J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  Thus far Hoover’s confrontations with Donovan were all skirmishes. The most important battle lay ahead. At stake was the control of U.S. intelligence.

  Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Military Intelligence Division, the Office of Strategic Services was a temporary agency, set up for the duration of the war. In the fall of 1944, as the conflict in Europe appeared to be nearing its end, Donovan began pressuring the president for a directive establishing a postwar, worldwide intelligence organization. Had such an organization been in operation in 1941, Donovan argued, the United States would never have suffered the ignominious surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

  Coming just after a series of hearings on that debacle, which put most of the blame on the failures of military intelligence, Donovan’s idea found a receptive audience, and on October 31 Roosevelt asked the OSS chief to put his proposal in writing. Two weeks later, and one week after the president’s reelection, Donovan submitted his plan.

  It went far beyond merely making his present organization permanent. Donovan envisioned a super, centralized intelligence agency, operating under the direct control of the president, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff—who now had oversight of the OSS—reduced to an advisory capacity. The head of the new organization—and there was no question who Donovan had in mind for this position—would have unlimited access to the resources, files, and reports of all the other U.S. intelligence agencies, both military and civilian, but would be answerable only to the president.

  Roosevelt sent the Joint Chiefs of Staff a copy of the memo for comment. The JCS, in turn, after classifying the report top secret, had fifteen numbered copies made and one sent to each of the U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI.

  Opposition to the plan was led by Hoover’s frequent ally General George Veazey Strong, the former head of G-2, who was now in postwar planning. If possible, Strong hated Donovan almost as much as Hoover did. Just a year earlier Strong had nearly succeeded in persuading Roosevelt to remove Donovan and put the OSS under his command, and it was due largely to Strong’s objections that the OSS was denied access to most of the deciphered enemy message traffic obtained from the cryptographic breakthroughs of Ultra and Magic.

  The military’s distrust of Donovan went back a long way. As early as April 1941 General Sherman Miles, Strong’s predecessor as head of G-2, had warned Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, “There is considerable reason to believe there is a movement on foot, fostered by Col. Donovan, to establish a super agency controlling all intelligence. This would mean that such an agency would collect, collate and possibly even evaluate all military intelligence which we now gather from foreign countries. From the point of view of the War Department, such a move would appear to be very disadvantageous, if not calamitous.”49

  Miles’s suspicions had now proven to be prophecy, and his successors united to oppose Donovan’s plan. Appearing before the Joint Chiefs of Staff in late December, General Clayton Bissell, then head of G-2, warned that if the plan was adopted, Donovan, and Donovan alone, would decide what intelligence was shown to the president. “Such power in one man is not in the best interests of a democratic government,” Bissell told the JCS. “I think it is in the best interests of a dictatorship. I think it would be excellent for Germany, but I don’t think it fits in with the democratic set-up we have in this country, where you run things by checks and balances.”50

  As was often true, Hoover did most of his fighting behind the scenes—in this instance supplying much of the ammunition Strong and the others used. He also continued to send the president, through Harry Hopkins, memo after memo citing OSS blunders. As Secretary of War Henry Stimson confided to his diary, Hoover “goes to the White House…and poisons the mind of the President.”51

  Apparently the poison, though slow working, was effective. On December 18 Roosevelt asked one of his aides, Colonel Richard Park, Jr., to conduct a secret investigation of the Office of Strategic Services. Park recalled, “Certain information had been brought to [FDR’s] attention which made an investigation both timely and desirable.”52

  Colonel Park held one of the most influential posts in military intelligence, because it gave him almost daily access to the president: he was in charge of the White House map room, an appointment he owed to General Strong.

  In his fifty-four page report, Park listed more than 120 charges against the OSS and its personnel—including incompetence, corruption, orgies, nepotism, black-marketing, security lapses, and botched intelligence operations, some of which had cost dozens of lives. By contrast, Park found only seven OSS actions worth favorable mention.

  The Hoover-Strong alliance was clearly evident in Park’s final recommendation: that the OSS be dismantled and replaced by an intelligence organization modeled on the FBI-ONI-G-2 structure in South America.

  Roosevelt didn’t live to see Park’s report, but he didn’t need to see it to reach his decision. That decision was made for him on the morning of February 9, 1945, when the president’s three least-favorite newspapers ran the same front-page story.

  Washington Times Herald: “Donovan Proposes Super Spy System for Postwar New Deal / Would Take Over FBI, Secret Service, ONI and G-2.”

  New York Daily News: “Project for U.S. Super-spies Disclosed in Secret Memo / New Deal Plans Super Spy System / Sleuths Would Snoop on U.S. and the World / Order Creating It Already Drafted.”

  Chicago Tribune: “New Deal Plans to Spy on World and Home Folks / Super Gestapo Organization Is under Consideration.”53

  The article, which contained verbatim quotations from Donovan’s top-secret proposal, bore the byline of the Washington correspondent Walter Trohan. Trohan was known to be one of J. Edgar Hoover’s favorite reporters and the recipient of innumerable FBI leaks.

