J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (38 page)

The shooting of Dillinger made Chicago’s Special Agent in Charge Melvin “Little Mel” Purvis public hero number one, an honor the FBI director was loath to share. Hoover, shown here with Purvis,
left,
and Acting Attorney General William Stanley,
center,
drove his once favorite agent out of the Bureau. Purvis later committed suicide, using a gun his fellow agents had given him at his retirement party.
AP/Wide World Photos.

Kate Barker and her son Freddie, minutes after the shootout at Lake Weir, Florida. When the agents broke into the cabin, Ma Barker had a Model 21 Thompson submachine gun, with a 100-shot drum, cradled in her arms. SA Tom McDade, who had the only camera, took these previously unpublished photographs. With the earlier capture of Arthur “Dock” Barker and the killing of Russell Gibson, only the gang member Alvin “Creepy” Karpis remained at large.
Photos Copyright 1991 by Thomas McDade.

Dillinger’s death mask. Hoover kept his prize scalp on display in his outer office.

His manhood impugned by the charge that he had never made an arrest, the FBI director personally “captured” Alvin Karpis in New Orleans, on May 1, 1936.

Hoover is shown here leading Karpis into the Federal Building in St. Paul, Minnesota, after the flight from New Orleans. According to ex-agents, and Karpis himself, one of Hoover’s “hired guns,” Clarence Hurt, actually made the arrest. Hurt appears,
far right,
carrying a submachine gun under his coat.
National Archives 65-H-130-6.

Clyde Tolson was given his moment in the spotlight with the capture of Harry Brunette, a former librarian turned kidnapper. The use of excessive force—hundreds of bullets were fired into the apartment where Brunette was holed up, missing the fugitive but wounding his wife and setting the building on fire—resulted in the nickname Killer Tolson and a public war between the New York Police Department and the FBI.
National Archives 65-H-52-1.

The career of the new public enemy number one, Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, as depicted in an exhibit on the popular FBI tour.

Karpis pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping, believing he would be sentenced to ten years; instead he got life. Preferring an imprisoned symbol to a freed felon, Hoover personally opposed his parole requests and Karpis served thirty-three years, twenty-three of them on Alcatraz, the longest any man has ever been incarcerated on the “Rock,” and the remainder at McNeil Island, where he taught a convicted car thief named Charlie Manson how to play the steel guitar.
Wide World Newsphotos.

Bruno Richard Hauptmann, shown here with a New Jersey state trooper, after being sentenced to death in the electric chair for the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby. In a long-suppressed Bureau memorandum, Hoover admitted, “I am skeptical as to some of the evidence.”
Wide World Photos.

“FBI Captures 8 German Agents Landed by Subs,” read the headlines. Hoover hid the real story—that George John Dasch,
above,
had surrendered, then turned in the others—from even the president.
Wide World Photos.

The spy in the Justice Department. Judith Coplon shortly after her arraignment for passing classified documents to the UN employee, and Soviet agent, Valentin Gubitchev. Although Coplon was convicted of stealing government documents and giving them to a foreign power, the convictions were set aside on appeal after disclosures that the FBI had committed various illegal acts.
Wide World Photos.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, testifying before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee on the Harry Dexter White case in 1953. Clyde Tolson is to the left of the director, Louis Nichols to the right. By now Hoover’s power and ego were so immense that he could call former President Harry S Truman a liar and get away with it.
UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos.