J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  Yet, despite these advantages, during World War II taps were used far more often than bugs, for one reason: the microphones then available were large, bulky, and difficult to hide. Only with the coming of miniaturization in the postwar years did bugs come to predominate.

  Among the premises bugged during the war were a number of high-class brothels in Washington and in New York City. There was a “national security” justification for these buggings, an FBI spokesman much later explained: their purpose was to catch foreign diplomats in compromising acts, which could then be used as leverage to persuade them to become FBI informants. However, the bugs, unable to filter out nationalities, also picked up embarrassing information on prominent Americans, including several members of Congress, all of which made its way into Hoover’s files.

  In at least one case, the bugs helped clear a suspect. In May 1942, New York City detectives, accompanied by Naval Intelligence officers, raided a homosexual brothel in Brooklyn which was believed to be “a nest for Nazi agents.” Questioned after his arrest, the proprietor, Gustave Beekman, identified as one of his regular customers Senator David I. Walsh of Massachusetts, chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee. Moreover, Beekman stated that on several occasions he’d seen Walsh conversing with another customer, a “Mr. E,” who was a known Nazi spy.

  When the story broke in the press, the president asked Hoover to investigate.* Without bothering to inform Roosevelt that the FBI had already had the Brooklyn establishment under both physical and microphone surveillance for some months, Hoover ordered a full field investigation. Interrogated at length by the FBI, Beekman broke and recanted his identification. Also, the agents succeeded in identifying another customer who had visited the brothel on the dates in question and who, they noted, closely resembled the senator.

  Although Walsh was “cleared” of these particular charges, other derogatory information was uncovered during the investigation, all of which became part of an 85-page folder in Hoover’s Official/Confidential file.26

  Buggings, wiretapping, break-ins, mail opening, and telegraph and cable monitoring—these were only some of the illegal acts which, adopted under the guise of “wartime necessity” and found to be highly useful shortcuts, became standard, albeit secret, investigative tools of Hoover’s FBI.

  These were not the FBI’s only secrets. Ironically, one of the best-kept secrets of the war—for a time Hoover apparently even kept it from the president—involved one of its most publicized cases: the Bureau’s “capture” of eight German saboteurs.

  Shortly after midnight on June 13, 1942, John Cullen, a young Coast Guardsman, was patrolling a lonely stretch of beach near Amagansett, Long Island, when he encountered four men struggling with a large raft in the surf.

  Challenged, the men claimed to be stranded fishermen. But Cullen doubted this, especially after they offered him a $260 bribe for his silence. In addition, the men were armed; one thoughtlessly said something in German; while not more than 150 feet offshore Cullen spotted a long, thin object that looked suspiciously like a submarine. Alone and unarmed, Cullen decided to play along and accepted the bribe, then hurried back to his station to report the incident.

  Though Cullen was convinced the men were German spies, and maybe even part of an invasion force, his superiors were skeptical and debated whether to sound a general alarm. Had they done so, probably both the men, who were standing around the Amagansett station of the Long Island Railroad waiting for the first train at 6:00 A.M., and the submarine, which was beached on a sandbar, would have been captured. Instead, fearing at least ridicule and possibly even reprimand for filing a false report, they did nothing until nearly dawn, when they sent Cullen and an armed patrol back to the spot. Although by now both the men and the submarine were long gone, the Coast Guardsmen dug up several caches containing a large quantity of explosives, fuses, blasting caps, timers, and incendiary devices (some in the form of pen-and-pencil sets), as well as German uniforms, cigarettes, and brandy.

  It was noon, however, before the FBI learned of the landing—from a Long Island police chief. By the time the first special agents arrived, with orders to seize the evidence and maintain a discreet surveillance, a couple dozen vacationers in beach chairs were already doing their own watching. By then the four would-be saboteurs had reached New York City, split into pairs, obtained hotel rooms, and ordered expensive lunches.

  Hurrying across the hall to the attorney general’s office, Hoover excitedly informed Biddle of the landing. “All of Edgar Hoover’s imaginative and restless energy was stirred into prompt and effective action,” Biddle later recalled. “He was determined to catch them all before any sabotage took place. He had steadily insisted that this war could be fought without sabotage. But he was, of course, worried.”28

  He had reason to be. An immediate decision had to be made. If a military alert was called—even as they talked other submarines might be landing—the press would surely learn of it and the result might be public panic. And of course, publicity would alert their quarry.

  The alternative—that the FBI go it alone and hope to catch the four before they committed any acts of sabotage—also had its risks. Very serious risks, as far as the future of Hoover’s FBI was concerned. If the FBI failed…

  But Hoover’s belief in his organization was so strong that he opted for the latter course. So did the attorney general. “But I wanted the President’s approval, and telephoned him,” Biddle recalled. “He agreed.”29 A news blackout was imposed, while Hoover ordered the largest manhunt in the Bureau’s history, putting all of its U.S. field offices on full alert.

  Even then, they almost blew it, not once but twice. The day after the landing, the leader of the saboteurs, George John Dasch, informed his partner, Ernst Peter Burger, that his real sympathies were with the United States, where he had lived for almost twenty years, and that he planned to call the FBI and turn them in. Dasch later claimed that he was prepared to push Burger out of their hotel window if he opposed him.

