Legacy of Secrecy (36 page)

days before JFK’s assassination. The contents of the note and the circum-

stances of Oswald’s visit were the subject of three conflicting stories that

Congress investigated in the mid-1970s, following Hoover’s death in

1972. The essence of Oswald’s note was that Agent Hosty should “stop

bothering my wife [and] talk to me if you need to.” The secretary in the

Dallas office recalled a phrase about “blowing up” the FBI office.7 How-

ever, surely a written threat to blow up the Dallas FBI office, delivered

in person by a former defector to an enemy of the US like Russia, would

have provoked a swift response in 1963, as it would today. We feel that

Oswald was simply trying to keep the local FBI agent from “blowing”

the deep cover Oswald had carefully maintained for so long.

We also noted that Hoover was able to tell Bobby Kennedy that

Oswald was not a communist, just an hour after Oswald arrived at Dal-

las police headquarters. This was probably a function of both Hoover’s

access to some of the additional surveillance on Oswald, and the FBI’s

thorough infiltration of the Communist Party USA by the early 1960s. It

has been claimed that one out of every four members of the Communist

Party by that time was an FBI informant, asset, or agent. Still, the initial

reports that Oswald was a self-proclaimed Marxist, a former defector,

and a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee were more than

enough for someone with Hoover’s mindset to believe Oswald was

guilty of JFK’s murder.

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Though America was nine years past the height of the McCarthy-era

blacklist—which gave rise to popular entertainments like
I Led Three

Lives
and
I Was a Communist for the FBI,
that had so enthralled a young

Oswald—its effects still lingered throughout much of the United States.

The first small crack in the Hollywood blacklist had occurred only three

years earlier, and even in 1963 many former film and TV stars and direc-

tors were still unemployable in Hollywood or working in exile. Many of

the film shorts produced ten years earlier, which claimed that freedoms

needed to be sacrificed to fight the communist menace, were still shown

in schools and on Sunday-afternoon local television. The John Birch

Society was at the height of its influence, courted and joined by promi-

nent politicians, judges, and other officials, even as it used anticom-

munism to mask what many saw as an undercurrent of racism. (Its

newsletters denounced any attempt at civil rights as a communist plot

and called Martin Luther King Jr. a communist who wanted to found a

“Soviet Negro Republic . . . with Atlanta as its capital.”)8

For Hoover, and many American newspapers and television stations,

initial word of Oswald’s apparent Soviet and Cuban connections was

all they needed to convict him. By Friday night, and into Saturday and

Sunday, many newspapers were in an odd state of duality. Their editori-

als, written in the immediate aftermath of JFK’s murder, denounced the

far-right paranoia and racism that many initially felt must have been

behind the shooting. But even as those editorials appeared over the next

two days, the newspaper’s front pages were trumpeting that JFK had

been murdered by a communist with ties to Russia and Cuba.

For someone like former FBI supervisor Guy Banister, it would not

have been hard to guess Hoover’s reaction, on two fronts. First, Oswald’s

seeming Soviet and Cuban ties would have made him a logical suspect.

Banister had long been an ardent anticommunist, first for the FBI and

then running checks for corporations to root out those with the taint of

communism, so he knew the mindset of someone like Hoover. Second,

Banister would know that because of the FBI’s participation in the tight

surveillance of Oswald (which probably involved Banister’s friends in

the New Orleans FBI office), Hoover would immediately have to begin

covering up any information that could reflect badly on the FBI. That is

exactly what happened in the coming days, weeks, months, and years.

The smallest step out of line by a reporter would bring a response from

Hoover, which might include having an FBI agent contact the reporter,

his or her editor, or even the publisher. Several examples of attempted

FBI suppression involved stories that emerged from Chicago, some

about the events in Dallas and others about the whispers among report-

ers regarding the attempt to assassinate JFK in Chicago.

What Hoover said publicly, or had his staff leak to reporters, could be

different from what Hoover said in private. Even as he told Bobby Ken-

nedy and others that Oswald had killed JFK, only sixteen hours later, on

Saturday morning, Hoover would tell new president Lyndon Johnson

that “the evidence that they have at the present time is not very, very

strong” against Oswald.9 We now know that saying one thing in pub-

lic and almost the opposite in private was consistent with the contrast

between Hoover’s own public and private lives. In public, he presented

himself as the personification of right-wing, conservative family values,

while in private he led a closeted gay life with his longtime companion,

Clyde Tolson. By 1963, Bobby Kennedy had finally dragged Hoover

into the war against the Mafia; in public, Hoover presented himself as

leading the FBI’s fight against organized crime, even as his New Orleans

office gave carte blanche to Banister’s patron Carlos Marcello.

Over the coming days, Hoover would no doubt learn more about

the JFK-Almeida coup plan and the other authorized, and unauthor-

ized, CIA operations against Castro. Though the FBI had no official role

in any of those operations, Hoover already had some information. Six

weeks before JFK’s death, Hoover had been sent a report from a Miami

FBI informant who said that Cubela was working for the CIA.10 Also,

the FBI had sometimes been in touch with Harry Williams throughout

the summer and fall of 1963, specifically after Harry’s encounter with

Trafficante in Miami (arranged by an associate of E. Howard Hunt) and

before Harry’s almost fatal trip to Guatemala City, when an FBI agent

warned Harry the FBI had picked up information that he was in danger.

In addition, Miami FBI informants (such as those code-named “MM T-1”

and “MM T-6”) provided information about Harry to the local office.11

Harry’s FBI file, like his CIA file, has never been released.

