J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (32 page)

After his mother’s death, Hoover, always accompanied by the associate director, spent most of his weekends in New York. If anyone questioned this—none did, until Marcantonio—there was the justification that this was where the Bureau’s largest field office was located, although Hoover rarely visited it except to make a press announcement.

Arriving by train Friday night, the pair breakfasted in their complimentary Waldorf suite Saturday morning, usually playing host to one or two friends, who then accompanied them to a nearby track, wherever the ponies were running. Although Saturday nights invariably ended at Winchell’s table at the Stork, they were usually preceded by dinner at Soulé or Maxims or Gallagher’s and a brief visit to “21” or Toots Shor’s. Shor, who had been a speakeasy operator during Prohibition, recalled, “When Hoover put his stamp of friendship on you, somehow you felt like a clean, decent guy.” At Gallagher’s, J. Edgar Hoover’s picture is still on the wall.
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But even New York was too close during the holidays. Each December, starting in 1938, Hoover and Tolson spent two weeks in Florida, usually in the
company of Winchell, who vacationed there at the same time. According to Hoover’s friend George Allen, “he never spent another Christmas in Washington after she died.”
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“It was like the
Belle Epoque
in France,” Ernest Cuneo later recalled; “it was like a Dufy painting of Longchamps on Grand Prix Day.” Not only were there “beautiful women, beautifully clothed—terrific form, terrific grace, and terrific color—there was
style.
It was quite the opposite of any coarseness.”

“The Stork Club,” Cuneo remembered, more than a little wistfully, “belonged to an age that is gone.”

Nor were the women the only attraction. To the Stork Club, and in particular to Table 50 in the Cub Room, gravitated “the most important men in the world—newspaper and book publishers, bankers, Hollywood magnates, celebrities of all kinds, the international
Who’s Who
—because this was before TV, and the only communications went out through the columnists.”

Walter Winchell was the dean of them all. According to Cuneo, who was attorney to both Winchell and Drew Pearson, the gossip columnist had a daily readership of about forty-eight million, but even that figure didn’t indicate his influence, for “when Walter finished broadcasting on Sunday night, he had reached 89 out of 100 adults in the U.S.”
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And for more than twenty years—until his newspaper, the
New York Mirror,
folded under him, and his television sponsors dropped him, for implying that Adlai Stevenson was a homosexual—he broadcast the praises of his friend John Edgar Hoover.

Unquestionably each used the other. It was Winchell, more than any other journalist, who sold the G-man image to America; while Hoover, according to Cuneo and others, supplied Winchell with “inside information” that led to some of his biggest “scoops.”

Hoover denied this. “The truth is that Winchell got no tips from me of a confidential nature,” the FBI director told the
New York Times
in 1954. “I cannot afford to play favorites.”
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The real truth is that, in addition to the tips, Hoover often supplied Winchell with an FBI driver when he was traveling; assigned FBI agents as bodyguards whenever the columnist received a death threat, which was often; helped him obtain a commission in the naval reserve, in 1934; then helped him shed it, in 1942, when it was revealed that he was receiving $5,000 per weekly broadcast while supposedly on active duty with the U.S. Navy.
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Yet, even though they used each other, there also existed between them a genuine friendship.

At times it was sorely tested. For two years Louis “Lepke” Buchalter was one of the nation’s most wanted fugitives. A key figure in the gang known as Murder Incorporated, Buchalter was wanted not only by the FBI but, especially, by New York’s racket-busting district attorney, Thomas Dewey. When a $50,000 reward failed to reveal his whereabouts (he was living in a furnished room next to police headquarters in Brooklyn), both the NYPD and the FBI
turned the heat on his underworld associates, not only hurting their “businesses” but also disrupting their personal lives.
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One night in early August 1939, Winchell received a call at the Stork Club. If the conditions were right, he was told, Lepke might be willing to surrender, but only to the “feds.” Dewey had vowed to execute him.

Winchell called his attorney, Ernest Cuneo, who in turn called Attorney General Frank Murphy. Murphy located Hoover at Tolson’s father’s funeral, and immediately after the services the pair flew from Iowa to New York. Hoover wanted Lepke badly, but even more he wanted to upstage Dewey.

