(1) William Sullivan, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover's FBI (1979)

At the heart of Hoover’s massive public relations operation were fifty-nine FBI field offices whose territory took in every village, town, city, and county in America. Each day, out of these field offices streamed eight thousand agents going into every state, city, and town, talking to and becoming friendly with ordinary citizens from all walks of life.

Because of his network of field offices, and thanks to the scores of contacts made and maintained by the special agents in charge, Hoover was able to place "news" stories - invented and written in the bureau, really nothing more than press releases, puff pieces for the FBI - in newspapers all over the country. Our strength was in the small dailies and weeklies; and with hundreds of these papers behind him, Hoover didn’t give a damn about papers like the New York Times or the Washington Post. Most of the men who run small local papers are used to printing stories about grange suppers on the front page; imagine how grateful they are for a story from the FBI. Of course, scores of Washington-based reporters printed stories we gave them too, and they usually printed them under their own bylines. Some of them lived off us. It was an easy way to make a living. They were our press prostitutes.

When I hear people talk about a "new" FBI, I know that the changes they talk about are only paper changes. This public relations operation of Hoover’s, this massive attempt to control public opinion, continues to this day, and it is at the very heart of what is wrong with the bureau. Unless it is exposed, until every editor of every little weekly newspaper who ever printed an FBI press handout realizes how he was used, the FBI will do business in the same old way.

A massive, pervasive public relations operation is no substitute for the job of investigating crimes. The FBI should conduct its business quietly and it should earn its respect from the citizens of the United States by the results of its work, not from the results of its propaganda.

 

(2) J. Edgar Hoover, wrote about the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in his book Masters of Deceit: A Study of Communism (1958)

One of the first opportunities to exploit political and social upheaval abroad arose in Spain. When a civil war broke out in that country in 1936, the Communists acted in line with the theory that the Soviet Union should be used as the base for the extension of Communist control over other countries. Soviet intervention in the Spanish civil war was twofold in nature. First, in response to directions from the Comintern, the international Communist movement organized International Brigades to fight in Spain. A typical unit was the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, organized in the United States. It succeeded in recruiting about 3,000 men. In all, the Communist parties of 53 countries were represented in the International Brigades with a total fighting strength of approximately 18,000, the first of whom arrived in Spain during the latter part of 1936. Second, the Soviet Union furnished direct military assistance in the form of tanks, artillery, and aircraft flown by Soviet pilots. For two years, Moscow pursued its objectives in the Spanish struggle. However, Soviet intervention ended in the fall of 1938, when the national interest of the Soviet Union forced it to turn its attention elsewhere. In Europe, Hitler's strength was steadily increasing. In addition, Japan's armed invasion of Manchuria posed a direct threat to Soviet territory in the Far East. At the end of 1938, the International Brigades withdrew from Spain.

Many Communists throughout the world who answered the Comintern's call to fight in Spain were repaid subsequently by Soviet assistance in their attempts to seize power in their respective countries. Among those identified with Communist efforts in connection with the Spanish civil war who subsequently gained prominence in the Communist movement were Tito (Yugoslavia), Palmiro Togliatti (Italy), Jacques Duclos (France), Klement Gottwald (Czechoslovakia), Erno Gero and Laszlo Rajk (Hungary), and Walter Ulbricht (East Germany).

 

(3) John Gates, The Story of an American Communist (1959)

At the press conference held when I quit the Communist Party, I made a prediction that the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities and the FBI would claim the death of the Daily Worker and my resignation only meant that the party was stronger than ever. Two months later J. Edgar Hoover published a book making this very claim. To those of us who left the Communist Party in the recent period, this talk about the organization growing stronger, is sheer fantasy. So little still remains of the party and of its influence, that at best it can be called a living corpse.

If J. Edgar Hoover really has the inside information which he claims, then he knows better than what he writes. Why does he persist in perpetuating a myth? Perhaps appropriations for his department have something to do with it. A growing number of Washington correspondents have begun to notice a rash of "communist menace" reports breaks out whenever government agencies are scheduled to request additional funds from Congress. Where upon a duly frightened legislature proceeds to shell out and no questions asked.

There is a legitimate body of opinion which seeks to counter many of the ideas and methods of communism with what it holds to be superior ideas and practices; but there is also a spurious anti-communist racket which is financially lucrative, politically deceitful and a weapon against progress and freedom. Perhaps this too explains why some persons are so reluctant to give up the ghost of the "communist menace" in this country.

The title of Mr. Hoover's book Masters of Deceit is, in my opinion, a misnomer. The Communist Party here never mastered the art of persuading very large numbers of Americans, deceptively or otherwise. The only deception at which it proved adept was self-deception - the basic cause of its demise as an effective political trend. Persecution and prosecutions undoubtedly harmed the Communist Party, but the greatest injury was done to it by the party itself. The party was in some ways a continuation of American radicalism, and in some ways its negation. The party fell apart because it would not think for itself, would not face reality; it tried to ride two horses at one time, refused to change when changes became necessary, and finally insisted on committing suicide.

