-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | (C) 1995 Cartha DeLoach | | | | All rights reserved. | | | | ISBN: 0-89526-479-X | | | | LC: 353.0074--dc20 | | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Hoover's FBI......................................................3 2. The Secret Files That Weren't....................................27 3. Bobby Kennedy's Bugs.............................................47 4. The Gay Director?................................................61 5. Hoover the Man...................................................83 6. The Assassination of JFK........................................113 7. Jack Ruby.......................................................143 8. Mississippi Burning.............................................163 9. King vs. Hoover.................................................199 10. The Hunt for James Earl Ray....................................221 11. Counter-Intelligence...........................................259 12. Spying on Americans............................................279 13. Hoover, the Mob, and Joe Valachi...............................297 14. Buried Alive!..................................................319 15. Congress.......................................................351 16. LBJ............................................................371 17. The Lion in Winter.............................................395 18. AG-Man's Goodbye...............................................411 Bibliographical Note...............................................419 Index..............................................................423 Acknowledgements...................................................439
CHAPTER ONE
SHORTLY AFTER THE DEATH of President John Kennedy, I became the official FBI liaison to President Lyndon Johnson. I was given this assignment because of my position as third in command in the FBI, second only to Hoover's old friend, Clyde Tolson. Within a few months I began to realize just how &r LBJ was willing to go to use the FBI for his own political purposes.The 1964 Democratic Convention was to be held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, late in August of that year. Everyone knew that Lyndon Johnson would be the party's nominee and that he would probably win the general election. As a consequence, the bureau's pre vailing philosophy was to please the president by helping him in every way possible within the legal limits of our mission. This was not unusual. Virtually every president since the founding of the bureau has been able to count on a courteous and friendly hand from an agency that is, after all, under his through the attorney and dependent on his favor. But Johnson, a man I admired then and now, wanted more.
Lurz, interrupted to tell me that the White House was on the line. It was Walter Jenkins, the President's Chief of Stak.
"Deke," he said, "the president is very concerned about his personal safety and that of his staff while they're at the convention. Would you head a team to keep us advised of any potential threats? We want to make sure the president is safe and... that th ere aren't any disruptions at the convention."
The emphasis is mine. Jenkins spoke as neutrally as possible, as if to suggest that the last portion of the request was just an afterthought, a natural extension of his concern for the president's safety. But I knew Jenkins, and I knew Lyndon Johnson, and I knew that was not what the phone call was about.
There is an entire federal service dedicated almost exclusively to the protection of the the Secret Service. We have always cooperated with them in helping to identify potential threats to the president. But until after the assassination of JFK a few months before, murdering a president had not even been a federal crime and so was not under our jurisdiction. Only with the greatest difficulty had the FBI been able to take charge of that investigation.
The law was then changed, and conceivably that change authorized us to take a more active role in guarding the president, though that would be stretching it a bit. Under its charter, the FBI is an investigative, not an operational agency. We are not a nat ional police force. Ninety percent of what police do is outside our charter. We do not do crowd control, we are not available for guard duty, we do not make decisions to prosecute nor, in most cases, to arrest. In fact, we make few arrests compared to our volume of investigations. We are investigators.
Protection, of course, was not what Johnson wanted. He wanted a showcase convention, no "incidents," no angry demonstrators on TV, no pictures of police cracking the heads of civil rights protestors, pictures that could upset LBJ's liberal and black suppo rters and persuade Southern conservatives that the country was falling apart. In other words, he didn't want what happened to Hubert Humphrey and the Democrats in Chicago four years later. He wanted us to prevent such a political disaster. I didn't like the sound of it.
"Let me check with the director and get back to you," I said.
as I went to Tolson. He passed me along to Hoover without comment. Those were dangerous waters, and Tolson wasn't about to wet his big toe, much less dive in head first. When I told Hoover what Jenkins wanted, he blinked, then wagged his head in disapproval.
"Lyndon is way out of line," he grunted.
"Should I just tell him we can't do it, that it's beyond the limits of our mission?"
Hoover sat for a moment, brooding. A master bureaucrat, he had often been able to circumvent what had been his biggest headache over the politicians who wanted to turn the FBI into their personal political goon squad. That was exactly what the depar tment had been on its way to becoming when Hoover had been appointed to reform it decades before. But the same bureaucratic instincts also told him when he was trapped. Jenkins had been careful to phrase the request under the cover of a legal and imperati ve duty: to protect the president. Only a few months before, Hoover's beloved agency had been bitterly criticized for failing to stop Lee Harvey Oswald, a man whose bizarre history the bureau had in its files, from assassinating JFK. If Hoover did not coo perate now, and, heaven forbid, anything happened, the bureau could be destroyed in the crossfire. Certainly it would be the end of Hoover's career. LBJ wasn't a bad bureaucratic infighter himself.
"No, I guess not," Hoover replied. "Tell Walter we'll give him whatever help he wants."
