J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  Nixon had deceived Hoover, although several weeks passed before the FBI director realized it. He had no intention of allowing Hoover direct access. As John Ehrlichman put it, “The last thing Nixon wanted was Hoover walking in on him whenever he felt like it.”12 To forestall this, Haldeman had given Ehrlichman, recently appointed White House counsel, the job of acting as both buffer and conduit, choosing him, Ehrlichman suspected, because Rose Mary Woods had become too close to Hoover and, particularly, to Helen Gandy.

  Not totally inconsiderate of the director’s feelings, Nixon still called him periodically to ask his advice. And when he sent Ehrlichman to see him, he arranged for him to bring some good news.

  For the first time in decades, the FBI director was having budget problems, the Bureau of the Budget having refused to allocate additional funds for construction of the new FBI Building, which—in part because of the director’s repeated changes in specifications—was already more than $40 million over budget, while construction hadn’t yet reached the ground level.* Using his influence as president, Nixon got Hoover the money he wanted, and Ehrlichman was delegated to tell him, hoping this would help smooth the way for a good working relationship.

  Visiting the famed director of the FBI was, Ehrlichman discovered, akin to going to see the Wizard of Oz. After being escorted through Hoover’s “trophy rooms”—a series of anterooms and offices, their walls adorned with hundreds of photographs, awards, scrolls, and plaques—he was finally ushered into a handsomely paneled room familiar to anyone who watched TV. Everything was here: the impressively large desk, the flags, the FBI seal, both on the wall and embroidered in the deep-pile carpet. The only thing missing was the director.

  Not until then did Ehrlichman learn that this was just a conference room, which was also used for ceremonial occasions and Bureau-authorized television shows. Hoover’s inner sanctum was beyond the desk, behind yet another door.

  It was small, not more than twelve feet square, and the director, seated behind a simple wooden desk in a large leather chair, dominated it.

  “When he stood, it became obvious that he and his desk were on a dais about six inches high,” the White House counsel observed, while sinking into the soft leather couch the director had indicated. Then Hoover “looked down at me and began to talk. An hour later he was still talking.”

  Forewarned that all meetings with the FBI director were secretly filmed or videotaped, Ehrlichman tried to spot the camera lens but was unsuccessful.* He did notice, near the ceiling, “a wavering purplish light” whose purpose he couldn’t fathom. (This was Hoover’s “bug light,” which he believed killed germs. There was a similar device in his private bathroom.)

  On Ehrlichman’s return to the White House the president asked him how he’d gotten along with Hoover. “Great,” he replied; “he did all the talking.”

  Nixon nodded. “I know. But it’s necessary, John. It’s necessary.”13

  Ehrlichman was unimpressed by the legendary FBI director, and he was even less impressed with the FBI’s intelligence reports, often returning them with the request that they be redone. Even the Kennedys hadn’t dared do this.

  Finding the FBI’s performance wanting, Ehrlichman began relying on the New York City police intelligence unit for his information, and he even put an ex-NYPD cop, Jack Caulfield, on his staff to handle special investigations too sensitive to entrust to the FBI.

  Hoover missed none of this. Quickly realizing that Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and the other members of the “palace guard” intended to restrict his access to the president, Hoover bided his time. It came just five months later.

  Meanwhile, with his own man in the White House, Hoover intensified the war against his ideological enemies, focusing on the latest menace, the Black Panther party, which the director characterized as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”14

  On November 25, 1968, even before Johnson and Clark left office, Hoover ordered the SACs to submit “imaginative and hard-hitting measures aimed at crippling the BPP.”15 In addition to mail openings, burglaries, surveillances, taps, bugs,† and the use of paid informants, a variety of other tactics were suggested and implemented. Among these, anonymous mailings were still much favored.

  The St. Louis field office sent an anonymous letter to the wife of a black leader, saying her husband “been maken it here with Sister Marva Bas & Sister Tony and than he gives us this jive bout their better in bed then you.” Lest the spouse—whom the FBI described as “a faithful, loving wife” and “an intelligent, respectable young mother who is active in the A.M.E. Methodist Church”—fail to mention the letter to her husband, he too was sent a copy, from “a mutual friend.”17

  The husband of a white woman working with a biracial organization received a letter which read, “Look man I guess your old lady doesn’t get enough at home or she wouldn’t be shucking and jiving with our Black Men in ACTION, you dig? Like all she wants to integrate is the bed room and we Black Sisters ain’t gonna take no second best from our men.” As a “tangible result” of the letter, the field office later bragged, the target and her husband separated.*18

  Employers unaware their employees were affiliated with black nationalist groups such as the Panthers were so informed, as were landlords, banks, auto insurance companies, and retail credit agencies, and if the targets had criminal records, these too were referred to.

