J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  By 1968, other politicians, if not the president, had caught on. Robert Kennedy was one of the first to sense the winds of change, and on March 16 he announced his intention to run against Johnson for the Democratic nomination for president. This was no surprise to many, and certainly not to LBJ. Hoover had informed him that Kennedy had tried to call Dr. King to apprise him of the decision.

  A mere twelve days later, the newly announced candidate made political history, in a bleak way. In the Oregon primary he became the first Kennedy to lose an election.

  Still, it was clear that the Democratic party, like the country, was deeply divided. After agonizing over the decision for months and discussing it with many people, Johnson startled the nation on March 31 by announcing that he would not run for reelection. Therefore, he avoided certain defeat in the Wisconsin primary two days later. Besides, “the thing I feared from the first day of my Presidency was actually coming true,” he later recalled. “Robert Kennedy had openly announced his intention to reclaim the throne in the memory of his brother. And the American people, swayed by the magic of the name, were dancing in the streets.”118

  Hoover was not in their midst. After the epic battle in public between two proud men, each implying that the other was a liar, there would be no place in the Kennedy administration for the current director of the FBI. It would not have been Hoover’s way to advise LBJ on his decision. It does seem likely that he would have reminded the president that Kennedy was very close to the Communist-inspired Dr. Martin Luther King, who had angered Johnson by coming out against the war.

  But that concern was mooted on April 4.

  “They got Zorro! They finally got the SOB!”119 These shouts echoed through the FBI’s Atlanta field office when news first came over the radio that Dr. King had been shot in Memphis. The Atlanta office had the primary responsibility for surveillance of the civil rights leader. When word came a few minutes later that King was dead, one agent literally jumped up and down with joy.

  Ramsey Clark had noted earlier that Hoover had never given evidence of any sense of compassion for the sorrows of the Kennedy family after JFK’s murder. King’s death was the occasion for a show of even greater insensitivity. Two days after the murder, as rioters tore through Washington neighborhoods, the attorney general could not find the director of the FBI. It was Saturday, and Hoover had gone to the horse races in Baltimore.

  Tolson, according to Clark, “could talk with compassion.”120 In an FBI executive conference early in 1968, as Kennedy’s chances for the nomination seemed to grow stronger, Hoover’s friend said, “I hope that someone shoots and kills the son of a bitch.”121

  On June 6 he got his wish when Sirhan Sirhan fired in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

  About 150,000 mourners lined up to pay their respects on June 7 and 8 as the body lay in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. Once again, the eyes of the nation and much of the world were riveted on the somber spectacle of a funeral for a young Kennedy cut down by an assassin’s bullets.

  Suddenly, as the coffin was carried down the steps of the church in full view of the TV cameras, there was a slight disturbance among the honorary pallbearers following close behind. An FBI agent was drawing Ramsey Clark aside and whispering that he must call DeLoach: “It’s urgent that you call him immediately!”

  When Clark got to a telephone, DeLoach reported that James Earl Ray, suspected assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King, had been arrested in London. The FBI had not wanted to interrupt the funeral service, of course, but Scotland Yard had refused to hold the story. Naturally, national attention was redirected to the news coverage of the FBI’s coup.

  Later, Clark found out the truth. DeLoach had told one of the Bureau’s favored journalists about the arrest the evening before. A lengthy, detailed press release had appeared on desks in the Justice Department either that night or early the morning of the funeral. Clark called DeLoach in a cold fury. He refused to use the agent as a liaison with the Bureau again. “The thing I couldn’t take was that I’d been lied to,” he would explain. “You can’t function that way.”122

  On July 21 a bomb exploded at the Tucson ranch owned by the Detroit mobster Peter “Horseface” Licavoli. Two bombs set off the next evening blasted away a patio wall at the home of the local Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno (Joe Bananas). Over the next year fifteen more explosions occurred as mob warfare rocked the southwestern desert town.

  Joe Bananas’s son went to the police. He wanted to help them find the “punks who are hurting my family’s image here.”