We selected a team of seasoned agents who could handle an assignment involving masses of people, agents level-headed enough to remain calm in a crowd, whatever the provocation. The hours would be long and pressure-packed. Most of the based in Washi ngton, Newark, and Atlantic were familiar with the dissident groups most likely to cause trouble and were trained to detect hot spots before a fire broke out.
Because the White House had called for our involvement at the last minute, we had to work day and night to plan our strategy, leaving many heavy case loads in abeyance. First, we compiled all available background data on the organizations most likely to cause disruptions and developed profiles of their leadership. We then prepared blind memoranda so that prompt reports could be sent to the White House staff should any of these groups or leaders begin to stir up trouble.
The group that most concerned the White House staff was a black civil rights group, the militant wing of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), composed largely of black political activists. The MFDP as a group had challenged the right of the re gular Mississippi delegation to represent Mississippi at the convention, arguing that the MFDP group should be recognized instead. There may have been some substance to their claim, but the credentials committee had ruled in favor of the regulars. The Whi te House suspected that this militant group would try to occupy the convention seats of the regular Mississippi delegation, causing at best a scuffle and at worst a riot on the convention floor. Jenkins wanted full reports on the MFDP chairman, Dr. Aron H enry, and an emerging leader, Robert Moses, as well as on the MFDP as a group.
In addition to gathering background data on the MFDP, we also compiled thumbnail sketches of Communist party groups, known hoodlums who frequented the area, compulsive thieves, and others who could be counted on to show up at the convention and make troub le.
By the time the convention was scheduled to open, we were ready. On Sunday afternoon, August 23rd, our advance party left for Atlantic City, with the remainder to report by 5:00 P.M. that afternoon. When we got to Atlantic City, we established liaison wit h the Secret Service, the Atlantic City Police Department, the New Jersey Highway Patrol, and the White House staff members managing the convention. Our headquarters was in one small wing of a building that formerly housed the Atlantic City Post Of fice.
In talking to White House staff members, I realized they were expecting a glitch-free convention, largely because of our presence. It was Lyndon Johnson's absolute faith in the FBI that generated such expectations, and that worried me. The president's ri ght-hand men in Atlantic Ciq were Walter Jenkins, Cliff Carter, and Bill Moyers, later of PBS fame. One of our first tasks was to coach them on effective measures to prevent a zstall-in" demonstration planned by Dick Gregory, the black comedian, who had a bone to pick with the Democrats. We also recommended major improvements in procedures for controlling admission to the convention hall. Carter and Moyers were particularly concerned that we gather all possible intelligence on the Mississippi Freedom Demo cratic Parq and their plans.
In 1964, the networks featured gavel-to-gavel coverage of the national political conventions; and during the daytime, when little of significance was occurring in the center ring, reporters were always interested in controversial sideshows. They often gav e air time to all sorts of marginal groups that would be ignored in convention coverage today. Any activist with the price of a ticket to Atlantic City had a good chance of getting on the tube and airing his complaints to the huge television audience watc hing the convention. And several groups had laid careful plans to assure coverage of their respective agendas.
With this scenario in mind, our which came directly from Walter Jenkins, Bill Moyers, and Cliff was to keep up with the activities of these people around the clock. Given the growing militancy, particularly among the black civil rights o rganizations, it was a tall order. Messrs. Jenkins, Moyers, and Carter were particularly interested in suppressing dissent from black groups, since the Democrats were counting on a large voter turnout in the black community to defeat Senator Barry Goldwat er, the expected Republican nominee.
To keep abreast of all serious disruptive plans and activities, we carefully disbursed our contingent of FBI operatives: ten informants (who operated under code numbers) from two nearby bureau offices, two agents working in an undercover capacity, four bl ack informants associated with our Newark office, eighteen established information sources in the Atlantic City area, one Nation of Islam informant, and two Atlantic City security informants.
The late Julius then a leader of the black community in the District of Columbia and a paid FBI traveled to Atlantic City to offer his help and was accepted immediately into the inner planning circle of the militants. Another informant w as actually the leader of the Progressive Labor Movement in Atlantic City. And a third informant succeeded in getting an assignment as a chauffeur for leaders of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and CORE (Congress of Racial Equality).
Our team met every morning at 8:30 for strategy sessions. After one of those sessions, a black agent came to me with a problem.
"There's a leader in this group, a woman, and she's willing to tell me everything. But... well... she says she'll only do her talking in bed. What should I do?"
"You're on your own," I said. "I'm not about to give you any advice."
The next morning he gave us a detailed account of the group's plans. At the conclusion of his briefing, he said to me privately, "Believe me, it's not always wise to place duty over discretion."
Our black agents were particularly challenged. Highly trained, they successfully penetrated the headquarters of the MFDP at the Gem Hotel and infiltrated the group's strategy meetings, held in the basement of the Union Baptist Temple. One agent developed such a close relationship with Dick Gregory that the entertainer-turnedactivist revealed to him in advance all his plans for inciting various groups to racial violence.
