Jackhammered

by Ed Bethune

  I was on the C-1 squad in Newark. It was our responsibility to investigate all bank robberies and hijackings. There were plenty of bank robberies, but hijackings were out of control in the New York and Newark metropolitan area. Most of our work was in Kearny, Jersey City, Hoboken, Union City, and Bayonne. They all qualified as tough areas.

  Hijackings present an interesting investigative challenge because the thugs who steal the trucks and sometimes kill the drivers have to coordinate their activities with the mob. It does no good to steal an expensive load of cigarettes or whiskey if you do not have a ready market for the “swag.” The mob, powerful at that time, provided the market and protected the merchants who sold the stolen goods to the public. The best way to solve a hijacking was to develop informants who would find out when the hijackers planned to deliver the hijacked truck or trailer to a storage facility, also known as a “drop,” where the goods would be unloaded and transferred to the mob. It was relatively easy to catch the minor players, but it was much harder to reel in the important players, the mobsters and the big merchants who sold the swag to the public. They were wise to the ways of the FBI. Nevertheless, we were good at what we did. We developed a number of good informants, and we spent many hours surveilling hijackers to the drop. There were many days when I got home after a long ride on the commuter train only to discover that the office had called and wanted me to come back in for an all-night surveillance.

  One of the first things I heard when I got to Newark was that its city government was corrupt. Hugh Addonizio, a former congressman, was mayor and in the late 1960s a blue ribbon panel appointed by Governor Richard Hughes reported that there was a pervasive feeling of corruption in the city. The panel recommended the appointment of a special grand jury to investigate the allegations of corruption. I had a brush with Newark corruption when I asked the city police to hold a federal prisoner for me. It was customary to use county and local jails to detain federal prisoners since the federal government had no such facilities. When I returned two days later to get my prisoner, a Newark police lieutenant told me he had charged my prisoner with a state offense and that they were not going to give him back to me. I was furious and got into a shouting match with the lieutenant in the presence of my prisoner. The lieutenant stood his ground so I picked up the phone and called our special agent in charge who immediately called FBI Headquarters in Washington, D. C. to report what was happening. In about ten minutes, the lieutenant got a call and left the room. When he returned, he said I could take the prisoner. As we left the building my prisoner, who seemed flattered that we were arguing over him, said: “Man, I thought you guys were going to draw pistols.” I had little doubt that the mob was behind the effort to get my prisoner out of federal custody. I had arrested him for hijacking, and there was the possibility that the prosecution of his case might be troublesome for organized crime. A few years later, the mayor was convicted for “delivering the city into the hands of organized crime,” according to former U.S. District Judge Herbert J. Stern. In spite of that, corruption continued. Newark was a terrible place to live and raise a family, but it was a good place to be an FBI agent. There was an endless supply of interesting work.

  I had one case where a tip led us to set up surveillance on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. Our information was that the hijacker would be coming from New York to New Jersey in a particular rig. The load was fresh beef, very expensive, but difficult to market because it had to be refrigerated. We waited for hours and our patience paid off. Around noon, the tractor-trailer we were looking for rolled out of the tunnel, and we followed it onto the New Jersey Turnpike, heading south. Usually the drops were in the city, close to the markets, but this load left the metropolitan area and continued south. Surveillance is a tricky business, particularly on the New Jersey Turnpike. You have to avoid detection and that is not easy, because clever hijackers have many tricks they use to “clean” themselves. We had several cars working on this surveillance so we managed to follow the hijackers all the way to an unusual place. They, for some reason unknown to us, had taken the stolen load to a rural area and turned into a large grove of trees protected by acres of open fields. It would be hard to get close enough to see what they were doing, and we needed to get a positive identification of the driver, the vehicles, and some basic idea of what they were doing in order to get authority from the United States attorney to move in and make an arrest. I sneaked up to a tree on a small hill near the grove and climbed up to a perch on the first big branch. Once settled I could see that there were several people and cars in the grove. Typically, hijackers either unload the trailer or just leave it in a hiding place, but these suspects were painting the truck and changing its identifying marks. With that information, we were able to get arrest authority so we converged on the grove from all directions. It was a good bust; we caught several important players and recovered the load of beef. The driver of the rig recognized me from a previous investigation and when he saw me he said, “He’s the guy who ought to get the stripes for this one.”

