J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  That Herbert Hoover, who took his defeat badly, would choose as a topic of conversation the retention of one of his many bureau chiefs—one who didn’t even rate a place on the reviewing stand—was as unlikely as that Roosevelt, having been snubbed the previous day by the president during his official courtesy call at the White House, would be inclined to seriously consider Herbert Hoover’s advice.

  “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

  J. Edgar Hoover, together with several of his aides, listened to a radio broadcast of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inaugural address from Bureau headquarters at Vermont and K. Although already in the planning, the new Department of Justice Building, to be constructed on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Ninth Street, was still two years from completion. There was, however, no assurance that J. Edgar Hoover would be one of its occupants, Walsh’s death having provided, at best, a temporary reprieve.

  Even before Walsh’s funeral, Roosevelt chose as his new attorney general Homer S. Cummings, a very able Connecticut lawyer who was as experienced in politics as in the law.

  Using his by now tried-and-true methods, Hoover quickly made himself indispensable. Most attorneys general had trouble finding their way through the maze of Washington’s federal bureaucracy. J. Edgar Hoover knew the shortcuts. And all, even though they might know Washington, were struck with the immensity of their responsibilities. Hoover’s barrage of informative memos, indicating that he was on top of each and every case, assured them that with all their other concerns they needn’t worry about the Bureau of Investigation.

  It didn’t take Homer Cummings long to discover how well established the BI director was. Deciding to work one Sunday, he arrived at the Department of Justice without his credentials, only to be told by a guard, “I couldn’t let you in without a pass even if you were J. Edgar Hoover.”4

  What impressed Cummings even more was the discovery that Hoover was, like himself, a man of principles. Even though his job was at stake, Hoover did not hesitate to oppose him, and the president, on issues which affected the Bureau. Three years earlier, the corrupt, scandal-ridden Prohibition Bureau had been transferred from the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice. Three months after taking office, President Roosevelt signed an executive order consolidating the Prohibition Bureau and the Bureau of Investigation, the merged units to be known as the Division of Investigation. For nine years, Hoover had worked hard to rebuild the Bureau of Investigation—and its reputation. With a single stroke of the pen it all seemed for naught. Both in person and by memo, Hoover forcefully argued his case with Cummings. Together they worked out what seemed to be a compromise but was, in reality, a victory for Hoover: the two bureaus would be placed under a single division, but their investigative work, offices, personnel, and files would be kept entirely separate.

  In another, far more important battle—for the “noble experiment” had by now proven an ignoble failure, and the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and the dismantling of the Prohibition Bureau were only months away—the president signed still another executive order, extending civil service to most of the departments of the federal government. Hoover, supported by Cummings, fought to keep the Bureau of Investigation exempt. Promotions should be based on ability, Hoover argued, not seniority. Also, he stated quite bluntly that he would resign before being forced to accept Communists and other undesirables. Although the battle raged over many years, hearings, and court decisions, Hoover eventually succeeded in keeping the Bureau civil service exempt.

  This meant that he could hire or fire, promote or demote, anyone he chose, without having to justify his actions or have them subject to review. Few others, no matter how high in government, had such unlimited power. J. Edgar Hoover would retain and use it until the day he died.

  By statute, the attorney general, not the president, decided who the director of the Bureau of Investigation would be. But Hoover knew where the power lay.

  Not simply content with trying to win over his new boss, Hoover enlisted even his agents in the field. Calling in the SACs, he instructed them to bring whatever influence they had to bear on prominent people in their jurisdictions—bankers, police chiefs, Democratic politicians—asking them to write the president and Congress, urging his retention as BI chief.

