J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets

by Curt Gentry

  James Crawford had no reason to feel apprehensive. But he did.

  As he turned onto Thirtieth Place NW, he scanned both sides of the dead-end street. Everything looked all right. There were no strange cars, little activity, only a few people leaving for work, all familiar. They should have been. After all these years he knew their habits as well as his own.

  Since he saw nothing out of the ordinary, the feeling should have gone away. But it didn’t. Instinctively he knew something was wrong…

  The president of the United States delivered the funeral eulogy.

  “Dr. Elson, Mrs. Eisenhower, Your Excellencies from the Diplomatic Corps, my fellow Americans:

  “Today is a day of sadness for America, but it is also a day of pride. America’s pride has always been its people, a people of good men and women by the millions, of great men and women in remarkable numbers, and, once in a long while, of giants who stand head and shoulders above their countrymen, setting a high and noble standard for us all.

  “J. Edgar Hoover was one of the giants. His long life brimmed over with magnificent achievement and dedicated service to this country which he loved so well. One of the tragedies of life is that, as a rule, a man’s true greatness is recognized only in death. J. Edgar Hoover was one of the rare exceptions to that rule. He become a living legend while still a young man, and he lived up to his legend as the decades passed. His death only heightens the respect and admiration felt for him across this land and in every land where men cherish freedom.

  “The greatness of Edgar Hoover will remain inseparable from the greatness of the organization he created and gave his whole life to building, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He made the FBI the finest law enforcement agency on the earth, the invincible and incorruptible defender of every American’s precious right to be fear from fear.”

  “He’s got files on everybody, God damn it.”

  —Nixon to Dean, White House tapes, February 28, 1973

  “Yet, America has revered this man not only as the Director of an institution but as an institution in his own right. For nearly half a century, nearly one fourth of the whole history of this Republic, J. Edgar Hoover has exerted a great influence for good in our national life. While eight Presidents came and went, while other leaders of morals and manners and opinion rose and fell, the director stayed at his post.*

  “I recall that President Eisenhower, a Republican, and President Johnson, a Democrat, both strongly recommended, after my election, that I keep him as Director of the FBI. He was one of those unique individuals who, by all odds, was the best man for a vitally important job. His powerful leadership by example helped to keep steel in America’s backbone and the flame of freedom in America’s soul.”

  The President: “Hoover was my crony and friend. He was as close or closer to me than Johnson, actually, although Johnson used him more.”

  Dean: “While it might have been, uh, a lot of blue chips to the late Director, I think we would have been a lot better off during this whole Watergate thing if he’d been alive, ’cause he knew how to handle that Bureau—knew how to keep them in bounds.”

  The President: “He would have fought, that’s the point. He’d have fired a few people, or he’d have scared them to death.”

  —White House tapes, February 28, 1973

  “He personified integrity; he personified honor; he personified principle; he personified courage; he personified discipline; he personified dedication; he personified loyalty; he personified patriotism. These are his legacies to the Bureau he built and the nation he served. We can pay him no higher tribute than to live these virtues ourselves, as he lived them all of his years, to love the law as he loved it, and to give fullest respect, support and co-operation to the law enforcement profession which he did so much to advance.

  “When such a towering figure—a man who has dominated his field so completely for so many years—finally passes from the scene, there is sometimes a tendency to say, ‘Well, this is an end of an era.’

  “There is a belief that a changing of the guard will also mean a changing of the rules. With J. Edgar Hoover this will not happen. The FBI will carry on in the future, true to its finest traditions in the past, because regardless of what the snipers and detractors would have us believe, the fact is that Director Hoover built the Bureau totally on principle, not on personality. He built well. He built to last. For that reason, the FBI will remain as a memorial to him, a living memorial, continuing to create a climate of protection, security and impartial justice that benefits every American.”

  The President: “Could we go after the Bureau?…Let’s look at the future. How bad would it hurt the country, John, to have the FBI so terribly discredited?”

