by Curt Gentry
Neither the New York police nor District Attorney Dewey had any part in the arrest, Hoover stressed, causing the New York Times to observe, “The hard feelings between the various law enforcement agencies almost overshadowed the main fact of Lepke’s capture.”25
Although Dewey magnanimously congratulated Hoover on the arrest, he also demanded that Lepke be turned over to New York for trial on the murder and extortion charges. In response, Hoover refused to let Dewey even question Lepke.
Attorney General Murphy called in Hoover and, in the presence of Ernest Cuneo, said, “Edgar, you know the man is guilty of eighty murders. What do you think we should do about this thing?”
As Cuneo has remembered the incident, Hoover, absolutely flushed with anger, responded, “Mr. Attorney General, the man doesn’t live who can break my word to the underworld.”
Lepke was tried on the federal charges, and sentenced to fourteen years in Leavenworth. But even after his conviction, Dewey continued to press his demand, although by now it was obvious his reason was political. The Chicago Tribune, and other Republican papers, charged that the FBI and the Justice Department had made a deal with Lepke, to keep him from telling what he knew about the Roosevelt administration’s links with Murder Incorporated.
Infuriated, the president ordered the attorney general to “turn the sonofabitch over to New York!”
Tried and convicted of murder, Lepke was sentenced to death. Just before his scheduled execution, in March 1944, he got word to Dewey that he was finally willing to talk. Dewey, who was then governor of New York and would become Roosevelt’s Republican opponent in the election that fall, sent the New York DA Frank Hogan to Sing Sing to interview him. Hogan later told Cuneo that Lepke had implicated the Roosevelt supporter Sidney Hillman, president of the International Association of Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, in at least one murder. According to Lepke, he and an associate had been paid $75,000 by Hillman to eliminate a garment factory owner who was opposing Hillman’s unionizing drive. But nothing could be done about it, Hogan told Cuneo, because Lepke’s charge was uncorroborated.*26
Louis “Lepke” Buchalter died as scheduled, on March 5, 1944, in the electric chair at Sing Sing, unaware that his case marked a milestone, of sorts, for J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI.
The last of J. Edgar Hoover’s personal arrests, the apprehension of Lepke was also the first (and for many years remained the only) arrest of a major organized crime figure by the FBI.
Marcantonio’s characterization of the FBI director as a “Stork Club cop” bothered Hoover far more than the New York congressman ever realized. Always acutely sensitive to possible criticism, and ever protective of his “good name” and that of his organization, Hoover allowed himself few pleasures. Saturdays at the track. His annual “non-vacations” in La Jolla and Miami. Weekends in New York. Even at the Stork Club, he went out of his way to be circumspect. To avoid the mere appearance of impropriety, drinks had to be whisked off the table before photographers were allowed to snap their shots and, after the Terry Reilly incident, greater care taken as to whom he was photographed with.
After 1940, although he continued to spend many of his weekends in New York, Hoover almost eliminated his nightclubbing. His world, never very broad, became even more confined.
Hoover’s counterattack against Senator Norris, Representative Marcantonio, and his other critics was orchestrated by Louis Nichols, who now headed the Bureau’s public relations division, Crime Records. As Senator Norris had predicted, criticizing Hoover and the FBI was made to seem “un-American.” The NBC commentator Earl Godwin stated, “In many cases an attack on Hoover is an attack on the president of the United States—and what’s more, an attack on the safety of the government.”28
In both their columns and their broadcasts, Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson repeated this theme, which also appeared in hundreds of newspapers nationwide, courtesy of “canned” editorials from Nichols’s division.
