by Jim Marrs
After World War II, FBI intelligence activities increased, thanks to the anticommunist hysteria of the Cold War years. In fact, it was the FBI that launched senator Joseph McCarthy on his ill-fated anticommunist crusade. In 1950, a one-hundred-page FBI document alleging communist infiltration of the US government was leaked to a military intelligence officer with instructions to pass it along to the Jewish American League Against Communism. The league offered the document to McCarthy, who was further encouraged to fight communism by Father Edmund A. Walsh, vice president of Georgetown University and an anticommunist author.
Assistant FBI Director Sullivan wrote, “We gave McCarthy all we had, but all we had were fragments, nothing could prove his allegations.”
While Hoover always claimed that information the bureau collected was never to be released to unauthorized persons, it was a rule that he bent for friends. In 1948, when New York governor Thomas Dewey ran for president against Harry Truman, Hoover secretly agreed to put the bureau’s resources at his disposal, hoping that he would be made attorney general upon Dewey’s election. Dewey lost.
In 1954, vice president Richard Nixon was able to obtain information in FBI files to use in his attack against representative Robert L. Condon of California.
It is well-known now that Hoover deliberately leaked derogatory material on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960s as a part of COINTELPRO, Hoover’s secret counterintelligence program.
It was this ability, first to gather information and then to control it, that gave Hoover his extraordinary power. Former assistant FBI director Sullivan wrote:
Hoover was always gathering damaging material on Jack Kennedy, which the President, with his active social life, seemed more than willing to provide. We never put any technical surveillance on JFK, but whatever came up was automatically funneled directly to Hoover. I was sure he was saving everything he had on Kennedy, and on Martin Luther King, Jr., too, until he could unload it all and destroy them both. He kept this kind of explosive material in his personal files, which filled four rooms on the fifth floor of headquarters.
Perhaps the presence of these files, which still held information on Kennedy and Inga Arvad, explains why reappointing Hoover was one of JFK’s first actions after becoming president.
It has been reported that Hoover’s personal and confidential files were destroyed soon after his death by Tolson and Hoover’s faithful secretary, Helen Gandy.
Hoover’s reappointment by Kennedy certainly wasn’t due to Hoover’s politics. A Republican who liked to boast that he had never voted, Hoover had quietly helped Nixon as much as possible during the 1960 campaign. According to Sullivan, Hoover did his best to keep the news media supplied with anti-Kennedy stories.
Hoover’s methods of ingratiating himself both to presidents and attorneys general he served have been well documented. He would send them letters marked “Top Secret, Eyes Only” filled with juicy tidbits of gossip about congressmen and political enemies. Most presidents disdained this practice, but two—Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon—seemed to enjoy the unusual channel of information.
Nixon and Hoover were GOP allies from the days when Nixon was a representative from California. Sullivan noted, “I spent many days preparing material based on research taken from FBI files that I knew was going straight from Hoover to congressman Nixon, material which Nixon used in speeches, articles and investigations.”
Nixon had been rejected as an FBI agent in 1937—Hoover later told him that the bureau wasn’t hiring at the time, but the agent who rejected him reported that Nixon was “lacking in aggression.” Despite this, Nixon and Hoover remained close friends. Hoover was a regular dinner guest at the Nixon White House in later years.
Following the assassination, Lyndon Johnson had a strong right-hand man in Hoover. According to Sullivan, Johnson—worried that Robert Kennedy might make a grab for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1964—asked Hoover for a special security team of FBI men, headed by Cartha D. DeLoach. Sullivan wrote, “Ostensibly, the agents would be there to guard against threats to the President, but this security force was actually a surveillance team, a continuation of the FBI’s surveillance on Martin Luther King in Atlantic City. By keeping track of King, LBJ could also keep track of RFK.”
Johnson and Hoover had much in common, according to Sullivan. He wrote, “Johnson and Hoover had their mutual fear and hatred of the Kennedys in common—and more. As neighbors in Washington since the days when Johnson was a senator from Texas, they had been frequent dinner guests in each other’s homes.”
