by Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover;America in the Age of Lies
Hoover was married to the Bureau, which meant everything to him. That may be one reason he didn’t want a wife or children. Work was his life and his family. Any involvement that asked more of him than routine and company would have felt like a subtraction to him; it would have taken him away from his first love: the agency he was building.
Going after immigrant Communists with Mitchell Palmer had given Hoover his first break; battling gangsters now turned him into a hero. “The tougher the attacks get,” Hoover boasted, “the tougher I get.” That was his genius, dating back to his early childhood, when he mastered his stutter and triumphed at debate: his ability to turn every potential weakness into a greater show of strength. But that inner fire also exacted a price: his need to win was so powerful that it left a trail of victims. What drove Hoover? Why were power and control so all-important to him?
On March 1, 1932, the tiny son of the aviator-hero Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped and held for ransom. Two months later, the boy was found dead. The crime shocked the nation. Who would bring such a heartless criminal to justice? Local police did not seem to have any answers. Franklin D. Roosevelt had just been elected president but had not yet taken office. He had promised a New Deal in which scientific experts in Washington would manage the economy and lift the nation out of the Great Depression. Who could bring that same clear-eyed approach to police work? The New York Times reported that J. Edgar Hoover was a real-life Sherlock Holmes whose modern science and relentless determination could make the nation safe.
Or could he? An August 1933 issue of Collier’s magazine described a totally different man. Hoover “looks utterly unlike the story-book sleuth. . . . He is short, fat, businesslike, and walks with mincing step.” The word mincing, along with a description of Hoover’s carefully matched tie, handkerchief, and socks, implied that he was homosexual. Was he? This is the second key question historians ask about Hoover.
Rumors about Hoover and men were common in his lifetime and are even more widespread today. The most frequently recounted myths are that he enjoyed wearing women’s clothes, took part in homosexual orgies, and had a lifetime male sexual partner. The first two stories are simply not true. They say more about the fantasies and motivations of the people who spread them than about Hoover. Serious historians shade the third point in a more interesting way. Hoover loved being part of a close circle of guys — from his cadet corps to the Masonic lodge he joined to the Bureau he created. One astute historian calls this being “homosocial”— strongly preferring that all-male world. But he also needed to have one man in his life — one handsome friend to whom he was so close that they were inseparable. In 1928, Clyde Tolson joined the Bureau and soon took the place of Frank Baughman, who married, and Guy Hottel, who was quite the ladies’ man. For forty years, Hoover and Tolson left their separate homes and then rode to work, ate lunch, and vacationed together. In the 1930s they often wore identical clothes, as if they were kids playing twins at a dress-up party. Had Tolson not been so ill, he probably would have followed Hoover as the head of the FBI. He did inherit most of Hoover’s considerable wealth. They were partners, but what did that mean? What happened between them in private?
Hoover was in his element in male clubs and secret societies. Here he accepts a “swagger stick” from the Potentate of the Aames Temple of the Shriners.
In a photo album Hoover made for himself, he included shots of Tolson asleep in his pajamas, and a roll of pictures taken while they were on vacation includes an image of a fully clothed Tolson reclining on a beach chair at an angle that could be seen as intimate or erotic. But who snapped the pictures and whether they reflected humor, affection, or something more we just cannot say.
My view, and that of most historians, is that Hoover did not have a sexual relationship with Tolson. He was not hiding his bedchamber from public view. Rather, he was hiding his desires from himself. When asked why he never married, Hoover once said, “I have always held girls and women on a pedestal. If I ever marry and the girl fails me, ceases to love me, and our marriage is dissolved, it would ruin me. My mental status could not take it, and I would not be responsible for my actions.” In his mind there was only purity and depravity — the pedestal or the raving lunatic. Even to feel desire for another man would totally unbalance his rigidly guarded “mental status.” Having seen his father decline, he would never let that happen to him.