 

(4) J. Edgar Hoover, testimony before the House of Un-American Activities Committee (26th March, 1947)

The Communist movement in the United States began to manifest itself in 1919. Since then it has changed its name and its party line whenever expedient and tactical. But always it comes back to fundamentals and bills itself as the party of Marxism-Lenninism. As such, it stands for the destruction of our American form of government; it stands for the destruction of American democracy; it stands for the destruction of free enterprise; and it stands for the creation of a "Soviet of the United States" and ultimate world revolution.

The preamble of the latest constitution of the Communist Party of the United States, filled with Marxian "double talk," proclaims that the party "educates the working class, in the course of its day-to-day struggles, for its historic mission, the establishment of socialism." The phrase "historic mission" has a sinister meaning. To the uninformed person it bespeaks tradition, but to the Communist, using his own words, it is "achieving the dictatorship of the proletariat"; "to throw off the yoke of imperialism and establish the proletarian dictatorship"; "to raise these revolutionary forces to the surface and hurl them like a devastating avalanche upon the united forces of bourgeois reaction, frenzied at the presentment of their rapidly approaching doom."

In recent years, the Communists have been very cautious about using such phrases as "force and violence"; nevertheless, it is the subject of much discussion in their schools and in party caucus where they readily admit that the only way in which they can defeat the present ruling class is by world revolution.

The Communist, once he is fully trained and indoctrinated, realizes that he can create his order in the United States only by "bloody revolution." Their chief textbook, The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, is used as a basis for planning their revolution. Their tactics require that to be successful they must have: (1) The will and sympathy of the people. (2) Military aid and assistance. (3) Plenty of guns and ammunition. (4) A program for extermination of the
police as they are the most important enemy and are termed "trained Fascists." (5) Seizure of all communications, buses, railroads, radio stations, and other forms of communications and transportation.

They evade the question of force and violence publicly. They hold that when Marxists speak of force and violence they will not be responsible - that force and violence will be the responsibility of their enemies. They adopt the novel premise that they do not advocate force and violence publicly but that when their class resists to defend themselves then they are thus accused of using force and violence. A lot of double talk.

In establishing the party's illegal character in 1942, the then Attorney General Biddle based his findings on the contents of the same Communist publications which today are being sold and circulated in party circles in the United States. The American Communist, like the leopard, cannot change his spots. The Communist Party line changes from day to day. The one cardinal rule that can always be applied to what the party line is or will be is found in the fundamental principle of Communist teachings that the support of Soviet Russia is the duty of Communists of all countries.

One thing is certain. The American progress which all good citizens seek, such as old-age security, houses for veterans, child assistance, and a host of others, is being adopted as window dressing by the Communists to conceal their true aims and entrap gullible followers.

The Communist propaganda technique is designed to promote emotional response with the hope that the victim will be attracted by what he is told the Communist way of life holds in store for him. The objective, of course, is to develop discontent and hasten the day when the Communists can gather sufficient support and following to overthrow the American way of life.

Communist propaganda is always slanted in the hope that the Communist may be aligned with liberal progressive causes. The honest liberal and progressive should be alert to this, and I believe the Communists' most effective foes can be the real liberals and progressives who understand their devious machinations.

Communists and their followers are prolific letter writers, and some of the more energetic ones follow the practice of directing numerous letters of protest to editors but signing a different name to each. Members of Congress are well aware of Communists starting their pressure campaigns by an avalanche of mail which follows the party line.

The party has departed from depending upon the printed word as its medium of propaganda and has taken to the air. Its members and sympathizers have not only infiltrated the airways but they are now persistently seeking radio channels. The American Communists launched a furtive attack on Hollywood in 1935 by the issuance of a directive calling for a concentration in Hollywood. The orders called for action on two fronts: (1) an effort to infiltrate the labor unions; (2) infiltrate the so-called intellectual and creative fields.

In movie circles, Communists developed an effective defense a few years ago in meeting criticism. They would counter with the question, "After all, what is the matter with communism?" It was effective because many persons did not possess adequate knowledge of the subject to give an intelligent answer.

Some producers and studio heads realized the possibility that the entire industry faces serious embarrassment because it could become a springboard for Communist activities. Communist activity in Hollywood is effective and is furthered by Communists and sympathizers using the prestige of prominent persons to serve, often unwittingly, the Communist cause. The party is content and highly pleased if it is possible to have inserted in a picture a line, a scene,
a sequence conveying the Communist lesson and, more particularly, if they can keep out anti-Communist lessons.

The Communist tactic of infiltrating labor unions stems from the earliest teachings of Marx, which have been reiterated by party spokesmen down through the years. They resort to all means to gain their point and often succeed in penetrating and literally taking over labor unions before the rank and file of members are aware of what has occurred.

