by Tim Weiner
8. “What would my instruction”: David Atlee Phillips, The Night Watch: 25 Years of Peculiar Service (New York: Atheneum, 1977), p. 155.
9. “provide excellent fodder”: Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, Sept. 1, 1965, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume 32, Dominican Republic.
10. “That whole operation was really weird”: Crimmins oral history, FAOH.
11. “It is an awful mess”: Hoover to President Johnson, Sept. 10, 1965, LBJ telephone tapes, LBJL.
12. “The President expected”: “Subject: Presidential Election in the Dominican Republic,” Dec. 29, 1965, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume 32, Dominican Republic. The memorandum from acting director of Central Intelligence Helms to the CIA’s deputy director for plans Desmond FitzGerald deserves a fuller quotation:
I want to reiterate, for the record, that the President told the Director and me on more than one occasion between May and mid-July, he expected the Agency to devote the necessary personnel and material resources in the Dominican Republic required to win the presidential election for the candidate favored by the United States Government. The President’s statements were unequivocal. He wants to win the election, and he expects the Agency to arrange for this to happen.
If you are finding road blocks in the way of getting on with this operation, I would appreciate being advised, so that the difficulties can be identified to the President with the aim of securing his influence on the side of financial allocations in support of the appropriate candidate. RH
13. “Hoover has furnished”: Rostow to Johnson, “Balaguer’s First Appointments,” June 11, 1966, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume 32, Dominican Republic.
32. CLEARLY ILLEGAL
1. “The Chinese and North Vietnamese”: Hoover memo for the record, April 28, 1965, cited in Church Committee, “COMINFIL Investigations—The Antiwar Movement and Student Groups.”
2. “We were engaged almost every weekend”: Gamber oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
3. “The demonstrations have been marked”: Hoover to FBI Special Agents in Charge, May 3, 1966, cited in Church Committee, “Civil Disturbance Intelligence.”
4. “I was, frankly, astounded”: Katzenbach, Some of It Was Fun, p. 182. Katzenbach realized that the surveillance of Martin Luther King was potential political dynamite. The FBI planted its last bug on King in November 1965. But wiretaps on King’s close adviser, the suspected Communist Stanley Levison, remained in place.
5. Hoover had installed 738 bugs: FBI assistant director James Gale to FBI assistant director Cartha DeLoach, May 27, 1966, FBI/FOIA.
6. “Students for a Democratic Society, which”: Hoover memo for the record, April 28, 1965, FBI/FOIA.
7. “Wire taps and microphones”: Hoover to Katzenbach, Sept. 14, 1965, FBI/FOIA.
8. “He cannot be trusted”: M. A. Jones to DeLoach, Aug. 2, 1965, FBI/FOIA, cited in Church Committee, “Warrantless FBI Electronic Surveillance.”
9. “Just how gullible can he be!”: Hoover notation on memo to Tolson, “Subject: letter to Sen. Edward Long,” Jan. 21, 1966, FBI/FOIA.
10. “He was always willing”: Cartha D. “Deke” DeLoach, Hoover’s FBI: The Inside Story by Hoover’s Trusted Lieutenant (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1995), p. 58. Fortas had to step down from the Supreme Court in 1969 because of his ethical transgressions; his conduct in Black v. U.S. stayed secret for two decades. Fred Black was a business associate of Bobby Baker’s; Baker was the secretary of the United States Senate when Lyndon Johnson was the majority leader, and he had been accused, but not yet convicted, of political corruption. Hoover had it on good authority (including bugs and wiretaps) that Baker had been a procurer of prostitutes for senators of both parties.
11. “No more such techniques”: Hoover notation, Sullivan to DeLoach, July 19, 1966. FBI/FOIA.
Breaking and entering clearly violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unwarranted searches and seizures. So did mail opening, as the Supreme Court had ruled in an 1878 case, Ex Parte Jackson:
The constitutional guaranty of the right of the people to be secure in their papers against unreasonable searches and seizures extends to their papers, thus closed against inspection, wherever they may be.… No law of Congress can place in the hands of officials connected with the postal service any authority to invade the secrecy of letters and such sealed packages in the mail; and all regulations adopted as to mail matter of this kind must be in subordination to the great principle embodied in the fourth amendment of the Constitution.