  Dean: “I think it would be damaging to the FBI, uh, but maybe it’s time to shake the FBI and rebuild it. I am not so sure the FBI is everyting it’s cracked up to be. I, I’m convinced the FBI isn’t everything the public thinks it is.”

  The President: “No.”

  Dean: “I know quite well it isn’t.”

  —White House tapes, March 13, 1973

  “The good J. Edgar Hoover did will not die. The profound principles associated with his name will not fade away. Rather, I would predict that in the time ahead those principles of respect for law, order and justice will come to govern our national life more completely than ever before. Because the trend of permissiveness in this country, a trend which Edgar Hoover fought against all his life, a trend which was dangerously eroding our national heritage as a law-abiding people, is now being reversed.

  “The American people today are tired of disorder, disruption and disrespect for law. America wants to come back to the law as a way of life, and as we do come back to the law, the memory of this great man, who never left the law as a way of life, will be accorded even more honor than it commands today.”

  The President: “We have not used the power in this first four years, as you know.”

  Dean: “That’s right.”

  The President: “We have never used it. We haven’t used the Bureau and we haven’t used the Justice Department, but things are going to change now.”

  Dean: “That’s an exciting prospect.”

  —White House tapes, September 15, 1972

  “In times past, in the days of the American frontier, the brave men who wore the badge and enforced the law were called by a name we do not often hear today. They were called ‘peace officers.’ Today, though that term has passed out of style, the truth it expressed still endures. All the world yearns for peace, peace among nations, peace within nations. But without peace officers, we can never have peace. Edgar Hoover knew this basic truth. He shaped his life around it. He was the peace officer without peer.

  “The United States is a better country because this good man lived his long life among us these past seventy-seven years. Each of us stands forever in his debt. In the years ahead, let us cherish his memory. Let us be true to his legacy. Let us honor him as he would surely want us to do, by honoring all the men and women who carry on in this noble profession of helping to keep the peace in our society.

  “In the Bible, the book which Edgar Hoover called his ‘guide to daily life,’ we find the words which best pronounce a benediction on his death. They are from the Psalms: ‘Great peace have they which love Thy law.’ J. Edgar Hoover loved the law of his God. He loved the law of his country. And he richly earned peace through all eternity.”

  After the eulogy, the president and Dr. Elson, Hoover’s pastor, stood together by the coffin for a minute of silent prayer.19

  * * *

  *Although Hoover did not live to see it, Rooney defeated Lowenstein, after a campaign replete with smears, innuendos, fraud, and suspiciously botched scheduling. Both Lowenstein and Peter G. Eikenberry (who had opposed Rooney in the 1970 primary) later filed lawsuits charging the FBI had secretly investigated them on behalf of the Brooklyn congressman. Lowenstein, whose anti-Nixon activities also earned him an IRS audit, was murder
ed in 1980 by a former civil rights protégé.

  *The society’s membership lists showed a heavy concentration of former SAs working for banks, savings and loans, auto manufacturers (in “labor relations”), airlines, casinos, Howard Hughes, and the church security department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon).

  *The microphones were reactivated by Hoover’s successor, L. Patrick Gray III, in December 1972.

  †Even with Hoover’s help, it was close, Rooney beating Lowenstein in the June Democratic primary by only 1,000 votes. When Lowenstein contested the election, with evidence of voting irregularities—including that of registered voters who were dead but voted anyway—the federal court ordered a new primary, which Rooney won by 1,200 votes.

  Following revelations of his longtime links with organized crime, and numerous financial improprieties, including that of having accepted illegal campaign contributions, the Brooklyn representative chose to retire at the end of his term in 1975. He died that October.

  *Gray, who was to succeed Kleindienst as deputy attorney general if his appointment went through, also represented Kleindienst in the confirmation fight.