  “Pretext” telephone calls, in which the caller pretended to be someone he wasn’t, were another effective device. Such a call to the mother of the Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael, warning her that the Panthers were going to assassinate her son, so frightened Carmichael that he fled New York the following day and flew to Africa, where he remained in hiding for years, of interest to no one except the CIA.†

  Attempts to discredit the Panther leadership in the eyes of the black community by publicizing “the evils of violence, the lack of morals, the widespread use of narcotics,” rarely worked, Hoover had to admit, since “a typical black supporter of the BPP is not disturbed by allegations which would upset a white community.”19

  What did work, the director discovered, was charges of “high living” and misappropriated funds. When Huey Newton, in fear for his life because of FBI-inspired death threats, secretly moved into a $650-a-month, expensively furnished penthouse apartment in Oakland, the Bureau leaked the story to one of its favored reporters, Ed Montgomery of the San Francisco Examiner, who even obligingly printed Newton’s alias and address.

  Top priority was given to creating schisms in the Panther leadership, and in particular between Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver. The FBI’s job was much simplified when the fugitive Cleaver fled to Algeria via Canada and Cuba. With thousands of miles separating the two leaders, the Bureau used bogus communications and missing correspondence to widen the split, so successfully playing on their ideological differences, egos, and paranoia that each man believed the other had him marked for assassination.*

  These were big successes, but the FBI was not content to leave them at that, as evidenced by a January 28, 1971, airtel written by Sullivan:

  “Huey P. Newton has recently exhibited paranoid-like reaction to anyone who questions his orders, policies, actions or otherwise displeases him. His Hitler-like hysterical reaction, which has very likely been aggravated by our present counterintelligence activity, has resulted in suspensions of loyal BPP workers. It appears Newton may be on the brink of mental collapse and we must intensify our counterintelligence.”20

  In short, Sullivan’s philosophy was: push them to the brink of madness, and then keep pushing.

  But Hoover disagreed. “Since the differences between Newton and Cleaver now appear to be irreconcilable,” he wrote on March 25, 1971, “no further counterintelligence activities in this regard will be undertaken at this time and now new targets must be established.”21

  One of the most effective tactics, of course, was to persuade local police to arrest the party leaders, on every possible c
harge, until they could no longer make bail. Used earlier against RAM, the Revolutionary Action Movement, in Philadelphia in 1967, it had proven so successful that the organization was rendered totally ineffective.†

  On November 9, 1969, the Chicago field office learned from an informant that Fred Hampton, head of the Illinois BPP, had been picked to replace David Hillard as the BPP’s chief of staff if Hillard was jailed on pending charges.

  This was a big move up, to the national leadership, and the FBI was determined to prevent it from happening. Young (twenty-one), dynamic, and an effective organizer (at eighteen he’d led an NAACP fight to desegregate swimming pools), Hampton showed the disturbing potential of someday becoming the new black “messiah” the FBI so feared.

  The Bureau’s informant, William O’Neal, was especially well placed. Not only was he the Illinois BPP chief of security; he was also Hampton’s bodyguard, and he gave his FBI handler Hampton’s schedule, his current address, a list of other BPP members who used the South Side apartment, an inventory of the weapons stored there, and a detailed floor plan of the apartment, complete to the notation “Fred’s bed.”

  With this information in hand, the FBI tried, several times, to persuade local law enforcement agencies to raid the apartment, but without success, probably because the FBI admitted that the guns had been “purchased legally.”22

  On November 13 two Chicago policemen were killed in a shootout that also left one Panther dead. Suddenly both the Chicago Police Department and the state attorney’s office were very interested, and on November 21 the FBI briefed them on the information O’Neal had provided. That same day the Chicago SAC informed the director, “Officials of the Chicago police have advised that the department is currently planning a positive course of action relative to this information.”

  At 4:45 A.M. on December 4, 1969, a combined strike force of state and local police (excluding only the FBI, whose involvement was kept secret) smashed in the door of the apartment. Who fired first remains in dispute. What is known is that when the firing stopped, nine minutes later, between eighty-three and ninety-nine shots had been fired, only one of which was from a Panther weapon; two Panthers, Hampton and Mark Clark, were dead; and five others were wounded. Hampton never made it out of bed. He probably died in his sleep, for there was evidence indicating he had been drugged prior to the raid.

  It was rare for the FBI to hide its light under a bushel, but in most of the COINTELPRO actions it was forced to do so. This didn’t keep the Chicago SAC from claiming credit when he airteled Hoover on December 11, “The raid was based on information furnished by the informant…This information was not available from any other source and subsequently proved to be of tremendous value.” This being the case, “it is felt that this information is of considerable value in consideration of a special payment for informant.”

  Hoover agreed and on December 17 responded, “Authority is granted to make captioned informant a special payment of $300 over and above presently authorized levels of payment for uniquely valuable services which he has rendered over the past several months.”

  Another favored tactic was to falsely label a target an informant. At the very least, if the information was believed, it alienated him from the group and added to the paranoia. But in the case of the Black Panthers, as the Bureau well knew, the repercussions could be far more serious. In February 1971 the BPP executed two suspected informants. The following month, Hoover authorized at least three more “snitch jacket” operations.