With Justice Department authorization, we tapped the phones at CORE/SNCC headquarters, and learned that CORE and SNCC leaders were making plans to acquire uniforms of Young Citizens for Johnson and use them to gain entrance to the convention hall. Tipped off beforehand, we were able to thwart their plan and avoid a disturbance on the convention floor during prime time.
We also picked up a number of orders to disrupt the convention, and in some instances they explicitly called for violence. One CORE leader said, for instance, "While I don't want any killing, I don't mind if some people get a little scorched or roughed up ."
We issued walkie-talkies to Jenkins and Moyers so they could keep in constant touch with the 250-watt transmitter and receiver at our command post. One evening, a group from the MFDP successfully infiltrated the convention hall and seated themselves in t he section assigned to the Mississippi delegation. When valid members of the delegation asked the interlopers to leave, they refused. Moyers, frantic, called me on his two-way radio:
"Deke," he shouted, "get some agents in here fast and move these intruders out!"
~I'm sorry, Bill," I said, "but that's going too far. The FBI simply can't haul people out of the whether or not they belong here."
Moyers was furious, but he finally got the message that we were not to be turned into a glorified goon squad for the Democratic party. At that point I was convinced that we were wrong to have accepted the assignment in the first place. Moyers and the rest of the president's staff had come to regard us as their own private security force, which they felt free to deploy in a partisan political struggle. At best, it was demeaning; at worst, it was a serious breach of the law.
Yes, there were arguments on the other side as well. Some unruly demonstrations and confrontations broke out at or outside the convention and these led to legitimate arrests and federal indictments. Emotions were running high, and any incident, however tr ivial, could have escalated into a bloody riot, endangering the president and his cabinet. At the beginning of his administration, the president had ordered us to assist the Secret Service in protecting him. In this case, we were carrying out that order. But, in the end, the line between national security and political activism had been blurred. We felt we had been compromised. At that point I resolved never to be used again in that fashion. But I found it was a resolution I could not keep.
We didn't give in every time, however. Whenever Hoover thought he could win a game of chicken with on any matter affecting the honor and reputation of the he'd press the pedal to the floor. In the late summer of 1964, shortly after Barry Goldwa ter had won the Republican presidential nomination, Walter Jenkins asked me to come to the White House and talk over a matter he didn't want to discuss on the telephone. When I heard what he had to say, I understood why.
"We want whatever information you have in your files on Barry Goldwater's staff. Not just his senatorial staff, but his campaign staff as well. "
"Why?" I asked him, as innocently as I knew how.
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
"The Boss wants to know who he's up against."
I raised my eyebrows.
"I'll see what we've got and let you know."
I went back over to FBI headquarters and asked to see the directon When I told him about Jenkins's request, he was clearly upset.
"This is going too far," he said. aThe operation in Atlantic City involved a potential national security matter, even though we knew what the White House wanted from us. But this is pure politics."
"No doubt about it," I said.
Hoover shook his head.
"We can't do it."
I nodded in agreement.
"Why don't we just tell them we don't have any of Goldwater's staff in our files?" I suggested.
Hoover agreed, and after a day or two I called Walter and told him we'd drawn a blank. He thanked me for checking and said he'd pass the information along to the president. I waited for a call from Johnson himself, but it never came. Maybe he believed me, or maybe with the election all but in the bag he just didn't want to push Hoover too far.
The popular myth, fostered of late by would-be historians and sensationalists with their eyes on the bestseller list, has it that in his day J. Edgar Hoover all but ran Washington, using dirty tricks to intimidate congressmen and presidents, and phone tap s, bugs, and informants to build secret files with which to blackmail lawmakers. This is the picture most often drawn today of Hoover's FBI. That was not the FBI I knew.
As assistant to the the number three man at the it was my job to deal with Congress and with the president. Far from telling them what to do, I had to struggle constantly to keep them from abusing the powers of the FBI. And Hoover made my life easier; he was jealous of the bureau's powers and reputation and did not easily acquiesce to the political machinations suggested by even the most powerful of leaders. If one great story about the FBI in Hoover's day remains untold, it is that a tit anic war was being waged over whether the FBI would be turned into a partisan national police department. And in almost every case the man defending the Constitution and trying to limit the powers of the bureau was J. Edgar Hoover, and the people trying t o politicize the bureau were the from moderate conservatives such as Richard Nixon to liberal icons such as Bobby Kennedy (who as attorney general never saw a wiretap he didn't like), and of course LBJ.
Hoover and the bureau often lost these struggles. When the president of the United States gives the FBI a direct order, and defines the task at hand as a matter of national security, there is not much to do but obey. But that the bureau was as insulated a s possible from politics was due largely to one Hoover himself. Hoover's virtues kept the FBI and so did his vices. He was for most of his life personally incorruptible, though in later years his confidence in his own incorruptibility led him oc casionally into ethical compromises; and he was an old-fashioned political conservative who truly believed in limited government.