  Burger didn’t. Himself a naturalized U.S. citizen, Burger admitted that he too had no intention of carrying out their mission. Instead he had planned to disappear with the $84,000 in U.S. currency the Abwehr had provided them. On hearing this, Dasch took charge of the funds.

  In most of the large Bureau field offices there is what the agents themselves refer to as the “nut desk.” The special agent who had the unwelcome task of manning it that day at NYFO listened skeptically to Dasch’s tale, observed, “Yesterday Napoleon called,” and hung up.30 Although the whole Bureau was on alert, nobody had informed him. He thought the call so ridiculous he didn’t even bother to log it.

  Rebuffed, Dasch decided to see Hoover personally and, after packing the money in a suitcase, took a train to Washington. His reception at the Department of Justice was less than cordial. After being shunted from office to office, he was finally allowed five minutes with one of the director’s assistants, D. M. “Mickey” Ladd. As head of the Domestic Intelligence Division, which handled all sabotage, espionage, and internal-security cases, Ladd was in charge of the spy hunt. But despite the news blackout, Ladd was convinced that Dasch had somehow heard of the landing and was just another crackpot eager to make a name and some money for himself. Ladd was already edging him toward the door when Dasch realized he had to do something dramatic to convince the obtuse FBI official.

  “I seized the suitcase that had been lying on the floor, tore its snaps, and dumped the contents on the desk,” Dasch recalled. “The three feet of polished wood were too narrow to hold the eighty-four thousand dollars in cash. Packets of bills cascaded over the sides to create the illusion of a miniature waterfall.”

  Even then, Ladd had his doubts. “Is this stuff real?” he asked.31 A few minutes later George John Dasch was finally allowed to see J. Edgar Hoover.

  During his interrogation, which lasted for eight days, Dasch gave the FBI invaluable information about the training he and the others had received at the Abwehr’s school of sabo
tage; their assigned targets in the United States (which included the Aluminum Corporation of America, the Niagara Falls hydroelectric plant, and the New York water supply system); and their contacts—plus equally welcome intelligence regarding German war production, plans, codes, and submarines.*

  Of more immediate import, after telling the agents where they could pick up Burger and the other two men, Dasch also informed them about a second submarine, which had landed four more saboteurs off the coast of Florida.

  And this was just the beginning, Dasch said. Additional groups were scheduled to land every six weeks. By sabotaging vital industries, and leaving bombs in such public places as railway stations and department stores, the Abwehr intended to initiate “a wave of terror” within the United States.33

  On June 20, two days after Dasch surrendered to the FBI in Washington, Burger and the other two members of the Long Island group were arrested in New York City. Burger also proved cooperative. Acting on the information he provided—which included descriptions, real names, cover names, and a list of possible contacts—the Bureau was able to track down and apprehend all four of the saboteurs who had landed near Jacksonville, Florida, arresting the last member of the group in Chicago on June 27.

  It was a tremendous accomplishment. Exactly two weeks after the Long Island landing, all eight of the German agents were in custody. They hadn’t even had time to commit a single act of sabotage. Hoover had won his gamble.

  At some point—it is unclear when, but it was probably right after the New York City arrests—Hoover and his aides reached a decision: when the story of the landings was made public, there was to be no mention of Dasch’s surrender or of his and Burger’s voluntary cooperation.

  The reason for suppressing this information was obvious: to deceive the Germans. It was wartime and the less the enemy knew, the better. If the Abwehr didn’t learn of Dasch’s betrayal, it was possible its leaders would conclude that the U.S. coastline was nearly impenetrable and, far more important, that the FBI was itself so efficient and well informed that it would be a waste of agents to attempt additional landings.

  This explanation makes of the FBI’s decision an ingenious disinformation ploy. It fails to account, however, for why Hoover also felt it necessary to deceive the president of the United States.

  Between June 16 and June 27, Hoover sent the president three “personal and confidential” memos on the case. In the first, written before Dasch turned himself in, Hoover summarized the evidence found at the landing site. In the second, written on June 22, he proudly informed the president that the FBI had “already apprehended all members of the group which landed on Long Island,” adding, “I expect to be able to have in custody all members of the second group.” Although it is obvious from the detailed information he included that one or more of the German agents was cooperating, there is no mention of Dasch’s turning himself in; or of his fingering the other three members of his group; or of Burger’s having supplied the information which Hoover hoped would lead to the arrest of the second group.

  On June 27, probably within minutes after being informed of the last arrest, Hoover called the White House and asked the presidential secretary Marvin McIntyre to inform the president that all eight saboteurs were now in custody. Knowing Roosevelt would be interested, McIntyre asked Hoover to send the president a memorandum outlining the developments in the case, and this Hoover did, that same day. In his third and last memorandum, Hoover not only failed to mention all of the above but even changed the facts to hide Dasch’s key role: “On June 20, 1942, Robert Quirin, Heinrich Heinck, and Ernest Peter Burger were apprehended in New York City by Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The leader of the group, George John Dasch, was apprehended by Special Agents of the FBI on June 22, 1942, at New York City.”34

  By falsifying both the date and the place Dasch had been “apprehended”—he’d surrendered to the FBI on June 18, 1942, in Washington, D.C.—Hoover made it appear that Dasch’s capture was the result rather than the cause of the other arrests.