Hoover himself made more than a dozen speeches, criticizing his critics. While he didn’t call Norris, the Nebraska Progressive, a Communist, he implied as much, stating that the “smear campaign” was being directed by “various anti-American forces.” He elaborated, “The Communists hope that with the FBI shackled, they can proceed without interference as they go about their boring, undermining way to overthrow our Government.”29
He was less oblique when it came to Congressman Marcantonio, whom he characterized as a “pinko dupe” and a “pseudo-liberal.” But he saved his choicest invective for the conservative columnist Westbrook Pegler, who, undoubtedly jealous of the access to Hoover enjoyed by Winchell and Pearson, had joined the FBI director’s critics. Pegler, Hoover said, suffered from “mental halitosis.”30
Again, orchestrated by “suggestions” from Nichols, the FBI “stable” took to the floor in both the House and the Senate to defend the director and his organization and to insert a ream of favorable editorials in the Congressional Record. Nichols even persuaded Gerald Nye, through a Hearst reporter, to praise Hoover for being in Florida “when we know that a great many wealthy Americans are wintering there and threatened by gangsters.”31
Not all of Nichols’s tactics were this transparent. Although an investigation by a special unit of the Justice Department had cleared the FBI of using undue force in the Spanish Loyaltist arrests, several reporters seemed inclined to believe the brutality charges of a very attractive young woman who had been arrested in the raids, until Nichols—who bragged about his accomplishment years later—“pulled the soapbox out from under her” by confiding to the newsmen that the woman, who was white, was “cohabiting” with a Negro taxicab driver.*32
After Attorney General Jackson’s dismissal of the Spanish Loyalist cases, many Washington insiders surmised, not entirely incorrectly, that the liberal Jackson was no fan of J. Edgar Hoover. Some carried this line of thought a step further, concluding that since the attorney general no longer supported him, the president himself had decided that Hoover had moved from the “asset” to the “liability” column, and that his dismissal would be announced in a matter of days. Those who so surmised didn’t understand the curious relationship between J. Edgar Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
FDR’s son Elliott remembered, “Father dealt with the bullet-headed boss at arm’s length. He recognized his efficiency…though he suspected that in many matters Hoover was not a member of the administration team. But his competence was unquestionable, so Father made it a practice never to interfere, this in spite of the fact that he knew there were many rumors of Hoover’s homosexuality. These were not grounds for removing him, as Father saw it, so long as his abilities were not impaired.”33
Others saw the relationship in an entirely different light, including Hoover himself, who later stated, “I was very close to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, personally and officially. We often had lunch in his office in the Oval Room of the White House.”34
Ed Tamm, who was the number three man at headquarters, accompanied the director to the White House some twenty-five to thirty times. According to Tamm, the director and Mr. Roosevelt “got along very, very well. There was always an obvious manifestation of friendship and admiration. Of course, Mr. Roosevelt had the ability to give that impression to everyone he dealt with, but he was very, very friendly to Mr. Hoover.”35
Francis Biddle, who replaced Robert Jackson and served as attorney general during the war years, put it even more simply: “The two men liked and understood each other.”36 Biddle might have added, but didn’t, that—much important—they used each other.
Although Roosevelt received many complaints about the FBI director (not the least of them from his wife, Eleanor), Ralph de Toledano perceptively observed that these probably tended to help rather than hurt Hoover: “If the ideological and intellectual prima donnas who surrounded Roosevelt complained that Hoover was keeping tabs on their activities, Roosevelt could never be sure that they were correct—but he liked the thought that Hoov
er might be keeping an eye on Harry Hopkins or any one of the palace guard, just as long as Hoover delivered whatever information he gathered to Roosevelt, for Roosevelt’s personal use. And so these complaints served to strengthen Hoover, rather than to weaken him.”37
Contrary to the then-current liberal view that Roosevelt was personally opposed to wiretapping and similar FBI practices, the New Republic columnist John T. Flynn realized very early that “J. Edgar Hoover could not continue these activities for ten minutes in the administration of a man who did not approve them.”38
Although the “Communist plot” to “smear” Hoover continued until the day he died—at least in the mind of J. Edgar Hoover—and although his battles with Attorney General Robert Jackson were just beginning, the symbolic end of the “near-fatal” attack on the FBI occurred on the evening of March 16, 1940, when the White House correspondents held their annual black-tie dinner.
As usual, the president was the guest of honor. Spotting the FBI director among the attendees, Roosevelt called to him, “Edgar, what are they trying to do to you on the Hill?”
Hoover replied, “I don’t know, Mr. President.”
Roosevelt grinned and made a thumbs-down gesture, at the same time remarking, loud enough for those at nearby tables to hear, “That’s for them.”39
A master of time and place, Roosevelt, with a single gesture, killed the rumor that Hoover no longer had his support.
There was—as there always was with FDR—a quid pro quo. A few days later the president started calling in some of his due bills.
* * *
*As Frank Donner has put it, “World War II would come and go, but not the ‘emergency.’ ” The days of the small Bureau were now forever past.3
*Although Hoover ordered the preparation of the list on November 9, 1939, it was not officially designated the Custodial Detention list until June 15, 1940. Periodically revised to include new enemies, it was later renamed the Security Index (SI) and the Administrative Index (ADEX), and it eventually spawned such other specialist lists as the Reserve (or Communist) Index, the Agitator Index, and the Rabble Rouser Index.
*As far as is known, these two brief trips to Mexico marked the only times J. Edgar Hoover traveled outside the United States.
*Hoover fared little better with the Christian Front cases. During the trial, evidence was introduced showing that the Bureau’s key informant had been paid $1,300 and that he’d also used FBI funds to purchase ammunition, as well as liquor, under the influence of which the “vast plot” was supposedly hatched. Of the seventeen defendants, one committed suicide, five were acquitted, and the other eleven had the charges against them dismissed.
*Another of his nieces, Mrs. Anna Kienast, has said, “Nanny was around seventy-eight when she died…I often thought this was one reason he never married. He didn’t have a chance. When he might have married, there was his mother and there was no room in the house for another woman and he simply did not have the money to run two establishments.”16
*According to Winchell, “The FBI…was making their children and wives miserable, asking schoolmates: ‘Do you know little Shirley’s father is a gangster?’ To neighbors: ‘Do you know that Mr. Buchalter is a member of Murder Incorporated?’ And so on.”22
*The accusations against Hillman, who had been questioned and released after the murder, had concerned Roosevelt for several years. As early as March 1941 Hoover, who obviously had his own sources inside the New York district attorney’s office, was reporting to the president on “developments in connection with the alleged efforts being made to bring about an indictment of Sidney Hillman.”27
*Nichols was also responsible for drawing up, about this same time, the FBI’s first “not to be contacted” list. Listees—whether individual reporters or entire newspapers, magazines or radio networks—were thereafter denied FBI cooperation in the researching and verification of news stories. This also meant, of course, that they were denied “tips” on forthcoming arrests and the like.
