by Curt Gentry
Even after J. Edgar Hoover’s death, his files retain a posthumous power.
Although Tolson’s health continued to fail, he survived Hoover by nearly three years. There were more falls and more hospitalizations, and each time Tolson returned to 4936 Thirtieth Place NW he was a little weaker and, some say, more confused.
For a while he and one of his doctors, Joseph V. Kennedy, would go to the races once a week, but after he started having to use a walker and, finally, a three-pronged cane, these excursions stopped. The visits to the graves and Gifford’s ice cream palace also dwindled, then ceased.
Apparently his last years were mostly spent watching quiz shows and soap operas. Aside from Mohr, Fields, and Crawford, he saw few people. Don Whitehead, who had written The FBI Story and who now wanted to write J. Edgar Hoover’s authorized biography, was rebuffed. His brother, Hillory Tolson, called several times and left messages. They were never returned. Old friends and former associates who tried to telephone him got Fields. If they were persistent, they were referred to Mohr, who also received all the mail relating to Hoover’s estate.*
It is not known when the strange telephone calls started. Some half dozen people claimed to have received them, and there were probably more. Most were made at night, but several were at odd hours of the day, as if Tolson knew when their secretaries would be out. In some he identified himself; in others he didn’t, but his voice was recognized. A reporter for a national magazine who had once written a puff piece about the associate director was warned that one of his editors was spreading malicious stories about him. The reporter had suspected as much, and couldn’t have cared less, but was oddly touched by Tolson’s concern. A former aide, who was still with the Bureau, was told why he would never be promoted—there was a derogatory letter in his personnel file—and was advised to resign and collect his pension, which he did. In 1973 Tolson, or someone using his name, tried to call President Nixon several times but was not put through.†
Sometime after this, Tolson’s telephone privileges were apparently revoked. He could no longer call out, he told one friend whom he consulted about stock purchases. He still had a telephone in his bedroom, but it had been changed to a direct line to downstairs. When he tried to call someone, he always got Annie Fields.
The friend suspected he was getting senile. It never occurred to him, though it did to others, that perhaps Tolson was being held prisoner in his own home.
In 1974, the year before Tolson’s death, Bobby Baker, President Lyndon Johnson’s former wheeling-dealing aide, received an astonishing message, which was relayed via one of Tolson’s private nurses, a woman who, years earlier, had attended Baker’s children. “Your friend Bobby Baker should know,” Tolson had told her, “that his secretary, Georgia Liakakis, is a paid government informant and has been for years. She has supplied many of his documents to the government.”
Baker’s initial reaction was that “old Clyde Tolson must have lost his marbles.” Liakakis, who had been working for him since about 1968, was like a member of the Baker family. She looked after his children, had a key to his house, had the run of his files. “My life was an open book to her.”
And to the FBI, he soon confirmed, as well as to the IRS. In an in camera legal proceeding, Liakakis admitted that she had not only supplied information on Baker’s personal and business affairs to the FBI and the IRS but also recorded his telephone conversations and informed her agent-handlers (Tom Sullivan of the FBI, Francis J. Cox of the IRS) of his appointments, whom he was meeting and where and when, apparently so that they could monitor them. She had been pressured into becoming a paid informant, she claimed, because of tax problems. Sullivan and Cox, however, stated that she had approached them.*
Baker couldn’t fathom why Tolson, “virtually on his death bed,” had passed this information on to him, “unless it had to do with settling accounts in his soul before the end.”24
On April 10, 1975, Clyde Anderson Tolson, age seventy-four, suffered kidney failure and was rushed to Doctors Hospital. He died on April 14, with only a nurse and James Crawford at his side. Joseph Gawler’s Sons handled the arrangements; Dr. Elson delivered the funeral address; and Tolson, too, was buried in Congressional Cemetery, not far from where Hoover lay. Only a few attended the graveside rites. In its obituary the Washington Post described him as J. Edgar Hoover’s “seldom-seen and nearly anonymous alter-ego”—and then proved its point by mistakenly running a photograph of Lou Nichols.25
Clyde Tolson’s will was not as simple as J. Edgar Hoover’s.
Less than three weeks after Hoover’s death, John Mohr had obtained Clyde Tolson’s power of attorney, as well as his bank power of attorney, the two documents giving him control of both Tolson’s finances and the late J. Edgar Hoover’s estate.