  There was a suspicious similarity to many of the letters Roosevelt received. Most noted that Mr. J. Edgar Hoover was in no way related to the former president, while nearly all stated that gangsters, racketeers, and other lawbreakers would hail with joy the BI director’s replacement, because, quoting one, “they have felt the keen edge of J. Edgar Hoover’s efficiency.”*5

  So serious did Hoover consider the threat that he even courted his enemies. To his amazement, Senator Burton K. Wheeler, still grief stricken over the death of his longtime friend Tom Walsh, received a visit from the BI director. Wheeler later wrote that some Democrats had suggested that if he “objected to J. Edgar Hoover he would be replaced as director of the Bureau of Investigation.” Wheeler added, “Hoover got wind of this talk and came to see me. He insisted he played no part in the reprisals against me. I had no desire to ask for Hoover’s head on a platter—and I’m glad I didn’t.”†7

  Even Felix Frankfurter was used. Hearing rumors that Hoover might be replaced, and well aware that his friend had the new president’s ear, on April 14, 1933, Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone wrote a very strong letter to Frankfurter listing Hoover’s remarkable accomplishments.‡

  On April 22 FDR memoed Frankfurter, “I think I can assure our friend [Justice Stone], whose letters I am returning, that it is all right about Edgar Hoover. Homer Cummings agrees with me.” On the twenty-sixth Frankfurter wrote the president, “Many thanks for your chit regarding Edgar Hoover. I have taken the liberty of passing the comforting message on to our friend.”10

  If J. Edgar Hoover was appreciative of Felix Frankfurter’s intercession on his behalf, he didn’t show it; for the rest of his life, Frankfurter remained near the top of Hoover’s enemies list.

  Frankfurter, however, was not the only one who had the president’s ear. When it came to politics, the person closest to the chief executive was Louis Howe. Besides being the brilliant strategist of most of FDR’s political victories, Howe was also—Hoover pronounced the term with utter contempt—an “armchair criminologist.”

  There was, according to Raymond Moley, a member of Roosevelt’s brain trust and one of Hoover’s strongest backers, “tremendous pressure on Roosevelt by various city politicians to replace Hoover with this or that police chief whom they believed would be more amenable to them for patronage…Louis Howe threw his weight behind the demands of the bosses.”

  There were also “lurking around,” Moley recalled, several disgruntled ex-BI agents “who were anxious to see Hoover removed and thus open the way for their reinstatement. One of these was brought to me, and he complained about the iron discipline which Hoover maintained over his subordinates. This sort of argument to me was the best commendation Hoover could have had. For a police agency must, if effective, be strictly disciplined.”

  Despite his letter to Frankfurter, there remained in Roosevelt’s mind, Moley knew, “a doubt about the desirability of continuing J. Edgar Hoover in office—a doubt placed there by Louis.” Arguing Hoover’s case, Moley finally won out over Howe: “At least I secured a stay of execution, and the decision was passed over to Cummings. It was not long before Cummings realized that Hoover was indispensable, and Hoover was retained.”11

  On July 30, 1933, Attorney General Cummings announced that he had appointed J. Edgar Hoover director of a “new Division of Investigation,” which would include the Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Identification, and the Prohibition Bureau, and which would “conduct the nation-wide warfare against racketeers, kidnappers and other criminals.”*12

  Although Hoover had won this battle, he was well aware that it might be only the first skirmish in a prolonged conflict.
Unwilling to keep such a powerful enemy, Hoover set out to win Howe over. He did it very simply. Aware of Howe’s fondness for detective stories, he began sending him memorandums with the “inside story” of the Bureau’s most famous cases. Amazingly, it seems to have worked. At least, Louis Howe never opposed Hoover again.

  Even though Howe had capitulated, the campaign he’d set in motion had built up its own momentum. Newsweek noted that in light of his activities as Palmer’s assistant during the Red raids, “some experienced Washington observers expressed astonishment” at Hoover’s appointment, while the new division chiefs manner was described as less that of a cop than that “of a Y.M.C.A. secretary.”13

  Far stronger was the response of Collier’s magazine. In its August 19, 1933, issue, Ray Tucker, its Washington bureau chief, ridiculed Hoover and his immature gumshoes and gave advice on how easy it was to shake their “tails.”

