by Curt Gentry
*Special Agent John J. Kelley had been assigned to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, expressly so that he and his wife could look after Tolson’s mother.
†In 1964, following his open-heart surgery, Tolson spent two months recuperating in the guest room of 4936 Thirtieth Place NW. Annie Fields, who cared for the bedridden associate director, was tipped $10 for her trouble. After moving into Hoover’s home, Tolson had kept on Fields as his cook, housekeeper, and nurse, paying her a munificent $72 a week (if he paid her more, Tolson told her, it would just go for taxes). Each Christmas, Tolson gave Fields $20 and a box of candy. Crawford also received $20, and a tie. When Crawford chauffeured Tolson during his periodic visits to the graves of Hoover and the dogs, Crawford usually had to pay for the gas.
*After being informed, during a court-ordered deposition, that Tolson had been in Doctors Hospital on September 6, 1973, in critical condition, Mohr stated that the date of the codicil was in error.
†Even though the building was eventually named for the late FBI director, there would be no J. Edgar Hoover Room. Hoover’s desk, however, was put on display, as part of the FBI tour, appropriately elevated on a small platform.
*It was common knowledge in the Bureau that the Inspection Division was not immune to corruption. Neil J. Welch, a former Buffalo SAC who pioneered many of the ABSCAM techniques, has noted, “Inspectors from Bureau headquarters were universally dreaded visitors in the field, in part because of their reputation for arbitrary unfairness—but in larger part because the price of their approval was often quite tangible. Inspectors in the field expected and received free meals and entertainment, gifts and trips, and the agents under inspection knew that ‘samples’ of local industry and commerce, preferably wine and liquor, were always welcome tokens. Predictably, inspection reports showed a clear correlation between a field office’s generosity and its performance rating. The inspectors often returned to Washington with bulging suitcases, and their careful inventory of booty was one of the most closely studied statistics at headquarters—a benchmark to be surpassed in the next inspection of that office.”30
Diplomatically, Welch doesn’t mention that the “samples of local industry and commerce” often included professional companionship.
*The FBI had first begun dealing with U.S. Recording in 1943. By 1971 some 60 percent of the firm’s total sales were made to the FBI.
*The Justice Department report noted, “Mr. Callahan testified that agents are allowed to take home cameras for personal use to maintain their proficiency with them. Agents assigned to this investigation verified that this is the case, but indicated that the practice is intended to maintain familiarity with cameras more complex than the Polaroid.”
†Dunphy resigned the day before he pleaded guilty. Thus the Bureau could still maintain that no FBI agent had ever been convicted of a crime.
*In explaining why he departed from precedent in this instance, Attorney General Bell stated:
“When reporting on disciplinary actions taken against government employees, federal agencies have traditionally made public the administrative action taken and the nature of the conduct which caused the action to be taken, but have not always identified the particular individuals involved.
“There are, however, certain instances of employee misconduct which call into question the integrity of the institution itself. If the agency’s mission is particularly sensitive, the misconduct serious, or the officials of high rank, then the public interest is best served by more extensive disclosure.
“It is this kind of wrongdoing which is described in the report I am releasing.”36
†Officially the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, the committee was headed by Senator Frank Church of Idaho.
*After the publication of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s All the President’s Men, there was considerable speculation that “Deep Throat” had been an FBI official, with Mark Felt, John Mohr, and L. Patrick Gray III being the most often named candidates.
†The lone holdout was Wallace Estill, SAC of the Knoxville, Tennessee, field office, a Sullivan supporter, who suspected that the telegram was part of a plan to get Mark Felt appointed director.
*In 1976 Patrick Murphy told the author, “Underneath, Clarence is a fine, decent human being in my book. He’s not a cream puff either, as some people would like to imply. He’s got a damn tough job; he’s had one hell of a rough time. I think he sees clearly that the FBI has some very important functions—it’s a very important organization—and under such heavy attack now that the baby could go out with the bathwater…He wants to protect what needs to be protected, but he knows things have to change.”43
*As if Hoover were still living, his aging cheerleaders reacted on cue to each of the congressional disclosures, as evidenced by a sampling of headlines from the Grapevine, the group’s monthly magazine: “Hoover Smear Protested”; “Attacks on FBI Undermining U.S. Security, Society Says”; “Society Executive Committee Meets at Washington to Consider Program to Counterattack Attacks on Bureau”; “Action Taken to Back FBI”; “Hoover Memorial Launched.”
However, when the Justice Department released its 1978 report on corruption in the hierarchy of the FBI, the society was strangely silent. For many of the ex-agents, the revelation must have confirmed what they had long suspected, that the “shoe clerks” on the administrative side of the Bureau had been violating everything the FBI stood for: Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.
*Following his retirement in June 1972, Mohr had become a paid retiree’s consultant to SAMBA. He later testified that the purpose of the Waldorf Astoria weekend “was purely social.”47
†Kelley subsequently reimbursed the Bureau for the cost of the valances, returned the two TVs, and repaid Prudential for the costs of the New York trip.
