Read J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets Online
Authors: Curt Gentry
Tags: #General, #Biography & Autobiography, #United States, #Political Science, #Law Enforcement, #History, #Fiction, #Historical, #20th Century, #American Government
J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (132 page)
*
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 draft 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.”
A
BBREVIATIONS
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
FTEN
C
ITED
S
OURCES
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.
EGAL
P
ROCEEDINGS
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.
HAPTER
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.
C38
. Sanford J. Ungar,
FBI
(Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1975), 273.
HAPTER
2: Wednesday, May 3, 1972 (Pages 41-47)
1
. Inquiry, 89.
2
.
Memorial Tributes,
xviii.
3
.
WP,
Sept. 10, 1972.
4
. Ibid.
5
.
Felt, Pyramid,
183;
NYT,
May 5, 1972.
6
. Felt interview.
7
. Felt,
Pyramid,
190.
8
. Inquiry, 176.
9
. Ibid., 53.
10
. Ibid., 176.
11
. Ibid., 88.
12
. Louis Nichols interview.
13
. JEH memo, Oct. 1, 1941; Inquiry, 154-55.
14
.
WP,
Jan. 19, 1975; Nichols interview.
C15
. Lukas,
Nightmare,
214.
HAPTER
3: Thursday, May 4, 1972 (Pages 48-58)
1
. Felt,
Pyramid,
184.
2
.
WS,
May 4, 1972.
3
.
WP,
May 5, 1972.
4
. Former Justice Department official.
5
.
NYT,
May 5, 1972.
6
. Inquiry, 37, 39, 45.
7
. Ibid., 48.
8
. C. F. Downing to I. Conrad, FBI Lab report, May 16, 1972.
9
. Anonymous letter to Gray, n.d. (early May 1972).
10
. Inquiry, 13-14.
11
. Ibid., 178.
12
. Ibid., 176.
13
.
WP,
July 12, 1975.
14
.
WS,
Jan. 1, 1972.
15
. JEH testimony, House Subcommittee on Appropriations, March 2, 1972
C16
.
Life,
May 12, 1972.
HAPTER
4: Inauguration Day (Pages 61-69)
1
. JEH to Watson (FDR), Aug. 2 and 3, 1943.