J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  Bobby handed out the diplomas. Hoover presented his president with a special badge that made him “a member of the FBI family.”84 Evidently, to all present and assembled, the three men were united in their commitment to enforcement of the law and protection of the public weal.

  “Dr. King Critical of FBI in South.” In the New York Times story of November 18, the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was quoted as charging that FBI agents in a small Georgia town were siding with segregationists.

  “Every time I saw FBI men in Albany, they were with the local police force,” the thirty-three-year-old minister declared. In response to the Albany Movement, an integrated effort in support of desegregation of public facilities in the town, authorities had jailed hundreds of protesters, black and white. Many of the black participants had been beaten or otherwise intimidated.

  “One of the great problems we face with the FBI in the South is that the agents are white Southerners who have been influenced by the mores of the community.”

  It was an accusation of collusion in defiance of law.

  “To maintain their status, they have to be friendly with the local police and people who are promoting segregation.”

  Early in 1961 King had complained that the Bureau did not actively seek to hire blacks. But this was something else. He outlined in great detail in the nation’s most influential newspaper a virtual indictment of the FBI for dereliction of duty.

  And he thus made an enemy whose dogged persistence in getting revenge would now follow him through life and into the grave.

  * * *

  *Years later, Arvad told her own son, Ronald McCoy, that she thought “it was a totally immoral situation, that there was something incestuous about the whole family.”3

  *The director and the ex-ambassador also apparently carried on an extensive personal correspondence, which presumably was destroyed by Helen Gandy following Hoover’s death. In addition to being on the director’s Special Correspondents list (meaning they were on a first-name basis), Kennedy also served as a sort of elevated informant for the FBI in the Boston area, with the designated title of “special area contact.” It has been reported that Hoover kept 343 separate case files on Joseph Kennedy.

  *Even though the Democratic nominee had assured him he would remain director in a Kennedy administration, Hoover, not trusting the Irish politician’s word, arranged to have congressional allies pass a bill that would give him full pay should he retire.

  *In FBI versions of the gymnasium incident, the attorney general tried to gain admission, was refused, and, though red-faced with anger, didn’t try again. In the Kennedy versions, after being denied entry, the attorney general ordered the FBI gymnasium to be open to all Justice Department personnel until eleven every night (it had previously closed at six). The FBI director was not eager to have the attorney general, or his men, wandering around the basement, where the printshop was located.

  *Somehow, Kennedy eluded Gandy’s eagle eye and barged in on Hoover’s daily two-hour “private conference,” waking the startled old man. This may have happened only once, but that would have been sufficient. The upstart had glimpsed him at a disadvantage.

  *The “Sugar Lobby” investigation was thought by the CIA to have important national-security implications. Existing import quotas for sugar were expiring in 1961, and the Dominican Republic, according to the agency, “intensely desired passage of a sugar bill by the U.S. Congress which would contain quotas favorable to that government.”45 CIA analysts feared that the legislation would be “all-important” to the future of U.S. relations with the sugar-producing Caribbean neighbor. The FBI suspected that Dominican nationals were spending heavily to influence senators, members of the House, and officials in the executive branch. Nevertheless, the administration’s original version of the import quota bill passed. A year later, when an amendment to the new legislation was being considered, government investigators again heard rumors of Dominican bribes. In both cases, however, no evidence of payoffs was uncovered. Kennedy approved a number of wiretaps in 1961 and 1962, including the homes of Agriculture Department officials and a U.S. citizen working for the Dominican lobbyists. Representative Cooley was not tapped.

  *In 1980 the Justice Department prepared a classified 302-page report on Gary Thomas Rowe and his underground activities on behalf of the FBI. According to JD investigators:

  • Rowe was no mere informant. Klan members stated he had veto power over any violent activity contemplated by the Eastview 13 Klavern.

  • Rowe twice failed lie detector tests in which he denied participating in the group’s bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Four young black girls were killed in the blast.

  • Although he admitted having been in the car with three other Klansmen when a shot was fired that killed the civil rights worker Viola Gregg Liuzzo, Rowe was not charged with participation in the murder but was instead used as the government’s principal witness against the other men. He later failed a lie detector test when asked whether, as his compatriots charged, he had fired the fatal bullet.

  • From 1960 to 1965 Rowe was paid at least $22,000 by the FBI and given help in starting a new life under an assumed name in California and, later, Georgia.

  All this, and more, was known to Hoover. The FBI director also knew that Rowe had bragged of having killed an unidentified black man in 1963, and that he had been involved in the beating of several Negroes at a Birmingham public park. Yet no action was ever taken against Rowe. “As long as he was providing good intelligence,” the Justice Department report concluded, “the Birmingham field office appeared willing to overlook Rowe’s own involvement.”47

  †Jenkins had warned Chief of Police Jamie Moore about the likelihood of trouble, and the official had decided to leave town. Moore called Jenkins at nine-thirty the night of May 13 to report that he would be gone all the following day. That left Sergeant Cook to answer the phone when the FBI’s man called on May 14. Hoover later promoted Jenkins to assistant director.

