by Curt Gentry
(Baughman, Hughes, and Appel were all married. Their families soon learned that, when you worked for Hoover, the Bureau always came first.)
At Hoover’s direction, a charter was obtained for the Bureau’s own Masonic lodge, the Fidelity Chapter. Membership and attendance at the Monday-night meetings were “voluntary,” but those who aspired to higher positions soon realized that associating with the director on this one semisocial occasion was almost a prerequisite to advancement.
One result was that, for many years, few Catholics rose to top offices in the Bureau of Investigation. There were also, with the solitary exception of Hoover’s second in command, Harold “Pop” Nathan, no Jews.
Nathan rarely accompanied Hoover on his nightly excursions. The erudite assistant director preferred to go home and read a book, preferably a much thumbed classic. It was Nathan’s philosophy, expressed to many a subordinate, that if you didn’t complete your work during assigned hours, you weren’t working hard enough. By “assigned hours,” however, Nathan meant six days a week and part of Sunday.
Hoover had his own philosophy. That a man did his work well, Hoover reasoned, did not mean that he couldn’t do it better. As if intent upon enforcing Coué’s maxim, he heaped upon his assistants responsibilities that often seemed far beyond their capabilities—until they tried to handle them. “You either improve or deteriorate” was a favorite Hoover saying.11 It was also a test. Those who protested, or failed, quickly vanished down the chain of command.
Hoover asked of his aides nothing more and nothing less than he asked of himself: complete devotion to the Bureau of Investigation. (The first marriages of both Baughman and Appel ended in divorce, and Vincent Hughes died of a heart attack while running up the stairs at headquarters.)
Every night Hoover carried home a briefcase full of work. Those who failed to emulate him were chastised for lacking the “right attitude.” He also had a direct telephone line installed, linking headquarters with the house on Seward Square, and left orders that if anything occurred which merited his attention, he was to be called whatever hour of the day or night.
Such a call came shortly after 11:00 P.M. on March 1, 1932, the night supervisor informing him that—according to the police teletype—Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., the twenty-month-old son of the famed aviator and his wife, Anne Morrow, had disappeared from the family home at Hopewell, New Jersey. It was believed he had been abducted.
Since kidnapping was not a federal offense, the Bureau had no jurisdiction in the case. Hoover, however, asked to be kept informed of any developments. He was called again, not long after 1:00 A.M., with the information that a ransom note, asking for $50,000 in small bills, had been found at the crime scene.
Calling his driver, Hoover returned to headquarters. By the time he arrived, most of his aides were already there. It was quickly decided that the Bureau would offer its “unofficial” assistance to the parents, and a special Lindbergh squad was set up, consisting initially of some twenty men, headed by the veteran agent Thomas Sisk.
Obtaining the safe release of the child was the Bureau’s first and foremost priority, Hoover told Sisk. Yet he couldn’t have been unmindful that if the child were safely recovered by his agents, the publicity accorded the Bureau of Investigation would be enormous. In addition, Senator Dwight Morrow, the child’s grandfather, was one of Hoover’s foremost critics; the successful conclusion of the case would, undoubtedly, transform him into a Bureau ally.
But Sisk and his special squad immediately encountered a major obstacle. The state and local police of New Jersey and New York, already fighting among themselves over the handling of the case, refused to share any of their evidence with the “federal glory hunters.” For several weeks the Bureau was not even allowed to see facsimiles of the ransom notes, and then had to use various subterfuges to obtain them.
Three days after the kidnapping Hoover himself went to Hopewell to offer his assistance to the child’s parents. They declined to see him, and he was referred to Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf, head of the New Jersey State Police. Schwarzkopf politely thanked Hoover for his offer but said his men could manage quite well by themselves.*
According to a possibly apocryphal tale, which nevertheless was widely circulated among various police departments, Hoover, in visiting the crime site and spying a pigeon in the eaves, had excitedly declared that perhaps it was a homing pigeon with a message from the kidnapper. None of the amused cops, or so the story went, saw fit to ask the director when and how and by whom the bird had been taught to alight on the Lindbergh roof.
Hoover instructed his agents to investigate every lead, no matter how improbable. As a result, they spent hundreds of hours trying to track down the tips of cranks, psychics, and anonymous callers with obscure grudges. Leon Turrou, a member of the Lindbergh squad, was present when BI agents “found” the child, in the home of an Italian couple. Before alerting Hoover, who was waiting to inform the press, Turrou thought to lift the baby’s underclothing, to discover that he was holding a girl. According to Turrou, “The Lindbergh squad took special pains to keep these blunderings out of the reach of reporters and their carnivorous epithets. The [Bureau] was struggling for recognition and respect, and it couldn’t afford the public’s horselaughs.”12
On the morning of April 2, the Lindbergh squad learned that the ransom was to be paid that night. Although it would have been easy to stake out the site—St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx—Hoover instructed the agents that under no circumstances should they intervene until after the child was safely recovered. When told this, Turrou later recalled, he felt “like a straightjacketed starving man tantalized by a sumptuous feast.”13
At exactly midnight, Dr. John F. Condon, a querulous, publicity-hungry retired schoolteacher who had volunteered his services as go-between, handed the $50,000 ransom package to a tall man with a German accent. Although Condon saw the man, Colonel Lindbergh, who was standing nearby, only heard his voice. In exchange for the money, Condon was given a piece of paper bearing the name and location of a ship where the child was supposedly being held.
