J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (33 page)

Again, orchestrated by “suggestions” from Nichols, the FBI “stable” took to the floor in both the House and the Senate to defend the director and his organization and to insert a ream of favorable editorials in the
Congressional Record.
Nichols even persuaded Gerald Nye, through a Hearst reporter, to praise Hoover for being in Florida “when we know that a great many wealthy Americans are wintering there and threatened by gangsters.”
³¹

Not all of Nichols’s tactics were this transparent. Although an investigation by a special unit of the Justice Department had cleared the FBI of using undue force in the Spanish Loyaltist arrests, several reporters seemed inclined to believe the brutality charges of a very attractive young woman who had been arrested in the raids, until Nichols—who bragged about his accomplishment years later—“pulled the soapbox out from under her” by confiding to the
newsmen that the woman, who was white, was “cohabiting” with a Negro taxicab driver.
^*
32

After Attorney General Jackson’s dismissal of the Spanish Loyalist cases, many Washington insiders surmised, not entirely incorrectly, that the liberal Jackson was no fan of J. Edgar Hoover. Some carried this line of thought a step further, concluding that since the attorney general no longer supported him, the president himself had decided that Hoover had moved from the “asset” to the “liability” column, and that his dismissal would be announced in a matter of days. Those who so surmised didn’t understand the curious relationship between J. Edgar Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

FDR’s son Elliott remembered, “Father dealt with the bullet-headed boss at arm’s length. He recognized his efficiency…though he suspected that in many matters Hoover was not a member of the administration team. But his competence was unquestionable, so Father made it a practice never to interfere, this in spite of the fact that he knew there were many rumors of Hoover’s homosexuality. These were not grounds for removing him, as Father saw it, so long as his abilities were not impaired.”
³³

Others saw the relationship in an entirely different light, including Hoover himself, who later stated, “I was very close to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, personally and officially. We often had lunch in his office in the Oval Room of the White House.”
³⁴

Ed Tamm, who was the number three man at headquarters, accompanied the director to the White House some twenty-five to thirty times. According to Tamm, the director and Mr. Roosevelt “got along very, very well. There was always an obvious manifestation of friendship and admiration. Of course, Mr. Roosevelt had the ability to give that impression to everyone he dealt with, but he was
very, very
friendly to Mr. Hoover.”
³⁵

Francis Biddle, who replaced Robert Jackson and served as attorney general during the war years, put it even more simply: “The two men liked and understood each other.”
³⁶
Biddle might have added, but didn’t, that—much important—they used each other.

Although Roosevelt received many complaints about the FBI director (not the least of them from his wife, Eleanor), Ralph de Toledano perceptively observed that these probably tended to help rather than hurt Hoover: “If the ideological and intellectual prima donnas who surrounded Roosevelt complained that Hoover was keeping tabs on their activities, Roosevelt could never be sure that they were correct—but he liked the thought that Hoover might be
keeping an eye on Harry Hopkins or any one of the palace guard, just as long as Hoover delivered whatever information he gathered to Roosevelt, for Roosevelt’s personal use. And so these complaints served to strengthen Hoover, rather than to weaken him.”
³⁷

Contrary to the then-current liberal view that Roosevelt was personally opposed to wiretapping and similar FBI practices, the
New Republic
columnist John T. Flynn realized very early that “J. Edgar Hoover could not continue these activities for ten minutes in the administration of a man who did not approve them.”
³⁸

Although the “Communist plot” to “smear” Hoover continued until the day he died—at least in the mind of J. Edgar Hoover—and although his battles with Attorney General Robert Jackson were just beginning, the symbolic end of the “near-fatal” attack on the FBI occurred on the evening of March 16, 1940, when the White House correspondents held their annual black-tie dinner.

As usual, the president was the guest of honor. Spotting the FBI director among the attendees, Roosevelt called to him, “Edgar, what are they trying to do to you on the Hill?”

Hoover replied, “I don’t know, Mr. President.”

