Enemies: A History of the FBI (86 page)

13.
“he was being bombarded”:
Memorandum of Conference with the President, May 13, 1960, Office of Staff Secretary, Eisenhower Papers, DDEL. General Andrew Goodpaster, Ike’s military aide, wrote the memorandum on May 16. The president was in the foulest mood on May 13—weathering, in his words, in “a great storm” over the CIA’s U-2 spy plane that had crashed during a secret flight over the Soviet Union. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was a prisoner in Moscow (he was eventually exchanged for the Soviet spy known as Colonel Rudolph Abel). The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had humiliated the United States. Ike’s anger can be inferred from the record created by General Goodpaster.

28.
D
ANGEROUS
M
AN

  
1.
“rather frightening”:
Robert F. Kennedy oral history, JFKL.

  
2.
“Bobby was trying to take over the FBI”:
DeLoach oral history, LBJL.

  
3.
Hoover had told his old friend:
The eyewitnesses to the demands from Joe Kennedy that JFK take RFK as attorney general—and Hoover’s personal approval of that choice—were JFK’s friend Senator George Smathers of Florida; RFK’s aide John Seigenthaler; and Hoover’s assistant, Cartha “Deke” DeLoach. “Some of Bobby and the President’s personality may have come from old man Joe Kennedy, who didn’t mind bowling people over,” DeLoach said, perceptively. “He loved the usage of power, and so did the President and Bobby—Bobby, I think, more than the President.”

  
4.
“We did it for the reason”:
Robert F. Kennedy oral history, JFKL.

  
5.
“He offended the FBI”:
Katzenbach oral history, JFKL.

  
6.
“most unpleasant”:
RFK oral history, JFKL.

  
7.
“The great problem now”:
RFK handwritten notes cited in Church Committee report.

  
8.
“I kept the Kennedys from firing Hoover”:
Evans oral history, in Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober,
The Kennedy Presidency: An Oral History of the Era
(Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2003), p. 269.

  
9.
“For years CIA has not played”:
Hoover notations on memos, [Deleted] to Sullivan, April 2, 1962, and Evans to Belmont, April 20, 1963; FBI/FOIA.

10.
“analyze the weaknesses of US intelligence”:
Director, FBI, to the Attorney General, “The Central Intelligence Agency,” blind memorandum hand-delivered April 21, 1961; Belmont to Parsons, “Central Intelligence Agency/Report for the Attorney General,” April 21, 1961.

11.
“The driver of the bus”:
Joseph G. Kelly oral history, FBI/FBIOH, Aug. 29, 2004.

12.
“We had a leak”:
Crockett oral history, FAOH.

13.
“Sheridan was the principal”:
LBJ White House tapes, Nov. 17, 1964, LBJL.

14.
“The leaker was one Otto Otepka”:
Crockett oral history, FAOH.

29.
R
ULE BY
F
EAR

  
1.
“When I heard”:
RFK oral history, JFKL. Kennedy set the date of this revelation in 1961; some historians believe the meeting was in 1962, but the circumstantial evidence suggests the earlier date is correct. Hoover went on high alert after King and Levison met the attorney general and his top civil rights aides in a private dining room at the Mayflower Hotel—an odd choice of venue, since Hoover usually took his lunch at the Mayflower. Hoover quickly learned about the meeting. It represented, to him, a Communist penetration—a secret agent’s access to the highest levels of the American government. No one took any notes that survived, but the conversation remained in the memory of those who were there. Kennedy advised King that the Justice Department had little jurisdiction to protect civil rights leaders from the Klan or southern lawmen. Sit-ins and civil disobedience were not the way, Kennedy advised; an orderly campaign for blacks to register and vote was the right path. After the lunch, Kennedy’s assistant John Seigenthaler took King aside and warned him about Levison: the man was a known Communist, and King would best be rid of him. King replied, in so many words, that it would be hard to break that tie.

  
2.
The substance of their conversation:
Hoover memo to Tolson, Belmont, Sullivan, DeLoach, Jan. 9, 1962; Evans to Belmont, Feb. 2, 1962; Bland to Sullivan, Feb. 3, 1962, FBI/FOIA.

  
3.
Lesiovsky’s meeting with Levison:
The FBI’s surveillance of the meeting was the result of a very lucky break: a member of the Soviet delegation who worked for the Soviet military intelligence service had offered to serve the FBI as an agent in place. On March 13, 1962, the FBI reported that Dmitri Polyakov, code-named Top Hat, had identified every member of the Soviet diplomatic delegation in New York and Washington who served as a spy for Moscow. Top Hat helped the FBI track diplomatic developments at a high level. SA Edward F. Gamber to SAC New York, “Subject: United Nations Personnel—USSR,” March 13, 1962, FBI/FOIA. On the Levison connection to the KGB’s Lesiovsky, Birch oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  
4.
“Under no circumstances”:
Hoover notation, Bland to Sullivan, Feb. 3, 1962, FBI/FOIA.