There was no such ship, and on May 12 the body of the boy, who had apparently died the night of the kidnapping, was found in a shallow grave less than five miles from the Lindbergh home.
From the start of the case, Hoover had—through the attorney general, Richey, and others—tried to persuade the president to order the Bureau to take charge of the investigation. Not until the day after the baby’s body was found did Herbert Hoover finally act, and then he went far beyond the BI director’s request. He directed that all federal law enforcement agencies assist in apprehending the criminal(s) responsible for the kidnap-murder. These included—in addition to the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation—the Secret Service division of the U.S. Treasury, the espionage and police arms of the Coast Guard, the Bureau of Narcotics, the intelligence unit of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Bureau of Prohibition, the Postal Inspection Service, and the Bureau of Customs.
Not only did each for the most part go its own way; the New Jersey police refused to share their findings and leads with any of them.
Hoover continued to lobby for the case. The attorney general wrote the governor of New Jersey suggesting “a coordinator of tested ability was available in the person of J. Edgar Hoover.”14 The governor ignored the suggestion.
Frustrated in his attempt to achieve command, Hoover did the next-best thing. In his press releases the BI chief assumed the mantle of responsibility, and after a time at least the public believed the Bureau of Investigation was in charge of the federal aspects of the case.
On June 22 Congress passed what became known as the Lindbergh Law, which made kidnapping a federal offense, and gave the Bureau of Investigation jurisdiction—but only if the kidnap victim was transported across a state line. Two years later, in May and June of 1934, the law was amended to add the death penalty and to create the presumption of interstate transportation if the victim had no
t been returned after seven days.
Important as these laws would be to the future of the Bureau, they did not apply to the Lindbergh kidnapping itself, and by the time the amendments were passed, Hoover was probably sorry he’d ever brought the Bureau into the case. Not only had there been no arrests; Hoover’s publicity gambit had worked too well. By now even the press was criticizing the BI chief for having failed to “solve” the Lindbergh case. Not until two years, six months, and fourteen days after the kidnapping was an arrest made.
The Bureau had caught Gaston Means, however. Three days after the Lindbergh kidnapping, Means had convinced Evalyn Walsh McLean, the wealthy estranged wife of the publisher of the Washington Post, that he was in contact with a gang of underworld criminals who had abducted the child and that, for $100,000, he could arrange his safe release. The well-meaning, but extremely gullible, socialite gave Means the money. Plus $4,000 “for expenses” a few days later. Only then did her attorney, learning of the payments, contact J. Edgar Hoover.
Charles Appel was hidden on the porch of Mrs. McLean’s home, his ear to a primitive listening device he’d fashioned, when one of Means’s associates tried to con her out of still another $35,000. Unbelieving, Appel heard Mrs. McLean ask the man if he would like to see the Hope diamond, which she owned and carried around in her purse. Means was arrested on May 5, 1932, and charged with “larceny after trust,” that is, embezzlement.
Hoover made time to sit in on the trial of the former Justice Department agent, listening as Means told one fanciful story after another (he even—possibly for the benefit of Hoover—blamed the kidnapping on the Communists). On leaving the stand, Means sat down next to the BI director and asked, “Well, Hoover, what do you think of that?”
“Gaston, every bit of it was a pack of lies,” Hoover responded.
“Well,” Means smiled, “you’ve got to admit that it made a whale of a good story!”15
Even after being convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, Means did not give up. Whenever a notable crime occurred, he’d contact Hoover and offer to solve it. In return for his release, of course. When Hoover ungraciously disdained his expertise, Means tried a new tack. Hoover had once told the press that even though Means had been convicted, he would not consider the case closed until the still-missing $100,000 had been recovered. Feigning remorse, Means notified Hoover that he was finally ready to pinpoint the location. Hoover suspected Means was lying. Still, he was most anxious to close the case and add that $100,000 to his recovery statistics. Only after agents in diving suits spent days sifting through the silt and refuse on the bottom of the Potomac did Hoover admit he’d been conned. This time he personally visited Means in his prison cell, demanding the convict tell him where the money was. “And dammit, Gaston,” the director told him, “you stop lying about it.”
According to Hoover (as he later recounted the story to the writer James Phelan) at this point Means clutched his heart, looked at him piteously, and replied, “This is the last straw, Edgar. You’ve lost faith in me!”16
Gaston Means had pulled his last scam. He died in prison a few years later—nine years short of serving his fifteen-year sentence—with the knowledge that he had, in the end, managed to con even J. Edgar Hoover. The $100,000 was never recovered.