He was also a man of monstrous ego. And because his own identity had so merged with the agency he had created, that ego served to protect his beloved bureau from anything he perceived as a including any expansion of its powers that might ultimately endanger the bureau's reputation or, for most of his reign, its enormous popularity. Like MacArthur in Japan during the occupation, Hoover made himself a demigod. But he used his semidivine status not for personal gain but to protect the bureau the only way he knew by keeping his personal power over the FBI unquestioned and unquestionable.
During the Hoover years, the FBI was headquartered with the rest of the Justice Department in a grim granite building on Constitution Avenue. Our offices were crowded, the larger rooms subdivid ed into cubicles by glass or steel partitions. Some cubicles were occupied by as many as four agents and four secretaries. There were no luxuries and little privacy.
Even ML Hoover's office was unpretentious. To see him, you walked down the hallway through a large conference room and then into his modest office. Furnished with a couple of old overstuffed chairs and a sofa, the office reflected the austerity of his lif its narrow limits, its stern rejection of frivolity. Over the door hung a sailfish he'd caught on one of his brief outings.
When you entered the door, the ritual was always the same. He would leap up from his desk and come to meet you at the center of the room. He would shake hands, offer you a seat to the right, and then return to his desk. On that desk, about a foot from his left elbow, lay a worn, black a gift from his mother. The Bible was more than a prop. It was a modest but deliberate one that few people who knew him failed to recognize and honor.
The desk stood on a dais, and when you sat in your chair, he stared down at you like Louis XIV on the throne of France. With a tall window behind him, the sunlight would often slant through the blinds and dazzle you as you stared up at his solemn, bulldog face. The arrangement was intimidating, and no doubt he planned it that way.
Even when I was assistant to the director, I never just strolled into Mr. Hoover's office uninvited. Either he would summon me or I would make an appointment through his secretary, Helen Gandy. During that period, he would call and send me memos daily; bu t response to these memos didn't usually require a face-to-face meeting. He kept his distance and expected his subordinates to do likewise. Calls and memos were familiarity enough.
But he was by no means thoughtless or unfeeling. In some ways he was like a father to me, though an old-fashioned father, the kind who kept his feelings to himself. He didn't go in for pats on the arm or back, nor was he quick to praise accomplishment. He expected everyone to perform well, and when they met those expectations, he did little more than nod in silent and more often than not he didn't even nod. When he went out of his way to congratulate you for a job well-done, your world lit up.
On the other hand, he was capable of genuine thoughtfulness. He often asked about my wife and children, and always listened carefully as I reported on progress in school or repeated some anecdote. He was also solicitous of my health and would notice when I was tired or under great strain. Not that he would lighten my load, but he would at least let me know that he was aware of the burden.
And though slow to praise, he was generous in awarding cash bonuses for good work. When I was a young agent raising a growing family on barely adequate wages, an extra $200 check in my envelope meant being able to pay off a worrisome bill or indulge in so me small but rare luxury. I realized eventually that Mr. Hoover was really a shy man who found some words difficult to say and could better communicate with cash. But if you tried to thank him for the commendatory bonus, he would wave your thanks aside an d proceed to the business at hand. And he preferred a curt telephone call to a visit.
When the calls and memos stopped for two or three days, you knew you were in trouble. I recognized the signs immediately, but always hesitated to ask why. Then his secretary, Helen Gandy, would prod me.
"Don't you think you should apologize to Mr. Hoover?" she'd say.
"For what?" I'd ask.
"I don't know, but obviously for something."
I'd nod and sigh.
"All right. Make an appointment for me."
Then I'd go back to my office, stare at the wall, and try to figure out what I'd done to make him mad. Was it something I'd said to a newspaper reporter? Did the press give me too much credit for a recent operation? Had I neglected to keep him sufficientl y informed about an ongoing investigation?
When the time came for my appointment, I'd enter the room like Dorothy confronting the Great and Powerful Oz. Mr. Hoover would come around the desk, shake hands in the same cordial way, and then sit down behind his desk, an expectant look on his face.
"I want to apologize," I'd say. "If I've offended you in any way, I can assure you it was unintentional."
"What makes you think you've offended me?" he'd say, eyebrows arched in surprise. "Well, Miss Gandy..."
"That old biddy," he'd say. "Don't pay any attention to her."
And that would be the end of it. He'd change the subject and we'd talk about the business of the bureau. I was never quite sure why I'd been disciplined, but the punishment was certainly effective. I could always think of half a dozen things I'd done wron g, and I made every effort to amend my life by staying out of the limelight and making my reports more frequent and detailed. When I walked out of the office, as light-headed as a boy after his first confession, Miss Gandy would smile and nod approvingly.
