J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  King tried to laugh the matter off, but Kennedy was dead serious and determined. He brought up the Profumo sex scandal* in Britain, which threatened the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Perhaps Macmillan had made the serious political mistake of remaining loyal to Profumo, an old friend. Kennedy made the parallel explicit: “If they shoot you down, they’ll shoot us down, too.”29

  This bizarre conversation was necessarily brief. The two men were due back inside for a public meeting with a large number of civil rights leaders.

  King agreed to reconsider his doubts. Kennedy promised to send him proof, at least about Levison. It would come in surprising form.

  Levison was in South America for an annual month-long vacation, but O’Dell met with King and several activists two days after the White House event. Everyone agreed that Hoover had somehow frightened the Kennedys into calling for a purge. And that the loss of O’Dell and Levison would be extremely damaging to the movement Jack Kennedy had committed himself to support.

  But King understood the need to compromise, if Saturday was any indication. Marshall, Robert Kennedy, and the president had spoken to him on one subject only. This thing had gotten in the way of the major goal.

  Reluctantly, on June 26, he informed O’Dell he had to go. The White House was not impressed. On June 30 a Birmingham newspaper attacked King’s connection with O’Dell in a front-page story based on material in FBI files. The reporter was known to be especially close to the attorney general.

  Stung but practical, King wrote a letter dismissing O’Dell and sent a copy to Marshall. He still hoped to continue his relationship with Levison. He did not expect the president to come through with the promised “proof.”

  Marshall was the messenger. Unable to get anything definite from Hoover, Robert Kennedy had not been able to set down anything on paper, but someone came up with a harrowing little comparison. Adopting the now familiar air of mystery, Marshall met with Andrew Young in a hallway of the New Orleans Federal Courthouse. He could speak only indirectly, it seemed, but here was the “proof” King requested: Levison was like Colonel Rudolf Abel.

  And that was that. Abel was a KGB officer caught spying in the United States. He had assumed an identity as a starving Brooklyn artist and successfully used the “cover” for years. Had Levison, then, been infiltrated into the country by the Russians?

  This was so preposterous that King had to throw in the towel. He was dealing with people who were either unusually credulous or just implacably determined.

  Levison couldn’t be fired, though. He wasn’t on the SCLC payroll. Hoover and the Kennedys were demanding something much more profoundly disturbing, going to the heart of freedom of association. King was supposed to cut off all personal contact with his friend and counselor.

  When he tried to effect a compromise, suggesting to Marshall through Clarence Jones that the Justice Department hint which phones were tapped so that King and Levison could elude Hoover’s surveillance, RFK blew up. Already distrustful of Jones,* the attorney general immediately ordered wiretaps on him and his leader, Martin Luther King, Jr.

  In effect, he was asking Hoover to ask him for permission to install the taps. The director’s formal requests were prepared with unusual speed. Jones would be covered by three permanent taps. Kennedy signed.

  The King request required more thought. For one thing, Hoover had inserted the phrase “at his current residence or at any future address to which he may move.”30 Interpreted to the letter, this would authorize taps on King wherever he went, even to a hotel room for one night. For another, Kennedy was doing a dangerous gavotte with the FBI chief. Hoover lusted for the authorization, but the record would show that the attorney general bore the responsibility for having it installed. Hoover wanted to discredit King, but allegations against him might well rub off on the Kennedys, who publicly defended him.

  After two days, Kennedy decided. To Hoover’s chagrin, the tap was not authorized.

  Not aware what his attempted compromise had provoked, King nonetheless saw that it had failed to achieve his aim. Levison saw, too, and decided to make the break himself, for the greater good of the civil rights movement.

  O’Dell and Levison were gone, and Jones was being tapped, the subject of a surveillance that would delight Hoover with a cornucopia of completely unpredictable material.

  But his attention had been caught by Rustin, who was chosen to organize the march on Washington, despite the fears of many civil rights leaders that his many personal liabilities—pacifism, socialism, homosexuality—could be used to embarrass the cause. King had not been close to Rustin for a couple of years, but the man’s hard work and brilliant organizational skills were essential to the planning of the demonstration. He could make it happen.

  Taylor Branch has unforgettably captured the FBI director’s reaction: “Hoover did not welcome a giant march for freedom by a race he had known over a long lifetime as maids, chauffeurs, and criminal suspects, led by a preacher he loathed.”31

  So it was that, two weeks before the march, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina entered into the Congressional Record a booking slip from California. He informed his fellow solons at work on the nation’s business that one Bayard Rustin had been arrested in 1953 for vagrancy, lewdness, and sexual perversion.

  Thurmond had been attacking Rustin for some time for his past Communist connections, citing chapter and verse. This scripture, like the copy of the booking slip, had been conveyed to him from SOG. The press yawned, but two days later California agents informed Washington that Rustin had been “taking the active part” in oral sodomy with two white men.32 The Los Angeles field office was thereafter besieged with Bureau demands for more details.

  The change in tactics may well have been inadvertently suggested by King himself, who was overheard on the Jones tap predicting that southern congressmen would attack Rustin’s politics and morals alike. His interlocutor, apparently agreeing, said, “I hope Bayard don’t take a drink before the march.”

