J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (5 page)

It would never be recorded in the Bureau’s official history, but, for a brief time, James Crawford, one of the few blacks ever to be an FBI agent, would serve as de facto, if not de jure, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Although J. Edgar Hoover’s will would not be made public for two weeks, when it was placed in probate, Tolson was aware that, excepting only a few small personal bequests, all of Hoover’s estate, including his home and its contents, had been left to him.

Hoover’s only surviving relatives, four nieces and two nephews, were not mentioned in the will.

Tolson moved into the house that same night, staying at first in the guest room and then, after about a month, moving into the master bedroom.

One of the estate appraisers later remarked, “It was as though Tolson had sold all of his belongings and just moved in with a suitcase and stayed. He didn’t bring a favorite chair or anything. But apparently he wasn’t attached to mementos.”
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35

That night President Nixon wrote in his diary, “He died at the right time; fortunately, he died in office. It would have killed him had he been forced out of
office or had he resigned even voluntarily…I am particularly glad that I did not force him out at the end of last year.”
³⁷

Leaderless, the widespread Bureau seemed to draw back into the vacuum that now existed at the Seat of Government. Many SACs flew to Washington that same day. That night, together with hundreds of other agents and ex-agents, they made the pilgrimage to Joseph Gawler’s Sons’ funeral home, at Wisconsin Avenue and Harrison, and silently filed past the open coffin.

One later told the author Sanford Ungar, “They had washed his hair, and all the dye had come out. His eyebrows, too. He looked like a wispy, gray-haired, tired little man. There, in the coffin, all the front, all the power and the color had been taken away.”
³⁸

T
here were some who refused to believe that all that power had died with the director. All one needed to unlock its mysteries, they were convinced, was a single key.

Shortly before nine on the morning following Hoover’s death, Gray again appeared in Mohr’s office. This time he was adamant: he wanted to know,
now,
where the secret files were kept.

Once again Mohr denied their existence. To Mohr, Gray seemed agitated. He was more than a little agitated himself, he would later recall: “I think I did cuss at him a little bit. I think the secretaries even heard me out there talking to him.”

“Look, Mr. Mohr,” Gray barked, “I am a hardheaded Irishman and nobody pushes me around.”

Mohr looked him right in the eye and responded, “Look, Mr. Gray, I am a hardheaded Dutchman and nobody pushes
me
around.”
¹

It was Mohr’s impression, not so much from his words as his attitude, that Gray was looking for files that could embarrass the Nixon administration. If he was, he left without them.

Mohr clearly felt he’d gotten the better of the encounter. The assistant attorney general knew no more about the files than when he’d asked the first time.

Within six hours John Mohr would be informed that President Nixon had appointed L. Patrick Gray III acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The hearse was twenty-five minutes late in reaching the Capitol. In life Hoover probably would have reprimanded and/or transferred the driver.

As the drizzle became a steady downpour, eight young servicemen removed
the flag-draped coffin from the back of the vehicle and very slowly carried it up the thirty-five steps, past the rigidly attentive column of honor guards. Although it was not apparent in the rain, all eight were sweating heavily; two actually suffered ruptures. Concerned that the director’s body be protected, John Mohr and Helen Gandy had selected a lead-lined coffin, weighing well over one thousand pounds. Reaching the top of the stairs, the pallbearers passed through the great bronze doors into the Rotunda.

The president of the United States was not in attendance—he would be delivering the eulogy at the funeral the following day—but most of official Washington was. The Supreme Court, the Cabinet, Congress, the diplomatic corps, and all the Bureau’s top executives stood as the coffin was lowered onto the black catafalque on which had rested the coffins of seven presidents, including Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, and such military heroes as General of the Army MacArthur.

This time, though, there were no dirges or drums, just a long silence, which ended only when the Reverend Edward L. R. Elson, chaplain of the Senate, Hoover’s pastor and his longtime friend, began the opening prayer.

Elson was followed by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. His voice echoing off the 160-foot dome, Burger eulogized “this splendid man who dedicated his life to his country in a half century of unparalleled service.” Calling Hoover “a man of great courage who would not sacrifice principle to popular clamor,” the chief justice concluded, “I am proud to join in this salute to a great American who served his country so well and earned the admiration of all who believe in ordered liberty.”
²

Warren E. Burger had been J. Edgar Hoover’s choice for chief justice. With a skill born of half a century of political infighting, the director had pushed him to the forefront of the other suggested nominees, several of whom were then eliminated as a result of FBI background checks.