  If Hoover’s purpose was to deceive the Germans, the change made sense. But what was his purpose in deceiving the president? Perhaps the clue lay in a little plot Lou Nichols was cooking up in Crime Records.

  With the approval of the president and the attorney general, Hoover ended the news blackout with a press conference on the evening of June 27, 1942. Coming when it did, while U.S. military victories were still few and far between, Hoover’s surprise announcement commandeered the nation’s headlines.

  FBI CAPTURES 8

  GERMAN AGENTS

  LANDED BY SUBS35

  Although it was one of the most sensational stories of the war, Hoover’s statement was tantalizingly brief. “He gave no details of how the FBI ‘broke’ the case,” the New York Times complained. “That will have to wait, FBI officials insist, until after the war.”36

  The press, however, wasn’t content to leave it at that. Biddle recalled, “It was generally concluded that a particularly brilliant FBI agent, probably attending the school in sabotage where the eight had been trained, had been able to get on the inside, and make regular reports to America. Mr. Hoover, as the United Press put it, declined to comment on whether or not FBI agents had infiltrated into not only the Gestapo but also the High Command, or whether he watched the saboteurs land.”37

  In the aftermath of the announcement, President Roosevelt received dozens of telegrams and letters urging that J. Edgar Hoover be given the Congressional Medal of Honor. The campaign, secretly organized in the FBI’s own Crime Records Division by its director, Lou Nichols, was not successful. But on July 25 both the president and the attorney general released statements extolling the FBI director, who would be celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary with the Department of Justice the following day.

  Hoover was not the only one disappointed at not receiving the medal. George John Dasch thought it the least the United States could do in recognition of his heroic, self-sacrificing act.

  Instead Dasch was tried with the others and, like them, sentenced to death.

  In great secrecy—both the public and the press were excluded, and a censorship order was imposed to forestall any possible leaks—the eight were tried before a military commission, composed of seven generals. Although it was a military trial, a civilian, Attorney General Francis Biddle, served as prosecutor. In a scene vaguely reminiscent of the Palmer days, Hoover sat next to the attorney general, handing him typed summaries of the evidence each witness could provide just before he took the stand.

  It was a quick trial. As Biddle put it, “It was obvious that the reliance of the public on their government would be immeasurably strengthened if these would-be saboteurs were disposed of promptly.”38 It took exactly one month to try the eight men, find them guilty, sentence them to death, and execute six out of the eight, by electrocution, in the District of Columbia jail.

  The public first learned of the verdict, and the deaths, in a brief presidential statement issued a few hours after the last execution took place. Acting upon “a unanimous recommendation, concurred in by the attorney general and the judge advocate general of the Army,” the president had commuted the sentences of two of the men, the statement said.

  “The commutation directed by the President in the case of Ernst Peter Burger was to confinement at hard labor for life. In the case of George Dasch, the sentence was commuted by the President to confinement at hard labor for 30 years.”

  “The records in all eight cases will be sealed until the end of the war.”39

  Even then, Hoover strongly opposed releasing the true story. No single episode it its history did more to perpetuate the myth of the FBI’s invincibility than its capture of Germany’s elite spies. Hoover wanted nothing to tarnish that myth.

  In the fall of 1945 the Newsweek correspondent John Terrell asked Tom Clark, President Truman’s first attorney general, to open the Justice Department’s files on the cases. The war was over now and there was
no reason the public shouldn’t be allowed to know the facts, Terrell argued. Clark, apparently so fresh to the job that he didn’t realize the AG had to obtain his subordinate’s permission, agreed.

  Hoover, learning of the article on the eve of its publication, “vigorously” complained to his new boss, who in turn called the editors at Newsweek and pleaded with them to delay publication. “Hoover wants to make some changes,” Clark said.40 But since Clark admitted that the facts were correct and honestly obtained, Newsweek decided to go ahead and run the story.

  Even then Hoover did not give up easily. Under the direction of Lou Nichols, the staff in Crime Records worked all night, turning out a press release which deemphasized the importance of Dasch’s surrender and subsequent cooperation and presented the FBI’s role in a much more heroic light. It was released early the following morning, in time to beat Newsweek to the stands.*

  While American military forces were busy fighting in Europe and the South Pacific, a secret bureaucratic war was being waged at home. It was not against enemy spies but against the heads of other departments and agencies. At times it seemed that the FBI director was at war with practically everyone in Washington.

  Hoover’s battles with James Lawrence Fly, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, became legendary. The pair clashed over everything from fingerprints to wiretaps. Hoover even blamed Fly for Pearl Harbor, claiming that if the FCC had allowed the FBI access to Japanese diplomatic cable traffic when it was first requested—in September 1939—the United States would have been forewarned of the Japanese sneak attack.