  Several of the agents on C-1 had been born and raised in the south. Once we surveilled a carload of suspected mobsters from Newark to Philadelphia. We made radio contact with agents from the Philadelphia office as we neared the Delaware River because we were going to transfer the surveillance to them. When it was over we met the Philadelphia agents for a cup of coffee and they said, “Man, you guys sounded like Mississippi coming down the New Jersey Turnpike.” We liked it that we still had our southern drawls.

  Lana and I were determined to make the most out of our time in the New York metropolitan area. We were on a tight budget, but we learned to beat the system by taking picnic lunches on day trips. With careful planning there was a lot to do that did not cost much. We took Sam and Paige to every zoo within a day’s drive of Middlebush, New Jersey. The Bronx Zoo was a good one, but it was no match for the Philadelphia Zoo. We quickly developed our ability to rate zoos and other low-cost public facilities. We were freebie-connoisseurs; nothing escaped our scrutiny. We saw free events at Central Park, free museum events, and we never missed the Macy’s Christmas Parade. F.A.O. Schwartz and other stores had fascinating displays that our kids loved, and we made our way from one place to another on the subway. We tried the Circle Line boat cruise, but it was too pricey. Besides, the cheapest and best boat ride in New York City is the Staten Island Ferry, which gives a great view of Manhattan and passes close to the Statue of Liberty. Lana and I always kept an eye open for bargains on theatre tickets. We managed to see a dozen first-rate Broadway shows. The first one we saw was Funny Girl, but the best was Sweet Charity starring Gwen Verdon as she was winding down her fabulous dancing and acting career.

  In 1966, the Baltimore Orioles won the American League pennant. Brooks Robinson, a native of Little Rock, was the star third baseman for the Orioles. I had played sandlot baseball with Brooks when we were growing up in Little Rock, and we had both made the Little Rock All-Star Team. We were also in the same Boy Scout troop, but Lana had an even closer relationship with Brooks. She had dated him when they were classmates at Pulaski Heights Junior High School and they were in the same graduating class at Little Rock Central High School. In late September, Lana heard that the Orioles were playing one of the last games of the regular season at Yankee stadium. They had not clinched the pennant, but they were close and it was a virtual certainty that they would do it. She picked up the phone, called Yankee stadium, asked for the visitor’s dugout, and when someone answered she said, “I want to speak to Brooks Robinson.” The person on the other end said, “Lady, he’s getting ready for a game, he can’t come to the phone.” Lana replied, “You tell him that Lana Douthit is calling.” In no time at all Brooks was on the phone. Lana said, “Brooks, we are so excited, we have never been to a World Series.” He laughed and said, “Neither have I, Lana.” The next day, the Orioles clinched the pennant and three days after that we got a special delivery letter from Brooks. It contained tickets to games three
and four, scheduled for Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Brooks also invited us to his home for a party before and after each game. I was the envy of the Newark FBI office. We attended both games. The Orioles swept four straight games from the National League champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers. For the first time in franchise history, the Orioles were World Series champions. The Dodgers scored only two runs in the entire series and those runs came in the first three innings of the first game, which meant that the Baltimore pitchers shut out Los Angeles for the last thirty-three innings of the World Series. It was a fantastic accomplishment.