12. “clearly illegal”: “Such a technique involves trespass …,” Sullivan memo with Hoover’s notation, July 19, 1966, all reprinted in Church Committee files and in Theoharis, From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover, pp. 129–130; 147–152. LBJ and RFK may not have fully grasped the legal and technical differences between a wiretap on a telephone line, which could be legally authorized, and a bug, a hidden microphone whose installation usually required breaking and entering without a warrant.
13. “In our time in the Bureau”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
14. “Someone got to the old man”: Church Committee staff summary of Louis Tordella interview, June 16, 1975. The CIA’s James Angleton accurately assessed the effect that the changing political climate had on Hoover. “The Congress was delving into matters pertaining to FBI activities,” he said. “Mr. Hoover looked to the President to give him support in terms of conducting those operations. And when that support was lacking, Mr. Hoover had no recourse.” Angleton testimony, Church Committee hearings, Sept. 24, 1975.
15. “Hoover put us out of business”: Cregar classified testimony, Aug. 20, 1975, Church Committee staff files.
Hoover had threatened to pull the plug on the FBI’s surveillances once before: “I want consideration given to terminating all technicals—H.” That note came thundering down from the director on July 21, 1958. “Terminating all technicals” would have meant an end to electronic surveillance—the use of bugs and the break-ins required to install them—and the destruction of hundreds of American intelligence operations. The root of Hoover’s wrath was a CIA leak to Congress about a Soviet defector. Hoover’s anger faded, but his threat to pull the FBI’s bugs from every secret hiding place in America remained.
16. For the next decade, from 1966 to 1976: A grand total of eleven espionage cases were brought against Americans in that decade, and nine of them were investigated by military intelligence and tried by military courts. The primary cause of this decline in FBI counterespionage and counterintelligence was the ceaseless demand by presidents Johnson and Nixon to focus on the political warfare against the American Left. LBJ told Deke DeLoach “that much of the protest concerning his Vietnam policy, particularly the hearings in the Senate,” could be traced to the Soviets and their allies. The statistics and the underlying causes are analyzed in Espionage Against the United States by American Citizens, 1947–2001, Defense Personnel Security Research Center, July 2002.
17. “That guy traveled”: Edmund Birch oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
18. “King was told by Levison”: Hoover to LBJ, July 25, 1967, LBJ telephone tapes, LBJL.
19. “disrupt, misdirect, discredit”: FBI headquarters to field offices, Aug. 25, 1967, FBI/FOIA.
20. liberal-minded men: The intelligence coordination among Attorney General Clark, Deputy Attorney General Christopher, the military, the CIA, and the FBI was detailed first in hearings before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights on April 9 and 10, 1974, and later in the Church Committee’s reports. The major programs undertaken by the FBI, the CIA, and the military were code-named Shamrock and Minaret.
21. “I don’t want anybody to know”: LBJ to Hoover, Feb. 14, 1968, LBJ telephone tapes, LBJL. The full context of these heated discussions is in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume 7, November 1–12, 1968: South Vietnamese Abstention from the Expanded Peace Conference; the Anna Chennault A
ffair.
22. “The Negro youth and moderates”: FBI headquarters to field offices, April 3, 1968, FBI/FOIA. Hoover’s “dead revolutionaries” warning came the day before the assassination of Martin Luther King.
23. “I have been appalled”: FBI headquarters to field offices, July 23, 1968, FBI/FOIA.
24. “He became a kind of Messiah”: Hoover memorandum for the record to Tolson, DeLoach, Sullivan, and Bishop, June 19, 1969, FBI/FOIA.
25. “We’ve lost Thieu”: LBJ telephone tapes, Nov. 1, Nov. 4, Nov. 8, Nov. 12, and Nov. 13, 1968. LBJ determined—after the election—that he could not prove the charge. The FBI, at LBJ’s command, eventually traced five telephone calls placed from the campaign plane of Republican vice presidential candidate Spiro Agnew in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One was a telltale: a conversation between Nixon’s clandestine emissary, Anna Chennault, at a Nixon command center in Washington, and an Agnew aide named Kent Crane, a former CIA officer. The tapes and conversations on the Chennault intrigue are recorded in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume 7, November 1–12, 1968: South Vietnamese Abstention from the Expanded Peace Conference; the Anna Chennault Affair.