In Hoover's office there were no pictures of presidents with fading inscriptions that read "to Edgar, with affection," no posed shots in the Oval Office, no White House mementos. Hoover had seen presidents come and go, and he knew their worst secrets. The closest thing to the standard Washington trophy photo was the proclamation, signed by Lyndon Johnson, waiving mandatory retirement age and allowing Hoover to continue as director after he turned seventy. But even that proclamation was hung in the confere nce room outside his door. The only official portrait space inside the office was reserved for Harlan Fiske Stone, whose picture hung in Hoover's inner sanctum. It was Stone who, as attorney general, had recommended him to be director of the FBI. Hoover o wed Stone, and he never forgot it.
When Stone became attorney general in April of 1924, it could have been bad news for the young Hoover's career. A Justice Department lawyer since 1917, Hoover had been appointed head of the department's General Intelligence Division (GID) when it was esta blished in 1919 by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. The Red Raids, as they were called, led by Palmer's Justice Department against communists, anarchists, and agitators, had been justified in large part after the fact by relying on the comprehensive f listing seditious individuals and their that had been compiled by Hoover and his GID. Palmer was severely criticized for the raids by many who complained that the roundups had violated the civil rights of hundreds if not thousands of peopl e. And Harlan Fiske once dean of the Columbia Law was one of Palmer's most vocal detractors. The locus of many of the department's abuses had been the smallish Bureau of started in 1908, but not yet called the FBI. Stone complai ned that the bureau had an "exceedingly bad odor" and within a month forced its chief, William J. Burns, to resign. The GID was part of the bureau, and many believed that Hoover virtually ran the bureau for Burns.
Stone, however, did not toss Hoover out with Burns. Hoover had earned a number of recommendations that were forwarded to the new attorney general, including the support of then-Comrnerce Secretary Herbert Hoover (no the future president had an as sistant who was a friend of J. Edgar's). Stone wanted to reform the which had been a dumping ground for political hacks who used their patronage jobs as investigators to harass and intimidate political and he came to see in Hoover a man of like mind.
"There is always the possibility that a secret police may become a menace to free governments and free institutions because it carries with it the possibility of abuses of power that are not always quickly apprehended or understood," Stone announced on th e day he ousted Burns. The Bureau of Investigation is "a necessary instrument of law enforcement. But it is important that its activities be strictly limited to the performance of those functions for which it was created and that its agents themselves be not above the law or beyond its reach." Stone concluded that the "Bureau of Investigation is not concerned with political or other opinions of individuals. It is concerned only with their conduct and then only with such conduct as is forbidden by the laws of the United States. When a police system passes beyond these limits, it is dangerous to the proper administration of justice and to human liberty, which it should be our first concern to cherish."
Hoover assured Stone that he shared the new attorney general's worries, and that he would only take the an interim appointment to replace if he could professionalize the outfit, get rid of the hacks, and grant promotions only on the basis of "pr oven ability." Hoover moved quickly to carry out the detailed instructions Stone gave him to reorder the bureau. He fired the political hacks, known as "dollar-a-year men,"an action later referred to in the bureau as the "great purge." Hoover's quick acti on convinced Stone that Hoover was serious about reforming the bureau, and he kept him on the job. Hoover stuck to Stone's principles throughout his career, and in many ways the bureau that Hoover remade was a product of Stone.
The emphasis on strict demarcations of the bureau's authority was key to Hoover's vision of the bureau, but it somehow led to perpetual confusion over the role of the FBI, a confusion that caused problems for me when I dealt with politicians as assistant director of the FBI, and a confusion that persists to this day.
Late in July of 1966, for example, Congressman John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, called me at my office. From the moment he began to talk, I knew he was highly agitated. He spoke in staccato sentences and repeated himself. The story he told was disturbin g. Someone had called him several times and threatened his life, apparently because he had supported civil rights legislation. He told me that his wife and children were back in Dearborn, waiting to hear that they were being placed under FBI protection. < P> "I want you to get there," he said, "and goddamned quick."
I understood his concern. I would have felt the same way myself.
But I had to tell him that despite the seriousness of the situation the FBI had no authority to provide either him or his family with guards.
"We'll be happy to investigate this matter," I told him, "but we can't protect you and your family."
In deliberately measured words he said, "Would you repeat that?"
I told him once again that we would investigate the threats but that we had no authority to offer protection to members of Congress or their families.
"If something happens to my wife and family, I'll hold you personally responsible. And if you won't assign some protection, I'll call Hoover and get it!"
"You're certainly free to call the director if you want," I told him, "but I'm sure he'll tell you the same thing."
I didn't mention that if he tried to contact J. Edgar Hoover, his call would be transferred right back to me.
"Then I'll call the attorney general," he shouted.
"Believe me, I understand," I said. "But the Department of Justice established this policy in the first place. We're all bound by it. Look, why don't you call the local police?"
"I don't have any confidence in them," he said, a little calmer now. "I want the FBI."