The “honeymoon” of the new president did not survive the stock market crash of October 1929. As America plunged into the Depression, criticism of Herbert Hoover mounted. In one of his many roles, Lawrence Richey kept a “black list” of the president’s enemies. More than a few so listed were kept under surveillance, among them William J. Donovan, whose activities were “duly reported to the President.”17
Whether Richey borrowed BI agents to conduct such surveillance is not known. It is probable that he did not. A former Secret Service operative, with his own very extensive intelligence connections, Richey probably found assistance elsewhere.
In June 1930 Richey arranged to have the Democratic party headquarters in New York City burglarized. According to the Rutgers history professor Jeffrey M. Dorwart, who revealed the break-in for the first time in his 1983 book Conflict of Duty: The U.S. Navy’s Intelligence Dilemma, “His presidency paralyzed by the worst economic depression in American history and reeling from vicious political attacks, Herbert Hoover had become overly excitable and sensitive to any opposition or criticism. Thus, when he received a confidential report alleging that the Democrats had accumulated a file of data so damaging that if made public it would destroy both his reputation and his entire administration, Hoover determined to gain access to the material.”18
To conduct the break-in, Richey selected Glenn Howell, a Washingtonbased naval intelligence officer (whose secret logbooks provided part of the documentation for Dorwart’s account). As in the Watergate burglary forty-two years later, when Howell and his civilian assistant, Robert J. Peterkin, broke into the Democratic headquarters, they were unable to find any such file.
That the president’s secretary did not use the BI director and his agents to conduct the burglary could mean that Richey felt that Hoover would have found even the suggestion of such an act morally repugnant. However, it could also mean that Richey, having known Hoover for many years, and having shared many a secret with him, did not wish to have this potentially explosive information in the Bureau’s files.
In either case, it was a wise decision. In less than four years, J. Edgar Hoover was investigating his “good friend” Lawrence Richey.
As far as J. Edgar Hoover was concerned, the only bright spot in the Democratic landslide of November 8, 1932, was the crushing defeat of William J. Donovan, the Republican candidate for governor of New York. With the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president the BI chief lost his entrée to the White House. Worse, suddenly his job was in jeopardy.
Within days after the election it was rumored that the president-elect intended to name Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana attorney general. This was followed by an even more disturbing rumor. Walsh had apparently confided to friends that his first act on taking office would be to fire J. Edgar Hoover.
The first rumor became fact on February 28, 1933, with Roosevelt’s announcement of Walsh’s appointment. The second gained considerable substance that same day when Walsh, located by the New York Times in Daytona Beach, Florida, confirmed that he had accepted the appointment and stated that “he would reorganize the Department of Justice when he assumed office, probably with an almost completely new personnel.”19
* * *
*“I feel sure,” Assistant AG Mabel Walker Willebrandt would recall, “Justice Stone was ‘kicked upstairs’ to the Supreme Court. I feel confident that he thought so too. When he told me of the offer, it was with a sense of regret, because, as he said, ‘I like doing this job. It needs to be done and I’ve only got started.’”1
*The most likely surmise is that they were filed in the director’s Personal File, which Helen Gandy later claimed to have destroyed.
*The New Jersey State Police lacked even a rudimentary crime lab. It was J. Edgar Hoover’s frequently expressed belief that they had used the money appropriated for this purpose to buy fancy uniforms.
12
A Stay of Execution
WALSH FOUND DEAD
BY BRIDE OF 5 DAYS
ON WAY TO CAPITAL
Senator Chosen for
Attorney General Is
Victim of Heart
Attack on Train
Roosevelt and Hoover Shocked—
Congress Adjourns
Amidst Inaugural
Preparations
—New York Times, March 3, 1933
The previous weekend—to the surprise of even his longtime friend and senatorial colleague Burt Wheeler—Tom Walsh, a confirmed bachelor since the death of his first wife in 1917, had remarried, taking as his bride a member of one of Cuba’s most prominent families. After the wedding, which took place in Havana, the pair had flown to Florida. Feeling ill, Walsh had consulted a doctor in Day
tona Beach, who treated him for indigestion. The pair had then boarded the train for Washington and the inauguration. Shortly after 7:00 A.M. on March 3, as the train was nearing Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Mrs. Walsh had awakened to find the senator lying face down on the floor next to his berth. By the time a doctor could be found, Walsh was dead. The certificate, prepared by a physician in Rocky Mount, listed the cause of death as “unknown, possibly coronary thrombosis.”1
Although an aura of mystery would always surround Walsh’s death—one author even suggesting that Hoover was somehow implicated in Walsh’s demise, citing as evidence the mysterious presence of a BI agent on the train—apparently the seventy-two-year-old attorney-general-designate had died following a too strenuous honeymoon with a much younger bride.*
According to Bureau-authorized accounts, as the president and the presidentelect were riding down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol for the swearingin, Hoover urged Roosevelt to retain J. Edgar Hoover as his BI chief, and FDR, though noncommittal, “promised to give thought to Hoover’s advice.”2
However, according to most historians, the pair barely spoke during the entire ride. They rode “in uncomfortable silence,” Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., noted, Roosevelt’s one attempt at a friendly remark producing “only an unintelligible murmur in reply.”3