Roosevelt grinned and made a thumbs-down gesture, at the same time remarking, loud enough for those at nearby tables to hear, “That’s for them.”
³⁹

A master of time and place, Roosevelt, with a single gesture, killed the rumor that Hoover no longer had his support.

There was—as there always was with FDR—a quid pro quo. A few days later the president started calling in some of his due bills.

D
uring the first two administrations of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had expanded tremendously—in authority, jurisdiction, and size. The president had also given his patriarchal blessing to its director, first by refusing to replace Hoover, then by standing up for him when he came under fire.

Six months before the 1940 election, Roosevelt started calling in his “due bills.” The president had used the Bureau to conduct political investigations before—in 1934, for example, he’d asked Hoover to closely monitor the activities of Huey Long, a possible presidential opponent, in a hotly contested Louisiana election—but such requests were infrequent, and in most instances there was at least a possible violation of federal law. No such rationale could be offered for these new requests.

On May 16, 1940, the president addressed a joint session of Congress on the subject of national defense. It was an explosive issue—many considered it a giant step toward U.S. intervention in the European conflict—and Roosevelt’s critics were quick to respond.

On May 18 Steve Early, the president’s press secretary, wrote Hoover, “I am sending you, at the President’s direction, a number of telegrams he has received since the delivery of his address…These telegrams are all more or less in opposition to national defense. It was the President’s idea that you might like to go over these, noting the names and addresses of the senders.”
¹

Hoover went one better. He checked the names against FBI files, then made “comments and reports” on what he had found—going beyond what FDR had requested, but probably giving him exactly what he wanted.

Having found Hoover receptive, Roosevelt made other requests. May 21, FDR to Early: “Here are some more telegrams to send to Edgar Hoover.” May
23, Early to Hoover: “The President asked me to show the attached telegrams to you.” May 29, Early to Hoover: “Respectfully referred to Honorable J. Edgar Hoover.” By the end of May, Hoover had conducted background checks on 131 critics of the president, among them Senators Burton K. Wheeler and Gerald Nye, and many of the leaders of the noninterventionist America First Committee, including Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh.
²

Unknown to Roosevelt, Hoover had been keeping a file on Lindbergh since he’d credited the Treasury Department, rather than the FBI, with solving the kidnap-murder of his son. It was already a large file. Both publicly and privately, the Lone Eagle had made no attempt to contain his admiration for the “new Germany.” Feted by the Nazi high command, Lindbergh had accepted a decoration from Hermann Göring, pronounced the Luftwaffe invincible, and stated that since Britain was doomed to defeat, America had no business involving itself with the losing side. “Lindbergh’s radio addresses were just next to treasonable,” Rexford Tugwell has noted, “but they had an unmistakably receptive audience.”
³

Roosevelt was not unappreciative of Hoover’s efforts. On June 12 he asked his presidential secretary, Major General Edwin M. “Pa” Watson, to “prepare a nice letter to Edgar Hoover thanking him for all the reports on investigations he has made and tell him I appreciate the fine job he is doing.”
⁴

Watson’s reply, which he prepared for the president’s signature, was brief, and purposely nonexplicit, but apparently it moved Hoover deeply.

Dear Edgar:

I have intended writing you for some time to thank you for the many interesting and valuable reports that you have made to me regarding the fast moving situations of the last few months.

You have done and are doing a wonderful job, and I want you to know of my gratification and appreciation.

With kind regards,

Very sincerely yours,
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
⁵

Hoover’s reply was nothing if not effusive:

My dear Mr. President:

The personal note which you directed to me on June 14, 1940, is one of the most inspiring messages which I have ever been privileged to receive; and, indeed, I look upon it as rather a symbol of the principles for which our Nation stands. When the President of our country, bearing the weight of untold burdens, takes the time to so express himself to one of his Bureau heads, there is implanted in the hearts of the recipients a renewed strength and vigor to carry on their tasks.

In noting the vast contrast between the Leader of our Nation and those of other less fortunate Nations, I feel deeply thankful that we have at the
head of our Government one who possesses such sterling, sincere and altogether human qualities.