Hoover was obsessive, perhaps afraid of what he might find out about himself. Even though he washed, and washed, and kept washing his hands, he sensed that invisible germs and bugs were all around him and could easily invade his body. He added air filters to his house to “electrocute” poisons wafting by and built a special toilet seat, raised like a throne; that way, no stealthy microbes could enter him. But the dangers he sensed were not just viruses and bacteria; he was equally on guard against toxic ideas and emotions. Again and again he warned how evil forces could debauch, deprave, and pervert a child’s innocent mind. As two leading scholars who have studied Hoover see it, Hoover devoted his life to building a wall against infections — whether those were germs, or desires, or Communists.
A new FBI agent was told to watch his words in the bathroom (where men might possibly try to match up with other men) because “the boss don’t understand queers, but he’s scared to death of them.” Hoover was so afraid of being contaminated by homosexual desire that he, in a sense, spied on himself, making absolutely sure that he would never even feel anything shameful; he smothered himself. That mind-set also made him hyperalert to external threats. He lived in a constant state of suspicion — which is one description of just how alert the guardian of a nation’s safety needs to be.
Hoover knew that even to dispute the Collier’s article, which implied that he was homosexual, would be to spread the rumor. Instead, he made sure to take long, manly strides as he walked, and soon Liberty magazine announced that Hoover’s “compact body, with the shoulders of a light heavyweight boxer, carries no ounce of extra weight — just 170 pounds of live, virile humanity.” That was the Hoover strategy: don’t argue with your enemy; create a new story that erases him from the record. The rumors about Hoover and Tolson were just one more threat that made him stronger.
PHOTO DOSSIER:
The following pages present a sample of the visual evidence we can use to make sense of Hoover, his inner desires, and his relationship with Clyde Tolson. Hoover was clearly making a statement about how similar he and his close associate were. Why? If you add together Hoover the lively spectator at sports events, Hoover the master filer, and Hoover the publicity hound, you get the sense that he liked display, performance, and watching others perform. Rather than being a person who needed to hide or disguise his private life, perhaps he just liked watching others and collecting their secrets while feeling safe and pure himself.
Hoover between Guy Hottel and Clyde Tolson, Miami, 1938. From his fancy shoes to the expression on his face, Hoover seems an almost giddy fashion plate — which could be interpreted as feminine.
Hoover and Tolson earlier the same year, demonstrating their identical manly determination — from the swing of their fists to the pace of their strides.
Hoover and Tolson vacationing in Florida in 1937.
This roll of shots taken in California, where Hoover and Tolson vacationed, might be seen as lovers’ portraits, but we cannot say for sure who took them or what degree of intimacy they reflect. I found them among Hoover’s FBI photo collection at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
Hoover and Tolson in their identical white suits, celebrating Clyde’s twentieth year at the FBI
This commissioned shot of Hoover’s home shows him as the lifetime collector who loved getting presents and putting them on display. Equally evident are the statues of nude athletic males.
In the early 1930s, America needed heroes. The glamour of the 1920s — Babe Ruth smashing home-run records, Charles Lindbergh soaring solo across the Atlantic, even so-called Captains of Industr
y and stock-market geniuses producing easy money out of nothing — seemed an outdated illusion. The most popular film in 1931 was Frankenstein, in which the main character becomes a savage beast. And the new star people rushed to see was James Cagney, playing a criminal on the rise in The Public Enemy.
People loved watching Cagney play a poor kid fighting his way up in a tough world where no one has clean hands. The film was fiction, but it was based on real gangsters of the time. The criminal with a gun and an attitude had become the new star. When one robber was caught, he spoke straight to those eager fans: “My conscience doesn’t hurt me. I stole from bankers. They stole from the people.” A gangster hero was Hoover’s nightmare — until he seized the moment.
John Dillinger was a real-life Public Enemy who was as charming and fearless as any Hollywood star. He broke out of jail three times, and even when, as in the following photo, he was surrounded by police, he seemed to be the one in charge, and sure of his next move. Sheriff Lillian Holley (on the far left) had Dillinger safely in her Indiana jail — until he made a fake pistol out of wood, grabbed real guns from his guards, and drove off in the sheriff’s own car. The longer Dillinger was on the loose, the more he seemed like a dashing Robin Hood outclassing the fumbling, inept police.
