J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  All day long, headquarters personnel peeked into Sullivan’s office to see if the rumor was true. It was. Except for one item, Sullivan’s desk, reputedly the messiest in the entire FBI, was bare. The only thing Sullivan had chosen to leave behind was a personally autographed photograph of the director.*

  As a sample of things to come, the Washington Post had the story the next morning: “Top FBI Official Forced Out / in Policy Feud with Hoover.” True to his promise, William Sullivan did not go quietly. The official FBI statement, that Sullivan had “voluntarily retired,” was quickly debunked. Although he was not quoted directly, it was obvious that Sullivan was talking.

  He was also writing another letter, this one for the record, if that became necessary.

  Despite its much touted investigative abilities, the FBI was unable to find a clue to the disappearance of the Kissinger wiretap records until Mark Felt called William Sullivan and asked him where they were. He had given them to Robert Mardian in the Justice Department, Sullivan told him, with, one suspects, a certain amount of satisfaction.

  Mardian, however, claimed that he’d destroyed the records.

  Although it must have been a difficult call to make, the director telephoned the attorney general on October 2 and informed him that the materials from the “special coverage” which had been in William Sullivan’s custody were missing.

  Mitchell told Hoover he shouldn’t concern himself, that they were in the White House. It was Ehrlichman now, however, who claimed the records had been destroyed.

  Hoover didn’t know whom to believe. But it didn’t matter. All that really mattered was that he no longer had them.

  Physical possession of the materials, although desirable, was not entirely necessary for Hoover’s purposes, however. If he intended to use the threat of making the wiretaps public as a means of forcing Nixon to retain him as director, all he needed was the basic facts: who was tapped, when and for how long, and upon whose request and authorization. What was actually heard was really immaterial. On Hoover’s instructions, an investigative team was assigned the job of reconstructing the history of the taps. But it quickly ran into a problem: the best source for the identities and dates was Horace Hampton of the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company; however, since the publication of Kessler’s articles, it was deemed unwise to contact him. Instead Belter and the men who did the actual listening and transcribing were interviewed, and they were able to recall most of the names and approximate dates. But only Sullivan was present during the conversations with Kissinger and Haig. And—because Hoover had insisted on it—there were no copies of the cover letters linking the materials to the White House or, most important of all, of Attorney General Mitchell’s signed authorizations.

  Nor could Hoover bluff. Since Sullivan knew there were no duplicates, the White House probably did also. In the last analysis, it would be J. Edgar Hoover’s word against John Mitchell’s. But if it reached that stage, he would have already lost the battle.

  As far as the Kissinger wiretaps were concerned, Hoover was stalemated. But these weren’t the only files he could use against Nixon.

  When Sullivan completed his final letter to Hoover, on October 6, he sent it to the director’s home, rather than to FBIHQ, explaining “As you are aware the Bureau has become a bit of a sieve and this letter if seen would be the subject of gossip which, I am sure, we both wish to avoid.”

  “Many times I have told you what I think is right and good about the FBI,” he began, “but now I will set forth what I think is wrong about it…”

  The letter, which ran to twelve single-spaced pages, was divided into twenty-seven separate categories, each containing one or more potentially embarrassing news stories, as a sampling of the headings indicates: Senator Joseph McCarthy and Yourself; The FBI and the Negro; The FBI and Jewish Applicants; Your Book Masters of Deceit; Free Services at Your Home; Concealment of the Truth; FBI and CIA; FBI and Organized Crime; Our Statistics; Leaks of Sensitive Materials; The Hoover Legend and Mythology; and, finally, FBI and Politics.

  Any reporter in the capital would have given a week’s pay for the chance to quote only a few of the passages: “My first recollection was leaking information about Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt whom you detested…You know well we have avoided hiring Jewish agents. You have always had one Jewish agent up front for people to see. Years ago it was Mr. Nathan I am told. In my time it is Al Rosen…More than one of us at the Bureau were disturbed when you identified yourself with Senator McCarthy and his irresponsible anti-Communist campaign. You had us preparing material for him regularly, kept furnishing it to him while you denied publicly that we were helping him. And you have done the same thing with others…We all know [our statistics] have been neither definitive nor wholly reliable…Breaking direct liaison with the CIA was not rational…As you know I had a number of men working for months writing [the book Masters of Deceit] for you. Only recently did I learn that you put some thousands of dollars in your own pocket and Tolson likewise got a share…I think we have been conducting far too many investigations called security which are actually political. During the Johnson administration…”

  Despite its many categories, Sullivan’s letter was very selective. There was no mention of the Kissinger wiretaps or other special favors the FBI had done for the Nixon administration (although previous, Democratic administrations were mentioned). Nor was anything said about any other wiretaps, bugs, or bag jobs; the deficiencies in the FBI investigation of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination; the plan to neutralize Martin Luther King, Jr.; or the COINTELPROs—in all of which William Sullivan had figured so prominently.