*These probably included Callahan’s failure to inform him about the financial mismanagement of the various funds, as well as the destruction of these and other presumably incriminating records.
†Still feistily independent, he couldn’t resist telling Dean exactly what he thought of Watergate: “While it is probably unnecessary, I would like to say first that the concept underlying the operation, to put it mildly, reflected atrocious judgment and the implementation of the concept was even worse in its lack of professionalism and competency.”51
*The hunter later described the incident as follows: “At approximately 6:10 A.M., I stood up…and saw a motion on the other side of the field. I picked up my rifle and through the scope I saw brown. I dropped my rifle down and saw a flicker of white. I’m not sure what it really was, but I thought it was a flag [the tail of a deer]. When I saw the white, it appeared to move a little further and I thought it had smelled me and was running. I picked up my rifle and through the scope I saw brown again and I squeezed the trigger.”52
*He also appointed Neil J. Welch special agent in charge of the New York field office.
†On June 9, 1990, a veteran FBI agent with a twenty-year unblemished record filed a bias suit against the Bureau, claiming his security clearance had been lifted when it was discovered he was a homosexual. Two weeks later the FBI summarily dismissed the agent. If the suit is successful, others are expected to follow.
‡Although the conviction was overturned on appeal, Miller was retried, convicted a second time, and sentenced to twenty years.
Other firsts followed. On June 12, 1990, Mark Runyon, who was assigned to the Pikeville, Tennessee, resident agency, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to sixteen years in prison, thus becoming the first FBI agent to be convicted of a homicide-related crime. Runyon strangled his pregnant girlfriend, an FBI informant in a car theft case, then hid her body for a year.
*The first draft of the recommendation, which was later leaked to the press, would have allowed the FBI, and the CIA, to conduct domestic buggings and break-ins and to infiltrate domestic groups with foreign ties in an effort to influence their activities. That draf
t also eliminated the requirement that the attorney general approve each instance of such intrusive tactics as electronic bugging, television monitoring, break-ins, and mail opening.
One would suspect the ghost of Tom Charles Huston, except that he was alive and well.
*Reportedly, William C. Wells, the Miami SAC, tried to discourage the suit by calling a meeting of his Hispanic agents and, holding aloft his FBI credentials, stating, “When you carry these, you lose your First Amendment Rights.”64
*In August 1990 the FBI decided to settle the suit out of court and agreed to give Rochon full pay and pension benefits, which could amount to more than $1 million. Another condition of the settlement was that the Bureau conduct a full investigation of Rochon’s harassment claims and make public its findings.
†In October 1990 the General Accounting Office revealed that the FBI had conducted over nineteen thousand “terrorism” investigations between January 1982 and June 1988.
*One of the informants was later found to have lied about everything but his name, while the other had already been characterized, in a September 27, 1968, FBI report, as “an unscrupulous unethical individual” whose information “cannot be considered reliable.” The Bureau also drew its evidence from some right-wing tracts, one of which was entitled “CISPES: A Terrorist Propaganda Network.”68
†As Matthew Miller has noted in Washington Monthly (in a January 1989 article entitled “Ma’m, What You Need Is a New, Improved Hoover”), if this standard were applied, “Zbigniew Brzezinski could be busted any day in the Columbia stacks.”
Source Notes
ABBREVIATIONS
For simplification, abbreviations have been used whenever possible. For example, a confidential memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice, to the Honorable Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States, dated January 1, 1936, appears here as JEH to FDR, Jan. 1, 1936. The abbreviations include the following:
AG attorney general
ASAC assistant special agent in charge
BI Bureau of Investigation (later renamed Federal Bureau of Investigation)
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CFO Chicago field office
CLR Civil Liberties Review
CR Congressional Record
CT Clyde Tolson
CTRIB Chicago Tribune
DJ Department of Justice
ER Eleanor Roosevelt
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FDR Franklin Delano Roosevelt
GID General Intelligence Division
HST Harry S Truman
IKE Dwight David Eisenhower
JEH J. Edgar Hoover
JFK John F. Kennedy
LAFO Los Angeles field office
LAX Los Angeles Herald Examiner
LAT Los Angeles Times
LBJ Lyndon Baines Johnson
“MGR” “Washington Merry-Go-Round”
MID Military Intelligence Division
MKL Martin Luther King, Jr.
NSA National Security Agency
NYDN New York Daily News
NYFO New York field office
NYP New York Post
NYT New York Times
OC Official/Confidential file
ONI Office of Naval Intelligence
OSS Office of Strategic Services
RFK Robert F. Kennedy
RN Richard Nixon
SAC special agent in charge
SFC San Francisco Chronicle
SFX San Francisco Examiner
SOG Seat of Government (also known as FBI headquarters)
WFO Washington field office
WP Washington Post
WS Washington Star
WTH Washington Times Herald
OFTEN CITED SOURCES
The titles of often cited sources have also been simplified. These include the following:
Church. The Hearings and Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, 94th Cong., 1st sess. 1975-76, vols. 1-6, bks. I-VI (also known as the Church committee).