Both documents were signed “Clyde A. Tolson,” in a very shaky hand, and were witnessed by two of the FBI’s top executives, Nicholas P. Callahan and James B. Adams. Callahan was the assistant director of the Administrative Division, Adams his assistant. Both worked for, and were poker-playing buddies of, John Mohr.
Mohr then prepared a new will for Tolson. Dated June 26, 1972, it bore the same shaky signature and was witnessed by Callahan and John P. Dunphy. Dunphy was head of the Exhibits Section of the FBI Laboratory and another member of Mohr’s poker group, which met regularly at the Blue Ridge Club. In addition to naming Mohr Tolson’s executor, the will made the following bequests: $5,000 to Tolson’s secretary, Mrs. Dorothy C. Skillman; $4,000 to his former assistant secretary, Mrs. Lillian C. Brown; $4,000 to John P. Mohr; $1,500 to Mohr’s daughter, Mrs. Joseph Henry Scott, Jr.; $5,000 to Annie Fields; $5,000 to James Crawford; $1,000 to Mrs. John J. Kelley, who had cared for Tolson’s mother for some years prior to her death;* $2,000 to Albert Paul Gunsser (although a Bureau employee, Gunsser was one of the men who handled Hoover’s and Tolson’s investments and prepared their tax returns); $1,000 to Tolson’s former maid, Rachel Gill; and $4,000 to Helen Gandy; with the rest of the estate to be divided equally between the Boys Club of America and the Damon Runyon Memorial Fund for Cancer Research.
The will also included a paragraph reading, “To my brother, Hillory A. Tolson, and his children James Walter Tolson, Robert H. Tolson and Pamela Tolson Hoist, or any of their children, I leave nothing by this will.”
It was, except for the disinheriting of Hillory Tolson and his family, a surprisingly generous document, considering that Clyde Tolson had a well-deserved reputation as a tightwad.†
Less than two months later, Mohr redrafted the will, to include a paragraph giving him an executor’s fee for handling the estate. The amended version, dated August 14, 1972, was identical to its predecessor—the bequests remaining the same—except for the witnesses. Since both Callahan and Dunphy were on vacation, it was witnessed by G. Speights McMichael and Darwin M. Gregory. They, too, worked for Mohr—McMichael was the Bureau’s chief procurement officer—and were also members of the Blue Ridge group.
Over the next two and a half years, there were five codicils to the will, all of which were witnessed by Dunphy and Callahan.
The first codicil, dated July 5, 1973, gave Gunsser an additional $2,000.
The second codicil, dated September 6, 1973,* gave an additional $2,000 each to Skillman, Mohr, Fields, Crawford, and Gunsser. Fields was also given “all of the furnishings, furniture, rugs, television set and any and all other furniture…in her living quarters” and all of Tolson’s bed linens and towels. John Mohr, as executor, was bequeathed “any and all memorabilia, medals, plaques, photographs, or any and all other personal property which can be easily identified with the late J. Edgar Hoover. The purpose of this bequest shall be to install these memorabilia…in the J. Edgar Hoover Room in the new FBI Building.† My Executor shall be empowered with exclusive discretion and judgment as to those items of personal property which shall be included in this bequest.”
Codicil three, dated March 6, 1974, upped the ante significantly: Skillman, Mohr, and Gunsser w
ere each given an additional $20,000, while Fields and Crawford got an additional $25,000 apiece.
Two new names appeared in codicil four, which was dated September 11, 1974, those of two of Tolson’s physicians. Dr. Joseph V. Kennedy, a longtime friend, was bequeathed $15,000, and Dr. William B. Wardrop, a neighbor, was given $5,000. In addition, Skillman was bequeathed a teakwood table with a marble octagonal inlaid top; Fields a winter-scene painting by Sam Noisette; and Crawford all of Tolson’s “wearing apparel.”
Codicil five, dated January 29, 1975, gave Dr. Wardrop an additional $10,000, while Dr. Robert V. Choisser, who was Hoover’s doctor as well as Tolson’s, was bequeathed $15,000.
Perhaps fortunately, at least for the Boys Club of America and the Damon Runyon Memorial Fund for Cancer Research, Clyde Tolson died on April 14, 1975, while there was still some money left. He’d already given away $198,500 of the estimated $500,000 remaining in the combined Hoover-Tolson estates.
The wills and codicils were filed in probate on April 24, 1975.