  “Yes,” the minister replied. “And grab one little brother. ‘Cause he will grab one when he has a drink.”33

  Hoover was pleased to accommodate King by fulfilling his fears.

  The campaign against Martin Luther King, Jr., was going well on all fronts but home. On August 23 Sullivan’s Domestic Intelligence Division gave Hoover a sixty-seven-page brief about the success of the U.S. Communist party in subverting blacks in general and the civil rights movement in particular. There hadn’t been any success, Sullivan said.

  As for the upcoming march, the party was “not the instigator” and was at present “unable to direct or control” it.34 Sullivan later claimed—but not to universal belief—that he foresaw the tempest this would raise and intended to weather it, urging his researchers to “state the facts just as they are.”35

  His superior’s cramped scrawl was indeed thunderous: “This memo reminds me vividly of those I received when Castro took over Cuba. You contended then that Castro and his cohorts were not communists and not influenced by communists. Time alone proved you wrong.”*36

  Sullivan’s report was fatally flawed by the same frankness that had characterized his monograph proving that the Mafia indeed exists—and shared its fate. Both were suppressed.

  Another department effort was having greater effect.

  “Martin Luther King Jr: Affiliation with the Communist Movement,” a report from the New York field office, was the first of many monographs the Bureau would send to the Justice Department. This one focused on inflammatory information provided by the brothers Solo, who had been watching the activities of Levison during his Communist period. It chilled RFK to the bone. “I am a Marxist,”38 it quoted King saying to his friend. The attorney general sent back the top-secret manuscript, telling Evans that he would be impeached if it got out.

  Private Life

  Hoover referred to Clyde Anderson Tolson, who was five years younger, as “Junior.” Tolson called Hoover “Boss” in publi
c and “Speed” when they were alone together. Tolson joined the Bureau in 1928 and almost immediately became the director’s constant companion. Their closeness gave rise to rumors of a homosexual relationship. National Archives 65-H-746.

  Clyde and Edgar at Laurel racetrack, Baltimore, 1937. Hoover had a weakness for “hot tips.” Tolson played the skeptic, both at the track and at headquarters. Joe Fleischer and National Archives 65-H-100-1.

  In Miami Beach, at Arnold Reuben’s Restaurant, with Walter Winchell, far right, and two unidentified females. The vastly popular columnist and radio commentator did more than any other man to perpetuate the myths of J. Edgar Hoover and his G-men. In return, the FBI director rewarded him with inside information on ongoing cases and embarrassing tidbits about their common enemies. One such item, about the Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, cost Winchell his television show. National Archives 65-H-563-1.

  At Miami Beach, 1939, on one of their semiannual “nonvacations.” Hoover told the press they were in Florida to lead a drive against “criminal scum.” One of the FBI director’s bulletproof limousines can be seen in the background. Wide World Photos.

  Celebrating both his birthday and New Year’s Eve at Winchell’s table in the Cub Room of the Stork Club, 1935, Hoover agreed to a gag shot. But the thuggish-looking man he asked to pose with him refused, and hurriedly left the club. When heavyweight boxing champion Jim Braddock took his place, both Winchell and club owner Sherman Billingsley breathed sighs of relief. Unlike Hoover, they’d recognized the “poor sport” as Terry Reilly, a syndicate killer currently on parole for extortion and impersonating a special agent. UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos and National Archives 65-H-182-2.

  Hoover was usually careful not to be photographed with his Red-baiting protégé Joseph R. McCarthy, the junior senator from Wisconsin. However, this picture, taken at oilman Clint Murchison’s California resort, Del Charro, in August 1953, shows the pair vacationing together at the same time the Justice Department was supposedly investigating McCarthy’s finances. Hoover kept extensives files on his friends as well as his enemies. The contents of McCarthy’s were so explosive they would have ended his political career. From left: McCarthy, Tolson, Royal C. Miller, and Hoover. National Archives H-65-141-1.

  4936 Thirtieth Place NW, Washington, D.C., J. Edgar Hoover’s home from 1938 until his death in 1972. Improvements and maintenance of the residence were paid for by the taxpayers. National Archives 65-H-1989-1.

  The living room of Hoover’s home. There were oriental rugs atop Oriental rugs and so many antiques that finding a way around them was like navigating an obstacle course. National Archives 65-H-1895-1-8.

  Hoover’s basement recreation room. Male guests, including Republican presidents, were shown obscene drawings of Eleanor Roosevelt, which the director had “appropriated” from the comedian W. C. Fields. National Archives 65-H-300-1.

  Hoover’s secret garden. Female nudes, including the famous calendar photograph of Marilyn Monroe, adorned the walls of the basement; nude statues of young men inhabited the garden. National Archives 65-H-300-2.

  Enemies List

  J. Edgar Hoover’s enemies list, accumulated during his five decades in power, was far more extensive, and secret, than President Nixon’s well-publicized roster, although there was some duplication. Hoover’s chief nemesis was William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, war hero, assistant attorney general, and founder of the OSS. Hoover kept Donovan from realizing his greatest dream, being appointed director of the CIA, and even slandered him after his death. Wide World Photos.