With expression of my highest esteem and deepest admiration, I am,

Respectfully,
J. Edgar Hoover.
⁶

Roosevelt obviously knew just how to handle Hoover. In addition to his letter, the FBI chief sent the president a new batch of reports on his political enemies. It was as if, amid all the rhetoric, a bargain had been struck.

Following a Lindbergh speech criticizing the president’s foreign policy—“The three most important groups who have been pushing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration”—Early sent Hoover thirty-six more telegrams.
⁷

This time, however, Hoover went beyond making “comments and reports.” He leaked some of the most interesting materials to Winchell and Pearson. According to Oliver Pilat, Pearson’s son-in-law and biographer, the FBI director wasn’t acting on his own but “was harassing isolationists under orders from the White House.”
⁸

One report, which neither Winchell nor Pearson used, maintained that Lindbergh had a German mistress, the implication being that she served as conduit to the Nazi high command.

Encouraged by Hoover’s enthusiasm, Roosevelt made a number of even more sensitive requests. On July 2, 1940, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes—obviously acting on the president’s behalf—asked Hoover to conduct a background investigation of Roosevelt’s Republican opponent, Wendell Willkie. There was a rumor that Willkie had changed his name from Wulkje; if true, this could be used to alienate not only Polish-American voters but all those Americans still reacting to the fall of Poland.
⁹

Acting on the advice of Ed Tamm that it would be “a serious mistake” for the Justice Department to conduct political investigations, Hoover denied the request.
¹⁰

In the case of Willkie, Roosevelt didn’t need Hoover’s help. In the fall of 1940 the president, using equipment borrowed from David Sarnoff, the head of RCA, had a secret taping system installed in the Oval Office. A microphone, concealed on the president’s desk, was connected to a recording device in the basement. But the equipment was primitive; often it picked up the president’s distinctive voice but no others; and after a few months Roosevelt abandoned it and instead relied on a hidden stenographer to transcribe those conversations he deemed important.

In one of the few tapes that survives, apparently made in August 1940, Roosevelt, on learning that Willkie was allegedly having an affair with the New York book review editor Irita Van Doren, instructed an aide:

“Spread it as a word-of-mouth thing, or by some people way, way down the line. We can’t have any of our principal speakers refer to it, but the people down the line can get it out. I mean the Congress speakers, and state speakers,
and so forth. They can use the raw material. Now, now, if they want to play dirty politics in the end, we’ve got our own people.”
¹¹

Hoover also declined a request—this one from the president himself—that he put a telephone tap on Postmaster General James Farley. Though Roosevelt’s campaign manager in 1932 and 1936, Farley, hoping to get the Democratic nomination himself, had come out against the president’s third-term bid, and Roosevelt, suspecting him of giving derogatory information to the anti-New Deal editor Ray Tucker, wanted to catch him in the act.

Hoover had no love for Farley, one of the men who had tried to replace him as director in 1933. Yet, according to Tamm, who was present at the White House when the president made the request, Hoover responded, “I cannot do that. I will not do that, because of the possibility of a leak. If there was ever any publicity that you had a telephone tap placed on one of your Cabinet members the damage to you would be irrevocable. I cannot do it. I will not do it.” As Tamm recalls the incident, “the president was a little piqued, but he saw the logic of the reason and he deferred to it.”
^*
12

There is another version of this same conversation, in which Hoover refused to tap Farley but added, to FDR’s delight, “However, I will tap Ray Tucker’s wire.”
¹⁵
If true, this must have given Hoover special satisfaction, for this was the same Ray Tucker who, in the 1933
Collier’s
magazine article, ridiculed the FBI director and described him as walking with a “mincing step.”

Though declining to tap Farley, the director found nothing wrong with sending the president purely political intelligence about him. On March 3, 1940, Hoover sent Roosevelt a confidential memo to the effect that Farley was having trouble with the income tax people and that it was reportedly serious enough to preclude his becoming a candidate.