Johnson cemented his friendship with—and perhaps his power—over Hoover in January 1964, less than two months after Kennedy’s assassination. In a ceremony conducted in the White House Rose Garden, Johnson praised his friend Hoover as “a hero to millions of decent citizens, and an anathema to evil men.”
After noting Hoover’s accomplishments through the years, Johnson said:
Edgar, the law says that you must retire next January when you reach your 70th birthday, and I know you wouldn’t want to break the law. But the nation cannot afford to lose you. Therefore, by virtue of and pursuant to the authority vested in the President, I have today signed an Executive Order exempting you from compulsory retirement for an indefinite period of time.
Although this order was renewed each year, it was tantamount to installing Hoover as FBI director for life since it would have required a subsequent executive order to rescind this action. Such action put an end to pre-assassination rumors in DC that Kennedy would use the mandatory retirement limit to remove Hoover after the 1964 election.
This extraordinary action coupled with the timing—with both the Warren Commission and the FBI’s assassination investigation just getting into full swing—has led more suspicious assassination researchers to suspect that this presidential exemption was a partial payment to Hoover for his lack of a penetrating probe into Kennedy’s death.
Shortly after this event, Hoover replaced Courtney Evans as the bureau’s White House liaison with Cartha DeLoach, who had been quite intimate with Johnson since his early days in the Senate. DeLoach figured prominently in the assassination investigation and revealed in the 1970s that Johnson had begun to suspect that the CIA had something to do with Kennedy’s death, ignoring the malfeasance of the FBI.
According to Sullivan, once Johnson assumed the powers of the presidency, his relationship with the trusty Hoover began to change. He wrote:
The Director was over 65 by that time, past retirement age for federal employees, and he stayed in office only because of a special waiver which required the President’s signature each year. That waiver put Hoover right in Johnson’s pocket. With that leverage, Johnson began to take advantage of Hoover, using the Bureau as his personal investigative arm. His never-ending requests were usually political, and sometimes illegal. . . . And Hoover hot-footed it to Johnson’s demands . . . he found himself very much in the back seat, almost a captive of the President.
In addressing the relationship between Hoover and Johnson, biographer Richard Gid Powers wrote, “Because of the extraordinary rapport between them, there was no service Hoover would refuse Johnson, no matter how far removed it might be from his law enforcement or domestic intelligence responsibilities.”
Some researchers have darkly hinted that LBJ may have had more leverage on Hoover than simply securing his job as director—that it may have had something to do with the JFK assassination.
There can be no doubt that Hoover had an abiding and intense hatred for both John and Robert Kennedy, because of their politics, their associates, their personal lives, and their style. Sullivan recalled hearing Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s associate director, confidant, and roommate, once say, “Goddamn the Kennedys. First there was Jack, now there is Bobby, and then Teddy. We’ll have them on our necks until the year 2000.” Hoover reportedly nodded in agreement.
This hatred for the Kennedys makes the bureau’s numerous contacts with Lee Harvey Oswald all
the more suspicious. The FBI was involved with Oswald starting when he went to Russia. Then there was Hoover’s 1960 memo to the State Department, warning “there is a possibility that an impostor is using Oswald’s birth certificate.” Very much aware of Oswald and even suspecting that someone may have been posing as the ex-Marine, the FBI attempted to keep tabs on Oswald after his attempted defection to Russia.
On April 27, 1960, John W. Fain, a resident FBI agent in Fort Worth, interviewed Robert Oswald concerning his brother’s activities in the Soviet Union. The older Oswald said his whole family was shocked at his brother’s behavior and that Lee had never had any sympathy for or connection with communism before his trip to Russia. Fain also interviewed Marguerite Oswald the next day concerning a $25 money order she had tried to send to her son.