President Lyndon Johnson, like Hoover, would learn much about

secret anti-Castro operations in the coming days. Because Hoover had

so many informants, prior to JFK’s death Johnson probably knew even

less than Hoover about the JFK-Almeida coup plan and the CIA’s other

operations. Yet Johnson’s new position allowed him to start learning

about those operations directly from CIA Director McCone. Close

friends Johnson and Hoover no doubt shared much of this information

with each other. However, the huge amount of data each man learned in

such a short time undoubtedly made it hard to keep all the operations

straight. After a summary that lasted only a few minutes, distinguishing

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the JFK-Almeida coup plan and AMWORLD from AMTRUNK and from

AMLASH wouldn’t have been easy. Hoover would eventually have to

figure out where the assassination part of the Cubela operation fit in,

and how the CIA-Mafia plots were involved. (Hoover knew about the

earlier phase of the CIA-Mafia plots, and had informant reports about

the actions of Rosselli and others still involved in the fall of 1963.) In

addition, LBJ would learn about the detailed files for the “Plan for a

Coup in Cuba,” and the even more extensive US military invasion plans.

This mass of information would have been confusing to digest in the

best of times, let alone in the aftermath of JFK’s murder.

At 7:25 PM (Eastern time) on the evening of the assassination, Lyn-

don Johnson called J. Edgar Hoover “at his home, and requested that

the FBI take complete charge of the case involving the assassination.”

William Manchester observed that “this was one of the first calls that the

President made upon returning to Washington that evening.” Hoover

had already begun investigating on his own authority, but now the new

president had given him primary control of the entire case. Hoover

“also told the President that he was concerned about the great amount

of publicity coming out of Dallas.”12 We have only Hoover’s account,

to historian Manchester, of what was said that night, and the publicity-

savvy Hoover was well aware that his words would be published in

Manchester’s upcoming book
Death of a President
. No doubt Hoover

and LBJ discussed urgent national security matters that Hoover didn’t

share with Manchester. For example, some of the “publicity coming out

of Dallas” was about the possible role of communist Russia and Cuba in

JFK’s murder. Just a year after the tense nuclear standoff of the Cuban

Missile Crisis, this could have spelled disaster for the new president.

Journalist Jack Anderson knew both men well, and later said he was

confident that LBJ would have said to Hoover something like “Help me

save my country.”13 That would have meant keeping the investigation

from spreading into areas that could trigger a call for an attack on Cuba

or the Soviet Union. This concern helps to account for the actions of

the FBI as the investigation unfolded. While critics of the FBI and War-

ren Commission have long complained about FBI witness intimidation,

misrepresentation of statements, and missing or altered evidence, an

increasing number of former FBI agents have gone on record about the

pressure they were under.14 As recounted in
Vanity Fair,
“former agent

Harry Whidbee [said] the Kennedy investigation was ‘a hurry-up job’ . . .

we were effectively told, ‘They’re only going to prove (Oswald) was

the guy who did it. There were no co-conspirators, and there was no

international conspiracy.’” The retired agent says that he “had conducted

a couple of interviews, and those records were sent back again and were

rewritten according to Washington’s requirements.” Laurence Keenan,

a retired FBI supervisor, confirmed his account. He told
Vanity Fair
that

“within days we could say the investigation was over. ‘Conspiracy’ was

a word which was verboten. . . . The idea that Oswald had a confederate

or was part of a group or a conspiracy was definitely enough to place a

man’s career in jeopardy.”15

As even more information emerged in the coming days and weeks

that seemed to implicate Russia or Cuba, the pressure from Hoover to

contain the investigation only increased. Hoover had his own reasons,

aside from national security, to withhold information, and it’s impor-

tant to keep those motivations in mind as the various cover-ups unfold.

Some have tried to blame JFK’s assassination on Hoover because of these

investigative shortcomings, but they overlook the fact that Bobby Ken-

nedy also withheld similar information for some of the same reasons.

Also, if Hoover wanted to get rid of JFK before the 1964 elections, he

could have easily done so simply by leaking accounts of his affairs to

conservative press outlets, something Hoover had done in a small way

in October 1963 in order to secure his job throughout JFK’s current (and

any future) term as president.16

Several important phone calls to Hoover on November 22 show

just how powerful and influential he was at that time. That morning,

even before JFK was shot, former president Dwight Eisenhower called

Hoover. At 4:18 PM, just minutes after Hoover finished his call to Bobby

about Oswald, Hoover received a call from former vice president Rich-

ard Nixon, then seen as a probable contender for the 1964 Republican

presidential nomination. Coupled with the fact that the first call LBJ

made when he got back to Washington was to Hoover, this call from

Nixon confirms that Hoover had assumed the mantle of the second-

most powerful man in America after JFK’s death (which was especially

true since there was no vice president once LBJ ascended to the Oval

Office). That’s why it was important for the conspirators to have some-

one quickly blamed for the assassination who could force Hoover, as

well as LBJ and Bobby, to cover up any information pointing at suspects

besides Oswald. Once Hoover’s considerable media and political con-

nections were brought into play, the lone-assassin information Hoover

and the FBI conveyed would quickly become gospel.

But in the first hours after JFK’s death, Hoover (and LBJ’s staff) had

not yet begun to exert the more extensive spin control they soon would.

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This allowed some early reports to appear that did not conform to the

“lone assassin” scenario that would be prevalent by the following morn-