J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  Clark was able to prevent several wiretaps, including new surveillance of Dr. King and proposals to tap Israel’s foreign minister, Abba Eban, and the UN mission from Tanzania. Hoover made yet another attempt to get authorization to cover King just two days before the civil rights leader was assassinated. Clark refused the request.

  He also warned Hoover that agents caught breaking the law would be vigorously prosecuted as the Justice Department’s “highest priority.”84 Tom had never shown such spine with the FBI director. In this and in other ways, according to one family friend, “people speculate that Ramsey’s whole course in life was in reaction to his father.”85

  Clark’s assessment of Hoover was kept off the record during these years. Much later he characterized the FBI’s obsession with the Communist party as a “terribly wasteful use of very valuable resources.”86 He was deeply concerned about the old man’s foot-dragging in civil rights cases and his hesitancy to go after cops who had overshot their boundaries. The attorney general was also frustrated with the lack of cooperation between the FBI and other agencies—specifically, the CIA—and he clearly saw how dangerously resistant the Bureau was to change.

  Deciding that “from many standpoints it was desirable for Mr. Hoover to be removed from the running of the FBI,” Clark proposed to LBJ the creation of a “single oversight officer” for the more than twenty governmental investigative agencies, a kind of “ombudsman who would have the responsibility to correct abuses, misconduct, failure to meet standards, discipline, and things like that.” The attorney general even suggested that Hoover be appointed to this position, “hopefully for only a few years,” though he never discussed the notion with the FBI director. Johnson thought that the idea “was too ambitious and too heavy to take on.”87

  If Clark was worried that the FBI’s effectiveness and the quality of its training programs had been declining for the preceding ten to twenty years, Hoover entertained a different level of criticism for his boss. Like RFK, Clark was casually dressed when he met with the director, not even putting on a jacket for their business luncheons. Worse, Hoover was convinced that Clark was “nothing but a hippie.” He exclaimed to one of the newsmen he used for leaks, “I went over there once and his wife was barefoot! What kind of a person is that?”88

  Ironically, Clark was receiving personal criticisms of Hoover that were much more serious in nature, by generally accepted standards. Early in 1968, or thereabouts, an anonymous letter typed on the stationery of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office charged, “Hoover lives in the past…surrounded by aged or incompetent men who have spent their careers looking backward and telling [him] what he wants to hear.”

  The letter alleged that one SAC, a paranoid who beat and otherwise abused his wife, was protected because he knew and “has openly stated that Hoover and Tolson, whom he knows intimately, and some of their friends are homosexuals.” There were also tales about a top official, an alcoholic, whose brother-in-law was a notorious hoodlum and whose peccadilloes included demanding two prostitutes gratis from the Chicago field office as well as a new $1,000 engine for his private motorboat.

  “Hoover has become independently wealthy in his job…makes thousands out of books and articles written for him by FBI employees, and many thousands in government funds have been spent by FBI employees on his property in Washington and California…Hoover and Tolson make Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of New York look like petty thieves when you consider the 40 years they have vacationed at FBI expense in New York, Florida and California without spending a dime, but submitting outrageous expense accounts.”

  The writer noted, “Action on your part, Mr. Clark, will take great moral courage.” The attorney general did not respond. A second letter, dated August 28, 1968, also typed on the stationery of the Los Angeles office, was written in much the same vein. A new charge was that Hoffa’s men had been able to frame yet another top FBI official “with a blonde, liquor and lavish hotel, but with unseen cameras and tape recorders,” so that he was forced “to make a move on behalf of Hoffa.” Each of the officials he cited were named. The main target was Hoover himself, however, who “sold out his organization and his integrity to remain on the job past mandatory Federal retirement age.” The anonymous FBI employee prayed for “an able Director, young and vigorous in approach, preferably a normal, married, Christian man with integrity so we can get our organization out of politics and again doing the job concerned Americans expect us to do.”

  The Justice Department did not investigate. When the author showed him copies of the letter, years later, Clark commented, “You get thousands of letters, and a lot of them are obviously from unbalanced people. When a guy writes you from way out in California telling you that President Johnson seriously considered replacing Hoover, and you’ve been close to the president all the time, an adviser of his, and this is in an area that you know a lot more about, you have to question the person’s judgment.”89

  Also, it was not in Clark’s nature to rise to bait on personal matters. Both LBJ and Hoover knew that he would not relish sharing the intimate revelations about public figures that they shared with each other.

  Later, it would seem that both the attorney general and the FBI director had barely restrained themselves until the conclusion of LBJ’s term in 1968.* Apparently Hoover got a look at prepublication galley proofs of Clark’s 1970 book, Crime in America, in which the FBI was described as blighted by “the excessive domination of a single person, J. Edgar Hoover, and his self-centered concern for his reputation and that of the FBI.”91 The director denounced the former AG as “a jellyfish…a softie,” “worst” head of Justice in his long experience.92 Clark replied that the Bureau, under Hoover, had become “ideological.”93

  Johnson seemed to take Hoover’s side in later years. “I thought I had appointed Tom Clark’s son,” he told an interviewer. “I was wrong.”94

  The retired Supreme Court justice had no such doubts. “(Ramsey has) always spoken up,” he said during the flap over his son’s book. “I’ve never known him to dodge any issue.” He also praised Hoover, “an old friend,” for having done “a very fine job” in office.