26. “If it hadn’t been for Edgar Hoover”: Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, pp. 357–358. The telephone call to Hoover during the Nixon meeting is recorded in LBJ’s daily diary.
33. THE ULTIMATE WEAPON
1. “The risk of war”: Nixon’s sworn deposition in Halperin v. Kissinger, Jan. 15, 1976.
2. “I will warn you now”: Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, pp. 357–358.
3. “my closest personal friend”: Nixon White House tapes, May 3, 1972.
4. “he’d come in alone”: Nixon White House tapes, Feb. 16, 1973.
5. “Almost unbelievable conversation”: H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994), p. 192.
6. “florid and fat-faced”: John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power: The Nixon Years (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), pp. 156–157.
7. “conducted, without a search warrant”: Nixon response to interrogatories, Church Committee, March 9, 1976.
8. “That was Mr. Hoover’s common practice”: Grand jury testimony of Richard Nixon, June 24, 1975, Watergate Special Prosecution Force Records, online at http://www.archives.gov/research/investigations/watergate/nixon-grand-jury/.
9. “This is the way civilizations”: Nixon statement on campus disorders, March 22, 1969.
10. “Attorneys General seldom directed”: Nixon testimony, U.S. v. Felt, Oct. 29, 1980.
11. “his friend and White House confidant”: Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, pp. 156–159.
12. “What is this”: The outrage of Nixon and Kissinger at the leaks, and their handling of the wiretaps, is best summarized in Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992, 2005), pp. 212–227.
13. “Within days”: Nixon, RN: Memoirs, p. 387.
14. “Hoover informed me”: Nixon deposition, Halperin v. Kissinger.
15. “Here he was in this room”: Rodman oral history, FAOH.
16. “a leak which was directly responsible”: Nixon deposition, Halperin v. Kissinger.
17. “Dr. Kissinger said”: Hoover memorandum of conversation with Kissinger, May 9, 1969, FBI, July 9, 1969, 5:05 P.M.
18. “express your appreciation”: “Talking Points for Meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, Wednesday, June 4, 1969,” Library of Congress, Kissinger Papers, Box TS 88.
19. “Here’s your machine”: Dyson oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
20. “the potential to be far more damaging”: Sullivan to DeLoach, Sept. 8, 1969, FBI/FOIA.
21. “attacks against the police”: Brennan to Sullivan, Feb. 3, 1969, FBI/FOIA.
22. “to form commando-type units”: Brennan to Sullivan, Jan. 26, 1970, FBI/FOIA.
23. “They were a bunch of renegades”: Perez oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
24. “Hoover had no idea”: Jones oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
34. “PULL DOWN THE TEMPLE”
1. “the greatest mistake I ever made”: Mark Felt and John O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life: The FBI, Being “Deep Throat,” and the Struggle for Honor in Washington (New York: Public Affairs, 2006), p. 121.
2. “moving ahead of the winds”: Sullivan to Helms, Oct. 24, 1968, FRUS 1964–1968, Volume 33.
3. “I do not think”: Huston testimony, Church Committee, Sept. 23, 1975.
4. “President Nixon was insatiable”: DeLoach oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
5. “gave us all hell”: Nolan oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
6. “The President chewed our butts”: Staff summary of Bennett testimony, Church Committee, June 5, 1975.
7. “revolutionary terrorism”: “Presidential Talking Paper: Meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Helms, Lt. Gen. Bennett and Adm. Gayler, June 5, 1970,” Haldeman White House Files.
8. “Individually, those of us”: Sullivan memorandum, June 6, 1970, Church Committee files.
9. “I saw these meetings”: Cregar testimony, Church Committee staff summary, Aug. 20, 1975.
10. “went through the ceiling”: Sullivan deposition, Nov. 1, 1975, Church Committee.
11. “in view of the crisis of terrorism”: Nixon, RN: Memoirs, pp. 474–475.
12. “Hoover has to be told”: Huston to Haldeman, Aug. 5, 1970.
13. “Mitchell and I”: Haldeman, Haldeman Diaries, p. 243.
14. “I was told five times”: Mardian oral history, Strober and Strober, The Nixon Presidency, p. 225.
