J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  On first meeting Miss Gandy, Gray had noticed “that packing boxes were on the floor of her office and that file drawers were open.”8 When he expressed interest, Miss Gandy told him that these were Mr. Hoover’s personal papers. They included matters concerning his estate, income tax returns, stock market purchases, oil leases, and other investments, the deed for his home, his dogs’ pedigrees, as well as nearly half a century of personal correspondence. The director numbered among his friends many famous people, Miss Gandy said. Afraid that in the event of his death the letters might be sold for their autographs, Mr. Hoover had instructed her to destroy them. She was, she said, complying with his wishes.*

  Gray thanked her and let her get on with her work, unaware that he was at that moment looking at J. Edgar Hoover’s most secret files.

  Had it not been for two broken promises, it is probable that by now the president himself would have known exactly where the much-sought-after files were located.

  During his long association with J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon had become particularly close to one of his top aides, Louis Nichols, who for many years headed Crime Records, the Bureau’s vast public relations division. The friendship had continued after Nichols left the FBI. In 1968 Nichols had served on the candidate’s six-man advisory board, in charge of ballot security. Convinced, as was Nixon, that the 1960 election had been stolen by the Democrats, Nichols and a specially selected team of ex-agents had the job of making sure it didn’t happen again.

  According to Nichols, Nixon firmly believed that although Texas had been stolen, their 1968 program had “saved Illinois, New Jersey, and several other states.”

  Meeting in Nixon’s New York apartment in the Hotel Pierre following his victory, the president-elect had told Nichols, “Lou, I know you saved the election for us. It goes without saying—if there’s anything you want, it’s yours.”

  Nichols wanted only two things: “to stop this damn sniping at Hoover” and, when Hoover decided to retire, “a promise that his successor will come from within the Bureau.” The two men shook hands on it.12

  Nixon not only failed to muzzle the snipers, including his top aide, John Ehrlichman; he had himself, on at least two occasions, almost asked Hoover to resign. As for the second promise, in the two days following Hoover’s death Nichols had tried repeatedly to reach the president. But Nixon never returned the calls, and so Nichols, one of the few people who knew their exact location, never told him about the files.

  Since taking over the Bureau in 1924, J. Edgar Hoover had found it advisable to keep separate from the General Files certain highly sensitive information; the stated reason for this separation was so that file clerks would not come across it and gossip about what they’d seen. These materials—which included dossiers, memos, letters, photographs, depositions, case summaries, microphone and wiretap logs, presidential correspondence, and special investigations—were kept in a confidential file in Miss Gandy’s office.

  By the early 1940s the file had grown so large as to be a problem. Therefore, in an October 1, 1941, memo of very limited circulation—sent only to assistant directors and above—Hoover ordered the file divided into three separate confidential files. One file, to be maintained in the National Defense Division (later, following the war, it was transferred to the Special File Room) included “confidential memoranda on undercover and SIS [Special Intelligence Service] employees; name, number and brief biography of confidential informants; list of technical surveillances and history of each; list of surveillance maintained on diplomatic representatives at the sanction of the State Department, and other similar items.”

  A second confidential file was set up in the office of Louis Nichols in Crime Records. Although Hoover’s memo did not explicitly state what should be kept in this file, Nichols had among his responsibilities congressional liaison, and at least some of the individual folders dealt with members of Congress. Their contents might be as innocuous as a list of FBI contacts with the particular senator or congressman (as when requesting an FBI tour for constituents); they might also, and often did, include personal information, sometimes derogatory in nature, the source ranging from such factual documentation as an arrest record or an endorsed check to unsubstantiated rumors or anonymous letters.

  The third, and most secret, confidential file remained where it had been from the start, in the office of Miss Gandy. It would be “restricted,” Hoover noted in the 1941 memo, “to confidential items of a more or less personal nature of the Director’s.”13

  Although Hoover was intentionally vague as to what these “confidential items” might be, there was no question as to his meaning of “restricted.” These materials were of such extraordinary sensitivity that only after proving his need to know, and obtaining Hoover’s personal authorization, could an assistant director consult a particular document.

  In 1957, when Louis Nichols retired, Hoover, apparently unwilling to entrust Nichols’s successor with his by now very extensive records, had much of this material transferred back to Miss Gandy’s office, where the two files were recombined under a special designation: the “Official/Confidential,” or “OC,” file.

  Few in the Bureau knew of the existence of the OC file. Fewer had seen even a portion of its contents. And fewer still knew exactly where in Miss Gandy’s office—which was lined with floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets and storage bins—this particular file was kept. One who did was Lou Nichols, and not until 1975, three years before his own death, did Nichols reveal that the individual OC folders had been “filed alphabetically in Hoover’s personal correspondence records.”14

  If one accepts Gray’s version of these events, neither Gandy nor Felt saw fit to mention this to the new acting director during his tour. Nor did they tell him that Miss Gandy maintained a private index to these files, consisting of three-by-five-inch cards, the white cards bearing the letters “PF,” for “Personal File,” the pink cards bearing the letters “OC,” for “Official/Confidential” file.