  Sullivan’s letter was part bluff, part blackmail. Hoover’s problem would be to decide how much of each. These are some of the things I know, Sullivan seemed to be saying, and if you don’t “reform, reorganize and modernize the Bureau”—or resign—I’ll make them public. The threat was implicit in the last paragraph:

  “Mr. Hoover, if for reasons of your own you cannot or will not [reform the Bureau] may I gently suggest you retire for your own good, that of the Bureau, the intelligence community and law enforcement…For if you cannot do what is suggested above you really ought to retire and be given the recognition due you after such a long and remarkable career in government.”25

  Minus the politeness, it sounded more than vaguely reminiscent of another letter William Sullivan had written seven years earlier, anonymously:

  “King there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days…There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”

  Hoover did not respond to the letter. But then neither did he show it to Mitchell or Nixon.

  As proof Sullivan wasn’t bluffing, just four days after he mailed the letter the lead story on the front page of the New York Times bore this headline:

  FBI IS SAID TO HAVE CUT

  DIRECT LIAISON WITH CIA

  Hoover Move in Quarrel 1 ½ Years Ago

  Causes Concern among Intelligence

  Officials about Coping with Spies

  The director looked old and tired when he got off the plane in Daytona Beach, Florida. Coming down the ramp, he stumbled and, had someone not caught his arm, would have fallen.

  A former aide was among those who met him. Hoover had seemed to shrink with age, he observed. He was also pale and withdrawn, agitated, his hands constantly moving. “He was either wringing them or tapping them—things he didn’t use to do.”26

  He was taken directly to the funeral home. Frank Baughman, his oldest, and once his closest, friend was dead, of cancer.

  Upon retirement, Baughman had hit the bottle. Alcoholism was a problem common to many ex-agents. Once the Bureau had dominated their lives, leaving them little time for their families or outside pursuits. Now retired, they felt cut adrift, out of it. Though occasionally Baughman testified as an expert ballistics witness in a criminal trial, most of the ex
citement, and camaraderie, was in the past. The highlight of each month was the arrival of The Grapevine, the gossipy publication of the Society of Former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sometimes the obituaries ran to half a dozen pages.

  Only a small number of people attended the funeral, and among them only two were former agents. The truth was that Baughman had few friends, because he bored people. Once a great raconteur—his tales peppered with language as salty as Edgar’s was proper—he’d turned repetitious, never failing to mention, for example, how proud he was that the director had been the best man at his wedding. Over the years his attitude toward Hoover had calcified into near-idolatry. The director’s Christmas card, almost the only contact they had, would remain on the mantel months after the holiday season. Yet, with all his trips to Florida, Hoover had never once looked him up.

  The funeral was open casket. Once a ruddy, robust man, with a big potbelly—he’d retired before it became a cardinal sin to have one—Baughman had been left skeletal by his cancer. The director paused only briefly before the coffin. Whatever thoughts he may have had, he didn’t share. “He looked,” the former aide noted, “the way he always did when he was in public: irritated, put upon, as if his being here was a great imposition. No, there was no emotion. I’ve never known Mr. Hoover to really care about anything or anybody, except maybe his dogs. He was a very cold man.”27

  Hoover later mentioned the funeral to Ed Tamm. He was amazed at something he had learned, Hoover said. For as long as they had known each other, Frank Baughman had deceived him: he’d been younger than he’d claimed. He’d lied to get into the Army, even lied to meet the Bureau’s entrance requirements. Hoover found this fact quite astonishing. It was his only known comment on his friend’s death.

  FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s fate was now in the hands of one of his ex-agents. Early in October 1971, Bud Krogh called in G. Gordon Liddy. The president needs advice on what to do about Hoover, he told him. Liddy immediately set to work drawing up a list of options.

  Since it was a “given” that Hoover should be replaced, the first question was timing. There were several arguments against waiting until 1972, Liddy noted in his memorandum. Both the Berrigan and the Ellsberg trials were scheduled for then; removing Hoover could affect their outcome. More compelling was the argument that 1972 was an election year and that the “issue-starved Democrats” could be expected to exploit the Senate confirmation hearings on Hoover’s successor “to the point of irresponsibility.” This left the remaining months of 1971.

  Liddy then cited the “Arguments Against Immediate Removal.” As he saw it, there were only a few. First: “Hoover could resist and make good his threat against the President. I am unaware of the nature of the threat and, therefore, cannot comment on the acceptability of the risk involved.”* Second was the political effect: “Removal of Hoover will not gain the President any votes on the left,” Liddy observed realistically. “The anti-Nixon bias of the left is visceral, not rational. On the other hand, some of the right could be alienated if the successor named is not acceptable.” Unaware that Nixon had someone “ready to move into the job,” Liddy then discussed the problems of choosing a successor acceptable to both the Left and the Right.

  There was no question that Liddy himself favored Hoover’s immediate removal. He listed nine “arguments for”:

  “1. Sullivan, and possibly others, are talking to the press. The information is accurate, substantive and damaging. I think we must assume that there will be no let-up of truly damaging disclosures…

  “2. There will be no upheaval in the FBI should Hoover be removed immediately. The vast majority of agents would approve. A few old cronies, such as Clyde Tolson, could be expected to resign in a huff…

  “3. Immediate removal would guarantee that the President would appoint the next Director of the FBI, something akin in importance to a Supreme Court appointment opportunity.