Apparently the FBI was not the only US agency with an active interest in Oswald. On July 3, 1961, more than a year before Oswald arrived back home from Russia, Fain prepared another report on Oswald. This report is rich in detail of Oswald’s life history as well as his activities in the Soviet Union. According to this document, much of the information on Oswald came from the district office of naval intelligence in New Orleans.
Armed with this naval intelligence information, Fain and FBI special agent Tom Carter requested a meeting with Oswald at the Fort Worth FBI office on June 25, 1962, less than two weeks after the Oswalds arrived back in Fort Worth from Russia. According to their report, Oswald told of flying home with Marina and their child, but he failed to mention the stopover in Atlanta. He also told of borrowing $435 to get home, but he declined to talk about why he went to Russia, saying only that he didn’t want to relive the past.
The agents said Oswald “exhibited an impatient and arrogant attitude” during the interview. He also denied that he had attempted to renounce his American citizenship and that he had offered the Russians any military information.
Interestingly, Oswald did assure the FBI agents that “in the event he is contacted by Soviet Intelligence under suspicious circumstances or otherwise, he will promptly communicate with the FBI.” Could this agreement have been the beginning of a special relationship between Oswald and the bureau?
Oswald’s next recorded contact with the bureau was on August 16, 1962, when Fain and Special Agent Arnold Brown approached him near his home at 2703 Mercedes Street in Fort Worth, where he and Marina had lived for about a month. Believing that Oswald had been “evasive” during his first interview, Fain had decided to contact him again, only this time the agents sat with Oswald in a parked car near his home. Fain explained that they didn’t want to embarrass Oswald in front of his wife, so they declined his offer to come into the house.
The more suspicious researchers view this unusual meeting in a car as a time when the FBI may have begun to recruit Oswald as an informant. But according to the agents, Oswald once again denied any misconduct in Russia, denied that he had tried to defect, and denied that any Soviet intelligence personnel had ever tried to contact him or offer any “deals.” Once again, Oswald agreed to contact the FBI if anyone connected with Soviet intelligence tried to meet with him.
After satisfying themselves that Oswald was not a member of the American Communist Party, Fain and Brown marked the Oswald file closed. Fain retired from the bureau on October 29, 1962.
However, that was not to be the last contact between Oswald and the bureau. After arriving in New Orleans in the spring of 1963, Oswald became the object of yet another security investigation by the FBI. This time the special agent in charge of Oswald’s file was Milton R. Kaack, who prepared a detailed report dated October 31, 1963, on Oswald, his background, and his New Orleans activities.
But the strangest contact between Oswald and the bureau came on August 10, 1963, the day after his arrest for disturbing the peace while handing out Fair Play for Cuba Committee leaflets on a New Orleans street corner.
Did Oswald Work for the FBI?
If Oswald indeed participated in spy work, particularly for the United States, it was most likely known to the FBI. What better prospect to recruit as an informant than an experienced American agent with a procommunist background or “cover”?
It is telling to note that following his arrest in New Orleans, Oswald, styled as a malcontent loner who tried to defect to Russia, should ask to meet with an FBI agent rather than a lawyer.
The day after Oswald’s arrest in New Orleans for disturbing the peace was a Saturday. The weekend is hardly a time for a quick FBI response to the request of a police prisoner jailed for creating a disturbance, a minor infraction. Yet special agent John Quigley soon arrived at the New Orleans police station and met with Oswald for an hour and a half.
The five-page report of that meeting written by Quigley reads like a comprehensive report on the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Oswald gave the agent background information on himself, then detailed his activities since coming to New Orleans, including his attempt to form a Fair Play for Cuba Committee chapter and the squabble between Oswald and anti-Castro Cubans.
Quigley, who told the Warren Commission he had never heard of Oswald until that Saturday, had a faulty memory. He later admitted that on April 18, 1961, he had reviewed Oswald’s Navy file at the nearby US Naval Air Station in Algiers, Louisiana, at the request of the Dallas FBI office.
