The Real J. Edgar Hoover

Ray Wannall

Description

Former special agent and assistant director of the FBI, Ray Wannall, writes a comprehensive, insider's commentary regarding one of the most powerful, but enigmatic personalities of our time. Highly revealing and provocative, FOR THE RECORD sheds light on efforts to undermine Hoover's legacy and startling details as to events involving Martin Luther King, the Kennedy family, the Nixon administration, and much much more!

Sujets

• Historical
• Lettres et linguistique
• FBI
• Biography
• Autobiography
• Hoover
• J. Edgar Hoover
• Federal Bureau of Investigation

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 15 mars 2000
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781618585103
• Langue: English

Extrait

TURNER PUBLISHING COMPANY 412 Broadway • P.O. Box 3101 Paducah, Kentucky 42002-3101 [phone]
 
Copyright © 2000 Ray Wannall
Publishing Rights: Turner Publishing Company All Rights Reserved.
 
Bill Schiller, Editor Herbert C. Banks II, Designer
 
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 00-101690
9781618585103
 
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced without the written consent of the author and publisher.
 
This publication was produced using available material. The publisher regrets it cannot assume liability for errors or omissions.
 
Additional copies may be purchased directly from the publisher.
Dedicated to my wife, Trudie, whose support and forbearance during my service as an FBI agent made my career possible and enjoyable, and whose counsel and assistance helped give life to this book.
 