On July 10, 1975, Hillory Tolson filed a petition challenging the will, accusing John P. Mohr of using “fraud and deceit” to exclude him from his brother’s estate. In Clyde Tolson’s latter years, the petition charged, “Tolson suffered physical and mental debility,” thus making him “easy prey for the undue influence and coercion exhibited upon him by [Mohr] and those in concert with [Mohr]…As a result of [Tolson’s] weakened condition, physically and mentally, [Mohr] and those in collaboration with him prevented others, including [Hillory Tolson] from seeing [Clyde Tolson], who became a virtual recluse.”26
As his attorney, Hillory Tolson chose Rolland Lamensdorf. It could not have seemed a very good case, from the attorney’s point of view. Although they still exchanged Christmas and birthday cards, the two brothers hadn’t seen each other in over a dozen years. The estrangement was apparently the result of an embarrassing “escapade.” One of Hillory’s sons, Walter, himself an FBI agent for fifteen years, had—or so Clyde Tolson told John Mohr—”run off with some young woman from the Fairfax Police Department,”27 disgracing, at least in the mind of the associate director, both the Bureau and the family name.
Although Hillory Tolson, as executive director of the White House Historical Association, had an office only a few blocks from the Department of Justice, neither brother had made the effort to walk that distance since 1962, when the incident occurred. Following Hoover’s death, Hillory had tried to telephone Clyde, several times, but without success.
Moreover, a comparison of the “Clyde A. Tolson” signatures on the two powers of attorney, the two wills, and the five codicils indicated that they had probably been signed by the same hand. Even more damaging, they closely resembled other samples of Clyde Tolson’s signature which appeared on documents signed while he was still with the FBI.
And there was the matter of his accusing a number of the top executives of the FBI of “deceit and fraud.”
Yet Lamensdorf had a hunch.
In preparation for a jury trial, he began taking depositions. Tolson’s three doctors—Kennedy, Wardrop, and Choisser—all refused to testify, or to make their medical records available, on the grounds of doctor-patient confidentiality (even though their patient was dead), but Lamensdorf was able to obtain some of Tolson’s hospital records, which, though dealing mostly with his physical symptoms, gave clues to his mental state.
Crawford, Fields, and Mohr were all deposed, Mohr maintaining that although Tolson’s physical condition in his last years had ranged from “fair” to “good,” he had remained in “excellent” mental condition right up to the very end. Mohr also stated that he couldn’t recall whether he had been present when any of the documents were signed or witnessed.
Then Lamensdorf came to the witnesses, and with the first, Nicholas P. Callahan, he struck pay dirt. Although a longtime friend and close associate of John Mohr (Sullivan would describe him as “Mohr’s good right arm”),28 Callahan testified that he hadn’t actually seen Tolson sign the two powers of attorney; he’d simply taken Mohr’s word that he had done so. Furthermore, he doubted that it was really Tolson’s signature. It looked more like the way he’d signed things during his last years at the FBI.
By now Lamensdorf was fairly sure he knew who had signed Tolson’s name.
He deposed her in September 1976. And with the testimony of Dorothy Skillman, Tolson’s longtime secretary, it was all over.
Mrs. Skillman admitted that it was she, with arthritic hand, who had signed Clyde Tolson’s name, as she had been doing for years. She further testified that she had done so on the instructions of John P. Mohr and that she had never discussed the matter with Tolson himself.
This revelation prompted a conference between the opposing attorneys. Foreseeing protracted litigation which could quite possibly end with the wills and codicils being thrown out—thus giving the entire estate to Hillory Tolson, as Clyde Tolson’s next of kin—a settlement was offered, negotiated, and accepted. In return for dropping his suit, Hillory Tolson received $100,000.
Under the terms of the agreement, the two charities paid $80,000, and the eight largest inheritors—Skillman, Mohr, Fields, Crawford, Gunsser, and Doctors Kennedy, Wardrop, and Choisser—paid the remaining $20,000, each contributing about 10.6 percent of their bequest. John Mohr, for example, received only $23,244, instead of $26,000. Mohr, however, also received a fee as executor of the estate.
According to John Mohr, when Clyde Tolson told him he wanted to disinherit Hillory Tolson and his family, he added, “He’d come back and haunt me if Hillory or any of the members of his family got any part of the estate.”29
The ghost of Clyde Tolson wasn’t the only specter from the past that would come back to haunt John Mohr.
During Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray III’s brief tenure, he had managed to ignore the rumors of corruption in the Administrative Division—which included the accounting and purchasing departments, the FBI Laboratory, the Exhibits and Radio Engineering sections and the Inspection Division—but his successor, Clarence M. Kelley, was forced to act.
In the fall of 1975, the House Select Committee on Intelligence (the Pike committee) provided the Justice Department with information indicating that certain officials of the FBI had allegedly been profiting from the Bureau’s business transactions with its exclusive electronics supplier, the U.S. Recording Company. Attorney General Edward H. Levi asked FBI Director Kelley to investigate the allegations, and Kelley gave the assignment to the Inspection Division.*
The inspectors, most of whom had served under John Mohr, one of the chief subjects of the probe, found nothing amiss.
The attorney general, on the other hand, found their report “incomplete” and “less than satisfactory,” and ordered a new investigation, this one conducted by the Justice Department itself. Two Criminal Division attorneys were put in charge. They, too, used FBI agents as investigators, only this time they were from the field, selected both for their experience and for their lack of ties to the persons being investigated.
The second investigation, which took almost eleven months, went far beyond the original allegations, into other areas of alleged misconduct. Altogether, “hundreds” of past and present FBI employees were interviewed—many cooperated, some didn’t, and at least one former official did his best to subvert the probe—while agent accountants and IRS agents examined vast quantities of documents that had somehow missed being shredded.
The special team found that for a dozen years (beginning in 1963 and continuing until 1975, when the practice was exposed), the FBI purchased virtually all of its electronics equipment from one firm—at markups that often ran as high as 40 to 70 percent.*
The firm, the U.S. Recording Company of Washington, D.C., was owned by Joseph Tait, whom John Mohr would describe in a confidential memo as “a personal friend” of his and “an excellent friend of the Bureau [who] would go to any lengths to protect our interests.”31
Mohr and other FBI official
s later justified the exclusive relationship on the grounds of confidentiality. But this explanation didn’t hold up under close examination. USRC employees did not have security clearances. The firm was burglarized on at least two occasions. Deliveries to the FBI were made during working hours in a panel truck plainly marked “U.S. Recording Company.” And almost everyone in the business knew of the arrangement: other electronics companies, in fact, often supplied the equipment, with USRC simply upping the cost for serving as middleman.
One aspect of confidentiality was of concern to the FBI, however, as evidenced by a March 14, 1963, memo Mohr sent to Ivan W. Conrad, then assistant director of the laboratory. “No recorders are to be purchased by the Bureau outside of USRC,” Mohr ordered. “The reason for this is because Mr. Tait of the USRC will protect the Bureau in the event questions are asked by a Congressional committee concerning the purchase of recorders by the FBI. Other companies will not do this for the Bureau.”32
The FBI did not want Congress, or the public, to know the extent of its eavesdropping practices. Various stratagems were used to hide these purchases. Part of the FBI’s annual appropriation—“not to exceeded $70,000”—was “to meet unforeseen emergencies of a confidential character.” Known as the Confidential Fund, these monies were supposedly intended as payments to informants. But between August 1956 and May 1973, at least $75,000 from this fund was used to buy electronics equipment. Also, individual orders were kept under $2,500, to avoid having to comply with open-bidding requirements. As a result, in addition to the high markups, which averaged 23.8 percent, the FBI lost the discounts available for purchases in quantity. For example, in 1971, following the Media burglary, the Bureau paid USRC $147,261 for burglar alarm equipment which could have been purchased from a New York supplier for $81,357.
The Justice Department’s special team was unable to find any evidence that Hoover, Tolson, Mohr, or any other FBI official accepted cash kickbacks or bribes from U.S. Recording. Rather, they uncovered a pattern of social contacts and minor gratuities between Tait and various Bureau officials. Tait played host at the weekend poker parties at the Blue Ridge club. He also entertained the officials at the Bethesda Country Club, Billy Martin’s Carriage House, in Georgetown, and the Rotunda Restaurant, on Capitol Hill. At Christmas time Tait gave lab employees small gifts—such as tie clasps, wallets, manicure sets, and desk calendars—while Mohr received an eight-track stereo tape player and speakers for his Cadillac. But although the Justice Department concluded that FBI officials “showed an improper favoritism to Mr. Tait and USRC in violation of specific conflict of interest regulations…no evidence was found indicating a fraudulent intent sufficient to make out a crime under Federal bribery or fraud statutes.”33