J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (42 page)

S
unday, December 7, 1941.

Together with several other FBI officials, Assistant to the Director Ed Tamm had taken Sunday afternoon off—his first in over two months—to watch the Washington Redskins play the Philadelphia Eagles. It was a home game, at Griffith Stadium, and it was already under way when, at about two-thirty, the loudspeaker paged, “Edward A. Tamm—”

Told to call headquarters, Tamm reached the FBI switchboard in time to be patched into a shortwave link between the Honolulu SAC Robert Shivers and the FBI director, who was weekending in New York.

“The Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor,” Shivers told Hoover and Tamm. “There is no doubt about it—those planes are Japanese. It’s war.” Then, holding the telephone toward an open window, Shivers said, “Listen!”
¹

Though it was a poor connection, and the line was full of static, the sounds the two men heard were unmistakable. They were of bombs exploding—as they hit the battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and other U.S. Navy vessels in the harbor.

All over the District of Columbia, FBI employees, listening to the radio broadcast of the pro-football game, heard the Tamm page and, without waiting to be called, converged on headquarters. Hoover and Tolson were among the last to arrive, having had to charter a flight from La Guardia.

There was some confusion, Robert Hendon recalled, but mostly there was frustration. For months the FBI had been prepared for just such an eventuality, having compiled lists of those aliens who were believed likely to prove dangerous in the event of war. But, though ready to make arrests, the FBI
couldn’t do so without written authorization from the attorney general, and he was en route from Detroit.

While waiting, Tamm notified the field offices that all Japanese on the A, B, and C lists were to be placed under surveillance. They were not to be detained until orders came through from headquarters; on the other hand, they shouldn’t be allowed to escape either.

When Biddle arrived in the capital, however, it was discovered that he couldn’t sign the proper authorizations until the president issued an emergency proclamation, so it was late that evening before the first arrests could be made. When Germany and Japan declared war the following day, the FBI had the warrants ready. Within seventy-two hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the FBI took into custody a total of 3,846 Japanese, German, and Italian aliens. Once arrested, they were turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service for custodial detention until such time as hearings could be held. In contrast to the roundups of the First World War, these were accomplished with little violence and only a few cases of mistaken identity.
^*

In addition to his many other duties, on December 8 President Roosevelt asked J. Edgar Hoover “to take charge of all censorship arrangements.” Though it was a temporary appointment, to be effective only until a director of censorship could be picked and a new agency established, Hoover took his duties seriously. In charge just a few hours, he succeeded in killing a
New York Times
headline which characterized the Pearl Harbor attack the worst naval defeat in U.S. history (though it obviously was), and he “persuaded” Drew Pearson and Robert Allen to edit a “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column which gave exact details of the losses in Hawaii.

Hoover, according to a memo he sent to the presidential press secretary Steve Early, informed Pearson that if he and Allen “continued to print such inaccurate and such unpatriotic statements the Government would be compelled to appeal to their subscribers direct and to bar them from all privileges that go with the relationship between the press and the Government.”
²

Pearson had a different recollection of their conversation. He wrote in his diary, “I got a call from J. Edgar Hoover…in effect threatening to put me in jail unless we killed the story giving the real truth on Pearl Harbor. I told Edgar that he was nuts, that there was no law by which he could put me in jail, and that he was not the man to interpret the law. He admitted all this, said that Steve Early at the White House had called up and asked him to throw the fear of God in me.”
³

As usual, Hoover managed to have it both ways, retaining his close ties with Pearson and Early alike.

The president’s decision to put the FBI director in charge of all censorship matters was not capricious. Foreseeing its need months earlier, Hoover had instructed his aides to set up a model plan for an independent organization, headed by a civilian and answerable only to the president, which would operate on the principle of voluntary self-censorship by the press and radio. When the first director of censorship was appointed on December 18, he took over an already established bureaucratic structure which, with only a few modifications, continued to operate throughout the war.

Months earlier, Hoover, realizing that there would be a critical need for trained linguists if war ever came, had had his staff establish an FBI language school. During the war it turned out hundreds of much needed translators.