  But he didn’t stop there. “We’re both getting pretty old,” said the former justice and attorney general of the postwar years. “That’s why I retired.”95

  That word. Bowing slightly to the threat of the inevitable as it concerned lesser men, Hoover had gone along with a 1968 statutory provision that future FBI chiefs be subject to Senate approval. This did not mean he was ready to pack up his files and go gently. This was insurance, in the event that he was forced into retirement, giving his supporters the clout to approve a nominee in his mold. Future directors would serve no more than ten years.

  Presumably it would be someone who would react as Hoover had to the wrenching ghetto riots in the summer of 1967. When forty-three people were killed in Detroit within four days in late July, Hoover told Johnson, “They have lost all control in Detroit. Harlem may break loose within thirty minutes. They plan to tear it to pieces.”96 Other observers restricted themselves to informing Johnson that Detroit was in fact in chaos, and he sent in federal troops to restore order to the riot-torn city. Harlem did not break loose.

  On another track, the FBI was planning to help Johnson’s reelection chances by “disrupting” a ticket envisioned by the antiwar “Peace Party.” The thinking was that “effectively tabbing as communist or as communist-backed the more hysterical opponents of the President on the Vietnam question would be a real boon to Mr. Johnson.”97

  But as civil disobedience threatened and another presidential contest loomed, as the war in Vietnam heated up, J. Edgar Hoover attained a grand climacteric on July 26. For six days he was honored and feted and publicly praised for his fifty years in government service.

  Perhaps this was a time for profound reflection. Or perhaps he simply continued business as usual. Let the facts speak for themselves.

  On Augus
t 1 he busily responded to the challenges of the inner-city rioting. In testimony before the President’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, he included Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., among “vociferous firebrands who are very militant in nature and who at times incite great numbers to activity.”98 Later in the day he started the FBI’s “Rabble-Rouser Index,” urging agents to intensify their efforts to collect information about the “rabblerousers who initiate action [in the disturbances] and then disappear.”99

  On the twenty-fifth of the month the Bureau was ready to establish a new COINTELPRO targeting black nationalists, in order to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” their activities. The director signed off with a motivational message: “You are urged to take an enthusiastic and imaginative approach to this new counterintelligence endeavor and the Bureau will be pleased to entertain any suggestions or techniques you may recommend.”100

  In September, Attorney General Clark asked the FBI to investigate whether or not the riots had resulted from some “scheme or conspiracy.” Specifically, he suggested that Hoover develop “sources or informants in black nationalist organizations, SNCC and other less publicized groups.”101 The director began the “ghetto informant program,” which continued to operate until 1973. There were 7,402 participants in 1972. At first the goal was to enlist the help of community listening posts, as it were, like “the proprietor of a candy store or barber shop.” Eventually, the program encouraged informants to identify “extremists,” including the owners, operators, and clientele of “Afro-American type book stores.”102

  At the same time, the FBI was investigating chapters of the Vietnam Veterans against the War to see if the organization was directed or controlled by the Communist party.* And the Bureau had joined with the CIA to encourage the National Security Agency to institute the illegal MINARET, a program designed to monitor antiwar and civil rights activists.

  In this climate LBJ’s request in October that the Bureau run a check on the senders of “negative” telegrams after a speech about his Vietnam policies may not have seemed unusual. Fifty of the “clearly critical” missives were duly handled by the Crime Reports Division.103

  But they could not check out, monitor, question, file, and intimidate everyone engaged in the great social protests of the 1960s. On October 21 and 22 more than fifty thousand Americans marched in Washington to protest the war in Southeast Asia.

  Yet Hoover did not hear. It was indeed business as usual. His staff prepared a long memorandum for Clark’s attention, ten pages with the puff title “Ku Klux Klan Investigations—FBI Accomplishments.” Buried in the text was a reference to Bureau informants’ “removing” Klan officers and “provoking scandal” within the organization.104 Since this was just one of a blizzard of memos he received, Clark failed to spot the snowflakes. Hoover could now say, if challenged, that Ramsey Clark had been informed of the White Hate COINTELPRO.

  In February, Hoover shared his reflections on the events of 1967 with Congressman Rooney’s subcommittee on appropriations.* As he saw it, the riots always began when an “already troubled situation” was fanned by “troublemakers, extremists, and subversives.” Tense situations were “further aggravated with the crowd taking violent action following the exhortations of extremists.” He could not find a single cause for the series of riots and had no evidence of overall conspiracy but warned his congressional watchdogs, “We should never overlook the activities of the Communists and other subversive groups who attempt to inject themselves into the turmoil once it is started.” He did not have a “panacea,” but he did recommend that “lawlessness and violence must be met head-on by prompt detection of those violating the law, followed by prompt trial and realistic punishment.”