  Even had Gray leafed through the folders, looking for information embarrassing to the administration, it is unlikely he would have found it, lacking the index, because a number of the especially sensitive folders were deceptively labeled. One on the current president, for example, appeared not under NIXON, RICHARD but under OBSCENE MATTERS.

  The honor guard consisted of five men: a representative of each of the military services and a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Every hour, throughout the night, the guard changed, and every hour another thousand persons, many in tears, quietly filed past the black catafalque.

  Most had never met the man, but almost all knew what he’d stood for. They ranged from tourists, for whom this was still another Washington monument, to be seen and talked about when the trip was over, to middle-aged men who as kids had worn Junior G-Men badges and, at least vicariously, become part of the FBI mystique.

  And there were others, from the Bureau’s past, though few recognized them as such, this singular man having become the symbol of the entire organization: Charles Appel, who founded the famed FBI Laboratory and proved that Bruno Richard Hauptmann wrote the Lindbergh ransom note; the federal appellate court judge Edward Tamm, Hoover’s top aide during World War II, and the man responsible for the FBI’s motto—Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity; Allen Meehagen, from the Chicago office, who, at eighty-two, was the Bureau’s oldest still-active special agent; and Louis Nichols, the public relations genius who more than any other man created the FBI’s public image, and that of its director.

  Leaving the Rotunda, most noticed the rally on the west steps of the Capitol, but few commented and fewer still stopped to listen.

  There were no Vietcong flags to tear down, and Ellsberg was too far up the steps to reach, but Barker and his men did the best they could. Periodically they shouted “Traitors!” and “Communists!”; when that didn’t seem to accomplish anything, they started several one-sided fights, knocking down one nonresisting demonstrator and punching a couple
others.

  Capitol police grabbed two of the men—Frank Sturgis and Reinaldo Pico—and hustled them off, but an unidentified man in a gray suit, flashing either CIA or FBI credentials, spoke briefly to the officers, assuring them the pair were good Americans, and they were subsequently taken down the street and released.

  Though the mission had ended in failure, both the vigil and the name reading going on through the night, Hunt and Liddy were far from disappointed. When they later picked up Barker and drove around Washington, debriefing him, they were almost jubilant.

  As they passed the Watergate, Liddy told Barker, “That’s our next job, Macho.”15

  * * *

  *The above is L. Patrick Gray’s version.

  Helen Gandy later testified, “I asked him if he would please look through the personal correspondence files. He leafed through one or two drawers. He said that it was perfectly all right to go ahead [with the destruction].”9

  While admitting he approved the destruction of Hoover’s personal correspondence, Gray strongly denied one part of Miss Gandy’s testimony: “I am sure that we talked in the doorway of her office and I know that I did not on this, or on any subsequent visit, look at or thumb through any of the papers in the files.”10

  Perhaps reluctant to contradict either, Mark Felt would testify that he couldn’t recall being present when the incident occurred, although later, in his book The FBI Pyramid, he states, “Gray looked casually at one open file drawer.”11

  3

  Thursday, May 4,1972

  Early that morning, with a dozen police motorcycles and a number of unmarked FBI cars as escort, Hoover’s body was moved to National Presbyterian, a modernistic white stone church on Nebraska Avenue.

  Because nearly all of official Washington would be in one place, security was intensive. Metropolitan and park police lined the last two blocks of the route. Although more than two thousand persons attended the funeral, all were invited guests. Millions of others, however, shared the experience, all three networks carrying the hour-long services live.

  The funeral had become a political event.

  Mark Felt was not alone in his resentment that the service had been transformed into “a television spectacular, designed more to aggrandize the president than to honor the departed director.” The disputes over seating, which had erupted only hours after Hoover’s death, had left a residue of animosity. As late as the previous afternoon, Acting Attorney General Richard Kleindienst had pulled rank, having his seat switched from the second pew on the left, alongside Vice-President Spiro Agnew, to the first seat of the first pew on the right, in the FBI section, so he was directly across the aisle from the president and, “incidentally,” Felt later observed, “directly in front of the television cameras.”*1

  Kleindienst naturally viewed the change in a different light, as just another skirmish in a continuing battle to establish that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not a separate entity but part of the Department of Justice, under the command of the attorney general.

  Although J. Edgar Hoover was dead, and presumably resting in peace, all his old battles raged on, as if having acquired independent lives of their own.

  President and Mrs. Nixon arrived at ten-thirty, accompanied by the new acting director and Mrs. Gray. They were seated with Mamie Eisenhower in the front pew on the left, with members of the cabinet and other dignitaries behind them, following the rigid diplomatic protocol for such affairs of state.

  Clyde Tolson, Helen Gandy, others from Hoover’s office staff, and his few remaining relatives were seated in a private section of the church, out of public view.

  The first two pews on the right were occupied by Acting Attorney General Kleindienst and the fifteen honorary pallbearers: Acting Associate Director Felt (with Tolson’s resignation, Gray had moved Felt up into the number two slot), Assistants to the Director Mohr and Rosen, and the twelve assistant directors. The pews behind them were occupied by former Bureau executives (but only those who had remained in the good graces of the director) and various headquarters personnel, in descending rank, FBI protocol being no less rigid than that of the Department of State.