"I'm sorry that we can't offer you the kind of help you want, but I will call our Detroit office as soon as we hang up and ask the special agent in charge to look into the matter immediately."
He seemed less angry when he hung up, but he was still an unhappy man. I immediately called Paul Stoldard, our special agent in charge (SAC) at the Detroit Office.
"He ought to contact the Dearborn police," Stoddard said. "They're very for their size, as good as any police force in the country."
I told him to launch an investigation, though neither one of us had high hopes that we would find the caller. Then I dictated a report to Hoover, informing him of Dingell's call. The memo came back in due course with one of Hoover's characteristic blue in k messages: "He acts like an adult beatnik." It was a curious comment, and I never understood precisely what he meant by it.
Needless to say, neither John Dingell nor his family was murdered. He remains in Congress to this day.
His mistake, however, was a common he believed that the FBI could provide him with protection. And he was not the first to make such an assumption. From Martin Luther King to Lyndon Baines Johnson to Estes Kefauver, people have assumed we had the powe r to offer protective and to do just about anything else we (or they) wanted. Washington bigwigs have asked us to perform every unlikely task from babysitting their children to repairing their television sets. And daily we received calls from ord inary citizens reporting the worst crimes axe murders, rapes, child and we've had to tell them the same thing I told Congressman Dingell: "Sorry, but what you've described doesn't fall under our jurisdiction. This is the Federal Bu reau of Investigation."
Had everyone understood precisely what our mission and limitations were, as envisioned by Stone, determined by Congress, and defined by our name, many of the controversies surrounding the FBI would never have developed. The FBI's jurisdiction is limited t o federal crimes. As I noted above, one of the great ironies of the Kennedy assassination was that Lee Harvey Oswald broke no federal law when he killed the president of the United States. For this reason, a good deal of confusion surrounded the investiga tion of Kennedy's death; and some of the subsequent conspiracy theories grew out of that confusion. For example, Dallas County Coroner Earl Rose was acting properly when he refused to surrender Kennedy's body to the presidential party. The crime had been committed in his jurisdiction. It was his responsibility to gather forensic evidence. He was prevented from doing so through enormous political pressure. As a direct consequence, more than thirty years later critics are still raising questions about the n ature of the president's wounds and the number of bullets fired.
At the time, the FBI had no legal authority to interject itself into that particular murder investigation, no matter that the victim was the highest official in the federal government. But we were ordered to do so by President Johnson, and since we were o n the scene, we took over the investigation and began gathering evidence. Still, we had to fight the Dallas Police Department every step of the way, and they had the law on their side. Today, it's a federal crime to kill the president of the United States ; and should such a tragedy ever recur the FBI will have primary jurisdiction.
Most crimes committed in the United States are violations of state law rather than federal law. Ordinarily, robbery, rape, murder, and other such acts aren't covered under federal statutes but fall under state penal codes and are tried in state courts. Th ere are exceptions, of course. For example, if any of these crimes is committed on federal property, or if other *deral crimes are involved, then the FBI can immediately move into the case.
Most people believe that the bureau has jurisdiction over all kidnappings. This is not so. The FBI becomes involved only if the kidnapper transports the victim across state lines. For this reason, the bureau waits twenty-four hours before entering many ki dnapping cases. When this period has elapsed, the courts presume that the kidnapper and victim have had time to leave the state, and the FBI enters the picture with all its resources, since transporting a kidnap victim across state lines is a federal offe nse. Much as the FBI was given the authority to investigate presidential assassinations because of the bungling of the local police, so too jurisdiction over kidnapping grew out of a notorious national case mishandled by local the kidnapping o f the Lindbergh baby in 1932.
Kidnapping remains one of the few common crimes not committed against the federal government that the FBI is permitted to investigate. As horrible as the crimes of multimurderers John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer were, they were still beyond the purview of the FBI. On the other hand, the bureau is called in ke quently on cases of mere larceny, when what is stolen is government property. And our agents are continually used to investigate applicants for positions in the federal government.
The bureau is not a free-standing agency with the option to do whatever pops into the director's head. The director and every single agent work under the authority of the attorney general of the United States, who is a political appointee of the president . So in a sense, the FBI belongs to the administration in power. When the attorney general calls and gives the director an order, ordinarily the director has to obey, even when the order is outrageous and demeaning. And by the same token, any time the att orney general wants to restrict the activities of the bureau, he is empowered to do so.
Although assassinations and kidnappings are high profile cases that forge the public's perception of the agency, the primary responsibility of the FBI is to investigate violations of federal law. If FBI agents come knocking at your door, they are probably looking for information rather than coming to arrest you. Even if you've committed a federal crime, you're more likely to receive a subpoena than be hauled off to prison by the bureau, though in many cases agents track down and arrest criminals just as p olice officers do.