Also before America’s entry into the war, Hoover had set up a “plant protection system” in defense plants and other key industries. Whenever a suspicious accident occurred, volunteer informants reported it to the FBI.
^*
It was largely due to this program that Hoover could boast, at war’s end, that the FBI had kept American industry sabotage free.

Although it appeared that Hoover had thought of everything, there was one problem the FBI director hadn’t foreseen: a mass defection of his agents.

Inundated with requests for leaves of absence, Hoover quickly spread the word that anyone who felt being a soldier or a sailor was more important or patriotic than being a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation needn’t apply for reinstatement. Some quit and enlisted anyway, but most withdrew their requests.

An even greater threat was the draft. With the backing of the president and the attorney general, Hoover was able to overcome the opposition of the War Department, Treasury, and several other envious agencies and obtain draft exemption for “those Bureau personnel whose services were deemed vital to the FBI.”
⁵
The favored many included Lieutenant Colonel J. Edgar Hoover and Commander Clyde Tolson, who resigned their reserve commissions in the Army and the Navy; all of the special agents; and most of the lab technicians, fingerprint searchers, and other clerical personnel.
^†

But Hoover wasn’t content with maintaining the status quo. With the lure of draft-exempt status, and the lowering of recruitment standards—there was no longer even the pretense that all applicants must have either law or accountancy degrees—Hoover was quickly able to nearly double the size of the Bureau. During the first two years of the war, the number of FBI employees rose from 7,420 to 13,317, while the number of special agents increased from 2,602 to 5,702.

Of those 5,702, about a dozen were black. Faced with the loss of his drivers and office help, Hoover had appointed them special agents, thus keeping them for the duration, while at the same time deflecting the NAACP’s frequent complaints that the FBI was “lily-white.”

Hoover, however, couldn’t take full credit for “integrating” the FBI. When appointed director in 1924, he had inherited one black special agent, James Amos, who had served as Theodore Roosevelt’s bodyguard, valet, and friend (Roosevelt died in Amos’s arms) and whose main job, under Hoover, was cleaning the weapons on the firing range. In addition to Amos, the FBI’s other black SAs included the director’s three chauffeurs (James Crawford, in Washington, D.C.; Harold Carr, in New York City; and Jesse Strider, in Los Angeles); and two SOG employees, Worthington Smith and Sam Noisette.

Ebony,
in a laudatory piece entitled “The Negro in the FBI,” later wrote of Hoover and Noisette, “The relationship between the two men virtually sets the race relations pattern for the huge agency.”
⁶

It was almost the only truthful statement in the article. Of dozen or so black SAs, “Mister Sam” had the most conspicuous job, serving as majordomo of Hoover’s office. His duties, not necessarily in the order of their importance, were to usher in visitors, hand the director a fresh towel when he emerged from his private bathroom, help him into his coat, and wield the flyswatter.

Over the years Hoover developed an increasingly neurotic fear of germs, together with an obsession with flies. On one memorable occasion Hoover spotted a fly in his office and ordered in Noisette to kill it. Noisette raised the swatter, then, arm aloft, hesitated: the fly had landed on the director! “Hit him, hit him,” Hoover screamed, and Noisette did, bringing down the swatter—as he’d later retell the story—“a hell of a lot harder than necessary.”
⁷

Charged with escorting in new agents for their ceremonial first meeting with the director, Noisette often privately befriended them, warning them of the hazards of working at the Seat of Government. For example, when Norman Ollestad tried to strike up a conversation in the men’s room, Noisette abruptly cut him off. Once they were outside, Noisette cautioned him, “You know, son, the walls of Justice got ears.” He ought to be careful of
anything
he said
anywhere
in the building, but especially in the toilet, since it was under constant surveillance. “The truth of the matter is that the boss don’t understand
queers,
but he’s scared to death of them, and that’s why they watch you fellahs in the head.”
⁸

Prior to the war, Hoover had wielded almost dictatorial power over his special agents. Since the FBI was not under civil service, there was no appeal to a disciplinary action, however arbitrary or unjustified it might be. But one could always resign. With the war that option remained, but few exercised it, since leaving the Bureau meant being subject to the draft. Hoover’s power over his men was now nearly absolute.