  “4. The Hoover incumbency would be undercut as a factor in the forthcoming Berrigan and Ellsberg trials.

  “5. The matter would be over and done with now and removed as a potential issue for the 1972 campaign.

  “6. Inaction, plus further disclosures in the press, could lead to charges that the President knew, or ought to have known, of the serious deterioration of the FBI, and failed to act out of concern for his re-election.

  “7. Short term, a prompt removal could enhance the President’s image as an action oriented President and confound his critics.

  “8. Long term, the action could be compared legitimately to the resolute stand taken by President Truman in the Douglas MacArthur case which, unpopular at the time, is now viewed as a plus in his presidency.

  “9. The country is, in my judgment, ready for the change.”

  Now came the ticklish part, “Methods.” Liddy could conceive of only three possibilities:

  “1. The most desirable method would be for Hoover to ask the President to find a successor as the ‘unfounded’ personal attacks upon [him] are, in his judgment, harmful to the national interest in general and to his beloved FBI in particular. This might be brought about through a Mitchell-Hoover conversation.

  “2. A second amicable method would be for the President himself to express the above sentiments to Hoover. He might well cooperate on that basis, were things handled adroitly.

  “3. The President could simply announce that on January 1, 1972, he will not take the affirmative action of seeking to exempt Mr. Hoover for another year from the mandatory retirement provisions of the law, stating that he cannot in good conscience do so as neither he nor the country has the right to expect so much of one man, and that he wishes to announce whom he shall nominate as a successor now so that there should be not the slightest element of partisan politics involved in the changeover.”

  Ironically, Liddy had chosen to scuttle Hoover by a technique he’d learned while in the FBI itself. The model for his memorandum was straight out of the FBI Manual and was a carryover from John Edgar Hoover’s debating days: arguments, pro and con; comments; recommendations.

  Liddy had just one each of the last:

  “Comment: Hoover is in his 55th year with the Department of Justice. Even his secretary dates from the first world war. There is no dishonor, express or implied, in asking a man in such circumstances to give up the burden of office.

  “Recommendation: After weighing all of the foregoing, I believe it to be in the best interest of the Nation, the President, the FBI and Mr. Hoover, that the Director retire before the end of 1971.”28

  The response to Liddy’s recommendation was almost immediate. Krogh called first: “The President says it’s the best memo he’s seen in years and wants it used eventually as a model of how to write a memo for the President.” Ehrlichman then called: “Gordon, I thought you’d like to know your memo on Hoover came back with A +’s all over it. Good job.”*29

  G. Gordon Liddy’s memorandum—subject: The Directorship of the FBI—was dated October 22, 1971. It’s possible that J. Edgar Hoover, through one of his White House contacts, saw an early draft. Or maybe he simply sensed what was coming—few were more sensitive to the winds of change in Washington, though the FBI director often seemed impervious to the storms that raged in other parts of the country—for on October 20, 1971, Hoover embarked on the most difficult task he’d faced during his nearly half century in office: he began destroying his most secret files.

  Richard Nixon accepted Liddy’s second option, reluctantly, John Mitchell having declined to exercise the first option, the suggestion that he persuade Hoover to resign. After all, the FBI director did work for him, the president argued. But the attorney general countered, “Mr. President, both you and I know that Edgar Hoover isn’t about to listen to anyone other than the President of the United States when it comes to this question.”31

  With the aid of Ehrlichman and Mitchell, the president psyched himself up for the confrontation. He would never desert “an old and loyal friend, just b
ecause he was coming under attack,” Nixon noted, but he was bothered that “Hoover’s increasingly erratic conduct was showing signs of impairing the morale of the FBI.” There was also, he admitted, a political concern: “I could not be sure that I would be re-elected for a second term. I was aware of what could happen to the FBI in the hands of a politically motivated opposition party, and the last thing I wanted to do was to give the Democrats a chance to appoint a new Director who would unquestioningly carry out their bidding against Republicans for the next four or eight years.”32

  A breakfast meeting was scheduled. The president prepared for it as if for a summit conference. The scenario called for Nixon to praise Hoover effusively, reminisce about their long friendship, and then diplomatically suggest that the FBI director retire now, with honors, while still at the peak of his career.

  It may have read well as a talking paper, but it didn’t play that way.

  First Hoover arrived looking not tired or harassed or under siege but as alert, decisive, and articulate as Nixon had ever seen him. It was obvious to the president that the FBI director “was trying to demonstrate that despite his age he was still physically, mentally, and emotionally equipped to carry on.”

  Nixon approached “the subject” by commiserating with Hoover over the recent criticism. “You shouldn’t let things like that get you down, Edgar,” he observed. “Lyndon told me that he couldn’t have been President without your advice and assistance, and as you know, I have the same respect for you as well as a deep personal affection that goes back nearly twenty-five years.” Having said this, Nixon then pointed out, as gently and subtly as he could, that in the years ahead the situation was going to get worse rather than better, and that it would be a tragedy if he ended his career under attack “instead of in the glow of national recognition he so rightly deserved.”