On Sunday night, when Winchell went on the air, Hoover and Tolson were sitting beside him. “Attention Public Enemy Number One, Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter!” Winchell breathlessly announced, “I am authorized by John Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to guarantee you safe delivery to the FBI if you surrender to me or to any agent of the FBI. I will repeat: Lepke, I am authorized by John Edgar Hoover…”

After Winchell went off the air he received a call. “Walter? That was fine. See you.”

A few days later there was a second call. This time the caller, who said he was speaking for Lepke, wanted to know what sentence he could expect. Winchell went to the Waldorf and talked to Hoover. Although Dewey wanted to try Buchalter for murder and extortion, there were only two federal charges pending against him: the fugitive charge and a narcotics indictment. If convicted, Hoover told Winchell, he would probably get between twelve and fifteen years.

Winchell relayed the message.

Almost nightly, for the next three weeks, Winchell received a telephone call from the man who claimed he was Lepke’s spokesman, each of which he dutifully reported to an increasingly exasperated J. Edgar Hoover.

Convinced he was being ridiculed, Hoover finally exploded, in front of everyone in the Cub Room. “I am fed up with you and your friends!” the FBI director shouted at the gossip columnist. “They can make a fool out of you, but they are not going to make a fool out of me and my men!”

“They are not my friends, John,” Winchell protested.

“They are your friends! They are your friends!” Hoover reiterated, livid with rage. “And don’t call me John! I’m beginning to think you are the champ bullshitter in town!

“Why are you doing this to us, anyway? Your ratings slipped or something? Did you do it to get your ratings back up?

“Tell your friends I will order him shot if he doesn’t come in within forty-eight hours.”

Sure that his rivals would have the story in minutes, Winchell himself angrily
stormed out of the Stork Club. Tolson caught up with him on the street and urged him to do what Hoover had told him.

“You people haven’t been able to find him for two years.” Winchell angrily responded. “How you gonna find him in forty-eight hours?”

Two days later Winchell received another call. When he reached Hoover at the Waldorf, the director’s voice was icy cold. His own, he later admitted, was more than a little hot. “My
friends,
John,” Winchell informed him, “have instructed me to tell you to be at Twenty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue between ten-ten and ten-twenty tonight. That’s about half an hour. They told me to tell you to be alone.”

“I’ll be there,” Hoover snapped, slamming down the phone.

According to the official FBI version of Lepke’s capture, “On the night of August 24, 1939, Director Hoover walked alone through New York City’s streets to the corner of 28th Street and Fifth Avenue. And there the hunted man, Buchalter, surrendered to him. The FBI got Buchalter, and Winchell got an exclusive story.”

It didn’t quite happen that way. Hoover was not on foot, and he wasn’t alone. Unknown to Winchell, more than two dozen agents had the corner under surveillance. Having picked up Lepke several blocks away, per instructions, Winchell pulled up beside the director’s distinctive black limousine. Then he and Lepke got into the back of the FBI vehicle. Hoover, Winchell recalled, was “disguised in dark sunglasses to keep him from being recognized by passersby.”

Winchell introduced the two men. Hoover, declining the proffered hand, said, “You did the smart thing by coming in.” En route Lepke asked about his probable sentence, and Hoover repeated the estimate of twelve to fifteen years. Only then did Lepke realize that he had been betrayed, by one of his most trusted aides. Abe “Longie” Zwillman, who was later found a “suicide” in his fashionable New Jersey residence, had told him Hoover had promised he’d get only ten years and that with good behavior he’d be out in five or six. With the unwitting help of J. Edgar Hoover and Walter Winchell, the mob had set up Louis “Lepke” Buchalter.
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Winchell didn’t even get his exclusive. At 11:15
P.M.
, just minutes after reaching the New York field office, Hoover called in the press to announce Lepke’s “capture.” Both the
New York Daily News
and the Associated Press had the story out before the late edition of the
Mirror
reached the streets, while Hoover, in his announcement, stated only that “Walter Winchell gave the FBI considerable assistance,” which, in any paper except Winchell’s own, rated less than two lines of type.
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Neither the New York police nor District Attorney Dewey had any part in the arrest, Hoover stressed, causing the
New York Times
to observe, “The hard feelings between the various law enforcement agencies almost overshadowed the main fact of Lepke’s capture.”
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Although Dewey magnanimously congratulated Hoover on the arrest, he
also demanded that Lepke be turned over to New York for trial on the murder and extortion charges. In response, Hoover refused to let Dewey even question Lepke.