  Potentially even more effective, in numbers killed or injured, was the tactic of pitting one violence-prone group against another. That this was, both legally and morally, incitement to murder apparently did not concern any of the FBI’s lawyer-agents.*

  Early in 1969 the FBI sent an anonymous letter to the leader of the Black Stone Rangers, a tough, heavily armed Chicago street gang, advising him, “The brothers that run the Panthers blame you for blocking their thing and there’s supposed to be a hit out for you.”

  The purpose of the letter, the Chicago SAC bluntly admitted in airtels to headquarters, was “to intensify the degree of animosity between the two groups” and to cause “retaliatory action which could disrupt the BPP or lead to reprisals against its leadership.”24

  In November 1968 Hoover informed the SACs that a serious struggle was emerging between the Black Panthers and another black nationalist organization, the United Slaves (US), and that it had reached such proportions that it was “taking on the aura of gang warfare with attendant threats of murder and reprisals.” The SACs were ordered to submit counterintelligence measures which would “fully capitalize upon BPP and US differences,” as well as create “further dissention in the ranks of the BPP.”25

  On January 17, 1969, an argument erupted on the University of California’s Los Angeles campus over whether a Black Panther or a United Slave would head the Black Student Union. The Panther won the election, but the Slaves won the battle that followed, shooting and killing two BPP members.

  During the following months the FBI exacerbated the feud; this resulted in two more deaths, both of Panthers, and injuries to dozens of others, from both groups, from beatings, stabbings, shootings, and firebombings. It was a long war, and whenever a truce seemed imminent, the Bureau stepped in and did something to provoke new violence. As late as May 1970 the Los Angeles SAC recommended that the United Slaves be “discreetly advised of the time and location of BPP activities in order that the two organizations might be brought together and thus grant nature her due course.”26

  With such successes it was difficult not to brag. On November 15, 1969, the San Diego field office notified FBI headquarters, “Beatings, shootings and a high degree of unrest continues to prevail in the ghetto area of Southeast San Diego. Although no specific counterintelligence action can be credited with contributing to this overall situation, it is felt that a substantial amount of the unrest is directly attributable to this program.”

  A special object of Hoover’s ire was the Black Panther “Breakfast for Children” program, which had received considerable publicity, although as the FBI pointed out, to business leaders and “cooperative news sources,” many of the donations were the result of intimidation and coercion.

  When the San Francisco SAC dared suggest that such community-interest programs might best be left untouched, Hoover angrily responded, “You have obviously missed the point. The BPP is not engaged in the ‘Breakfast for Children’ program for humanitarian reasons. The program was formed by the BPP for obvious reasons, including their effort to create an image of civility, assume community control of Negroes, and to fill adolescent children with their insidious poison.”27

  Perhaps encouraged by the director’s mention of poison, the Newark SAC proposed a truly bizarre scheme, which would disrupt both the breakfast program and the BPP’s upcoming national convention.

  AIRTEL

  TO: DIRECTOR, FBI

  FROM: SAC, NEWARK

  SUBJ: COINTELPRO—BLACK EXTREMIST RM

  The following counterintelligence proposal is submitted for consideration:

  It is proposed that a telegram be sent from Oakland, California, to Jersey City, NJ, BPP Headquarters, 93 Summit Ave., (and to all BPP Headquarters). The text of the telegram should read similar to the following:

  “Word received food donated to Party by anti-Liberation white pigs contains poison. Symptoms cramps, diarrhea, severe stomach pain. Destroy all food donated for convention suspected of poison, however, still requested you meet quota.”

  “Ministry of Information”

  It is suggested that the Bureau then consider having the Laboratory treat fruit such as oranges with a mild laxative-type drug by hypodermic needle or other appropriate method, and ship fruit as a donation from a fictitious person in Miami, Florida, to Jersey City headquarters.

  “Confusion, intra-BPP distrust and hunger at the upcoming convention would be the results,” the Newark SAC predicted.28

  Hoover consider
ed the idea, but finally rejected it, in an airtel to the SACs in Newark and San Francisco, “because of lack of control over the treated fruit in transit”—someone other than a Black Panther might eat it.

  However, the idea of the telegram, he added, “has merit.”29

  In its January 24, 1969, issue, which appeared just four days after the inauguration, Life bid an editorial farewell to the Johnson administration, adding, “There are three farewells we hate to see postponed: that of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, 74, the Selective Service’s General Lewis B. Hershey, 75, and Democratic House Speaker, John W. McCormack, 77. Older in aggregate years than the Republic itself, they would earn our respectful farewell by standing down soon from honorable but growingly uncreative careers, whose continuation symbolizes to many, particularly the young, official unresponsiveness to the challenges of today.”

  Henry Luce was now dead and no longer blackmailable.

  Less than two months later the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported that the Nixon administration was trying to find ways to persuade Hoover to retire. Twice, the paper stated, Hoover had tried to go to the White House to speak personally to the president “on trivial matters,” only to be told to go through the attorney general. One unnamed White House official was quoted as comparing Hoover to Winston Churchill: “I consider that Churchill saved western civilization, but the time came when the old goat had to go.”

  Enraged, Hoover denounced the article as “a shallow fabrication built upon unfounded rumors and gross untruths,” and had its author, the Washington correspondent Richard Dudman, investigated.*30