Because the FBI is strictly an investigative agency, it cannot perform many functions that Americans expect from a more conventional police force. During the peak of the civil rights movement, liberals demanded that the FBI protect civil rights marchers a nd demonstrators from angry mobs and bushwhackers, and conservatives insisted that we arrest New Left demonstrators and throw them in the darkest federal dungeon. We received angry phone calls and letters from senators as well as from private citizens on both sides of the issue. At times the pressure was almost unbearable. Yet we neither had the authority to provide protection to anyone, nor the power to arrest demonstrators who were not violating federal law. Such authority would have carried additional power, and many of the same people who called for us to protect civil rights demonstrators were also charging us with being repressive. You can't have it both ways. Either the FBI is limited in its mission and in the power it wields, or else it can perfor m numerous functions and assume new and more awesome authority. When J. Edgar Hoover was telling the American people that he would not assign agents to protect or arrest civil rights demonstrators nor arrest militant demonstrators, he was also saying that he wanted no more power than he already had.
Of course, during those years we were sometimes forced to perform tasks beyond our purview. We did provide protection for at least one attorney general's Martha Mitchell, who, we theorized, badgered her husband into assigning agents to follow her aro und the Washington social scene, much to Hoover's displeasure. It was not a duty they enjoyed. She would introduce them at cocktail parties, pinching them on the cheeks as if they were five-yearold boys. Agents were also assigned to babysit their little g irl, Marnie, who was easier to handle than her mother.
During J. Edgar Hoover's tenure, presidents and attorneys general ordered the director and his agents to intimidate corporate executives, to conduct illegal surveillance of private citizens, and even to engage in political espionage. In such cases, the di rector usually protested and used every means in his power to avoid carrying out such orders, especially if illegal. But in the end he and the bureau have often been forced to comply. In these cases everyone involved understood precisely what was going on . The chief law enforcement officer of the nation knew that he was ordering subordinates to violate the law. So did the president. And in most cases, these were the same politicians who championed civil liberties in the political arena. Today their admire rs are the first to talk about FBI abuses of civil liberties and the tyranny of J. Edgar Hoover. It is safe to say that without the liberal administrations of the 1960s, the FBI would have stayed more often within the legal limits of its mission and not b ecome embroiled in the dirty tricks of partisan politics.
I'm not suggesting that Hoover was without and I should know. I dealt with him constantly, was in and out of his office frequently, and talked to him on the phone. He was proud and vain, perpetually concerned with covering his own rear, and not abov e abusing his powers. He could be petty and vindictive. He stayed in office too long, and in so doing, he helped damage the reputation of the FBI he had virtually invented and almost perfected. In this respect he almost ruined the great achievement of his life.
On the other hand, while he was in charge, the bureau was the best law enforcement agency in the world. Today, the point may be debatable. In recent years, an FBI agent was arrested for burglary. Another was seduced by a Russian spy and became an agent fo r the Soviet Union. Still another stole drugs with intent to sell them on the streets. To those of us who served under J. Edgar Hoover, such crimes are surprising and sickening. We don't believe they could have happened under his leadership. One thing is they didn't. The high caliber of personnel the FBI enjoyed during those years is directly attributable to the standards he maintained.
During the Hoover years, FBI agents were recruited with the same care and attention given the screening of medical students or an NFL draft. (At one time we could have fielded an All-American football team.) We brought in the brightest and best from all o ver the country. Someone once found that we had agents in the FBI from 625 colleges and universities, many of them with law or accounting degrees.
We checked their backgrounds, made certain that they had lived clean and responsible lives, and continued to monitor their behavior even after they had become experienced agents. We were interested in whether they could hold their liquor, or slept with ot her men's wives, or, and mainly, performed their duties within the regulations and guidelines set by the bureau.
I remember being called in by the director and told to investigate a complaint from a man in Puerto Rico who charged that one of our agents had used martial arts in an effort to extract information. "The charges sound like they might be legitimate," he sa id. "Fly down there and find out. Stay as long as it takes."
I flew to Puerto Rico. When I arrived, I sent one of our San Juan agents into the mountains to bring the man back so I could hear his story. Several hours later I got a telephone call. It was our San Juan bureau chief.
"Deke," he said, "we've got a problem."
"You can't find the guy?"
"Oh, no," he said, "I've found him. He's standing right here. But he says he won't come in."
"Tell him he's got nothing to worry about. Nobody's going to hurt him. He can bring a lawyer along if he wants to. We're here to investigate his charges."
"He's not afraid," the agent told me. "He's embarrassed. He says he doesn't want to come into town because he doesn't have any shoes."
"Tell him I don't care if he doesn't have shoes. It won't bother me."
The agent told me to hold, and I heard some conversation in the background. Then the agent came back on the line.
"He says it may not bother you, but it bothers him."
I'd flown all the way out to Puerto Rico, and the charges this man had made were serious. The director became very unhappy when anyone suggested that agents had misbehaved, and use of physical force, except in cases of extreme provocation, was grounds for immediate dismissal.