After the Reverend Edward Hatch, chaplain of the House, pronounced the benediction, the Rotunda was opened to the public and remained so throughout the rest of that day and all that night. It was some hours yet before another event was scheduled to begin on the Capitol steps.

Minutes after the services in the Rotunda ended, Acting Attorney General Richard Kleindienst called L. Patrick Gray III on his car phone and told him to be in his office at 2:15
P.M.
They had an appointment at the White House, Kleindienst said.

Gray presumed there had been a new development in the ITT case or the nomination. When Gray entered the AG’s office, Kleindienst told him, “Pat, I’m going to appoint you acting director of the FBI.”

At first Gray thought his boss was kidding; on finding he wasn’t, he “was just, just flabbergasted.” Accompanied by an aide, the pair went directly to the White House where, according to Gray, the president talked to him about “the importance of the job and the fact that it had to be nonpolitical.”
³

The naming of Gray as “acting” rather than “permanent” director was in
itself a shrewd political move. It eliminated the risk of another stormy confirmation hearing before the election. It gave the Bureau a pacifier, by leaving open the possibility that when a permanent director was named he still might be from within the FBI. And, best of all, it could be presented as a nonpartisan act, since the winner in November, be he Democrat or Republican, would be free to name his own man.

The official announcement was made immediately after the meeting.

By the time Gray could locate his wife, Bea, who was at the beauty parlor, she had already heard. At least one of his four sons was surprised when he reached him. Patrick, a student at Washington College, in Chestertown, Maryland, asked, “What are the guys here going to say when I tell them my dad’s become the head fuzz?”
⁴

While the news of J. Edgar Hoover’s death had hit the Bureau with all the intensity of an earthquake measuring eight on the Richter scale, the announcement that his replacement would be an outsider with no law enforcement experience was an aftershock measuring at least five.

Far from being pacified, many of the assistant directors prepared to submit their resignations. Mohr and Felt talked them out of it, for the time being.

Gray’s first official act following the announcement was to call Clyde Tolson to offer his condolences. Tolson refused to accept the call. Instead Tolson placed his own call, to Mark Felt, and asked him to prepare his letter of resignation. Couching it “in much softer terms than Tolson would have, had he dictated it himself,” Felt later recalled, it read simply, “Due to ill health, I hereby submit my resignation. Clyde A. Tolson.” It was signed not by Tolson but by his secretary, Mrs. Skillman.
⁵

Moving quickly to take charge, Gray also called Mark Felt—bypassing John Mohr—and asked him to call a meeting of the executive conference, composed of the Bureau’s fifteen top executives, at 4:00 P.M. While realizing they were grief stricken, he told Felt, he thought it important that they see “this individual who had been named to follow Mr. Hoover.” Felt, who was quick to pledge allegiance to the new director, agreed.
⁶

The meeting was tense. Most if not all of those present not only resented Gray’s appointment but also felt the timing was in bad taste, Hoover having not yet even been buried.

Sensing the hostility, Gray met it head-on. After speaking of his deep respect for the Bureau, and the man who created it, Gray observed that he was not J. Edgar Hoover, he was his own man, and he would be making changes, but in common with his predecessor he intended “to maintain the FBI as an institution.” Despite their reservations, more than a few were impressed.
⁷

Following the meeting, Gray was introduced to Helen Gandy, who interrupted her work to give him a thirty-five-minute tour of the director’s suite of offices. During the tour, Felt asked Gray when he planned to move in. Gray asked if May 12, a week from Friday, would give them enough time to remove Hoover’s “personal memorabilia.” Although Gray may have had in mind the
Dillinger death mask and similar grisly artifacts, upon which he gazed with unconcealed distaste, he probably was referring to the hundreds of photographs, plaques, scrolls, and honorary degrees which were prominently displayed in the outer office and passageway.

Gandy and Felt said they were sure that would be more than enough time.

On first meeting Miss Gandy, Gray had noticed “that packing boxes were on the floor of her office and that file drawers were open.”
⁸
When he expressed interest, Miss Gandy told him that these were Mr. Hoover’s personal papers. They included matters concerning his estate, income tax returns, stock market purchases, oil leases, and other investments, the deed for his home, his dogs’ pedigrees, as well as nearly half a century of personal correspondence. The director numbered among his friends many famous people, Miss Gandy said. Afraid that in the event of his death the letters might be sold for their autographs, Mr. Hoover had instructed her to destroy them. She was, she said, complying with his wishes.
^*

Gray thanked her and let her get on with her work, unaware that he was at that moment looking at J. Edgar Hoover’s most secret files.