  The special agents in charge were seated in the choir loft, emblematic of the separation between headquarters and “the field.”

  James Crawford and Annie Fields were seated toward the back.

  One person in the Bureau pews was not a current or former agent, although perhaps millions of people thought of him as such. He was Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., star of the television series “The FBI,” whose image had so impressed the late director that he had instructed his agents to emulate the actor.

  Following a brief Masonic ceremony, Dr. Elson offered the opening remarks, recalling the many years the director had been his friend and revealing that it was “not commonly known that there was a time in Mr. Hoover’s young manhood when he struggled in the depths of his being over a call to enter the ministry or to give his life to the legal profession. The loss to the church of a great prophet and spiritual leader has been the great gain of the legal profession.”2

  Following prayers, two hymns by the Army chorus and readings from Psalms and the New Testament, the president of the United States walked to the lectern to deliver the eulogy.

  J. Edgar Hoover was buried just thirteen blocks from the row house where he had been born, in Congressional Cemetery, the oldest and least fashionable of the capital’s burial plots, alongside his parents and a sister who had died in infancy.

  The gathering at the graveside was even more select, fewer than a hundred persons being present, not all of whom, however, were invited guests. While various FBI officials clustered in little groups, discussing such subjects as the security of Hoover’s files, and plans for bringing to a quick end the reign of the outsider chosen to be his successor, little black children perched on nearby tombstones, waiting for the service to end so that they could snatch the giant mums and other flowers.

  After the final prayer, Dr. Elson removed the American flag from the coffin, folded it, and handed it to Clyde Tolson, who softly said, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”3 Tolson appeared, according to one observer, more bewildered than sad. As he was being helped into his limousine, most of those present saw him for the last time. He never returned to the FBI.

  Infrequently, however, he returned to this spot, Crawford driving him in his own car. But he never got out. He’d let Crawford put flowers on the grave while he sat in the backseat, saying nothing, his face expressionless. Then, after a time, he’d shake his head, as if to clear it of a jumble of thoughts, and motion impatiently for Crawford to drive him home.

  Sometimes they’d go by way of Gifford’s, in Silver Springs, and Crawford would go in for two ice cream cones, for which he’d usually have to pay. Most times Crawford paid for the gasoline too. But he never complained. It was Tolson who’d given him his job in the first place.

  In his last years Clyde Tolson was old, sick, more than a little senile and—as the scandals involving the revised codicils of his will would seem to indicate—perhaps easily manipulated. He was also probably very lonely.

  For over four decades he’d lived in the director’s shadow. Although in private he’d often disagreed with the Boss, and more than occasionally his own view had prevailed, in public he’d personified Washington’s ultimate yesman—supporting Hoover’s every decision, defending him against his critics, implementing even his most outrageous whims.

  Yet in his last, solitary years he did a curious thing. He did it secretly and, one suspects, probably in great fear, aware that if others learned of it he would undoubtedly be committed.

  With smuggled messages, and hasty telephone calls, sometimes identifying himself but sometimes apparently not, he tried, in his own way, to correct or remedy certain injustices which he believed had been perpetrated by the organization he’d so long served.

  Sometime that day Helen Gandy turned over to Mark Felt the second of two large batches of file folders, for safe
keeping in his own office. Altogether, Felt later stated, there were enough to fill twelve cardboard boxes.

  Perhaps mindful of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic short story “The Purloined Letter,” Felt “hid” them in plain view: in six two-drawer combination-lock cabinets in his outer office.

  A list of the folders prepared by Mrs. Erma Metcalf, one of Miss Gandy’s assistants, dated October 20, 1971, seven months prior to Hoover’s death, placed the number of individual file folders at 167.

  Three, dealing with high Bureau officials, subsequently disappeared. Whether this occurred before or after they were entrusted to Mark Felt is unknown, although, in an interview with the author, Felt indicated familiarity with their subjects and their contents.

  Of the 164 remaining, some contained only a single page, others several hundred, while the total number of pages in all was in excess of 17,750. In time they spanned five decades, covering events that had occurred as early as the 1920s and as late as the current year.

  Of the 164 folders, at least 84, or just over half, contained derogatory information: some of it criminal; much of it in that less easily defined zone of the dishonest, disreputable, unethical, and immoral; but most of it sexual.

  In common with much else concerning this file, even the number “164” was deceptive. A single folder, for example, consisting of letters sent to the director over a seven-year period by the Washington field office (whose territory included the capital and its environs) contained gossip and scandal involving hundreds of persons.

  Few of the folders were “dossiers,” as a dictionary would define that term. Rather, for the most part, they contained highlights: especially selected bits and pieces of information; long-missing parts from unsolved puzzles; individual incidents taken out of the context of whole lives. They were literally the essence of innumerable FBI investigations, legal and otherwise, distilled into 164 separate subject groupings and packed into a dozen cabinet drawers.