J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (28 page)

“But the wheels of justice had slipped,” according to Drinnon, “as Mr. Hoover might have discovered had he turned from his confidential reports to his calendar or even to his daily newspaper.”
²³
Hoover’s memorandum was dated May 4, 1934. By this time Emma had finished her tour and had been in Canada for several days.

Returning to headquarters following his appearance before McKellar’s subcommittee, Hoover instructed Tamm that when Alvin Karpis was located he was to be notified immediately, so that he could participate in the arrest.

Three weeks later Karpis and another fugitive, Fred Hunter, were traced to an apartment on Canal Street in New Orleans and placed under surveillance.
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Hoover was in New York with Assistant Director Clyde Tolson when he received the news. Although the pair had partied late the night before, guests at the Stork Club table of the columnist Walter Winchell, they chartered a flight to New Orleans the same day.

T
here is some mystery as to when Hoover and Tolson first met.

Born on a farm near Laredo, Missouri, on May 22, 1900, Clyde Anderson Tolson had moved to Iowa while still a youth; attended business college in Cedar Rapids for one year; then, in 1917, with the advent of the war, moved to Washington to accept a job as a clerk in the War Department. Energetic, hardworking, and exceptionally bright, he was within a year confidential secretary to the secretary of war, then Newton D. Baker, a post he held for the next eight years, through the terms of Baker and two of his successors, John Weeks and Dwight Davis. At the same time he also attended night school at Hoover’s alma mater, George Washington University, obtaining his B.A. degree in 1925 and his B.L. in 1927. In April 1928 he applied for, and immediately got, a position as a special agent of the Bureau of Investigation.

According to Don Whitehead’s officially authorized account, Clyde Tolson was “the man who came to dinner.” On his application, Tolson supposedly stated that he intended to stay in the Bureau just long enough to get a little experience and enough money to start his own law practice in Cedar Rapids. This unusually frank admission was so novel that Hoover ordered, “Hire him, if he measures up after the examination and investigation. He will make us a good man.”
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However, according to George Allen, who knew both men well, Hoover and Tolson had met long before this. It was Allen’s impression, from conversations with the pair, that the director had first encountered Tolson while the latter was still working for Baker and, having been impressed with his abilities, had later persuaded him to join the Bureau.

It is also possible, as others have suggested, that Tolson was recommended
to Hoover by one of his former law professors or by their mutual acquaintance General Ralph H. Van Deman.

What followed was no mystery. Clyde Tolson’s rapid rise would go unmatched in the entire history of the Bureau. Named a special agent in April 1928, he was sent to Boston for his first (and only) field assignment; returned to Washington to become chief clerk of the Bureau that September; was promoted to inspector in 1930; was made assistant director in 1931; and, stuck with no place higher to go until Harold “Pop” Nathan retired, was finally rewarded for his patience with a position specially created for him, that of associate director, in 1947.

From the start, they were nearly inseparable. Both confirmed bachelors (though Tolson often hinted at a romance with a chorus girl during his early years in the capital), they worked together, had most of their meals together, even spent their weekends together, often in New York, where the Bureau’s largest field office was located, occupying a complimentary suite at the Waldorf Astoria. Although the FBI maintained that the director never took a vacation, the pair also spent the Christmas season in Florida and the start of the Del Mar racing season in California.

For both Frank Baughman and Charles Appel, the arrival of Clyde Tolson came as something of a relief. It meant they could spend at least some of their evenings, and even an occasional weekend, with their families.

More than bachelorhood drew Hoover and Tolson together. Both were former clerks, accustomed to Washington’s bureaucracy and its Byzantine byways. Each was a quick study. From years in government service, both had learned to “devour” memos, noting their key points, spotting discrepancies, and, often, catching their hidden meanings—the real reasons the memos had been written in the first place. Also forming a very special bond between them were the many secrets they shared. Having worked as confidential secretary to three secretaries of war, Tolson knew many of the top secrets of military intelligence. There is little doubt he shared this information with Hoover. For his part, Tolson was the only person, besides Helen Gandy, to whom Hoover granted access to
all
his files.