  Actually the gang war was a COINTELPRO created and operated by one FBI agent, acting on his own. So three witnesses testified in 1970. A Mafia specialist described as having “a lot of brass,” SA David Olin Hale supposedly told the two men who placed the bombs that they were part of an FBI operation designed to start a feud between the Tucson Mafiosi. When one was wounded by a shotgun during his escape after an explosion, the agent allegedly suggested that his partner use a crossbow to kill a Mafia bodyguard as vengeance. According to courtroom testimony, the agent visited the wounded man in the hospital and asked if he could “crimp a cap onto a fuse” under the sheets of his bed. The patient explained that one hand was still incapacitated and could not perform the task with only one good hand.

  Later, an attractive blond anthropology student who had told a friend that she and Hale had tried to bomb Joe Bananas’s car was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head. Her death was ruled a suicide by police.

  When the trial began, Hale was suspended. When his name was mentioned in court by the girlfriend of the brother of one of the bombers, he resigned from the Bureau. Although FBI officials were described by government sources to be “mad as hell,” one of them claimed that Hale was about to be let go because he had accepted loans and gifts from a private person. The judge in the trial, deciding to fine the bombers $260 each, believed that they had been “taken in, misled, led down that primrose path pointed out” by the FBI agent. He characterized Hale’s alleged schemes as “a frolic of his own that has brought embarrassment to all concerned.”123

  Hale was never charged in the case, which was suppressed by the Justice Department. The state of Arizona chose not to prosecute him. He was hired in an executive position after resigning from the FBI; this suggests that he had not been given an unfavorable recommendation from his former employers.

  Legal observers pointed out that, to indict Hale, Attorney General John Mitchell, who had promised to stamp out the mob, would have to charge the former FBI agent with conspiring to deprive the gangster Joe Bananas of his civil rights.

  Because of the possibility that the Democrats might win, Hoover’s aid and comfort to the Republican presidential candidate, Richard Nixon, had to be covert. This time, however, he didn’t need Father Cronin as go-between. Lou Nichols was in charge of the former vice-president’s campaign security. The first Judas, long since forgiven if not still fully trusted, had mounted “Operation Eagle Eye,” a nationwide network of ex-FBI agents and attorneys given the task of making sure the theft of 1960 was not repeated. The FBI director could just sit back, feed helpful information to Nichols, and feign uninvolvement.

  He hadn’t counted on LBJ.

  Less than two weeks before the election, President Johnson called a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam and proposed resumption of the Paris peace talks. It was both an adroit political move, to help Democratic presidential candidate, Hubert Humphrey, and a highly personal one, for above all else Johnson wanted to end the war before he left office. Unfortunately, South Vietnam’s president, Nguyen Van Thieu, balked, refusing to sending a delegation to Paris. From NSA-intercepted cable traffic and CIA reports (the agency had Thieu’s office bugged), Johnson learned that Thieu was attempting to sabotage the talks in the hope that if Nixon was elected he would demand much tougher terms. Johnson, not too surprisingly, suspected that Nixon’s people were orchestrating the stall. Suspicion focused on “the Dragon Lady,” Madam
e Anna Chennault, the Chinese-born widow of the World War II Flying Tigers commander. A leader in the Republican Party, and head of a group called Concerned Asians for Nixon, Madame Chennault was known to be a close confidante of the South Vietnamese ambassador Bui Diem. Through DeLoach, Johnson requested that Madame Chennault, Bui Diem, and the embassy of Vietnam be placed under physical and electronic surveillance.