  In late 1966, the FBI transferred me to the resident agency in Red Bank, New Jersey. It was good news because I was tired of my daily commute on the Pennsylvania Railroad. We bought a house in Middletown, only ten minutes from my new office, which backed up to the Navesink River, and Lana landed a teaching job at Middletown High School. I had just received my promotion to GS-11 and now I would not have the expense of commuting. Things were looking up for the Bethune family. We joined a beach club where the children could learn to swim, and we got a big RCA color TV, our first color television set. We did make one mistake as we were outfitting our new home. We purchased a beagle puppy and named him Beau. He was cute, but he loved to jump up on top of his doghouse and, true to the beagle breed, bay at the moon. His baying did not bother us, but many of our close neighbors left their windows open at night because they did not have air conditioning. It was not long until I was getting phone calls asking me to put Beau in the house so the neighbors could get some sleep. On the first night Beau was in the house, he chewed the arm off my favorite stuffed chair. My fellow agents laughed when I told them I was so mad that I was planning to take Beau to the dog pound, but softhearted Jim Marley, our most senior agent, could not bear the thought of that. I seized the opportunity by suggesting he should take Beau, and he agreed. Paige and Sam offered little resistance because their neighborhood friends teased them unmercifully about having a dog that bayed at the moon.

  In the summer of 1967, I got a radio call to go to a chicken farm near Lakewood to assist in an investigation. It was a one hour drive from where I was at the time, and when I got there, around 10:00 a.m., I saw backhoes, trucks, and agents with shovels.

  The case agent, Thomas Powers, was briefing other agents on the situation. A source had provided information that the chicken farm was a Mafia burial ground and that we would find several bodies there.

  The work at the burial ground went on for several days and the digging unearthed several things of interest. I saw the partial remains of one body, a chest cavity with most of the ribs attached. A fellow agent showed me a sixty-gallon drum of fluid that contained a few globules of fat. He theorized it might be the remains of a body stuffed into a drum of acid that neutralized as the body was consumed, leaving only the globules of fat. I—the unscientific dunce who flunked chemistry as a freshman at the University of Arkansas—readily accepted his theory, but I later wondered if my friend was just having some fun with me. The case was big news because it generated sexy headlines and there were good visuals for television—a formula guaranteed to drive the media crazy. For several days, the media treated the entire nation to breathless reports about the FBI digging up a “Mafia Burial Ground.” Soon the media grew tired of telling and retelling the same story so they lost interest and moved on to other things. The burial ground case was just one of many episodes involving La Cosa Nostra (Mr. Hoover’s preferred name for the Mafia) in the late 1960s.

  My work in Red Bank was different than it was in Newark. We had an occasional bank robbery, but hijackings were rare. I worked various cases in and around Fort Monmouth and Long Branch, against a backdrop of national political and cultural turmoil. It was early 1967. The country was tearing itself apart over the Vietnam War, a conflict that was not going well. A new counterculture had formed and many organizations espoused socialist and sometimes communist doctrine. Many Americans opposed escalating the U.S. role in Vietnam, believing the economic cost too high, but most disapproved of the counterculture that had arisen alongside the antiwar movement. Those identified with the new movement were called “Hippies.” Middle Americans, particularly older Americans were uncomfortable with the youth culture of the period—long hair, casual drug use, promiscuity, and protest music.

  The Black Panthers, an extremist group organized in 1966, and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had different ways of operating, but they typified the intense protesting that exploded after President Johnson, in early 1965, ordered the bombing of North Vietnam and introduced ground troops to fight the Viet Cong in South Vietnam.

  There was so much unrest nationwide that it was no surprise to those of us in the FBI when rioting broke out in the black neighborhoods of Newark. The summertime riots lasted six days, ending on July 17, 1967. The city was ablaze. The governor of New Jersey said it was an “obvious open rebellion.” He called out the National Guard and sent large numbers of state troopers in to quell the riot and put an end to the looting, burning and sniping. I had occasion to be in the heart of the riot at the height of the trouble. I will never forget what I saw. It was heart wrenching. It reminded me of the time I saw the National Guard troops and the 101st Airborne surrounding Little Rock Central High School in 1957, only this was worse.