  “Despite all this burlesque and bombast,” Tucker continued, “there is a serious and sinister side to this secret federal police system. It had always been up to its neck in personal intrigue and partisan politics.” Under Hoover, Tucker charged, this miniature American Cheka was run in a Prussian style as Hoover’s “personal and political machine. More inaccessible than presidents, he kept his agents in fear and awe by firing and shifting them at whim; no other government agency had such a turnover of personnel.”

  Nor was any other as publicity hungry, the magazine’s bureau chief claimed. “The director’s appetite for publicity is the talk of the Capital, although admittedly a peculiar enterprise for a bureau which, by the nature of its work, is supposed to operate in secrecy. Although Mr. Hoover issued strict orders against publicity on the part of his agents, he was never bound by them.”

  The Collier’s article also mentioned, albeit obliquely, for the first time in print, Hoover’s rumored sexual orientation: “In appearance Mr. Hoover looks utterly unlike the story-book sleuth…He dresses fastidiously, with Eleanor blue as the favored color for the matched shades of tie, handkerchief and socks. …He is short, fat, businesslike, and walks with mincing step.”14

  Nothing more. But the implication was there. In Washington, then as now a self-contained world where rumor and gossip have their own value as currency, the observation that J. Edgar Hoover was thirty-eight years old, unmarried, and still living with his mother and had never, to anyone’s recollection, been seen in the company of a woman, was more than adequate cause for speculation.

  The implication that he was less than manly so stung the director that he apparently took immediate steps to remedy that impression. Less than two weeks after the Collier’s article appeared, a Washington gossip columnist inquired if anyone had noticed that since the Tucker charge “the Hoover stride has grown noticeably longer and more vigorous.”15 To further counteract both the “fat” and the “mincing step” talk, an article was planted in another national magazine, Liberty, which stated 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 masculinity.”*16

  Hoover still had the job. Nor did it take him long to readjust his loyalties: they went to whoever currently resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Within weeks after his appointment as director of the new division, Hoover was reporting to AG Cummings on the activities of the man who helped get him his job in the first place—the former presidential aide Lawrence Richey.

  Like many others in Washington, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes kept a “secret diary.” In his entry for May 2, 1933, Ickes reported that Attorney General Cummings had shocked the Cabinet with a dramatic announcement:

  “The attorney general said at the Cabinet meeting today that he was informed that a strict espionage was being maintained of Cabinet members and other officials high in the Government Service. This work is under the charge of Lawrence Richey, one of the secretaries to former President Hoover, and is supposed to be in the interest of [Herbert] Hoover particularly, and of the Republican Party in general.”18

  Although the ex-president had left Washington after the inauguration, Lawrence Richey had remained behind, entrusted with “a mysterious assignment.” Apparently it did not take J. Edgar Hoover long to discover what it was.19

  AG Cummings, Ickes wrote, “warned all of us to be on our guard against people who might thrust themselves upon our notice and he said that the same precaution should be taken by our wives and members of our families. His information is that some women are being employed to worm themselves into the confidence of our wives.”20

  What Homer Cummings did not tell the Cabinet, although he did confide the information to Hoover, was that a private detective, apparently in the employ of Richey, had been poking into his own personal life, attempting to prove that he was “very intimate” with the wife of a friend.

  An experienced politician, Cummings probably hoped to defuse the charge—which he vehemently denied—by telling Hoover before someone else did. Hoover, of course, promised to keep the matter confidential, and immediately dictated a memorandum for the files.

  In preparing the ransom for the Lindbergh kidnapper(s), Elmer Irey, the Treasury Department’s chief law enforcement officer, had included a large number of gold certificates, as an aid in identification.* In April 1933 President Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard and directed that all such bills be exchanged for other forms of currency on or before May 1.