Attorney General Murphy called in Hoover and, in the presence of Ernest Cuneo, said, “Edgar, you know the man is guilty of eighty murders. What do you think we should do about this thing?”

As Cuneo has remembered the incident, Hoover, absolutely flushed with anger, responded, “Mr. Attorney General, the man doesn’t live who can break my word to the underworld.”

Lepke was tried on the federal charges, and sentenced to fourteen years in Leavenworth. But even after his conviction, Dewey continued to press his demand, although by now it was obvious his reason was political. The
Chicago Tribune,
and other Republican papers, charged that the FBI and the Justice Department had made a deal with Lepke, to keep him from telling what he knew about the Roosevelt administration’s links with Murder Incorporated.

Infuriated, the president ordered the attorney general to “turn the sonofabitch over to New York!”

Tried and convicted of murder, Lepke was sentenced to death. Just before his scheduled execution, in March 1944, he got word to Dewey that he was finally willing to talk. Dewey, who was then governor of New York and would become Roosevelt’s Republican opponent in the election that fall, sent the New York DA Frank Hogan to Sing Sing to interview him. Hogan later told Cuneo that Lepke had implicated the Roosevelt supporter Sidney Hillman, president of the International Association of Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, in at least one murder. According to Lepke, he and an associate had been paid $75,000 by Hillman to eliminate a garment factory owner who was opposing Hillman’s unionizing drive. But nothing could be done about it, Hogan told Cuneo, because Lepke’s charge was uncorroborated.
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Louis “Lepke” Buchalter died as scheduled, on March 5, 1944, in the electric chair at Sing Sing, unaware that his case marked a milestone, of sorts, for J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI.

The last of J. Edgar Hoover’s personal arrests, the apprehension of Lepke was also the first (and for many years remained the only) arrest of a major organized crime figure by the FBI.

Marcantonio’s characterization of the FBI director as a “Stork Club cop” bothered Hoover far more than the New York congressman ever realized. Always acutely sensitive to possible criticism, and ever protective of his “good name” and that of his organization, Hoover allowed himself few pleasures.
Saturdays at the track. His annual “non-vacations” in La Jolla and Miami. Weekends in New York. Even at the Stork Club, he went out of his way to be circumspect. To avoid the mere appearance of impropriety, drinks had to be whisked off the table before photographers were allowed to snap their shots and, after the Terry Reilly incident, greater care taken as to whom he was photographed with.

After 1940, although he continued to spend many of his weekends in New York, Hoover almost eliminated his nightclubbing. His world, never very broad, became even more confined.

Hoover’s counterattack against Senator Norris, Representative Marcantonio, and his other critics was orchestrated by Louis Nichols, who now headed the Bureau’s public relations division, Crime Records. As Senator Norris had predicted, criticizing Hoover and the FBI was made to seem “un-American.” The NBC commentator Earl Godwin stated, “In many cases an attack on Hoover is an attack on the president of the United States—and what’s more, an attack on the safety of the government.”
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In both their columns and their broadcasts, Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson repeated this theme, which also appeared in hundreds of newspapers nationwide, courtesy of “canned” editorials from Nichols’s division.

Hoover himself made more than a dozen speeches, criticizing his critics. While he didn’t call Norris, the Nebraska Progressive, a Communist, he implied as much, stating that the “smear campaign” was being directed by “various anti-American forces.” He elaborated, “The Communists hope that with the FBI shackled, they can proceed without interference as they go about their boring, undermining way to overthrow our Government.”
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He was less oblique when it came to Congressman Marcantonio, whom he characterized as a “pinko dupe” and a “pseudo-liberal.” But he saved his choicest invective for the conservative columnist Westbrook Pegler, who, undoubtedly jealous of the access to Hoover enjoyed by Winchell and Pearson, had joined the FBI director’s critics. Pegler, Hoover said, suffered from “mental halitosis.”
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