  *Kalugin was press secretary at the Soviet embassy. Stone had chosen their meeting place, he later told the author, “to tweak Hoover’s nose,” knowing Harvey’s was his favorite restaurant.16

  *The investigation remained open long after the man who ordered it was dead and buried.

  The initial suspect, of course, was William Sullivan. However, as further Anderson columns appeared, it became apparent that the quotations he used were not from the Bureau’s own file copies but from summary memorandums the FBI had disseminated to the White House and other agencies. Although this multiplied the number of suspects, it let FBI personnel (and Sullivan) off the hook.

  Whatever Anderson’s source(s), this was a major leak. The “celebrity files” which he had obtained ran to more than five thousand pages and included information on some fifty individuals and organizations, including Saul Alinsky, James Baldwin, Marion Barry, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, the Chinese Hand Laundry Association, Cassius Clay, Concerned American Mothers, Ossie Davis, Walter Fauntroy, Jane Fonda, Alger Hiss, Janice Joplin, Eartha Kitt, Joe Louis, Groucho Marx, Zero Mostel, Madalyn Murray, Elvis Presley, Tony Randall, Jackie Robinson, Benjamin Spock, and Roy Wilkins.

  There were some in the Bureau who blamed Jack Anderson’s May 1, 1972, column for FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s death.

  †This was later verified by Mark Felt, who, conducting a mini-investigation, found “there was no evidence on the newspapers near where they slept to indicate they had not relieved themselves outside as usual.”18

  *Although it was undoubtedly a speechwriter’s error, it seems oddly prophetic that Nixon included himself with the seven other presidents whom Hoover had seen come and go. His resignation followed the FBI director’s death by just two years and three months.

  Epilogue:

  Pandora’s Box

  Strange things happened after J. Edgar Hoover died.

  Whether James Crawford or Annie Fields discovered the body would seem to be, at most, a historical footnote, hardly important enough to merit a cover-up. Yet not all of the FBI’s secrets were in the files. To explain James Crawford’s presence at the death scene would be to risk opening a Pandora’s box of horrors. And all it would take to lift that lid would be for an inquisitive reporter to ask a few questions, starting with “How come Crawford was there that day? I thought he’d retired.”

  Discovering that the former special agent had also been Hoover’s gardener and houseman might have prompted curiosity about what other services the late director had had performed at public expense. For example, the Exhibits Section (basically the Bureau’s carpentry shop, it designed and constructed courtroom mock-ups, training aids, and the like) had channeled thousands of dollars into improvements on Hoover’s home. Some, such as the burglar alarms and the ten-foot stone wall which closed off the backyard, could be justified as necessary security, but not the new front portico, fishpond, flagstone courtyard, sidewalks, Astroturf, landscaping, sun deck, bar, liquor cabinet, recreation room murals, valet, ornamental tables, stereo, speakers, cabinets, and wallpaper, or the annual paint job, or the powerful fan that Exhibits had installed in Hoover’s kitchen because the director had once mentioned that he did not like the smell of bacon frying. The Exhibits Section also built special gifts each year for the director’s birthday and service anniversaries, maintained all his electrical appliances, and kept men on call twenty-four hours a day in case his TV went out.

  Perhaps even more important—so far as the cover-up was concerned—more than the late director’s reputation was at stake: Hoover was not the only FBI official to use the Exhibits Section for his own personal needs.

  Questions about the misappropriation of government time, money, equipment, and services would inevitably lead to the sensitive subject of what had really happened to the royalties from the director’s best-selling books, the profits from the sale of their movie rights, and ABC’s per-episode payments for the TV series “The FBI,” and would almost certainly bring attention to the tax-exempt FBI Recreational Association, the Imprest Fund, the Confidential Fund, the Library Fund, and SAMBA, the Special Agents Mutual Benefit Association.

  Altogether, many thousands of dollars were missing, misused, misappropriated, and/or unaccounted for.