JD Report MLK. Department of Justice Task Force, Report to Review the FBI Martin Luther King Jr. Security and Assassination Investigations, 1977.
JD Report U.S. Recording. Department of Justice, Report on the Relationship between United States Recording Company and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Certain Other Matters Pertaining to the FBI, 1978.
FBI Oversight. Circumstances Surrounding Destruction of the Lee Harvey Oswald Note, etc.: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Committee of the Judiciary, House of Representatives, on FBI Oversight, 94th Cong., 1st and 2d sess., Serial 2, pt. 3, 1975-76.
Inquiry. Inquiry into the Destruction of Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s Files and FBI Recordkeeping: Hearings before a Subcommittee on Government Operations, House of Representatives, 94th Cong., 1st sess., 1975.
JFK Assn. Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, 95th Cong., 2d sess., 1978-79, vols. I-IX.
JFK and MLK Assn. Report Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations, 95th Cong., 2d sess., 1979.
MLK Assn. Investigation of the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Hearings, 95th Cong., 2d sess., 1979, vols. I-XIII.
RN Impeach. Statement of Information. Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Pursuant to H. Res. 803, a Resolution Authorizing and Directing the Committee of the Judiciary to Investigate Whether Sufficient Grounds Exist for the House of Representatives to Exercise Its Constitutional Power to Impeach Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, 93d Cong., 2d sess., 1974, bk. VII, pts. 1-4: White House Surveillance Activities and Campaign Activities.
LEGAL PROCEEDINGS
In addition, various legal proceedings provided source material. Those most often cited include the following:
Halperin suit. Depositions in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Morton H. Halperin, et al., Plaintiffs, vs. Henry A. Kissinger, et al., Defendants, Civil Action No. 1187-(19)73.
Tolson will dispute. Depositions in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, Probate Division, Hillory A. Tolson, Plaintiff, vs. John P. Mohr, Defendant, Administration #868-(19)75.
Other, less frequently used citations appear in full when first mentioned, then in abbreviated form.
CHAPTER 1: Tuesday, May 2, 1972 (Pages 19-40)
1. James Crawford interview; Crawford deposition, Tolson will dispute; Ovid Demaris, The Director: An Oral Biography of J. Edgar Hoover (New York, Harper’s Magazine Press, 1975), 32-47.
2. Mark Felt interview; Felt, The FBI Pyramid (New York: Putnam’s, 1979), 176; John Mohr deposition, Tolson will dispute.
3. Inquiry, 17.
4. LAT, April 3, 1972.
5. Confidential source.
6. Jeremiah O’Leary interview.
7. Christopher Lydon interview; NYT, May 3, 1972.
8. Jack Anderson files on JEH; Jack Anderson, Joseph Spear, and Les Whitten interviews; WP, May 3, 1972.
9. NYT, May 3, 1972.
10. Inquiry, 8.
11. Mohr to Kleindienst, May 2, 1972; ibid., 114.
12. Former FBI official.
13. AP, May 3, 1972.
14. Four Great Americans: Tributes Delivered by President Richard Nixon (New York: Doubleday/Reader’s Digest Books, 1972), 59.
15. NYT May 4, 1972.
16. WP, May 3, 1972.
17. WS, May 3, 1972.
18. Memorial Tributes to J. Edgar Hoover in the Congress of the United States and Various Articles and Editorials Relating to His Life and Work, 93d Cong., 2d sess., Sen. Doc. 93-68 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1974), 257.
19. Ibid., 287.
20. Ibid., 270-72.
21. LAT, May 3, 1972.
22. NYT, May
3, 1972.
23. Ibid.
24. Memorial Tributes, 70-74.
25. Ibid., 125.
26. WS, May 3, 1972.
27. Ibid.
28. “MGR,” Nov. 23, 1972.
29. J. Anthony Lukas, Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years (New York: Viking Press, 1976), 211-13.
30. Inquiry, 88-89.
31. WP, Jan. 19, 1975.
32. Inquiry, 89.
33. Ibid., 177.
34. John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power: The Nixon Years (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 167-68.
35. Statement taken by Timothy H. Ingram, staff director, House Government Operations Subcommittee on Government Information and Individual Rights, of District of Columbia Court Appraisers Thomas A. Mead and Barry Hagen, 1976 (hereafter Mead/Hagen statement).
36. Ibid.
37. The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 599.
38. Sanford J. Ungar, FBI (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1975), 273.
CHAPTER 2: Wednesday, May 3, 1972 (Pages 41-47)
1. Inquiry, 89.
2. Memorial Tributes, xviii.