

  7. Lansky did come under heavy FBI surveillance in 1961, but this was part of the push against organized crime under Attorney General Robert Kennedy. (Little Man, by Robert Lacey, Boston, Little, Brown, 1991, pp.
288ff, corr. Lacey, 1992.)

  8. The U.S. Intelligence/Mafia connection in World War II was a high-risk relationship, the precursor of the arrangement in the sixties, when the CIA and the mob collaborated to plot the murder of Fidel Castro.

  9. The CIA’s James Angleton, said to have been in possession of a Hoover sex picture, served in the OSS in Rome at the end of the war – at the time Lansky’s associate Lucky Luciano arrived there, following his release from a U.S. jail in recognition of his services to U.S. Intelligence (Cold Warrior, by Tom Mangold, NY, Simon & Schuster, 1991, pp. 22ff.)

  10. The spying on the brothel, near the Brooklyn Naval Yard, occurred because of suspicion that U.S. Senator David Walsh, Chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee, was a patron. Walsh was exonerated, following a controversial probe in which the FBI played a key role. Afterward, Walsh sent Hoover an effusive letter of thanks. (OC 123, 153, Trading With the Enemy, by Charles Higham, NY, Delacorte, 1983, p. 88, NYP, May 1–22, 1942, NYT, Oct. 6, 1942, Meyer Lansky: Mogul of the Mob, by Dennis Eisenberg, Uri Dan, and Eli Landau, NY, Paddington Press, 1979, p. 199.)

  Chapter 24

  1. Judge McLaughlin and former committee investigator William Gallinaro were outraged when a charge of perjury was brought against Mrs Rosenstiel in an unrelated New York case in January 1971. They believed that this was the work of Rosenstiel himself, using money and influence to obstruct the committee inquiry by discrediting his former wife. The millionaire’s attorney in the divorce case, Benjamin Javits, was disbarred for conniving at his client’s attempt to subvert the judicial system. (NYT, Feb. 9, 1971, Village Voice, Feb. 18, 1971, ints. Wm. Gallinaro, Edward McLaughlin, 1988, [Javits] NYT, Jan. 6, 1971.)