J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (43 page)

It is not known how many letters the FBI opened in its search for foreign spies. But in 1976 the Church committee, after examining those figures which the FBI made available, concluded that “even by the Bureau’s own accounting of its most successful program, the mail of hundreds of American citizens was opened for every one communication that led to an illegal agent.”
¹³

No postmaster general, attorney general, or president was ever informed that the FBI was illegally opening both foreign and domestic mail. Nor were the thousands of U.S. citizens, organizations, and businesses whose mail was opened and read by the FBI.

Again, questions of constitutionality, legality, or morality apparently never arose. The FBI official William Branigan explained, “It was my assumption that what we were doing was justified by what we had to do.”
¹⁴

The Bureau’s use of “surreptitious entries” predated World War II. Older
agents recall a limited number of officially sanctioned break-ins going back as far as 1926, two years after Hoover became director. But it wasn’t until 1939—after President Roosevelt gave the FBI “authority” to investigate subversive activities—that the practice became, in the words of a former SA, “a common investigative technique.” By 1940 the FBI was conducting special classes in “bypassing.”
¹⁵
While the legal machinery of the U.S. government moved ponderously on the floors below, agent trainees practiced picking locks in the attic of the Department of Justice Building. Some became quite expert. “We had men who, if they went bad, would be the best second-story men in the world,” a former agent boasted.
¹⁶

In the period preceding Pearl Harbor, the primary targets were Axis diplomatic establishments. When war was declared, however, these embassies and consulates closed, and attention shifted to those countries which were known to be secretly aiding the enemy, such as Spain, Portugal, and Vichy France.

These were not the only targets. Even though the USSR was now an ally, the Bureau’s interest in the American Communist party continued unabated, and it was only one of a large number of “domestic subversive organizations” which interested the FBI. Break-ins were also used in ordinary criminal cases, such as bank robberies, kidnappings, and hijackings. Though any evidence thus obtained was inadmissible in court, there were usually ways around this. Often a break-in provided leads to other evidence which
was
admissible. Also, knowing in advance exactly what they would find upon entering a home or business, agents had little trouble concocting enough “probable cause” to persuade a judge to issue a search warrant. If all else failed, they could always create a “reliable informant.”

“Surreptitious entries” and “black bag jobs” were headquarters terms. In the field the SAs usually called them “bag jobs.” “But they were
never
‘burglaries,’ ” one former assistant director heatedly explained “because nothing was taken.”
¹⁷

Usually nothing was—except information. Often something was left: a listening device. And, although former FBI officials are loath to discuss it, sometimes, in very special cases, break-ins were used to plant incriminating evidence which would then be “discovered” during a court-authorized search.
^*

As was also true of various other illegal acts, Hoover kept a tight rein on surreptitious entries. Either he or Tolson had to approve them personally.

If a SAC wanted to conduct a break-in, he first had to make a feasibility study, to determine whether entry or exit could be effected without detection. Only if the study showed negative risk would the request be considered. As far as Hoover was concerned, the security of the operation—and the avoidance of
possible “embarrassment to the Bureau”—was more important than any benefit that might be derived from it.

Once this was done, the SAC made two copies of his request: the original typed copy and a “tickler,” or carbon. Retaining the tickler, which he placed in his office safe, he sent the original to the assistant director of the appropriate division at FBIHQ for consideration. If he passed on it, he bucked it up to the director or associate director.

If approval was granted—either orally or with the initials “H” or “CT”—the original was placed in a special file in the assistant director’s office, and a coded telex sent to the SAC, who then copied the authorization number on his tickler copy and destroyed the telex. During the next field office inspection, one of the inspectors would check the SAC’s authorization number against a list of those on file in Washington, then destroy the SAC’s copy. Periodically, the assistant director’s file was also sanitized.
^*

Because of this procedure it isn’t possible to determine exactly how many break-ins the FBI committed. Queried on this point by the Church committee, the FBI responded, “Since there exists no precise record of entries, we are unable to retrieve an accurate accounting of their number”; however “at least 14 domestic subversive targets were the subject of at least 238 entries from 1942 to April 1968.”
¹⁹

These figures are suspect for a number of reasons.
^†
Perhaps the best was supplied by M. Wesley Swearingen, a former SA with twenty-five years’ service. “I myself actually participated in more than 238 while assigned to the Chicago office,” Swearingen stated. “The Chicago office committed thousands of bag jobs.” This was only one field office.
²¹

Again, as far as is known, no president or attorney general was ever officially informed that the FBI was conducting illegal break-ins, although some must have been very obtuse not to have guessed the source of many of Hoover’s reports.

The justification for the break-ins most often cited was practicality. A single surreptitious entry netting a copy of the mailing list of a suspect organization, for example, might save hundreds of man-hours otherwise spent watching and trying to identify those who attended meetings. It was the sort of argument Hoover might have used before the House Appropriations Subcommittee—complete with graphs and statistics—except that Congress wasn’t informed of the break-ins either.

Congress
was
told about
some
of the wiretaps. Each year when the director made his annual budget request an exchange such as the following would occur.

Congressman Rooney: “What is the average number of daily telephone taps used by the Bureau throughout its entire jurisdiction at the present time?”

Director Hoover: “The number of telephone taps maintained by the Bureau as of today totals 90. They are utilized only in cases involving the internal security of the United States. They are not used in the usual criminal investigations except in kidnapping cases.” Hoover would then go on to say that he personally did not authorize installation of any telephone taps. “That is done by the Attorney General. I submit to the Attorney General my recommendations for the installation of a telephone tap and he either approves or disapproves it.”
²²

Although the stated number varied year to year, it never exceeded one hundred. Apparently Hoover considered this a safe figure; it was high enough to show that the FBI was monitoring the nation’s hidden enemies, yet low enough to indicate the FBI wasn’t tapping everyone.