This famous photo shows Dillinger, on the right, in complete command while in the hands of the law. Then as now, a person with star power could command a scene, even when under arrest.
Here is how Don Whitehead, in the officially approved book The FBI Story, described him: “John Herbert Dillinger led a kill-crazy gang which swept through the Midwest from September, 1933, until July, 1934.” Dillinger’s men robbed a dozen banks, then gunned down four lawmen in Kansas City. Hoover was furious. He saw the Kansas City Massacre as “a challenge to law and order and civilization itself.” But in public relations terms, this “challenge” was just what Hoover needed.
Even as Dillinger was grabbing headlines, the attorney general was preparing a sweeping new anticrime program that granted Hoover and his men a vast array of new powers. The more Dillinger flouted the law, the more eager Congress was to arm and empower Hoover. Bureau agents were given oversight over newly defined national crimes; they could now make arrests and carry guns. Next step: bring down Dillinger, whom Hoover had dubbed “Public Enemy Number One.” On March 31, 1934, two agents cornered Dillinger in a house in St. Paul, Minnesota — but they left one door unguarded, and he slipped away again.
Dillinger’s gang was loose somewhere in the Midwest. That meant the Bureau’s team was going to be led by Melvin Purvis, a rail-thin, extremely short agent known for his South Carolina accent and his taste for just the right hats and clothes. Purvis was a dedicated lawman who had been promoted to be the special agent in charge in Chicago. Hoover and Purvis were quite different. The director was a master of filing whose genius was in running an organization, while his special agent worked best out on his own — even if that left his paperwork neglected and his staff confused. That difference in style was only the beginning of their fatal conflict.
Purvis learned that Dillinger and his men were squirreled away in a vacation lodge in Little Bohemia, Wisconsin. He rushed to phone Hoover, rounded up ten agents, and found two small planes (one borrowed from a movie actress) to fly them to a tiny airport fifty miles from the hideout. The Bureau was still so small and ill equipped that the agent nearest to the airport was standing in the lot of a Ford dealership begging to borrow a few cars when he heard the planes overhead. In turn, Purvis had no plan: driven by the “fever for action,” the agents were rushing to get to the Dillinger gang before they dispersed. While the airport was a scene of near chaos, back in Washington, Hoover was beaming. He was so sure they’d get the most wanted man in America, he couldn’t wait to tell the press. Newsmen were told to be ready — the manhunt was just about to end.
By ten p.m., Purvis and his men were in the woods, creeping slowly and quietly toward their prey. Now they were just two hundred feet from the door. Suddenly the silence was broken by loud barking: two collies heard the men coming and were doing their guard-dog best to alert their owners. Sure that Dillinger would get the message and run, Purvis spread out his men and readied them to shoot. Three men came out of the two-story wooden lodge, settled into a car, and began driving, radio blaring, headlights off.
“Halt!” Purvis shouted. “We’re federal officers!” The car drove straight ahead. “Stop the car!” yelled another agent. The car sped on.
Twenty-eight shots rang out — wounding two men, killing a third — and now, finally, warning the Dillinger gang inside. One after another they leaped through the back windows and scrambled into the dark woods. Baby Face Nelson was known to be a shoot-first heartless killer. As he was escaping, Nelson ran into two agents and a policeman. He killed one and wounded the other two.
Hoover’s great raid, which he had hoped would be the triumph of his Bureau with its expanding role, left a dead civilian, a dead agent, and yet more proof that no one could touch Dillinger. Purvis offered his resignation, and rumors spread that Hoover might lose his job. Changing the headlines was now an absolute necessity. Hoover did not accept Purvis’s resignation, perhaps calculating that to do so would be to admit that the Bureau had failed. But he appointed Samuel Cowley, another agent, to lead the Dillinger hunt.