  Hoover despised First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who accused him of creating an American gestapo. Once her husband was safely dead, the FBI director leaked scandalous stories about her alleged love affairs with various men, and women.

  Hoover strongly opposed the United Nations, which he considered nothing more than a nest of spies. Shown here at the 1951 Paris General Assembly are three of the director’s enemies. From left, John Foster Dulles, whom Hoover suspected of “Communist leanings”; Adlai Stevenson, whom he branded a homosexual in the 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns; and Mrs. Roosevelt, whom Hoover called the Bureau’s “most dangerous enemy.” Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.

  The presidential confidant and U.S. Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter helped J. Edgar Hoover keep his job. In return, the FBI director kept Frankfurter under nearly constant surveillance. Wide World Photos.

  Hoover branded the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., a “notorious liar” and “a ‘tom cat’ with obsessive degenerate sexual urges,” and set out to “neutralize” him. A worried-looking King is shown here leaving the director’s office after their famous 1964 confrontation. When King’s assassination was announced, some FBI agents cheered. UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos.

  The anonymous letter the FBI sent King, in hopes it would encourage him to commit suicide. The excised portions referred to King’s sexual activities. The letter, which was opened by the civil rights leader’s wife, Coretta, was accompanied by tape recordings of King’s hotel room trysts.

  The Three Judases

  The first Judas, Louis Nichols, headed the Bureau’s mammoth publicity division, Crime Records, and was responsible for creating and maintaining the public image of the FBI and its legendary director. But when Nichols left the Bureau to work for the ex-bootlegger Lewis Rosenstiel, and took his contact list with him, Hoover accused him of betrayal. UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos.

  The second Judas, Cartha “Deke” DeLoach. Rightly suspecting that DeLoach, another Crime Records head, was conspiring to get his job, the FBI director was not displeased when he was forced into retirement. UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos.

  William Cornelius Sullivan, the whistle-blower. During their last meeting, Hoover accused the agent he’d treated like a son of being the third Judas. “I’m not a Judas, Mr. Hoover,” the feisty New England Yankee retorted. “And you certainly aren’t Jesus Christ.” Wide World Photos.

  The Presidents

  J. Edgar Hoover actually served under ten presidents—for more than a quarter of the nation’s history—although he didn’t count the first, Woodrow Wilson, perhaps hoping the public would forget the key role he played, while a young Justice Department staffer, in Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s infamous Red raids. It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, shown here signing the 1934 crime bills which gave the Bureau the authority to carry guns and make arrests, who later gave Hoover his almost unlimited powers. From left: Attorney General Homer Cummings; President Roosevelt; Hoover; Senator Henry F. Ashurst, of Arizona; and Assistant Attorney General Joseph B. Kennan. National Archives 65-H-206-2.

  Hoover hated Roosevelt’s successor, Harry S Truman, who tried, unsuccessfully, to keep the FBI director in check. Hoover and Truman are shown here with Attorney General J. Howard McGrath. UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos.

  Hoover established an immediate rapport with President Dwight David Eisenhower. Their mutual admiration, however, didn’t keep Hoover from investigating rumors regarding Ike and his mistress Kay Summersby. The president and the FBI director are shown here with Attorney General Herbert Brownell, discussing plans to “exterminate” the Communist party. It was during Eisenhower’s administration that Hoover launched his highly illegal, and sometimes deadly, COINTELPROs, the FBI’s secret wars against dissent. UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos.

  The FBI director had a much closer personal relationship with Eisenhower’s vice-president, Richard M. Nixon, that dated back to the Hiss case. Hoover bragged to his aides that he had created Nixon. It was not an idle boast. The pair are shown here at Bowie racetrack in 1959. National Archives 65-H-1515.

  The FBI director kept massive files on President John F. Kennedy, his brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and their father, Joseph Kennedy, as well as their wives and other women. Jack and Bobby’s plan to replace Hoover was aborted by the president’s assassination. Wide World and National Archives 65-H-1676-1.

  Hoover and Lyndon Baines Johnson lived across
the street from each other while the latter was a congressman. On becoming president, LBJ waived the FBI director’s mandatory retirement at age seventy, but kept him on a short leash. National Archives 65-H-2204.

  Hoover secretly helped Richard Nixon become president. In return, Nixon tried twice to fire the FBI director. Although both times Hoover emerged from the Oval Office with his job intact, the plottings of Nixon’s “palace guard” took their toll on the director. The two are shown here just after Nixon’s election, at New York’s Hotel Pierre, when Hoover planted the seed that would ultimately lead to Richard Nixon’s downfall. UPI/Bettmann and National Archives 65-H-2821.

  The Last Days

  The two faces of J. Edgar Hoover. The last formal portraits of the FBI director were taken in the fall of 1971, by Yoichi Okamoto, President Johnson’s favorite photographer. Hoover is shown here in his outer office, where he greeted visitors. Yoichi Okamoto.