  *The bungler was Arthur Balletti, an employee of Maheu’s friend the Florida investigator Edward DuBois. Apparently, Balletti had reason to believe that Rowan would be out for the whole afternoon. He forgot maid service. When he left the wiretap equipment out in plain view, the maid on duty spied it and called the sheriff’s office.

  *In September, agents who were shadowing Campbell because of her connection with Roselli learned from a Los Angeles private investigator “of questionable reputation” that Campbell was allegedly sleeping with JFK. On September 9, while on stakeout, the agents watched two men burglarize Campbell’s unoccupied apartment, and did nothing, except record the incident in their report.

  †The previous year, Giancana had been rendered livid by FBI harassment at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. McGuire had been led off separately for questioning, for the agency was constantly trying to “turn” her and other Giancana acquaintances. Agent Bill Roemer, an imposing figure who sensed he could anger the mobster into assaulting him—and thus make a nuisance arrest—began to shout, “Ladies and gentlemen, here he is! Chicago’s number one hoodlum, the city’s biggest form of low life. Responsible for more scum, more crime, more misery than anyone alive.” Giancana controlled his notoriously short temper, gritting his teeth, but finally hissed, “Hey, we’re supposed to be on the same side, aren’t we?”54 Roemer was dumbfounded.

  But while the FBI was hounding the gangster, the CIA was still helping him with domestic matters. In December, however, he did have a small bone to pick. The bug at the Armory caught him saying to Roselli, “It’s no good. It’s not the kind I was looking for. I was looking for the kind for the room, that would fit anyplace, a little disc, that you could lay anywhere.”55 The conversation continued at some length, reflecting Giancana’s obsession with finding out just what his lover was doing and saying. Hoover was bugging a gangster who was being helped by the CIA to bug a girlfriend.

  *Compounding his sins, Sinatra had been involved i
n the money transfer, too. Judith Campbell later claimed that Giancana had said to her, “Listen, honey, if it wasn’t for me, your boyfriend wouldn’t even be in the White House.”56

  *Hoover apparently had no personal qualms about murdering the Communist leader Fidel Castro, only that the CIA and organized crime were involved. When it appeared that the CIA plots had failed, Hoover offered the services of the FBI. On October 29, 1962, the director sent the attorney general a memorandum about an FBI informant who had stated that he could arrange Castro’s assassination: “The informant was told that his offer was outside our jurisdiction, which he acknowledged. No commitments were made to him. At this time, we do not plan to further pursue the matter. Our relationship with him has been most carefully guarded and we would feel obligated to handle any recontact of him concerning this matter if such is desired.”60

  *Had the FBI director chosen to, he could have provided the president with some equally juicy gossip regarding his new host. Although nowhere near as voluminous as Frank Sinatra’s FBI file, Bing Crosby’s contained allegations that he patronized prostitutes, paid a blackmailing procurer $10,000, and consorted with known criminals, in particular Moe Dalitz of the old Detroit Purple Gang, who had become one of Las Vegas’s most prominent citizens.

  †Sinatra’s thirst for revenge was not yet slaked. After the president’s murder, the singer courted a prominent member of the Camelot circle, and the pair were photographed on dates. Eventually the two decided to announce their engagement at a party of socialities and celebrities, who were primed for the news. The woman was humiliated in front of this company as the hours ticked by and her suitor failed to show—or ever to make contact again.

  *Hoover could afford to be more subtle once Kennedy had been exposed. In July, after the attorney general orally requested a tap on the New York Times reporter Hanson Baldwin, who had written an article on Soviet missile systems that was thought to be based upon classified information, the director instituted the wire surveillance of Baldwin and, on his own initiative, also tapped the journalist’s secretary. On July 31—three days after the Baldwin tap began, four days after the secretary was put on line—the AG gave formal written approval of the “technical coverage.”

  *Unknown to Houston, the CIA had revived the Castro assassination plot, supplying Rosselli with a vial of their lethal pills. Also in this meeting was the CIA director of security, Sheffield Edwards, who told RFK that the operation had been conducted from August 1960 to May 1961. According to CIA investigators themselves, however, Edwards was undoubtedly being less than forthcoming and must have known that the scheme with Rosselli had been reactivated.

  †Once Hoover had learned of Maheu’s involvement, he presumed he could capitalize on his former aide’s loyalty to the Bureau, and, following the last Miami meeting between Maheu and Giancana, he had two of his senior agents talk to him. The director expected the ex-FBI man to tell everything he had learned about the activities of Giancana and Roselli, the agents told him. But Maheu had reached a “gentleman’s agreement” with the mobsters: “They promised me they wouldn’t discuss the assassination plot with their associates, and I promised them I wouldn’t repeat anything I might overhear while with them.” Nor would he betray the CIA. Hence the angry slander the director heaped on the man he’d once praised as one of his ablest aides.70

  *To date, the FBI has released only eighty, heavily censored pages from the Marilyn Monroe file. While it is possible that the actress was bugged or tapped, or both, and that these transcriptions have been destroyed or are being suppressed, the available material contains no indication that Hoover knew of or suspected her involvement with RFK prior to the August 20 meeting, when the attorney general himself brought up the subject.