15. “running all over the place”: Mark Wagenveld, “Delco Raid Forced Changes in FBI,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 8, 1996.
16. “to steal the nomination”: Nixon White House tapes, May 26, 1971.
17. “The national security information”: Ibid.
18. “Do you remember Huston’s plan?”: Nixon White House tapes, June 17, 1971.
19. “Why Watergate?”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
20. “Hoover refused to investigate”: Nixon White House tapes, May 9, 1973.
21. “In terms of discipline”: Nixon White House tapes, June 29, 1971.
22. “As a young Congressman”: Nixon at graduation exercises of the FBI National Academy, June 30, 1971.
23. “He was trying to demonstrate”: Nixon, RN: Memoirs, pp. 598–599; “At the end of the day”: Haldeman, Haldeman Diaries, p. 357.
24. “He may have suffered”: Ray Wannall, The Real J. Edgar Hoover: For the Record (Paducah, Ky.: Turner Publishing, 2000), p. 146.
25. “playing on the paranoia”: Felt and O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life, pp. 116–121.
26. “There were a few men”: Hoover memorandum of conversation with Rep. H. Allen Smith, May 23, 1966, FBI/FOIA.
27. “We have those tapes”: Nixon White House tapes, Oct. 8, 1971.
28. “We’ve got to avoid the situation”: Nixon White House tapes, Oct. 25, 1971.
29. “Sullivan was the man”: Ibid.
30. “We got to get a professional”: Nixon White House tapes, March 13, 1973.
31. “As political attacks on him multiplied”: Felt and O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life, p. 160.
32. “That son of a bitch Sullivan”: Wannall, The Real J. Edgar Hoover, p. 147.
PART IV • War on Terror
35. CONSPIRATORS
1. “Oh, he died”: Nixon White House tapes, June 2, 1972.
2. “Pat, I am going to appoint you”: L. Patrick Gray III with Ed Gray, In Nixon’s Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate (New York: Times Books, 2008), pp. 17–18.
3. “Never, never figure”: Nixon White House tapes, May 4, 1972.
4. “an interloper bent on pushing”: “they lied to each other”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, pp. 23–27.
5. “Once Hoover died”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH. 310 “He laughed because”: Bledsoe oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
6. “It was agreed”: C. W. Bates, “Subject: James W. McCord Jr. and O
thers,” June 22, 1972, FBI/FOIA.
7. “The FBI is not under control”: Nixon White House tapes, June 23, 1972.
8. “I again told him”: C. W. Bates, “Subject: James W. McCord Jr. and Others,” June 22, 1972, FBI/FOIA.
9. “These should never see the light of day”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, pp. 81–82. Dean corroborated Gray’s account in his Watergate testimony.
10. “There is little doubt”: “FBI Watergate Investigation/OPE Analysis,” July 5, 1974, FBI/FOIA.
11. if “the President decides”: The oral arguments and the ruling are from the Supreme Court records of U.S. v. U.S. District Court, decided June 19, 1972, and more commonly known as the Keith case, after the federal trial court judge whom the Justice Department sued to prevent the disclosure of the warrantless wiretaps. It soon became clear why the Justice Department had fought so long and so hard against the disclosures. The FBI had placed a warrantless tap on the White Panther headquarters in Ann Arbor. The Bureau also had overheard the defendant Plamondon on a warrantless tap aimed at discovering ties between Black Panthers and Palestinian radicals; that surveillance had been part of a highly classified program called MINARET, in which the FBI and the National Security Agency had collaborated to spy on members of the radical antiwar and black power movements since 1967.
12. “They will kidnap somebody”: Nixon White House tapes, Sept. 21, 1972. 313 “Everybody at that meeting”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, p. 117.
13. “he had decided to reauthorize”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
14. “hunted to exhaustion” and “No holds barred”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH; Felt and O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life, pp. 259–260. See also Gray, In Nixon’s Web, pp. 117ff. The FBI’s Paul Daly led the subsequent internal investigation of John Kearney, leader of the FBI’s Squad 47: “I believe I counted up over eight hundred break-ins, for which he was commended.” The Justice Department eventually dropped the case against Kearney, once its investigators understood that he had been following orders from the top of the chain of command.