"Tell him I'll buy him a pair of shoes," I said. "Ask him what size he wears."
I went out, bought the man a pair of shoes, and sent them to him by messengen A few hours later, he walked into bureau headquarters, a smile on his face, the new shoes on his feet. Then he told me his story. After a few questions and answers, I began to b elieve that he was telling the truth. The agent had apparently tossed him around in an effort to extract information. After more investigation, I determined beyond reasonable doubt that the charges were true, and the agent was severely disciplined. When I got back to Washington, I thought about putting the shoes on my expense account, but decided against it. Mr. Hoover always looked over such reports with a cold eye, and I didn't want to explain the purchase. Besides, they were cheap shoes.
I tell this story to illustrate the care the FBI took to keep its ranks free from the abuse of power so often associated with law enforcement agencies. At the time I was a high-ranking official in the bureau, yet I was sent all the way from Washington to a tiny Caribbean island to investigate the complaint of a man who lived in the mountains and was too poor to buy a pair of shoes. And it wasn't simply that Mr. Hoover wanted the bureau to be above criticism. Just as important was the director's insistence that every agent obey orders and operate strictly within regulations. If an agent used unauthorized tactics in Puerto Rico, then he was untrustworthy no matter where he was stationed or what his assignment. J. Edgar Hoover didn't want him.
This stress on discipline derived in part from the fact that the FBI under Hoover was a semimilitary organization. Strict obedience to regulations and commands was just one of several significant ways in which the FBI resembled a military unit.
The mission of the FBI is similar to that of the armed and the dangers are comparable. Recruits are taught to react quickly and obediently because their lives and the lives of others may well hang in the balance. Like military personnel, they are being trained for combat with a hostile and sometimes deadly enemy. The criminal element in society is accustomed to using any means whatsoever to achieve its purposes. To counter this, FBI agents must lead careful and disciplined lives. Agents are also o ften called to testify in federal court concerning cases they have investigated, and they must be credible witnesses whose character and behavior stand up to the most rigorous cross-examination. For these reasons it is essential that prospective FBI agent s be investigated thoroughly in order to uncover any drunkenness, drug use, sexual that might compromise their effectiveness in the field or on the witness stand.
Local police forces abound with examples of corrupt officers who have received payoffs or threatened physical abuse. The FBI, which deals with crime on a grand scale, must maintain a higher standard. During the Hoover years, we did. After Hoover, the bure au's reputation was tarnished by a number of scandals.
Perhaps these recent incidents are simply a sign of changing times, part of a general breakdown in public morality. Perhaps they are the result of a laxity in the bureau, which is far more and far less than it used to be. Today's F BI has better technology at its disposal, and in some respects its agents are better trained and more sophisticated than we were, but there is a marked change in morale and spirit.
This change is particularly obvious in the attitude of agents toward the director. When Hoover was in charge, he was a five-star general. When he walked down the hallways, agents viewed him with a mixture of awe and terror. Though small in stature, he exu ded strength and authority. In the rare moments when his eyes met the eyes of a mere agent, he was ten feet tall. And even those of us who saw him every day never quite felt at ease in his presence.
In part, his authority came from the sharp focus of his personality. He was always completely absorbed with the business of the every second of every day. Most of the time when you were in his presence, you were not so much an individual or a perso nality as a cog in the vast machinery of the universe he'd created and was controlling. You existed at his whim, and if he chose to he could snap his fingers and you'd disappear.
The military discipline did not make the FBI some sort of American gestapo as has been suggested by several recent books. There is just enough truth to this to keep it alive, but in many ways the reverse was true. Hoover, though by no means a plaster sain t, fought just as hard to limit the powers of the FBI as he did to protect them. The strict discipline of the FBI was a way of keeping agents in line, of making sure they wouldn't overstep their authority and abuse the rights of citizens, nor abuse even t hose who, like the Puerto Rican man I interviewed, didn't enjoy the full rights and privileges of American citizenship.
Hoover understood, as had Stone, the dangers of a national police department. He had seen what had happened to his predecessor, Burns, and knew that if the FBI ever became such an abusive force, the American people would eventually turn on the agency. Thi s was why Hoover fought every attempt on the part of wellmeaning members of Congress to separate the bureau from the Justice Department and allow it to operate independently. Although Hoover often found it difficult to work with superiors like Bobby Kenne dy and Ramsey Clark, he wanted the FBI to remain an arm of the Department of and a purely investigative arm at that. Had he been the power-hungry monster of recent accounts, he could have allowed his many friends on Gpitol ilill to legislate a pri vate fiefdom for him and run it without interference from the president or his appointees. That he chose otherwise was not so much a lack of ego on his part as his firm grasp of the concept that the FBI was better as a "bureau" than as an autonomous feder al agency. That it continues to be so is more a tribute to J. Edgar Hoover than to several generations of civil libertarians.