  *Eventually, the FBI discovered that most of the “skim” loot went to Meyer Lansky in Miami. In a typical month in 1963, the skim from one casino amounted to $123,500, of which Lansky kept $71,000, then transmitted the rest to the New Jersey mobster Gerardo Catena. Catena distributed in the north and Lansky in Florida. Each recipient would have a small percentage of his share deducted for casino employees who kept mum about the operation. There were also couriers, $300,000 to a Swiss bank, $100,000 to the Bahamas. In a mob discussion of the possible sale of the Horseshoe Club for $5 million, the price was considered reasonable because the annual skim was about $700,000. Pieces of the Horseshoe, the Fremont, and the Sands were owned by Catena, Richie Boiardi, Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo, Vincent Alo, and Sam Giancana, according to the electronic surveillances.

  *Aleman repeated essentially the same story to investigators for the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. However, when Aleman testified before the committee he said that Trafficante may have meant only that the president was going to be hit by “a lot of votes from the Republican Party or something like that.”79 The switch from bullets to ballots came after Aleman admitted to committee investigators that he feared possible reprisal from the Trafficante organization. Trafficante also testified before the committee. Although he admitted having met with Aleman, he denied having made any such statements.

  *Hoover apparently did not learn of Becker’s allegations until 1967, when Becker related the incident to Ed Reid, a former Las Vegas Sun reporter and the coauthor, with Ovid Demaris, of The Green Felt Jungle. Reid, who wanted to use the story in his new book The Grim Reapers, contacted the FBI. But the Bureau not only didn’t interview Becker, or investigate the allegations; the agents tried “to discredit Becker to Reid in order that the Carlos Marcello incident would be deleted from the book by Reid,” as they reported to the director in a June 5, 1967, memorandum.82

  Marcello, who was later sentenced to prison for seventeen years on two separate convictions, also testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations and denied any involvement in a plot to kill President Kennedy. He also claimed he’d never met with Becker, although the meeting has been independently confirmed.

  29

  “We Must Mark Him Now.”

  In cold hard facts, the Reverend King was mistaken. Some 70 percent of the FBI agents working in the Deep South had been born and raised above the Mason-Dixon line. This was in accord with Bureau policy. In the interests of professionalism and ethics, new agents were never assigned to areas they knew well.

  But senior agents were a different matter. If they had an influential “rabbi,” say, Assistant Director Mohr or Deke DeLoach, they could usually finagle an assignment to their office of preference. And the majority of the SACs and ASACs were natives of Dixie, who had chosen to return to their roots.

  Moreover, there was something about the South. It was catching.

  Outsiders in this closed society soon learned the tricks of assimilation, putting more than a hint of bourbon and magnolia in their accents. But the infection could run deeper into the bone, bringing on a feverish change in attitudes and mores, creating new sons and daughters of the South who could wolf down grits or juleps with more zest than the natives.

  A litmus test might be use of the phrase “our way of life.” It was not a way of life that allowed much leeway for the aspirations of Dr. King and his followers.*

  True, Hoover tried to keep his senior agents independent, even discouraging socializing between his men and local police. But such SOG decrees weren’t practical in the field. Cooperation was essential. You couldn’t trust men who wouldn’t raise a glass with you or show up at the occasional barbecue. Sure, the special agents made a point of showing off their professional skills—and access to Washington and its awe-inspiring crime labs. But they also let the locals know that, once away from the office, and out of the dark business suits, FBI men had no trouble at all being good ole boys.

  People in Birmingham had understood. When SAC Jenkins had called the policeman who was KKK, they knew he had not put the cart before the horse. He knew “our way of life.” He’d connected.

  Dr. King’s mistake on the facts notwithstanding, he was whisker close on the interpretation.<
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  “In the late fifties, early sixties,” his young aide Andrew Young would recall, “we thought of the FBI as our friends…the only hope we had.”2

  Slender reed.

  J. Edgar Hoover, as early as 1957, had ordered his agents to begin monitoring the activities of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

  King had flashed onto the national scene in December 1955, when he led the Montgomery bus boycott. Blacks held firm for 382 days until segregated seating was ended, and King enunciated and refined his concepts of nonviolent protest. On January 11, 1957, many boycott principals, primarily black clergymen from the South, founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

  King, who had said, “We will use non-cooperation to give birth to justice,” was chosen president.3

  By May he was dramatically orating before 35,000 demonstrators at a rally in Washington, D.C., where he shouted over and over again, “Give us the ballot!”4

  Immediately, Hoover opened a file under “racial matters.” The SCLC had announced a campaign to register eligible black voters throughout the South, a move that the FBI director felt warranted covert surveillance. King’s file would be stuffed with “all pertinent information.”5

  During the 1960 presidential contest King was sentenced to serve four months at hard labor for “parading without a permit” during a protest in Atlanta. Taking a cue from campaign strategists, JFK telephoned the minister’s wife, Coretta, to sympathize with her and to affirm the goals of her husband’s movement. This famous phone call, according to some analysts, clinched the Kennedy win.