  This was the first big break in the case, and everyone involved in the hunt was convinced an arrest was imminent. During the week before the deadline, fifty of the $10 gold certificates used in the ransom were redeemed at two separate New York City banks. Neither teller, however, had checked the 57-page list of the ransom bills at the time of the transaction, nor could either identify the person who exchanged them. On May 1 another $2,980 was redeemed at still another New York bank, with similar lack of attentiveness. Though more ransom bills were passed, mostly in individual transactions, the case seemed to have come to a standstill.

  Hoover saw his chance. New Jersey’s state police chief, Schwarzkopf, and his fancy-dress cops had proven they didn’t know what they were doing, Hoover told Attorney General Cummings. Moreover, the tremendous duplication of effort by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies was hurting, rather than helping, the effort to solve the case. Since the passage of the Lindbergh Law, the Bureau of Investigation had solved every kidnapping case it had entered except two (in both, the victims’ families had been uncooperative). Also, unlike the other agencies, the Bureau had at its disposal both a modern scientific criminology laboratory and the world’s largest collection of fingerprints.

  Himself persuaded, Cummings convinced Roosevelt that Hoover should be placed in charge of all federal aspects of the investigation, and on October 19, 1933, a presidential directive was issued to this effect, greatly angering Elmer Irey, whose Treasury agents were pulled off the case. By now realizing it was better to share criticism than take the brunt of it alone, Schwarzkopf pledged his grudging cooperation and finally opened his files to both the BI and the New York police.

  Nearly a year passed, however, before the real break came, and it was due not to superior sleuthing but rather to the alertness of a filling-station attendant. On September 15, 1934, a motorist purchased five gallons of ethyl from a station in upper Manhattan, paying with a $10 gold certificate. Before making change, the attendant jotted down the vehicle’s license number—4U-13-41, N.Y.—on the back of the bill. Three days later a teller at the Corn Exchange Bank and Trust Company compared the bill’s number to those on the ransom list and called Thomas Sisk at the New York field office.

  A check of the New York Motor Vehicle License Bureau disclosed that the car, a dark blue Dodge sedan, belonged to a Bruno Richard Hauptmann, of 1279 East 222nd Street, in the Bronx.

  Hauptmann, an unemployed carpenter, was placed under surveillance. Hoping to catch Hauptmann in the act of passing one of the bills, Hoover and Sisk wanted to delay
the arrest, and, for a few hours, the police seemingly agreed. However, well aware of Hoover’s penchant for publicity, and probably suspecting that he was planning something similar, they apparently decided to stage their own capture. The following day one of the New York police cars suddenly pulled out of the cavalcade of local and federal law enforcement vehicles that was tailing the Dodge and, forcing it over to the curb, dragged out Hauptmann and placed him under arrest.*

  In the jurisdictional melee that followed, the police refused to let the feds search either Hauptmann’s person or his car. But one enterprising BI agent managed to “lift” Hauptmann’s wallet long enough to extract a handwritten shopping list. Later the same day, Turrou obtained photocopies of Hauptmann’s driver’s license applications from the Motor Vehicle License Bureau; still later, he and the police persuaded Hauptmann to copy in longhand the text of several newspaper articles. He then rushed all these handwriting samples to Charles Appel in Washington. Working all night in the lab, Appel compared the exemplars with facsimiles of the ransom demands.

  Turrou had fallen into an exhausted sleep on a cot in the New York field office when Appel called at eight-thirty.

  “There was nothing musical about Charlie Appel’s voice,” Turrou would recall, “but that dreary morning it couldn’t have sounded more lyrical if played to a background of angels’ harps and elfin woodwinds. ‘It checks,’ he said simply. ‘Congratulations.’ ”21

  On learning of Hauptmann’s arrest, Hoover had taken the first train to New York. He was present later that morning when Hauptmann was put in a lineup with a dozen detectives. “It wasn’t much of a deception,” Turrou remembered. “The detectives were shaved, bright-eyed six-footers. Hauptmann looked like a midget who had wandered through a Turkish bath for two sleepless days and nights.”22