Although Harold “Pop” Nathan didn’t retire until 1945 (after forty-two years in government service) and Charles Appel and Frank Baughman remained
until 1949, most of the legendary characters from the Bureau’s early days were gone by now.

Hoover was not unhappy to see them go. Individuality was not a desired characteristic in the new FBI. He had put up with it when he needed their special skills, but he didn’t need them any longer. Class after class, with the uniform sameness of a mass production line, the FBI Academy turned out the kind of men Hoover wanted. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, John Keith had resigned in 1936 to become a security consultant at Philco.
^*
Charlie Winstead, one of the last of Hoover’s “hired guns,” left in 1942. Hoover had tolerated his frequent insubordination this long only because Winstead had been banished to a remote resident agency where he could make the least amount of trouble. Still, he managed to offend a female reporter by telling her that her opinions of Russia were “not worth doodleyshit.” Although the director certainly didn’t agree with the reporter’s contention that “Russia is fighting our battles,” he jumped at the chance to discipline Winstead. Ordered to apologize and report to Oklahoma City, one of the Bureau’s least desirable postings, Winstead instead told the director to “go to hell” and resigned to take a captain’s commission in Army intelligence.
⁹

The new SAs did not make trouble. Many of those who joined the FBI during the war would remain in it afterward, a number of them rising to positions of authority, among them John Mohr and William Sullivan. According to Sullivan, he and his fellow World War II classmates developed a particular mind-set that would stay with them throughout their Bureau careers: “We never freed ourselves from that psychology that we were indoctrinated with, right after Pearl Harbor…It was just like a soldier in the battlefield. When he shot an enemy he did not ask himself: is this legal or lawful, is it ethical? It was what he was supposed to do as a soldier.

“We did what we were expected to do. It became part of our thinking, part of our personality.”
¹⁰

Having been taught to disregard “the niceties of law,” they continued to disregard them through the Cold War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War and in the COINTELPROs—the FBI’s own war on dissent.

By 1942 the FBI was committing so many illegal acts that the “do not file” system had to be expanded to hide their paper trail.

In early December 1941, while still temporary director of censorship, Hoover asked the telegraph and cable companies—Western Union, RCA, and ITT—to delay the transmission of all messages to some half dozen countries for twenty-four hours, so that they could be copied and examined by the FBI. This “drop copy” program didn’t end with the war. As James Bamford notes in his book
The Puzzle Palace,
it only grew. “By the fall of 1946, the FBI was covertly obtaining, direct from the cable companies, cable traffic to and from
some thirteen countries.”
¹¹
With only brief interruptions, the FBI continued to read foreign cables both to and from the United States until at least 1975.

Though rain, sleet, and snow couldn’t keep a postman from his appointed rounds, the FBI could. In 1940 censorship experts on Stephenson’s BSC staff taught a specially selected class of six FBI agents the techniques of chamfering (mail opening). Their initial targets were the Axis diplomatic establishments in Washington, D.C. Mail from both foreign and domestic points of origin was intercepted at the Main Post Office, brought to the FBI Laboratory for opening and photographing, then returned to the Post Office to be reinserted into the mail flow.
^*
Bettering their English teachers, FBI Lab technicians developed a fairly simple device that enabled them to open a letter in one or two seconds.

This initial program was code-named Z-Coverage. Once started, it, like all FBI programs, grew—to include New York City and the embassies and consulates of several supposedly neutral countries. Z-Coverage outlived the Axis, remaining in operation for twenty-six years. Although briefly suspended after World War II, it was reinstated during the Cold War, with a new set of targets. And this was just one of eight FBI mail-opening programs during this same period.
^†
The other seven were of shorter duration but came to cover a much broader geographical area. Mail-opening devices, and training in their use, were made available to at least seven other participating field offices: Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Though most of these programs operated on the principle of “watch lists,” some were random. For example, between October 1961 and February 1962, the FBI conducted an experimental program in which
all
mail sent to San Francisco from either Washington, D.C., or New York City was screened.
¹²