In some ways they were much alike. Despite his public persona, “Hoover was a little retiring and bashful,” Charles Appel remembered, “and Tolson was too. That was one reason they hung together: they were kind of loners.”
²

Outside of the Bureau, neither had many interests. Hoover’s were two in number: going to horse races and collecting antiques. Although Tolson shared the director’s fondness for the ponies—most Saturdays they could be found at a nearby track—he was also interested in all kinds of sports, and especially baseball and tennis, while his one solitary passion seemed to be inventing things. He obtained patents—with the help of the FBI Laboratory—on several devices, including a replaceable bottle cap and a mechanism for raising and lowering windows automatically.

Although Tolson was often referred to as Hoover’s alter ego, there were subtle differences between the two. In appearance, Clyde Tolson was thin,
handsome in a plain, unaffected way, and just slightly taller than Hoover. It was, some suggested, the reason he always walked with a slight stoop.
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Of the two Tolson was less rigid, less formal. He wasn’t above playing relief pitcher on the Bureau team. Unlike Hoover, who either lectured you or stayed silent, “
very
silent,” Ramsey Clark recalled, “Tolson could carry on a very engaging conversation on many subjects.”

After the former attorney general published a book that was slightly critical of the Bureau, both Hoover and Tolson had attacked Clark viciously (Hoover calling him, among other things, a “spineless jelly fish” and the worst AG he’d served under). Yet, even after the attack, Clark could still remark, “Tolson seemed to me to be a sweet man. He seemed to be a gentle and thoughtful man.” Clark sensed in Tolson “compassion, which you never felt with Mr. Hoover.”
⁴

Alan Belmont, for many years a close associate of both men, observed that Hoover was more outgoing than Tolson, with a more evident sense of humor, but he “regarded Clyde Tolson as more of a friend.” Similar comments were voiced by Robert Wick, Robert Hendon, and others who worked with the pair.
⁵

In Washington, where there were many such creatures, Clyde Tolson was considered “the ultimate yes-man.” Even in the early days, Charles Appel recalled, Hoover liked to surround himself with yea-sayers. This trait, Appel believed, was good for neither Hoover nor the Bureau; and it was “the only difficulty” Appel had with him during his three decades in the organization.
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Edward Tamm, who eventually gave up the number three spot to become a federal judge, saw Tolson as “a quiet man, always on his guard, always cautious about making a commitment or taking a position in which he would find himself out of step with the director. He would not endorse ‘mother love’ or ‘home cooking’ until he was sure the director agreed that that was what should be done.” Tolson would make his memo comments in pencil so that he could change them if Hoover expressed a contrary view. The blue ink was always the final word.

In addition, Tolson was “very loyal—extremely loyal—to the director,” Tamm said, adding, “And I suppose that meant loyalty to the Bureau also, for some years. The words ‘director’ and ‘Bureau’ were strongly synonymous.”
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Yet Tolson’s role went beyond merely being Hoover’s shadow. According to Belmont, Clyde Tolson was the watchdog of the Bureau: he had a perpetually pessimistic attitude, seeing the worst of everything. But it was, Belmont stressed, “a necessary function.” Tolson’s job was to protect the director’s flanks, to spot and, if possible, eliminate, any errors of commission or omission which might bring criticism of the director and/or the Bureau.
⁸

According to Courtney Evans, another former associate, Tolson’s major
contribution was twofold: “One, he could moderate the director’s views at times; and, two, when the director wanted to get something resolved, but didn’t want to handle it himself, he would just quietly say something to Tolson and Tolson would get it done and nobody would know that Hoover had anything to do with it. That was his big service to the organization, and I think he fulfilled a valuable role.”
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Not too surprisingly, Tolson became known as “Hoover’s hatchetman.” According to a tale often told among the agents, one day the director, noticing that the associate director appeared depressed, suggested, “Clyde, why don’t you transfer someone? You’ll feel better.” When the thought failed to raise Tolson’s spirits, Hoover advised, “Go ahead, fire someone; or, if you’re really feeling bad, do it with prejudice.” Former employees who were unable to obtain other government jobs because of the Bureau’s negative reports didn’t think it all that funny. And, often, they blamed not Hoover but Tolson.

Being a buffer was among his several “necessary functions.”