 
Ray Wannall
Table of Contents
Title Page Copyright Page Dedication ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AUTHOR’S NOTE DISCIPLINARIAN AT THE HELM EARLY ENVIRONMENT ESCALATING RESPONSIBILITIES HOOVER, WIRETAPS, AND BUGS HUMOR AND PRACTICAL JOKES COMPASSION THE IDEA MAN COINTELPRO IN RE: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. THE HUSTON PLAN DR. KISSINGER’S ROLE IN WIRETAPPING THE PENTAGON PAPERS CASE THE SLIDE DOWN THE TOTEM POLE HOOVER AND THE KENNEDYS THOSE ALLEGATIONS OF PERVERSION HOOVER AND ORGANIZED CRIME THE OFFICIAL AND CONFIDENTIAL FILES THE ENIGMATIC DIRECTOR THE LENGTHENED SHADOW OF A MAN APPENDIX A APPENDIX B APPENDIX C NOTES AND SOURCES INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was undertaken at the suggestion of renowned author William B. Breuer. In 1996 when Bill and his wife, Vivien, were gathering material for his 29th book, Vendetta!, at his request I sent him a lecture I had given, from which he was able to draw a bit of information. In commenting on this, Bill paid me a high compliment. He said, “Ray, why don’t you tell the story about the real J. Edgar Hoover? You don’t write like a lawyer.” (I do have a legal background.)
In January 1997, I began to follow his suggestion and this book is the result. I cannot justifiably record all the extensive and much needed help Bill volunteered. If this recitation of my view of Director Hoover accomplishes its purpose--to depict the real man as we who served under him remember him--it will be due in large part to the advice and guidance of my good friend and mentor Bill Breuer.
I appreciate the valued assistance of Patricia G. Solley, Unit Chief, Office of Public and Congressional Affairs, FBI, in working through the pre-publication review process.
To record individual contributions of hundreds of friends in the Society of former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation would take several pages. Through association with them since joining the society in 1976, I have been exposed to their comments and observations about the Director which have guided my journey through several chapter. Numerous ex-FBI friends have responded to my specific request assistance. Among them, Leonard Viner has been most generous in his contributions. My special thanks also to Tom Smith, Mark Felt, Deke DeLoach, Val and Don Stewart, Ben Fulton, Art Cammarota, Jack Grady, Jim Nolan, Dick Fletcher and Bernie Wells.
I am grateful to Dave Turner, President of Turner Publishing Company, who agreed to publish this book while other publishers speculated that there had been a surfeit of books on J. Edgar Hoover. He could not have assigned as my editor anyone more helpful and cooperative than Bill Schiller. His expert guidance and counsel in bringing my manuscript to fruition were all I could have asked for, and more. And, you have in your hands evidence of the superiority of Herb Banks of Turner Publishing as a book designer.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Two months before his death at age 77, J. Edgar Hoover testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee. Chairman John Rooney stated, “I would like to say to Mr. Hoover that he seems to thrive... on the barbs of those foul balls that have been trying to lay a glove on him.” The Director, as he preferred to be called within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, replied, “Mr. Chairman, I have a philosophy that you are honored by your friends and you are distinguished by your enemies. I have been very distinguished.”
J. Edgar Hoover was not just the head of the FBI, he was the FBI. One of the most powerful men in Washington, he directed the Bureau for 48 years on appointment by eight successive presidents, Republican and Democratic.
Was Hoover a homosexual, a cross-dresser, a blackmailer as claimed by radicals at both ends of the political spectrum, law violators, anti-anti-communists, and sleazy authors grubbing for financial gain and media attention? How did this feisty, petty, egotistical, formidable, domineering man — as described by one of his lieutenants — manage to stay in office for nearly a half-century? Why would many thousands of his hard working and highly trained special agents over the years tolerate this staunch disciplinarian?
This book faces up to these hard questions about this enigmatic personality. The answers, thoroughly documented, no doubt will be a surprising revelation to those not yet born when Hoover passed away in 1972, or those too young to have a personal recollection of him.
But the men and women of Hoover’s generation, patriotic and law-abiding citizens who followed the career of the head of the fabled G-Men, will nod a knowing, “I told you so!”
For 33 years until retiring in 1976, I served in the FBI, first as a special agent, then as an assistant director assigned to headquarters, where I worked directly under Hoover. Over the years, I became aware of how the man thought, reasoned, and acted. This knowledge was cumulative, derived from submitting ideas and recommendations for his approval, reviewing and responding to his instructions and comments, and reacting to his demands for answers to questions and for results.
I conferred with the Director in his office or by phone. On occasion, I attended business and social receptions where he was also a guest, and had the opportunity to talk with him about non-business matters.
I was not a close personal friend of Hoover’s. Mainly because of the demanding task that was his — directing the security of this nation against foreign and domestic enemies — he had few cronies. But I was a close observer of him for a quarter century, and in the years following his death, I have talked with scores of former special agents and officials about him, reminiscing and exchanging anecdotes.
Convinced that my views reflect those of nearly all of the thousands of members of the Society of Former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I have written this book to help set the record straight about the real J. Edgar Hoover.
DISCIPLINARIAN AT THE HELM
In March of 1924, President Calvin Coolidge nominated Harlan Fiske Stone to be his attorney general. Coolige had been nicknamed Silent Cal because he used the very minimum of words when he spoke. However, on the occasion, he sent a loud, clear mandate for Stone to clean up the scandal-ridden Department of Justice. As vice-president, Coolidge, a former classmate of Stone’s at Amherst College, had succeeded to the presidency via the death of President Warren Harding. He inherited a Justice Department that reeked with problems.
Harding, formerly a small town newspaper editor and politician in Ohio, had been the first Republican to capture the White House in eight years. Following his March 4, 1921 inauguration, he began drawing from men who had been his poker-playing pals and his political board of strategy. One of these men, Harry M. Daugherty, was named as his attorney general. Under Daugherty, the Bureau of Investigation (early name of the Federal Bureau of Investigation) was almost wrecked. The Department of Justice was referred to as the “Department of Easy Virtue.”
One of Daugherty’s early acts was to fire William J. Flynn, director of the Bureau of Investigation, and appoint William J. Burns in his place. Burns was the President of the William J. Burns International Detective Agency. In the Daugherty shake-up of the department, J. Edgar Hoover (an employee since 1917) found himself transferred from his post as special assistant to the attorney general to the position of assistant director of the Bureau of Investigation on August 22, 1921, his first direct connection with the Bureau.
Burns was no friend of labor. A Canadian newspaper expose charged that his Canada-based detective agency had solicited to spy on manufacturers’ workers in their plants or union conventions and report “when, where and how labor trouble will break out.” His agents were accused of deliberately fomenting labor discord.
Once Burns assumed his position as head of the Bureau, the strong political influences at work in the Harding administration were soon evident in the agency’s files. Burns received a memorandum from a senator which gave a break-down of the party affiliations of the Bureau’s agents in the Chicago office. Republicans were listed without comment but the names of democrats had appended comments such as: “Son-in-law of Democratic State Senator;” “Placed by Congressman A, Democrat;” “Democrat and active as such.”
A shady figure named Gaston B. Means was appointed by Burns as a Bureau agent two months after Hoover became assistant director and soon became Burns’ favorite investigator and close friend. Means and Hoover clashed almost immediately. Hoover asked Burns to order Means to stay out of his office. He didn’t like the man’s spending habits or morals.
Means was charged by the New York Sun of having been an agent of Germany in 1916, and the accused murderer of a wealthy widow. Following his acquittal of the murder, he filed a forged will which would have put her estate practically at his disposal.
Senate hearings disclosed that Bureau agents working under Burns sneaked into senators’ private offices in the capitol, opened thei