  
5.
“that bastard”:
The March 22, 1962, meeting between Hoover and JFK has been reconstructed through existing White House records by Robert Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King’s best biographers, Evan Thomas and Taylor Branch, respectively, but they both rely on hearsay evidence for the “bastard” quotation reproduced here.

  
6.
“I expressed astonishment”:
Hoover’s May 9, 1962, memo for the record was published by the Church Committee in 1975.

  
7.
“Courtney I hope”:
Hoover, May 22, 1961, memo to RFK and RFK’s notation, quoted in Church Committee,
Assassination Plots, Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders
, pp. 127–128. Hoover’s memo reported that the FBI had interviewed the CIA’s security chief, Sheffield Edwards: “Colonel Edwards advised that in connection with CIA’s operation against Castro he personally contacted Robert Maheu,” an ex–FBI agent who worked, simultaneously, for the CIA, the Mafia, and the Las Vegas billionaire Howard Hughes. The memo noted that Maheu had served the CIA “as a ‘cut-out’ in contacts with Sam Giancana, a known hoodlum in the Chicago area.”

  
8.
“Levison influenced him”:
RFK oral history, JFKL. RFK’s close aide and successor, Nick Katzenbach, agreed. “Given the Bureau’s statement about Levison as being true, and given the way they stated it which was flatly and positively and—from really making it spooky as far as the source is concerned—I’d no reason to doubt that,” Katzenbach said in his own oral history for the JFK Library.
   Levison told King they should break off their relationship, he told the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in 1976: “The movement needed the Kennedys too much. I said it would not be in the interests of the movement to hold on to me if the Kennedys had doubts.”
   But as the historian David J. Garrow has written, after reviewing FBI records released a decade ago:

King remained reluctant to lose Levison’s assistance and counsel, and thus he detailed a mutual friend, the young African-American attorney Clarence B. Jones, of New York, to serve as a telephonic intermediary between himself and Levison. Marshall and Robert Kennedy picked up on the ruse almost immediately, and within days Kennedy had authorized the wiretapping of Jones’s home and office. Kennedy considered adding a tap on King as well, but decided to hold off.
   In early August of 1963 King happened to stay at Jones’s home for several days, at which point both the FBI and, by extension, the Kennedys were introduced to a new aspect of King’s life—namely, his sexual endeavors, which in subsequent months would all but replace Levison as the focus of the FBI’s surveillance of King. But at that time Marshall and Robert Kennedy were far more worried by the extensive evidence of King and Levison’s communication by way of Jones. The wiretap in Jones’s office recorded King saying, “I’m trying to wait until things cool off—until this civil rights debate is over—as long as they may be tapping these phones, you know.…”

David J. Garrow, “The FBI and Martin Luther King,”
Atlantic Monthly
, July–August 2002.

  
9.
Hoover commanded the FBI:
Director to SAC Atlanta, “Communist Infiltration of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: Internal Security,” July 20, 1962, FBI/FOIA.

10.
“The Klan got involved”:
Woodcock oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

11.
“I go in to see Hoover”:
Davis oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

12.
“The 19 million Negroes”:
William C. Sullivan, “Communist Party USA/Negro Question/Internal Security—Communist,” Aug. 23, 1963, with Hoover notations and Sullivan’s response, FBI/FOIA.

13.
“a really politically explosive document”:
Katzenbach oral history, RFK Oral History Project, JFKL.

14.
eight wiretaps and sixteen bugs:
Brennan to Sullivan, “Subject: Martin Luther King Jr./Security Matter—Communist,” April 18, 1968, FBI/FOIA. The taps on King’s home telephones remained in place until April 1965; the SCLC taps until June 1966.

15.
“It’s a moral issue”:
McGorray oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

16.
“Hoover was telling me”:
Jack Danahy oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

17.
“King is a ‘tom cat’ ”:
Sullivan to Belmont, with Hoover notation, Jan. 27, 1964, FBI/FOIA.

18.
4,453 members:
William C. Sullivan, “Communist Party USA/Negro Question/Internal Security—Communist,” Aug. 23, 1963, FBI/FOIA.

19.
“I have some news for you”:
William Manchester,
The Death of a President
(New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 195–196. The source for this account was Robert F. Kennedy but, as always, it was his word against Hoover’s. “Manchester is a liar but it was obvious he was fed this by R.F.K.,” Hoover scribbled in a note to his aides on Feb. 15, 1967. FBI/FOIA.

20.
“Oswald was a confidential informant”:
DeLoach to Mohn, “Assassination of the President/Allegation That Oswald Was an FBI Informant,” Feb. 7, 1964, FBI/FOIA.

21.
“their training, violent tendencies”:
Sullivan to Belmont, Nov. 26, 1963, FBI/FOIA.

22.
“gross incompetency,” “We failed,”
and
“a direct admission”:
Hoover and DeLoach memos, Dec. 10, 1963, and Oct. 14, 1964; cited in “The Investigation of the Assassination of John F. Kennedy,” a staff report of the Church Committee conducted in 1975 but classified and unpublished until 2000.

30.
“Y
OU GOT THIS PHONE TAPPED
?”