During Hoover’s lifetime, the official story never mentioned the innocent deaths at the vacation lodge; they were snipped out of history as if they had never happened. And that was just one of the many ways Hoover’s public-relations men massaged the facts.
Since the whole Little Bohemia story had been erased, the official version needed a new starting point. Hoover’s authors found just the right incident when Dillinger fled from Indiana to Illinois in a stolen car. Since the robber had crossed a state line, the Bureau was now on the case. This was perfect: instead of the agents fumbling an attack, they could be described as cool, efficient lawmen. Now Dillinger was the bumbler who did not realize the trouble he would bring on himself once he was up against the national organization. Hoover supposedly ordered Cowley to “stay on Dillinger. Go anywhere the trail takes you.” Dillinger, though, had gotten a plastic surgeon to make him look like a different man. How was Cowley going to “stay on” a man who had become someone else?
As the old FBI story went, Cowley tracked down a woman named Anna Sage who knew exactly where to find Dillinger. The master robber was planning to take her to a movie the next day — only she was not sure which theater he’d choose. Cowley gathered a squad of agents and waited to spot Sage. Wherever she was, Dillinger would be. She wore an orange dress so she’d be easy to pick out. But under the glaring lights of the Biograph Theater, the dress looked red. The Woman in Red became the road sign. Once Cowley saw her, he phoned his boss, “who was pacing the library at his home in Washington.” Purvis loitered at the front of the theater, holding a cigar, waiting for the most wanted criminal in America to emerge. When Purvis reached to light up, the agents knew they had their man. Dillinger sensed something was wrong, turned around, and saw a man walking toward him too quickly and purposefully. He “darted toward an alley, clawing a pistol from his pants pocket.” The Bureau’s men were a step ahead this time. “Slugs tore into Dillinger’s body and he pitched on his face. The chase was over.”
If you listened to Hoover, the success of the Dillinger fight was due to Cowley — who was soon promoted — as well as to the teamwork and efficiency of the Bureau. Purvis was there to help out and light a cigar. Unless you dug back in the archives, you would not know that the entire story was created to serve two purposes: to craft an image of Hoover’s men as faceless, efficient, and irresistible, and to eclipse any memory of Melvin Purvis, superstar.
Hoover’s pursuit of Dillinger aimed not only to capture a criminal but also to announce that a relentless and efficient set of lawmen was guarding the nation.
In reality, Purvis got the tip about the movie theater; it was part of a deal he’d made with Sage, an im
migrant from Europe, who was in danger of being deported. She offered news of Dillinger in exchange for help staying in the country. Purvis promised to do his best. And it was Purvis who walked up behind Dillinger and insisted, “OK, Johnnie, drop your gun.” While Purvis fought to make good on the deal with Sage, Hoover ignored him and made no effort to help her when she was deported. The clash over how to deal with Sage was just the first move in a larger struggle. Every time Purvis made the news, Hoover worked harder to overshadow him. By August, American Detective Magazine quoted Cowley as nominating a new hero in the Dillinger saga: “One man alone is responsible for the end of John Dillinger, and that man is J. Edgar Hoover.”
While Hoover steered his press contacts to change history, he used his power within the Bureau to punish his all-too-famous agent. Purvis was criticized for being a poor office manager (which was true), for getting to work too late and not filling out forms correctly, even for speaking too softly on the phone. More than anything, Hoover was furious that Purvis seemed to like publicity, to want to call attention to himself.
In October, Purvis burst into the headlines again. He led a team of agents who trapped and killed another famous gangster: Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Hoover immediately insisted that “Mr. Purvis is also to leave tonight and the curtain is to be pulled down on the publicity there.” The curtain stayed down; reporters who asked the Bureau for the most basic background information on its star agent were turned away. Instead of being given juicy details about Purvis, they were instructed that “our system of operations is such that through cooperative efforts a case is broken.” To call attention to any “so-called ‘hero’ of a situation” would only inspire jealousy and hurt morale. But Purvis just could not remain in the shadows.