Moreover,
after
Roosevelt had safely won reelection, Hoover sent the president a number of confidential reports on Willkie’s private remarks and personal involvements, leading one to suspect that in refusing Roosevelt’s earlier request the FBI director was only protecting himself in the unlikely event that the Republican candidate won.

Nor did Hoover have any compunction about investigating the two men he often claimed were responsible for his being named director: former president Herbert Hoover and his longtime aide Lawrence Richey. On July 2, 1940—twelve days after the surrender of France—Adolf Berle informed Tamm that the president had heard, from the journalist Marquis Childs, that the ex-president and his aide had sent telegrams to the former French premier Pierre
Laval, hoping to persuade him to reveal that Roosevelt had secretly promised to send American troops to aid the French. However, when the New York field office checked the records of the telegraph companies, it was unable to find any such messages.

Knowing Roosevelt had an ongoing interest in the activities of his predecessor, the FBI director continued to monitor them. On February 4, 1941, the former president had a private lunch with Lord Halifax, the British ambassador, at the British embassy. Hoover informed Roosevelt, via Watson, of the details of their conversation, which he said he obtained from a source which he had “heretofore found reliable,” a euphemism Hoover often used when the source was in reality a bug or a tap.
¹⁶
Ally or not—Halifax himself was strongly pro-appeasement—it’s possible Hoover had even the British embassy bugged. He was—by this time or shortly after—tapping and/or bugging the Germans, the Italians, the Japanese, and the Russians, as well as the embassies and/or consulates of such “neutral” nations as Vichy France, Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland.
^*

By this time Hoover was also conducting still other, even more secret investigations. In Adolf Berle’s much edited diary entry of March 21, 1940, one glimpses the shadows: “Lunch with J. Edgar Hoover and Mr. Tamm, anent the affairs of the FBI. For an hour and a half we discussed a variety of matters, largely connected with the seamy side of the New Deal…There were a number of matters which J. Edgar Hoover has had to handle and handle quietly at the direct request of a number of people.”
^†
17

Although Robert Jackson blamed Frank Murphy, rather than J. Edgar Hoover, for pushing through the Spanish Loyalist indictments, the attorney general and the director soon clashed on a number of other issues.

On learning of the Custodial Detention program, Jackson tried to put it under Justice Department supervision. Claiming he feared that “the identity of confidential informants now used by the Bureau would become known,” Hoover fiercely resisted, for five months, at which point Jackson finally ordered him to make available the “dossiers” of those on the list. Perhaps Jackson saw this as a victory. If so, he was deceived, for by giving the Justice Department unit “dossiers” (or summaries), rather than access to raw reports,
Hoover was able to disguise some of his sources (which undoubtedly included wiretaps and bugs), as well as select what information the unit would be allowed to see.
¹⁹

That the trick worked once did not mean it would work again. Faced for the first time with a hostile attorney general who demanded access to the files, Hoover on April 11, 1940, secretly inaugurated a new filing system.

Rather, it was a “do not file” system. Memorandums for the director on especially sensitive subjects were to be prepared on blue paper rather than on white.
^*
Bearing no classification or serial numbers, they were not referred to in the General Indices. Unnumbered, they could be destroyed without leaving a telltale gap. Since only single copies were prepared, the director alone would decide whether to retain, destroy, or return them.

Thus a supervisor could report to the director that certain evidence was the result of a burglary, without fear that this information would later surface in court. Or a SAC could request, and obtain, authorization for adding a name to the mail-opening lists, then eliminate the incriminating paperwork.

Many of the items in the Official/Confidential files, which Hoover established a year later, were “do not file” memorandums. No attorney general, from Jackson on, was ever told that the FBI was keeping a dual system of records.

Hoover’s most heated conflict with Jackson was over the issue of wiretapping.

When Attorney General Stone banned wiretapping in 1924, Hoover himself had declared the practice “unethical.” He’d also promised the ACLU’s Roger Baldwin that it was “a thing of the past.” There is evidence, however, that by 1928 at least some BI agents were tapping telephones, with or without the director’s consent.
²²