  I wondered: Why are these things happening in the United States of America? The black community of Newark was effectively under military occupation. Twenty-six people died, nearly all from police shootings. Hundreds were injured and the police jailed more than a thousand. Official inquiries later concluded that the riot started because black citizens of Newark felt excluded from meaningful political representation and often suffered police brutality. Unemployment, poverty, and issues over low-quality housing also contributed to the turmoil.

  All during this time of political and cultural upheaval, those of us in federal law enforcement were on alert for attempts to break into armories. The most virulent protest groups had announced their intention to use force, and later a faction of SDS, the Weather Underground, did exactly that.

  It was a difficult time to be an FBI agent, but 1967 was especially difficult for me for a personal reason. My father, after a long illness with lung cancer, died on April 19. Daddy visited us a few months before he died. When he flew into Newark, Lana, the kids, and I met him at the airport. When the flight attendants got him off the plane and into a wheelchair on the tarmac we ran to meet him, but when we got close to him we could see that he was frail, obviously sick. In spite of that, Daddy gave us his trademark smile and managed to keep up a good front for the three days that he stayed with us. I took some time off and we treated Daddy to a complete car tour of our favorite places. When we put him on the plane back to Arkansas I think he knew, as did I, that it was the last time I would see him alive.

  Shortly after Daddy got home my sister put him in a nursing home, and he died a few weeks later. I could not be there for the last days of his illness, but my sister told me it would not have mattered because he was in such bad shape that he would not have known I was there. I flew home for Daddy’s funeral in Wilmot. Aunt Delle made the arrangements. The undertaker would bury Daddy in the cemetery overlooking a lake near Bayou Bartholomew, but friends and family would have a chance to view him in his open casket at Aunt Delle’s house before the burial service. The open casket viewing is an integral part of the Southern Baptist way of saying goodbye to a loved one. My sister and I were so appreciative of Aunt Delle’s help that we did not object to the open casket or the huge amount of food displayed and served throughout the house. My Uncle Rod Bethune attended the funeral, but was not too fond of the Southern Baptist way. He said, as the event wound down: “It’s OK, but it’s a little too picnicky to suit me.” Daddy would have laughed a belly laugh at Uncle Rod’s remark, but then he would have defended Aunt Delle. He was that kind of man. He lived hard, he died hard, and he did it all with good cheer.

  In early 1968, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam turned
out to be a military defeat for the communists, but politicians and military leaders had led the American people to believe that the communists were incapable of launching such a massive effort. The offensive proved our leaders wrong and revealed to the American people that the war in Vietnam was in disarray. On March 31, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek re-election. Just as everyone believed things could get no worse, a gunman assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee. The national turmoil reached a new level, and despite the urging of many leaders, the assassination on April 4, 1968, led to a nationwide wave of riots in more than one hundred cities. The worst of these riots were in Washington, D. C., and Baltimore, Maryland.

  I was deep into my work but I had come to realize that I was stuck in New Jersey. Senior agents, in a position to know, told me that Mr. Hoover had established a policy in the mid-1960s to the effect that no southern born agent could serve in a southern office until he had been in the Bureau for a long time. He made the rule after Dr. King, who Mr. Hoover never got along with, alleged that FBI agents in the South were unsympathetic to civil rights allegations. If I ever got an assignment outside New Jersey, it would not be in the South. The barrier to serving in the South was a concern. We would have loved a transfer to Arkansas, but it never really bothered us until one day our kids came home from preschool and our four-year-old son, Sam, said in a perfect New Jersey brogue as he was taking a Dr. Pepper out of the refrigerator: “Hey, youse guys want a bottle of pop?” Lana and I looked at each other, knowingly. We wanted our children to have the same kind of early life we had had growing up in Arkansas. We wanted them to know their Arkansas relatives and understand their Arkansas roots.