Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (46 page)

It has been said that of the small number of members of the Communist
Party in those days, almost half were FBI informers.

But Hoover never let the facts stand in the way of his campaign to
eradicate communism, even if it meant neglecting one of the true menaces
to America-organized crime.

In the forty-eight years that Hoover controlled the United States' only
national police organization, he served eight presidents and outlasted more
than a dozen attorneys general.

Organized-crime investigator Peter Maas has reported that prior to Robert Kennedy becoming attorney general, only four FBI agents in the New
York office were assigned to organized crime and those were kept busy
with in-office "bookkeeping" duties. Yet about four hundred agents were
on the streets of the city searching out communists.

As late as January 1962, Hoover was on record as saying: "No single
individual or coalition of racketeers dominates organized crime across the
nation." As with the communist threat, Hoover was not telling the truth.

Shortly after the aborted mob conference at Apalachin in 1957, Sullivan
and other top FBI officials prepared a monograph on the Mafia that was
sent to the top twenty-five government officials concerned with law enforcement. Learning of this, an angry Hoover recalled all twenty-five
copies and had them destroyed. He denounced the monograph as "baloney" and this report on organized crime was never heard of again.

It was not until Mafia thug Joe Valachi was brought to Washington by
Attorney General Robert Kennedy's Justice Department for testimony
before a Senate committee that Hoover was grudgingly forced to admit to
the existence of an organized-crime structure in this nation.

Why did Hoover act like there was no such thing as the Mafia when
there was so much evidence to the contrary?

In his book The Bureau, Sullivan wrote:

[Hoover] didn't want to tackle organized crime. He preferred his
agents to spend their time on quick, easy cases-he wanted results,
predictable results which produced the statistics Hoover thrived on... .
Investigating the Mafia promised to be more difficult than rounding up
juvenile auto thieves. Organized crime is far more complicated: the
Mafia runs legitimate businesses as a front for their illegal operations.
Mafioso are rich and can afford the best lawyers, while we have to use
government lawyers, some of whom are excellent, some of whom aren't
worth a damn. And the Mafia is powerful, so powerful that entire police
forces and even a mayor's office can be under Mafia control. That's
why Hoover was afraid to let us tackle it. He was afraid we'd show up
poorly.

There were also other considerations. Hoover was well known for his
ingratiating attitude toward Washington politicians. The more powerful the
politician, the more Hoover tried to befriend him.

Of one thing there is certainty-by the time of World War II, the vast
power of the FBI was centered solely in J. Edgar Hoover.

But if blame has to be laid for this situation, it may, as argued by Tom
Wicker, associate editor of The New York Times, be laid on the American
public. Wicker wrote:

... the public-gulled, it is true by the Bureau's incessant propaganda
-until recent years loved it all; and what considerable percentage of
voters Washington believed were still devoted to J. Edgar Hoover at his
death was suggested by the President's funeral oration and by Congress's decision that his body should lie in state, where Lincoln and
Kennedy had lain. There was little or no outcry when the Director,
guardian of liberty, spoke up for Joe McCarthy, called Martin Luther
King a liar and for years singlehandedly held up congressional passage
of a consular treaty with the Soviet Union. There was always a radio
audience for "The FBI in Peace and War" and the G-man movies to
which the Director invariably lent "technical assistance" and his seal of
approval-as long as they pictured his men on the side of the angels.
For decades, his turgid and moralistic articles appeared with the regularity of the seasons in "Reader's Digest" and "American" magazines,
and publishers took turns presenting his self-aggrandizing books to the waiting public. If J. Edgar Hoover passed eventually beyond the normal
restraints of office, the American public seemed to view this process
happily, and with a sense of gratitude.

But if Hoover's reputation grew overlarge in later years, it certainly had
no such problem back in the 1920s. Public criticism had arisen over the
Palmer raids. Federal agents were charged with unconstitutional searches
and seizures, individual rights violations, and even using agents provocateur.

One federal judge, after hearing testimony of warrantless arrests and
prisoners being held incommunicado, declared: "It may . . . be observed
that a mob is a mob, whether made up of government officials acting
under instructions from the Department of Justice, or of criminals, loafers,
and the vicious classes."

Later a Senate committee looked into the raids, but divided on its views
of the operation and no consensus was reached. It was the first-and
last-congressional investigation of the FBI.

Fresh from the complaints over the Palmer raids, morale in the Justice
Department went from bad to-worse.-

In an effort to demonstrate leadership in this moral crisis, newly elected
President Calvin Coolidge appointed Harlan Fiske Stone, a former dean of
the Columbia University Law School, attorney general.

Soon after taking control of what had become known as the "Department of Easy Virtue," Stone named twenty-nine-year-old Hoover acting
director of the Bureau. Hoover moved rapidly to restore respect for the
Bureau, which was in real danger of being disbanded due to the years of
problems and criticism. His actions produced immediate results. Asked if
one of his agents would investigate the activities of a senator's son,
Hoover replied: "This Bureau cannot be used for partisan purposes."

Backed solidly by Stone, Hoover completely rebuilt the image of the
Bureau of Investigation. And on December 10, 1924, Stone made Hoover
director. Stone later told a friend:

I took the responsibility of appointing Mr. Hoover . . . although
many people thought that Mr. Hoover was too young a man and had
been in too close contact with the Burns regime to be given the post. I
thought I knew my man and the event has proved that I was right. . . .
Mr. Hoover has steadily built up the Bureau . . .

Over the next fifteen years, Hoover was to move the Bureau from a few
hundred unarmed investigators to a full-fledged national police agency.
And all the while, he kept an eye open for favorable public relations
opportunities.