  Quickly seizing the story, the anti-Roosevelt forces in Congress raised such a furor that the president was forced to table Donovan’s plan. Enraged, Donovan called the leak of the classified document “treasonable” and, demanding that the guilty party be exposed, requested that the JCS appoint “a judicial or quasi-judicial body armed with the power of subpoena…to compel testimony under oath.”54

  But, like Donovan’s super-agency plan, this proposal was tabled; no one relished asking the director of the FBI to testify.

  Donovan, of course, was convinced Hoover was responsible. If true, no one was able to prove it. Years later, after making an in-depth study of the episode, a CIA historian could conclude only that Hoover “had the motive, the means and the ability to carry out the deed.”55

  Walter Trohan, however, denied that the FBI director was his source. Interviewed long after the death of everyone concerned, Trohan claimed that Steve Early, the president’s press secretary, had given him the document, stating, “FDR wanted the story out.”56 Supposedly, his reason for doing this was to gauge public reaction before deciding whether to endorse the plan.

  Trohan’s attribution seems highly unlikely. Although this wouldn’t have been the first time Roosevelt floated a trial balloon in the press, his choice of the anti-New Deal Patterson and McCormick newspapers almost guaranteed that the plan would be shot down. Then too, this was during the same period when FDR had Louise Macy Hopkins, the wife of his most trusted adviser, placed under surveillance, because he suspected her of repeating White House conversations to none other than Cissy Patterson of the Washington Times Herald.

  By a stroke of luck, Donovan didn’t have to wait long to get his revenge against Hoover.

  In late February 1945 Kenneth Wells, an OSS Far East analyst, was reading an article on British-American relations in Thailand in an obscure magazine called Amerasia when he experienced a strong sense of déjà vu. Whole paragraphs seemed familiar—which was not too surprising, since they were his own words, written months earlier, in a secret report.

  Wells took the magazine and his report to Archbold van Beuren, the head of security for the OSS. Greatly concerned, van Beuren took the next flight
to New York, where he showed the materials to Frank Brooks Bielaski, who was in charge of OSS investigations.

  Confronted with the same problem posed by Donovan’s leaked proposal—thirty different people had been sent a copy of the report—Bielaski decided to take a shortcut, and on the night of Sunday, March 11, he, five OSS agents (most of whom were former special agents of the FBI), and an ONI locksmith did a bag job on Amerasia’s New York editorial office.

  The ONI expert wasn’t needed: by flashing his credentials, Bielaski persuaded the building superintendent to let them in. Once inside, they found a treasure trove of government documents—Bielaski later estimated there were perhaps as many as two or three thousand. A single suitcase contained over three hundred documents, all originals, all classified, and all bearing stamps indicating that at some point they had been routed to the State Department. “I took this stuff and spread it around,” Bielaski recalled. “It covered almost every department in the government except the Federal Bureau of Investigation…There were documents from the British Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, G-2, State Department, Office of Censorship, Office of Strategic Services…There were so many we could not list them.”*57

  Removing the OSS documents and a few others as samples, Bielaski rushed back to Washington and presented them to Donovan. Donovan immediately grasped the importance of the find. Acting on its own, the OSS had discovered what appeared to be a huge spy ring—operating only a few blocks from the FBI’s New York field office and obviously unknown to Hoover and his men. If ever there was proof the United States needed a new intelligence agency, this was it.

  It was an argument he would soon use with the president. But before that, because of the State Department stamps, Donovan requested an urgent appointment with Edward Stettinius, who had replaced Cordell Hull as secretary of state. After examining the documents, Stettinius told his assistant Julius Holmes, “Good God, Julius, if we can get to the bottom of this we will stop a lot of things that have been plaguing us.”59

  Donovan urged the immediate arrest of the entire Amerasia staff—this being wartime, certainly some charge could be found—and offered the investigative services of his agency. But Stettinius, ignoring both suggestions, simply informed the OSS chief that from here on the State Department would handle the situation.

  Donovan’s revenge was too brief for him to savor. Immediately after Donovan’s departure, the secretary of state called Attorney General Biddle, who turned the whole matter over to the FBI.

  Although the Amerasia case bedeviled the government for nearly a decade, and backfired on both the OSS and the FBI, it had one immediate effect. It gave Donovan the opening wedge he needed in order to persuade the president to reconsider his proposed intelligence plan.

  On March 30 Roosevelt took the train to Warm Springs, Georgia, for a much needed rest. Although eager to return to the war zone, Donovan remained in Washington, awaiting the president’s decision. It came on April 4, in a brief note: “Apropos of your memorandum of November 18, 1944, relative to the establishment of a central intelligence agency, I should appreciate your calling together the chiefs of the foreign intelligence and internal security units in the various executive agencies so that a concensus [sic] of opinion can be secured…They should all be asked to contribute their suggestions to the proposed central intelligence service.”60

  Roosevelt hadn’t approved Donovan’s plan; he’d merely reactivated consideration of the original written proposal he’d submitted back in November 1944. But Donovan took the note as approval, ignoring the fact that no consensus was possible, since State, War, Navy, and Justice remained unanimously opposed.