  He was not more specific in his prescriptions for allaying the unrest of the ghettos, but he did praise the achievements of a Miami police chief. There was a 62 percent drop in robberies “in the three districts where the Negroes live” after cops started carrying shotguns into the neighborhoods and traveling with police dogs at their side.106

  As for the discontent of students, this generation of new leftists was not “legitimately interested in bringing about a better nation.” No, they had been seized by “an almost passionate desire to destroy, to annihilate, to tear down.” He worried that the Communist party was taking advantage of the concerns of disaffected young Americans.† In his view the growing tendency of civil rights leaders to support the antiwar movement was “some progress” for the American Communists, who were pleased to see these leaders “advise Negroes to refuse to fight in Vietnam.” The black nationalist movement, he warned, presented “real opportunities for foreign exploitation…a definite threat to our internal security.”108

  At the time of this appearance before the House Appropriations Subcommittee, the FBI was spending about $200 million annually. Hoover’s “testimony” was merely a formality. “I have never cut his budget,” said Congressman Rooney some weeks before this meeting, “and I never expect to.” The Senate committee charged with reviewing the Bureau’s budget would actually do nothing, relying upon Rooney and Hoover to reach an agreement.

  Acclaim was no longer universal. In a mildly critical article, the Washington Post’s Richard Harwood quoted an anonymous FBI agent who called Hoover the chief archivist of “other people’s filth.” Many others were quoted in a similar vein, but Tolson, writing a severe letter to the editors, put these remarks in perspective. They were “the actual or alleged carpings of so many nameless detractors and dead men.”109

  It has to be remembered that when J. Edgar Hoover spoke about international communism and foreign conspiracies and the seduction of American youth, many experienced, knowledgeable men and women believed that he knew what he was talking about. Among their number was Lyndon Johnson, who was encouraged to continue his doomed Vietnam policies by the FBI director’s misapprehensions of reality.

  In late April 1965, when asked by the White House about possible Communist influence in the antiwar movement, Hoover sent Johnson several opinion pieces written by journalists who attacked the growing dissent as Communist inspired, but neglected to tell the president that the articles were actually based on Bureau handouts.

  On April 28 Hoover met with the president, who said he had “no doubt” that Communists were “behind the disturbances.” At that time the Students for a Democratic Society had announced plans to stage demonstrations in eighty-five cities across the nation. Eagerly agreeing with Johnson, the director charged that SDS was “largely infiltrated by communists and…woven into the civil rights situation which we know has large communist influence.” Johnson was well pleased. According to Hoover’s memorandum of the meeting, LBJ wanted the FBI to “brief at least two Senators and two Congressmen, preferably one of each Party,”110 so that they could make public speeches denouncing the Communist inspiration of the antiwar movement by chapter and verse.

  What started now reinforced Johnson’s blindness. Hoover’s efforts minimized, and for a tragically long time the president entirely missed, the ground swell of public opposition to the war. This error cost LBJ the presidency. It also prolonged the conflict, raised the number of the dead, and profoundly increased the nation’s wrenching agony.

  Back in 1964 the FBI’s annual report to the attorney general had cited the Communist party’s “intensive campaign for the withdrawal of American forces from South Vietnam.”111 As Hoover knew, the CIA was telling Johnson that China and North Vietnam hoped to encourage the agitation on college campuses and create such public disorder that U.S. troops would have to be brought home in order to calm the country. He had to come up with something equally good, if not better. He wrote subordinates that he wanted a memo to Johnson “prepared immediately,” taking a predetermined slant on SDS: “What I want to get to the President is the background with emphasis upon the communist influence therein.”112 This slanted memo was also to be distributed to administration officials for use in their speeches. The
report, “Communist Activities Relative to United States Policy on Vietnam,” showed that the CP did indeed want to influence the dissenters. And that is all.

  Powerful, articulate senators were now beginning to speak out against the administration’s policies. When the Foreign Relations Committee decided to hold televised hearings on the subject, LBJ ordered Hoover to monitor their remarks for a point-by-point comparison with “the Communist Party line.”* In addition, the FBI passed along a memorandum concluding that various “peace” demonstrations were evidence of the success of Communist designs.115

  Student organizations were watched and infiltrated, and the Bureau gathered intelligence about planned antiwar demonstrations with its VIDEM program. Hoover’s emphasis was on the potential for violence raised by the dissenters, whose numbers were growing rapidly. Other observers of the national scene were drawing quite different conclusions from the unprecedented phenomenon, but Hoover missed the point. As late as 1966 he was writing all SACs about the “rising tide of public indignation”—against the demonstrators.116

  The FBI’s mischievous memorandums, called “interpretive” by Sullivan, were purposeful exaggerations. They remained influential in the Nixon administration, exacerbating White House misunderstanding of the public mood.

  “It is impossible,” the Church committee concluded, “to measure the larger impact on the fortunes of the nation from this distorted perception at the very highest policymaking level.”117 Or to number those who died in vain.