Quigley could give the Commission no reason why Oswald had wanted to see an FBI agent in 1963, but an FBI document released in 1977 may give a clue. There Quigley reports being contacted by a New Orleans police intelligence officer who “said that Oswald was desirous of seeing an agent and supplying to him information with regard to his activities with the FPCC in New Orleans.” Again this statement, along with the detailed description Oswald gave of his activities, seems to indicate that Oswald was trying to make some sort of report. In this “report,” Oswald continually mentions the fictitious head of the New Orleans FPCC, A. J. Hidell, saying that he had talked with Hidell several times by telephone but had never met him. Asked for Hidell’s number, Oswald said he couldn’t remember it.
In all, at least ten FBI agents filed affidavits with the Warren Commission stating unequivocally that Lee Harvey Oswald was never an informant for the bureau. Could they have said the same for “Harvey Lee Oswald,” or “A. J. Hidell”? During his Warren Commission testimony, Quigley made an odd slip of the tongue, referring to Oswald as “Harvey Lee Oswald” until corrected by assistant counsel Samuel Stern. It is well-known that FBI informants, and even agents themselves, often use code, or cover names.
It is interesting to note that J. Gordon Shanklin and Kyle G. Clark, the FBI supervisors in the Dallas office, mentioned only that no payment was made to Oswald for information in their affidavits. They did not specifically deny knowledge of Oswald as an informant, as had the other agents in their affidavits.
Other circumstances of Oswald’s New Orleans stay also indicate the possibility of a relationship with the FBI. In 1975, a New Orleans bar owner, Orest Pena, claimed to have seen Oswald in his Habana Bar in the company of both Cubans and FBI agent Warren De Brueys.
Pena, himself an FBI informant and a Cuban exile associated with the CIA-backed Cuban Revolutionary Council, said he remembered Oswald as a man who came into his bar with a Cuban and ordered a lemonade, then vomited it up. He said he saw Oswald together with De Brueys and other “government agents” on several occasions.
Pena also said that about ten days before he was to testify before the Warren Commission, De Brueys threatened him, saying, “If you ever talk anything about me, I will get rid—I’ll get rid of your ass.”
Pena added that Commission staff counsel Wesley J. Liebeler did not let him speak freely, so he decided to keep his mouth shut. Agent De Brueys denied both allegations and the House Select Committee on Assassinations chose to believe him.
Then there is the strange story of William S. Walter, who served as a security clerk for the New Orleans FBI office in 1963. Like CIA paymaster James Wilcott, Walter was a minor functionary who clai
med to have seen the wrong things. When he tried to tell what he knew, he found himself facing an official stone wall. Testifying to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Walter said he was on duty the day that Quigley interviewed Oswald in the New Orleans police station. In response to Quigley’s request for a file check on Oswald that day, he said he found that the New Orleans FBI office maintained both a security and an informant file on Oswald. However, Quigley told the committee that there was no informant file on Oswald, only the security file.
Walter’s story apparently was echoed by Dallas FBI agent Will Hayden Griffin. According to a 1964 FBI memorandum, Griffin reportedly told people that Oswald was definitely an FBI informant and that files in Washington would prove it. Griffin later denied making any such comment.
But Walter had other information for the committee. He claimed that while he was serving night duty in the FBI office on November 17, 1963, the New Orleans FBI office received a teletype from FBI headquarters warning against a possible assassination attempt on Kennedy during the coming trip to Dallas on November 22. Walter said he was alone in the New Orleans FBI office in the early morning hours when the teletype came through. He said it was headed “urgent,” marked to the attention of all special agents, and signed “Director.”
The thrust of the teletype was that the bureau had received information that a “militant revolutionary group” might attempt to assassinate Kennedy on his proposed trip to Dallas. It went on to say that all receiving offices should “immediately contact all CI’s [confidential or criminal informants], PCI’s [potential confidential or criminal informants], local racial and hate-group informants and determine if any basis for threat. Bureau should be kept advised of all developments by teletype.”