  Another question or two would have led to the United States Recording Company of Washington, D.C.; the close relationship between its president, Joseph Tait, and Assistant to the Director John P. Mohr; and the weekend poker games at the Blue Ridge Club.

  One of the special agents who handled Hoover’s and Tolson’s taxes once told William Sullivan that if the truth about the director’s stock purchases, oil well leases, and income tax returns ever came out, Mr. Hoover would spend the rest of his life on Alcatraz. He said it in such a way, Sullivan recalled, as to indicate that he feared he’d probably be occupying an adjoining cell.

  No, it was better to let Annie Fields find the body.

  Yet the whole cover-up nearly came unraveled within days after J. Edgar Hoover’s death, with the anonymous letter to the new acting director, L. Patrick Gray III. In addition to charging that J. P. Mohr had lied about there being no secret files, and informing Gray that they had already been moved to 4936 Thirtieth Place NW, the letter writer claimed that still other things were being “systematically hidden from” Gray, citing, as two examples, the misuse of the Exhibits Section and Hoover and Tolson’s use of FBI employees to prepare their taxes and handle their investments.

  However, following in the footsteps of the late director, Gray didn’t investigate the charges but rather ordered an investigation to try to determine the anonymous letter writer’s identity.*

  Murder or old age?

  The facts seemed simple enough; he was an old man—seventy-seven years old—and old men die. Yet given his prominence, and the times, it was perhaps inevitable that there would be rumors that J. Edgar Hoover had been murdered.

  Acting Attorney General Richard Kleindienst had tried to squelch such speculation in his official announcement of the FBI director’s death, when he stated, “His personal physician informed me that his death was due to natural causes.”1

  Lending support, if not substance, to the rumors were the three-hour delay before Hoover’s death was announced, the failure to conduct an autopsy, and certain discrepancies regarding both the time and the cause of death.

  But the delay was due to the Bureau’s insistence that its personnel be notified before there was a public announcement, and autopsies were performed in the District of Columbia, as in most other jurisdictions, only when (1) requested by the family, (2) the cause of death was unknown, or (3) there was suspicion that the death had occurred from other than natural causes. None of the three applied in this case.

  John Edgar Hoover’s official certificate of death, as prepared by the District of Columbia Depart
ment of Public Health, gave the date of death as “5-2-72” and the hour of death as “9 A.M.” Since the body had been found twenty-five to thirty minutes earlier, and Hoover had died sometime after 10:15 the previous night, this seemed to be clearly in error. However, according to a spokesman for the coroner’s office, if the exact time of death was not known, the time the deceased was pronounced dead was often used, and nine in the morning would have been about the time Hoover’s physician, Dr. Robert Choisser, arrived and examined the body.

  Less easily explained was another discrepancy. In filling out the death certificate, Dr. James L. Luke, the district’s medical examiner, listed the cause of death as “hypertensive cardiovascular disease,” giving as his source “Dr. Robert Choisser.”2 Yet Dr. Choisser told the press, the following day, that Hoover had had very mild hypertension—that is, slightly elevated blood pressure—for over twenty years; that he was what was called a “borderline hypertensive”; and that “he never had any evidence of heart disease,” as far as he, Dr. Choisser, knew. He said nothing about the 1957 “incident.”3

  In the absence of an autopsy (which would also have revealed whether Hoover was using amphetamines), the confusion remains, but it is far from evidence of homicide.

  With the revelations of Watergate and the activities of the White House Plumbers, the murder talk resurfaced. To the shock of the Ervin committee investigators, Arthur Egan, a reporter for William Loeb’s Manchester Union Leader, who was being quizzed about Teamsters payments to Nixon’s 1972 campaign, referred, almost in passing, to “the murder of J. Edgar Hoover.” Questioned behind closed doors in a secret session, Egan stated, “Everyone on hearing that says I am nuts, but somebody in the Watergate thing murdered…J. Edgar Hoover.” Egan admitted, however, that he had no proof of this, that it was just his “own hunch.”*4