18
Roosevelt Calls In His Due Bills
During the first two administrations of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had expanded tremendously—in authority, jurisdiction, and size. The president had also given his patriarchal blessing to its director, first by refusing to replace Hoover, then by standing up for him when he came under fire.
Six months before the 1940 election, Roosevelt started calling in his “due bills.” The president had used the Bureau to conduct political investigations before—in 1934, for example, he’d asked Hoover to closely monitor the activities of Huey Long, a possible presidential opponent, in a hotly contested Louisiana election—but such requests were infrequent, and in most instances there was at least a possible violation of federal law. No such rationale could be offered for these new requests.
On May 16, 1940, the president addressed a joint session of Congress on the subject of national defense. It was an explosive issue—many considered it a giant step toward U.S. intervention in the European conflict—and Roosevelt’s critics were quick to respond.
On May 18 Steve Early, the president’s press secretary, wrote Hoover, “I am sending you, at the President’s direction, a number of telegrams he has received since the delivery of his address…These telegrams are all more or less in opposition to national defense. It was the President’s idea that you might like to go over these, noting the names and addresses of the senders.”1
Hoover went one better. He checked the names against FBI files, then made “comments and reports” on what he had found—going beyond what FDR had requested, but probably giving him exactly what he wanted.
Having found Hoover receptive, Roosevelt made other requests. May 21, FDR to Early: “Here are some more telegrams to send to Edgar Hoover.” May 23, Early to Hoover: “The President asked me to show the attached telegrams to you.” May 29, Early to Hoover: “Respectfully referred to Honorable J. Edgar Hoover.” By the end of May, Hoover had conducted background checks on 131 critics of the president, among them Senators Burton K. Wheeler and Gerald Nye, and many of the leaders of the noninterventionist America First Committee, including Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh.2
Unknown to Roosevelt, Hoover had been keeping a file on Lindbergh since he’d credited the Treasury Department, rather than the FBI, with solving the kidnap-murder of his son. It was already a large file. Both publicly and privately, the Lone Eagle had made no attempt to contain his admiration for the “new Germany.” Feted by the Nazi high command, Lindbergh had accepted a decoration from Hermann Göring, pronounced the Luftwaffe invincible, and stated that since Britain was doomed to defeat, America had no business involving itself with the losing side. “Lindbergh’s radio addresses were just next to treasonable,” Rexford Tugwell has noted, “but they had an unmistakably receptive audience.”3
Roosevelt was not unappreciative of Hoover’s efforts. On June 12 he asked his presidential secretary, Major General Edwin M. “Pa” Watson, to “prepare a nice letter to Edgar Hoover thanking him for all the reports on investigations he has made and tell him I appreciate the fine job he is doing.”4
Watson’s reply, which he prepared for the president’s signature, was brief, and purposely nonexplicit, but apparently it moved Hoover deeply.
Dear Edgar:
I have intended writing you for some time to thank you for the many interesting and valuable reports that you have made to me regarding the fast moving situations of the last few months.
You have done and are doing a wonderful job, and I want you to know of my gratification and appreciation.
With kind regards,
Very sincerely yours,
Franklin D. Roosevelt.5
Hoover’s reply was nothing if not effusive:
My dear Mr. President:
The personal note which you directed to me on June 14, 1940, is one of the most inspiring messages which I have ever been privileged to receive; and, indeed, I look upon it as rather a symbol of t
he principles for which our Nation stands. When the President of our country, bearing the weight of untold burdens, takes the time to so express himself to one of his Bureau heads, there is implanted in the hearts of the recipients a renewed strength and vigor to carry on their tasks.
In noting the vast contrast between the Leader of our Nation and those of other less fortunate Nations, I feel deeply thankful that we have at the head of our Government one who possesses such sterling, sincere and altogether human qualities.
With expression of my highest esteem and deepest admiration, I am,
Respectfully,
J. Edgar Hoover.6
Roosevelt obviously knew just how to handle Hoover. In addition to his letter, the FBI chief sent the president a new batch of reports on his political enemies. It was as if, amid all the rhetoric, a bargain had been struck.
Following a Lindbergh speech criticizing the president’s foreign policy—“The three most important groups who have been pushing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration”—Early sent Hoover thirty-six more telegrams.7
This time, however, Hoover went beyond making “comments and reports.” He leaked some of the most interesting materials to Winchell and Pearson. According to Oliver Pilat, Pearson’s son-in-law and biographer, the FBI director wasn’t acting on his own but “was harassing isolationists under orders from the White House.”8