  Coming so close to the election, the request caused consternation among Hoover and his aides. Because of Chennault’s prominence in the Republican party, DeLoach memoed Tolson, “If it became known that the FBI was surveilling her this would put us in a most untenable and embarrassing position.”124

  However, even though Johnson was a lame-duck president, he was still commander in chief, as he reminded DeLoach in one of his late-night telephone calls, and round-the-clock surveillances were approved. Johnson’s suspicions were confirmed on November 2 when the FBI intercepted a call from Madame Chennault to the embassy in which she urged Saigon to stay firm: they’d get a better deal with Nixon, she said. When the embassy official asked if Nixon knew about the call, Madame Chennault replied, “No, but our friend in New Mexico does.”125 The vice-presidential candidate Spiro Agnew’s campaign plane had stopped briefly in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that day, and Johnson had the FBI check telephone toll records to see if Agnew or his staff had called Chennault. No such call was found, and, although LBJ strongly suspected that the Republicans had delayed the end of the war for purely political reasons, he couldn’t prove it and reluctantly dropped the matter.

  This left Hoover on the spot. Were Nixon to win—as Hoover fervently hoped he would—the Chennault-Agnew investigation would indeed place the FBI in “a most untenable and embarrassing position.” But the wily FBI director had already devised an out: if Nixon won, he’d tell him about the investigation, and put the blame on LBJ.

  * * *

  *DeLoach later explained that his mandate was “to provide information…which would reflect on the orderly progress of the convention and the danger to distinguished individuals, and particularly the danger to the President of the United States.”4 One danger to Johnson was the possibility of open disagreement with the Reverend King, as revealed by DeLoach in a telephone call to someone in the White House, reported in an unsigned memorandum. The civil rights leader was planning, it was feared, to “speak up to the President” in a meeting that the president was scheduled to attend. For this timely warning and all the rest, Hoover would comment on DeLoach’s final report of the Atlantic City operation, “DeLoach should receive a meritorious award.”’

  †Although the G Street YMCA was one of several dozen Washington establishments off-limits to FBI personnel, a number of agents surreptitiously used its facilities because it was open evenings and had handball courts. Other prohibited areas included certain parks and public rest rooms, most nightclubs, and many hotels, residence clubs, and apartment buildings.

  Although they were not on the official list, new headquarters personnel were usually warned that the two most off-limits establishments in the capital were the Rib Room of the Mayflower Hotel (at lunchtime) and Harvey’s Restaurant (at night). Attempts to socialize with the director and associate director, they were informed, were definitely not the road to advancement.

  *Goldwater’s staff was preternaturally clean, except for one assistant’s traffic violation and another’s minor mention in the FBI files. Since he couldn’t find someone as vulnerable as Jenkins on his opponent’s staff, Johnson considered linking Jenkins himself with Goldwater, for the two had flown together in the senator’s Air Force squadron.

  †Perhaps to cover himself, DeLoach dispatched a memo to Hoover proving that LBJ remained supportive: “He stated that despite any criticism the Director might receive over this incident he, the President, felt that history would record the fact that the Director had done a great humanitarian deed. The President added that he received flowers from Khrushchev every time he had a bad cold or was laid up in bed for a day or two. He stated this did not make him love Khrushchev any more and that the American public certainly recognized this fact.”8

  *Actually the phrasing was not without interest: “When he assumed office as President in November, 1963, Mr. Johnson still did not know of the January, 1959, arrest.”13

  †In addition to the Bureau’s cooperation and advice, official sanction meant that the production company could use the FBI seal on the screen. In 1954 Congress had named it one of two government symbols that could not be used commercially. The other was Smokey the Bear.

  *This is no exaggeration. In one shooting script, two old ladies were chatting by the by about the good old days. The actor Efrem Zimbalist was to smile. According to Richard Gid Powers, this reaction shot had to be changed because of the possibly suggestive implications of his expression.15

  *Kennedy supporters naively thought that Johnson could be forced to accept RFK as his vice-presidential nominee at the convention, and the president gleefully strung them along. In fact, the nomination of Goldwater, and Johnson’s own success in the White House, strengthened him with the types of voters Kennedy might have been expected to attract. In Johnson’s traditional power base, the South, the Massachusetts liberal would have been a liability. “I don’t need that little runt to win,” the president said. Kennedy certainly understood that Johnson would not want, as RFK put it, “a cross little fellow looking over his shoulder.” When Johnson finally asked his attorney general over to the Oval Office in order to tell him he would not be chosen, Kennedy noted from several unusual conversational items on the agenda that it was obvious that “he was receiving detailed reports from the FBI on the activities of several of the Congressmen and Senators.” Kennedy also noticed that the lights on LBJ’s tape recording equipment were on, indicating that the talk was being recorded.23