Yet, perhaps more important than any of them was that he was J. Edgar Hoover’s only truly close friend. Roger Baldwin, in an interview shortly before his death, saw nothing unnatural in this. It would have been unnatural, Baldwin thought, had someone in such a high and solitary position not had at least one “buddy,” someone he could confide in, trust.
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Others offered another interpretation. The constant companionship of “Junior” and the “Boss” did not go unnoticed or unmentioned, either in Washington or in the field. As the author David Wise put it, Hoover’s bachelor life-style “inevitably gave rise to whispers about his sexual preferences, if any.”
¹¹

Tolson accompanied Hoover when he flew to New Orleans on April 30, 1936, to follow up on the Karpis lead. Agents had already staked out the apartment, on Canal Street, where they’d been informed Karpis was staying, and Inspector E. J. Connelley, who now headed the specials squad, diagrammed the building and nearby streets on a blackboard in the New Orleans field office, assigning agents to the roof, fire escape, and every possible exit. When the team assembled at the scene, however, the unexpected happened: Karpis and Hunter sauntered out of the apartment, crossed the street, and got into their automobile.

According to the official FBI version—recounted in dozens of articles and books—as soon as Karpis slipped into the driver’s seat, Hoover ran to his side of the car and Connelley ran to the other side, where Hunter was sitting. There was a rifle on the backseat. Before Karpis could reach for it, Hoover lunged through the open window and grabbed the fugitive by the collar. “Stammering, stuttering, shaking as though he had palsy,” Hoover would recall, “the man upon whom was bestowed the title of public enemy number one folded up like the yellow rat he is.” Ashen-faced with fear at the sight of the famous profile of the FBI director, Alvin “Creepy” Karpis meekly surrendered. “Put the cuffs on him, boys,” Hoover ordered. Only then was it discovered that, despite all the meticulous preparations, no one had remembered to bring handcuffs. Improvising,
the captors tied Karpis’s hands behind him with an agent’s necktie.
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After driving Karpis to the New Orleans field office—the newly captured felon having to provide directions since all the others in the car were out-oftowners—Hoover called a press conference to announce his first arrest.

“Now that Karpis has been captured, who takes his place as Public Enemy #1?” a reporter asked.

Recognizing a ready-made opportunity to strike back at Senator McKellar, the director replied, “Politics itself is Public Enemy #1. Political attempts to hamper and interfere with Federal and other police and prosecuting agents are the real menace at present.” Hoover then specifically criticized, without naming names, those politicians who tried to dictate appointments and assignments of agents, as well as those who were themselves linked to the underworld.
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On May 1 the
New York Times
headlined:

KARPIS CAPTURED
IN NEW ORLEANS
BY HOOVER HIMSELF

On May 8 the headline read:

ENEMY LIST CUT TO ONE
J.E. HOOVER CAPTURES
CAMPBELL IN TOLEDO

On May 11:

ROBINSON CAPTURED IN
GLENDALE, CALIFORNIA
PUBLIC ENEMY SLATE CLEAN

On May 13 the “Topics of the Times” columnist observed, “The timing has been so dramatic that one might almost suspect a touch of stage direction, as if J. Edgar Hoover had all three of his quarry in hand and chose to release them one by one.”
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Following McKellar’s lead, the subcommittee had recommended a $225,000 cut in the FBI budget request. When the matter reached the Senate floor, the Republican Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan saw a chance to embarrass the New Deal, and attack McKellar as a miser whose misdirected parsimony would once again cause the threat of kidnapping to hang over every cradle in America.

According to Jack Alexander, “While he talked, Democratic leaders gathered in an excited knot and decided to abjure McKellar’s cynicism. Obviously, it would not do to permit the Democratic standard to wave on the side of the underworld. When Vandenberg sat down, one Democrat after another got up
and lavishly eulogized the G-men and their work. After the echoes of the oratory had died down, an amendment embodying the proposed cut was defeated by a throaty roar of noes and the Senate voted the full appropriation. McKellar sat apart in Catilinian silence, shunned by friend and foe alike.”
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15

That same week Congress also voted to increase FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s salary from $9,000 to $10,000 per year.

Although those special agents who participated in the capture of Alvin Karpis were well aware that the director’s version wasn’t exactly the way it happened, none ever
publicly
disputed the official account.

However, one other person who was on Canal Street that day told a different story, although thirty-five years passed before he got a chance to recount it. According to Alvin Karpis, it was Clarence Hurt, not J. Edgar Hoover, who ran up to his side of the car and, putting a .351 automatic rifle to his head, demanded, “Karpis, do you have a gun?”