  Convinced he’d won his battle—and sure he would be picked to head the new organization—Donovan hurried back to the other war. Flying to Europe, he immersed himself in the task of moving OSS headquarters from London to newly liberated Paris, where he commandeered the Ritz hotel suite formerly occupied by Hermann Göring.

  It was there that he received the news of the president’s death.

  In the United States it was the afternoon of Thursday, April 12, 1945. Eleanor Roosevelt had just finished a speech at the Seagrave Club in Washington when she was called to the telephone. “Steve Early, very much upset, asked me to come home at once,” she would recall. “I did not even ask why. I knew in my heart that something dreadful had happened…I got in the car and sat with clenched hands all the way to the White House. In my heart of hearts I knew what had happened, but one does not actually formulate these terrible thoughts unless they are spoken.”

  On hearing the news, she responded, “I am more sorry for the people of this country and of the world than I am for ourselves.”61

  When the Senate adjourned, just before 5:00 P.M., the vice-president slipped into the unmarked office of Sam Rayburn to have a bourbon with the Speaker of the House and his cronies. Told Steve Early had called, he would remember, “I returned the call and was immediately connected with Early. ‘Please come right over,’ he told me in a strained voice, ‘and come in through the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance.’

  “I reached the White House about 5:25 P.M. and was immediately taken in the elevator to the second floor and ushered into Mrs. Roosevelt’s study…Mrs. Roosevelt seemed calm in her characteristic, graceful dignity. She stepped forward and placed her arm gently about my shoulder.

  “ ‘Harry,’ she said quietly, ‘the President is dead.’ ”62

  After a long stunned silence, Truman asked, “Is there anything we can do for you?”

  “Is there anything we can do for you?” she responded. “For you are the one in trouble now.”63

  The news reached the Seat of Government at about 5:40 P.M., by a circuitous route, a source in the Secret Service having informed one of the assistant directors, who in turn alerted Ed Tamm. Hoover and Tolson had left their offices a few minutes earlier, en route to Harvey’s for dinner, but, calling downstairs, Tamm was able to catch them as they left the elevator.

  By the time the director and assistant director had returned to the fifth floor, Tamm was on the telephone, attempting to confirm the story with the White House. A month earlier, there had been a rumor that Roosevelt had died aboard ship while en route home from the conference at Yalta, when actually the death was that of his longtime military aide Major General Edwin “Pa” Watson. But Early’s line was busy. He’d arranged a conference call with the three wire services. Even though all were notified simultaneously, International News Service scooped Associated Press and United Press by nearly a minute, with a 5:47 P.M. FLASH WASHN—FDR DEAD.

  The director of the FBI was officially informed of the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, of a massive cerebral hemorrhage, at about the same time radio listeners all over the United States heard, “We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin…”

  At that, Hoover learned the news before Donovan. The transatlantic cable was out temporarily, and it was several hours later, on the morning of April 13, Paris time, when an aide burst into the OSS chief’s Ritz hotel suite and interrupted his shaving to tell him there was a report that Roosevelt was dead.

  Like Tamm, Donovan recalled the earlier rumor, and was skeptical, until he finally succeeded in placing a telephone call to his friend Ned Buxton at OSS headquarters in Washington.

  Buxton confirmed the president’s death, then asked, “What will happen now to OSS?”

  “I’m afraid it’s the end,” Donovan replied.64

  Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had become one of the most important agencies in the U.S. government, and, with the president’s benign approval, its director had become one of the most powerful men in Washington.

  If J. Edgar Hoover mourned Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s passing, there is no record of it. His first act, on returning to his office from that of Assistant to the Director Tamm, was to call Lou Nichols in Crime Records and order him to bring in all the files on Harry S Truman.65

  * * *

 
; *The authority for conducting such investigations was a 1940 amendment to the Hatch Act, which made it illegal for an employee of a federal agency to have membership in any political party or organization which advocated the overthrow of “our Constitutional form of government.” Hoover, as usual, interpreted this rather broadly, investigating not only possible subversive affiliations but also “the background, qualifications, experience and reputation” of those being investigated.1

  Applicants for government positions were required to list character references. Presuming that none of the listed references was likely to provide derogatory information about the subject, the FBI interviewed them primarily to get the names of other persons who were more likely to reveal information about the subject’s life that he might prefer to have shielded from investigation. Those in this subcategory who proved cooperative were then often developed as regular informants.

  *The young agent, G. Gordon Liddy, who later attained more than a little notoriety in the Watergate affair, observed in recollecting the conversation, “Despite my puzzlement over the irrelevant monologue on Eleanor Roosevelt, I don’t believe I could have been more impressed had I been a parish priest after a private audience with the pope.”7