  *While acknowledging that the FBI director was officially subordinate to the attorney general, Katzenbach doubted that “any Attorney General after Harlan Fiske Stone could or did fully exercise the control over the Bureau implied in that formal relationship.” The comment could be construed as self-serving, perhaps, but it was deeply felt. “Absent strong and unequivocal proof of the greatest impropriety on the part of the Director, no Attorney General could have conceived that he could possibly win a fight with Mr. Hoover in the eyes of the public, the Congress, or the President.”27

  *Hoover noted in his memorandum to Watson, “A copy of this communication has not been sent to the Acting Attorney General” (Ramsey Clark).30 Even though the FBI’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination had been closed, its investigation of the Warren Commission critics was open-ended. Hoover continued to send new material to the White House even after the administration changed.

  *Journalists and public delighted in the revelation during the hearing, by the San Francisco private eye Hal Lipset, of the existence of an olive-shaped “bug,” designed to be used in martinis.

  *Hoffa’s “Motion for Relief Because of Government Wiretapping, Electronic Eavesdropping and Other Intrusions” was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court, which assessed it was, in effect, a motion for a new trial that should be filed in the district court in Chattanooga. The new trial was never granted, and the Hoffa team’s frantic efforts to prove wiretapping got nowhere. The Teamsters leader went off to jail more than three years after his conviction with a touch of sangfroid. When an attorney was unable to get through to check a last-minute appeal to the federal judge in Chattanooga, his client grabbed the telephone, and the bottom of the instrument fell out. “See, what did I tell you,” Hoffa said, “even this phone is bugged.”46

  *According to the magazine article, Zicarelli, known locally as Joe Bayonne, was a capo in the Joe Bonanno family and ran gambling rackets, sold arms to the dictator Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, and was involved in a scheme to legalize the importation of laetrile, a supposed cancer cure made from apricot and peach pits. Gallagher defended this last enterprise to the Life reporters: “Look, if
Bonnie and Clyde had a cure for cancer, you should listen.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration didn’t agree.49

  †The major article in 1968 had been foreshadowed by a brief paragraph in a Life article the year before, which Gallagher characterized as “the first shot across my bow.” In a survey of organized crime, the congressman had been briefly mentioned as, once again, “a tool and collaborator” of the Bayonne racketeer. Immediately afterward Cohn called DeLoach to say, “That was a pretty dirty trick the Bureau did to Neil Gallagher.” According to the lawyer, DeLoach replied, “That’s just like you, Roy, always standing up for guys who don’t stand up for us.” Gallagher recognized that Cohn’s motives for telling this anecdote might not have been entirely pure.50

  ‡According to Gallagher, it was about this time that FBI agents burst into the Washington apartment his daughter was sharing one summer with three girlfriends. Gallagher had signed the lease, since the vacationing coeds were all underage. The agents demanded to know which one of the “broads” was sleeping with the congressman.51

  *Dodd had almost made a fatal mistake with Hoover immediately after John Kennedy’s assassination. On November 25 the FBI director learned that his former agent was proposing that Congress, not the Bureau, be in charge of an investigation of the murder and was urging this course upon President Johnson. The two were at least politically close; as Senate majority leader, LBJ had skipped over several senior senators to give Dodd a seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. The appointment of the Warren Commission ended Dodd’s initiative, but Hoover was furious at the mere suggestion. The Connecticut senator had an unusual reservoir of good feeling to draw against, however, because in 1963 and again in 1965, he helped quash proposed legislation that would have mandated Senate confirmation of the director of the FBI.