By the early 1930s, Prohibition had propelled crime into the national
spotlight and Hoover was there to share the glory. During the heyday of Bonnie and Clyde and the Ma Barker Gang, hardly a day passed that
Hoover wasn't being quoted in the nation's press. His legend grew.

In the early 1930s Hoover, a staunch Republican, was very cautious
about his moves within Franklin Roosevelt's Democratic administration.

By 1933, kidnapping was added to the list of crimes under the jurisdiction of the FBI due to the famous abduction of Charles Lindbergh's infant
son. This list grew longer the next year, with the addition of killing or
assaulting a federal officer, fleeing across state lines, and extortion involving interstate commerce.

By 1935, Bureau agents were given the power to go beyond investigation. They were allowed to serve warrants and subpoenas, to make seizures and arrests, and to carry arms. The Bureau had become the very
thing that Hoover had often spoken against-a national police force. Also
that year, the word Federal was added to the Bureau's name, and soon the
initials FBI were well-known all over the world.

By the beginning of World War II, the FBI boasted an Identification
Division with thousands of fingerprint records, a complete and up-to-date
laboratory, and a National Police Academy for training state and local
law-enforcement officers.

Even today it is considered the peak of a lawman's career to be selected
for training at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. And Hoover made
use of this too. According to former Assistant Director Sullivan:

.. . Hoover felt that the alumni of the FBI training course were his
men. Thanks to this network of FBI-trained police officers, we had a
private and frequently helpful line to most city and state police organizations throughout the country.

Hoover also used the FBI Academy against perceived enemies. On the
day of the JFK assassination, a shocked Dallas FBI agent named James
Hosty told Dallas police lieutenant Jack Revill that Lee Harvey Oswald
was a Communist known to the FBI, and that the Bureau had information
that Oswald was capable of committing the assassination. Since all government agencies were saying they had no knowledge of Oswald, this story
was a bombshell.

As a result of this conversation, Dallas police chief Jesse Curry told TV
newsmen that the FBI was aware of Oswald but had not informed the
Dallas police. When challenged to prove his charge by the head of the
Dallas FBI office, Curry qualified his statement by saying he had no
personal knowledge of the issue. But the damage had been done.

Until Curry's retirement in 1966, Hoover conducted a vendetta against
the Dallas police, according to FBI documents released in 1980. The
documents show that under orders from Hoover, FBI officials were prohibited from conducting training courses for Dallas police, and policemen
from that city were not invited to attend the FBI Academy.

Furthermore, Curry resigned as chief in February of 1966, less than a
month after Dallas mayor Erik Jonsson had visited Hoover in Washington.
After hearing Hoover's complaints against Curry, Jonsson told the petulant
director he would "immediately instruct the city manager to have a stem
talk" with the police chief.

Hoover did not gain such immense power overnight. After turning his
Bureau into an anticrime force, he began to look into other areas.

Beginning with secret meetings between President Roosevelt and Hoover in the summer of 1936, the Bureau began moving quietly into the areas
of intelligence gathering. It was all explained in a "Strictly Confidential"
staff memorandum written by Hoover:

In talking with the Attorney General today concerning the radical
situation, I informed him of the conference I had with the President on
September 1, 1936, at which time the Secretary of State [Cordell Hull]
was present, and at which time the Secretary of State, at the President's
suggestion, requested of me, the representative of the Department of
Justice, to have an investigation made of the subversive activities in this
country, including Communism and fascism. I transmitted this request
to the Attorney General, and the Attorney General verbally directed me
to proceed with the investigation and to coordinate, as the President
suggested, information upon these matters in the possession of the
Military Intelligence Division, the Naval Intelligence Division, and the
State Department. This, therefore, is the authority upon which to proceed in the conduct of this investigation, which should, of course, be
handled in a most discreet and confidential manner.

This new authority marked the beginning of this nation's multiagency
intelligence establishment and marked a period of extraordinary growth for
the Bureau. The FBI, which boasted only 391 agents in 1933, counted
nearly 5,000 by the end of the war.

In 1939, on the eve of World War II, the Bureau was directed to
investigate espionage, sabotage, and violations of neutrality regulations. It
also handled draft evaders and the apprehension of enemy aliens.

It should be noted that Hoover was one of the few government officials
who opposed the relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans as a
violation of their civil rights.

During the war, the FBI was called upon to gather intelligence on
activities detrimental to U.S. interests in South America. And while this
activity was ordered terminated with the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, the FBI still retains a large office in Mexico City.

Also during the war, Hoover's path crossed that of a young Naval
intelligence officer with unexpected and long-term repercussions. The FBI
had been snooping after a suspected Nazi agent, a beautiful woman named
Inga Arvad who had attended the wedding of Germany's Field Marshal Hermann Goering and met with Adolf Hitler. A former Miss Denmark,
she had no trouble attracting young men in wartime Washington. One of
these men was Naval Ensign John F. Kennedy.

Hoover's FBI wiretapped an apartment shared by Kennedy and "Inga
binga," as he called his paramour, and picked up the sounds of sexual
play. They also picked up a few remarks by Kennedy concerning sensitive
security matters. After both the Navy and his father had been alerted to the
danger presented by Kennedy's involvement with a suspected agent, young
Kennedy was quickly transferred to the South Pacific. It was there, of
course, that Kennedy led the survivors of PT-109 back to safety, thus
becoming a war hero and helping to launch his political career-all thanks
to the diligent J. Edgar Hoover. It could thus be argued-with great
irony-that it was Hoover who actually set young Kennedy on the course
that ended in Dallas.