Had it not been for two broken promises, it is probable that by now the president himself would have known exactly where the much-sought-after files were located.

During his long association with J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon had become particularly close to one of his top aides, Louis Nichols, who for many years headed Crime Records, the Bureau’s vast public relations division. The friendship had continued after Nichols left the FBI. In 1968 Nichols had served on the candidate’s six-man advisory board, in charge of ballot security. Convinced, as was Nixon, that the 1960 election had been stolen by the Democrats, Nichols and a specially selected team of ex-agents had the job of making sure it didn’t happen again.

According to Nichols, Nixon firmly believed that although Texas had been stolen, their 1968 program had “saved Illinois, New Jersey, and several other states.”

Meeting in Nixon’s New York apartment in the Hotel Pierre following his victory, the president-elect had told Nichols, “Lou, I know you saved the
election for us. It goes without saying—if there’s anything you want, it’s yours.”

Nichols wanted only two things: “to stop this damn sniping at Hoover” and, when Hoover decided to retire, “a promise that his successor will come from within the Bureau.” The two men shook hands on it.
¹²

Nixon not only failed to muzzle the snipers, including his top aide, John Ehrlichman; he had himself, on at least two occasions,
almost
asked Hoover to resign. As for the second promise, in the two days following Hoover’s death Nichols had tried repeatedly to reach the president. But Nixon never returned the calls, and so Nichols, one of the few people who knew their exact location, never told him about the files.

Since taking over the Bureau in 1924, J. Edgar Hoover had found it advisable to keep separate from the General Files certain highly sensitive information; the stated reason for this separation was so that file clerks would not come across it and gossip about what they’d seen. These materials—which included dossiers, memos, letters, photographs, depositions, case summaries, microphone and wiretap logs, presidential correspondence, and special investigations—were kept in a confidential file in Miss Gandy’s office.

By the early 1940s the file had grown so large as to be a problem. Therefore, in an October 1, 1941, memo of very limited circulation—sent only to assistant directors and above—Hoover ordered the file divided into three separate confidential files. One file, to be maintained in the National Defense Division (later, following the war, it was transferred to the Special File Room) included “confidential memoranda on undercover and SIS [Special Intelligence Service] employees; name, number and brief biography of confidential informants; list of technical surveillances and history of each; list of surveillance maintained on diplomatic representatives at the sanction of the State Department, and other similar items.”

A second confidential file was set up in the office of Louis Nichols in Crime Records. Although Hoover’s memo did not explicitly state what should be kept in this file, Nichols had among his responsibilities congressional liaison, and at least some of the individual folders dealt with members of Congress. Their contents might be as innocuous as a list of FBI contacts with the particular senator or congressman (as when requesting an FBI tour for constituents); they might also, and often did, include personal information, sometimes derogatory in nature, the source ranging from such factual documentation as an arrest record or an endorsed check to unsubstantiated rumors or anonymous letters.

The third, and most secret, confidential file remained where it had been from the start, in the office of Miss Gandy. It would be “restricted,” Hoover noted in the 1941 memo, “to confidential items of a more or less personal nature of the Director’s.”
¹³

Although Hoover was intentionally vague as to what these “confidential items” might be, there was no question as to his meaning of “restricted.” These
materials were of such extraordinary sensitivity that only after proving his need to know, and obtaining Hoover’s personal authorization, could an assistant director consult a particular document.

In 1957, when Louis Nichols retired, Hoover, apparently unwilling to entrust Nichols’s successor with his by now very extensive records, had much of this material transferred back to Miss Gandy’s office, where the two files were recombined under a special designation: the “Official/Confidential,” or “OC,” file.

Few in the Bureau knew of the existence of the OC file. Fewer had seen even a portion of its contents. And fewer still knew exactly where in Miss Gandy’s office—which was lined with floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets and storage bins—this particular file was kept. One who did was Lou Nichols, and not until 1975, three years before his own death, did Nichols reveal that the individual OC folders had been “filed alphabetically in Hoover’s personal correspondence records.”
¹⁴

If one accepts Gray’s version of these events, neither Gandy nor Felt saw fit to mention this to the new acting director during his tour. Nor did they tell him that Miss Gandy maintained a private index to these files, consisting of three-by-five-inch cards, the white cards bearing the letters “PF,” for “Personal File,” the pink cards bearing the letters “OC,” for “Official/Confidential” file.