It was also a bogus figure. The key phrase in Hoover’s statement was “as of today.” Just before the director’s annual trip to the Hill, a number of taps would be removed; after he’d testified, they would be reinstated.

Even the attorney general didn’t know how many wiretaps there were. Often wiretap authorization was requested only after a tap had already been installed and was producing useful information. This reduced the number of requests, as well as the number of nonproductive taps.
^*

Nor did Hoover’s stated figure include the wiretaps installed by local police at the request of the FBI, or the taps installed by agents in the field without headquarters’ permission. The latter were called “suicide taps” because if they were detected the agents could say good-bye to their careers.
^†

Most important of all, it did not include the “bugs.” Hoover was careful not to mention these—to Congress, the president, or the attorney general. Ironically, had he wanted to, Hoover could have cited Roosevelt’s May 1940 memorandum as authority for microphone surveillance as well as wiretapping, since the president’s use of the phrase “listening devices” was broad enough to cover both.

This, however, was the last thing Hoover wanted to do, since that same
memo required that each request be approved by the attorney general. And, however accommodating Francis Biddle might be, he would never approve something that required illegal trespass. To plant a bug, it was usually necessary to first commit a surreptitious entry, in clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. So Hoover said nothing, and continued to bug, secretly, on his own authority.

Wiretapping and bugging were taught at the FBI’s “Sound School,” which, at various times, was hidden in the Identification Building in Washington and at the academy at Quantico.

As usual, headquarters had its own terminology, derived from Bureau telegraphese. ELINT was electronic surveillance, of which there were two types: TELSUR, telephone surveillance; and MISUR, microphone surveillance. FISUR referred to physical surveillance. In the field they were commonly known as “taps,” “bugs,” and “tails.”

The chief advantage of TELSUR was that they did not entail surreptitious entries. Since the local telephone companies supplied pair numbers and a location for monitoring, there was little chance the tappers would be caught in the act, as happened in the bugging of Harry Bridges. Besides, a tap picked up both sides of a telephone conversation.

The advantages of MISUR, however, were far more numerous, and insidious. They did not require permission, from either the courts or the attorney general. They picked up not only telephone conversations, which were often guarded, but all the conversations, and any other sounds, in the bugged room.
^*
Although they usually required two or more surreptitious entries (one to plant the bug, another to remove it, and, often, in between, return trips to repair or replace a malfunctioning unit), quite often actual break-ins were unnecessary. By “waving the flag,” that is, appealing to patriotism, agents were usually able to persuade landlords to give them access to targeted premises. Many of the major hotels (including the Willard in Washington, the Waldorf in New York, the Blackstone in Chicago, and the St. Francis in San Francisco) and some of the chains (among them, the Hilton Hotels and Holiday Inns) were especially accommodating, assigning subjects to prebugged rooms.

Yet, despite these advantages, during World War II taps were used far more often than bugs, for one reason: the microphones then available were large, bulky, and difficult to hide. Only with the coming of miniaturization in the postwar years did bugs come to predominate.

Among the premises bugged during the war were a number of high-class
brothels in Washington and in New York City. There was a “national security” justification for these buggings, an FBI spokesman much later explained: their purpose was to catch foreign diplomats in compromising acts, which could then be used as leverage to persuade them to become FBI informants. However, the bugs, unable to filter out nationalities, also picked up embarrassing information on prominent Americans, including several members of Congress, all of which made its way into Hoover’s files.

In at least one case, the bugs helped clear a suspect. In May 1942, New York City detectives, accompanied by Naval Intelligence officers, raided a homosexual brothel in Brooklyn which was believed to be “a nest for Nazi agents.” Questioned after his arrest, the proprietor, Gustave Beekman, identified as one of his regular customers Senator David I. Walsh of Massachusetts, chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee. Moreover, Beekman stated that on several occasions he’d seen Walsh conversing with another customer, a “Mr. E,” who was a known Nazi spy.

When the story broke in the press, the president asked Hoover to investigate.
^*
Without bothering to inform Roosevelt that the FBI had already had the Brooklyn establishment under both physical and microphone surveillance for some months, Hoover ordered a full field investigation. Interrogated at length by the FBI, Beekman broke and recanted his identification. Also, the agents succeeded in identifying another customer who had visited the brothel on the dates in question and who, they noted, closely resembled the senator.

Although Walsh was “cleared” of these particular charges, other derogatory information was uncovered during the investigation, all of which became part of an 85-page folder in Hoover’s Official/Confidential file.
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Buggings, wiretapping, break-ins, mail opening, and telegraph and cable monitoring—these were only some of the illegal acts which, adopted under the guise of “wartime necessity” and found to be highly useful shortcuts, became standard, albeit secret, investigative tools of Hoover’s FBI.

These were not the FBI’s only secrets. Ironically, one of the best-kept secrets of the war—for a time Hoover apparently even kept it from the president—involved one of its most publicized cases: the Bureau’s “capture” of eight German saboteurs.

Shortly after midnight on June 13, 1942, John Cullen, a young Coast Guardsman, was patrolling a lonely stretch of beach near Amagansett, Long Island, when he encountered four men struggling with a large raft in the surf.

Challenged, the men claimed to be stranded fishermen. But Cullen doubted this, especially after they offered him a $260 bribe for his silence. In addition,
the men were armed; one thoughtlessly said something in German; while not more than 150 feet offshore Cullen spotted a long, thin object that looked suspiciously like a submarine. Alone and unarmed, Cullen decided to play along and accepted the bribe, then hurried back to his station to report the incident.