I am convinced that the great masses of union men and women are patriotic American citizens interested chiefly in security for their families and themselves. They have no use for the American Communists, but in those instances where Communists have taken control of unions, it has been because too many union men and women have been outwitted, outmaneuvered, and outwaited by Communists.

The numerical strength of the party's enrolled membership its insignificant. The Daily Worker boasts of 74,000 members on the rolls. But it is well known that there are many actual members who because of their position are not carried on party rolls. What is important is the claim of the Communists themselves that for every party member there are 10 others ready, willing, and able to do the party's work. Herein lies the greatest menace of communism. For these are the people who infiltrate and corrupt various spheres of American life. So rather than the size of the Communist Party, the way to weigh its true importance is by testing its influence, its ability to infiltrate.

The size of the party is relatively unimportant because of the enthusiasm and iron-clad discipline under which they operate. In this connection, it might be of interest to observe that in 1917 when the Communists overthrew the Russian Government there was one Communist for every 2,277 persons in Russia. In the United States today there is is one Communist for every 1,814 persons in the country.

 

(5) Arthur Murtagh, former FBI agent, interviewed in 1990.

I certainly do not want to indicate that Hoover did not have some unusual ability in structuring an organization designed to perpetuate a sort of dictatorial control of both the FBI and, so far as he could manage it, the minds of the American citizens: but so did Adolf Hitler.

 

(6) Ray Tucker, Collier's Magazine (19th August, 1933)

Mr. Hoover is short, fat, businesslike, and walks with a mincing step. He dresses fastidiously, with Eleanor blue as the favourite colour for the matched shades of tie, handkerchief and socks. A little pompous, he rides in a limousine even if only to a nearby self-service cafeteria.

 

(7) Peter Wright, Spycatcher (1987)

Hoover's room was the last of four interconnecting offices. Belmont knocked, and entered the room. Hoover stood behind his desk, dressed in a piercing blue suit. He was taller and slimmer than he appeared in photographs, with wrinkled flesh which hung off his face in small drapes. He greeted me with a firm and joyless handshake.

Belmont began to describe the reason for my visit, but Hoover cut him off sharply.

"I've read the report, Al. I want to hear Mr. Wright tell me about it."

Hoover fixed me with coal-black eyes, and I began to outline the discovery of RAFTER. Almost at once, he interrupted me.

"I gather your Service is now satisfied about the intelligence provided by our Czech source?"

I began to answer, but he swept me aside.

"Your security organizations enjoy many facilities here in Washington, Mr. Wright."

There was more than a hint of a threat in his voice.

"I have to advise the President of the United States when those facilities raise questions about our national security. I have to take a close personal interest in a case like this, particularly in view of the recent problems the United Kingdom has suffered in this area. I need to know I am on firm ground. Do I make myself clear?"

"Of course, sir, I understand perfectly ..."

Harry Stone busily studied his shoelaces. Al Belmont and Bill Sullivan sat to one side of Hoover's desk, half hidden in shadow. I was on my own.

"I think you will find in my report ..."

"My staff have digested your report, Mr. Wright. I am interested in the lessons you have learned."

Before I could answer, Hoover launched into a passionate diatribe about Western inadequacy in the face of the Communist onslaught. I agreed with many of the sentiments; it was just the manner of the telling that was objectionable. Inevitably the subject of Burgess and Maclean came up, Hoover sounding each syllable of their names with almost prurient venom.

"Now in the Bureau here, Mr. Wright, that sort of thing could not happen. My officers are thoroughly screened. There are lessons to be learned. Do I make myself clear?"

 

(8) Anthony Summers, The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1993)

A further allegation came from Jimmy G. C. Corcoran, who had become Edgar's trusted associate while working as an FBI Inspector in the twenties.

"After he left the Bureau," said Shimon, "Jimmy became very powerful politically. During World War II he was a lobbyist, and he was retained by a business group to get congressional help for them to open up a factory- for a $75,000 fee. That was illegal during the war, and we got a tip-off from the Attorney General's office that the FBI were going to set Jimmy up when he went to pick up his $75,000 at the Mayflower Hotel.

"Jimmy was really mad. He went to Harvey's Restaurant and sent word to Hoover that Jimmy Corcoran wanted him to come out right now or he was going to create a scene.

"Hoover came out in the end, and said, 'What's the matter, Jimmy?' and Jimmy called him a lot of dirty words and said, 'What d'you mean trying to set me up?' Hoover said, 'Gee, Jimmy, I didn't know it was you.' And Jimmy said, 'For Chrissake, how many J. G. C. Corcorans do you know? . . . This is what I get for doing you a favor, you dirty S.O.B. . . .' And the outcome was that Jimmy went and collected his $75,000. And he wasn't arrested."

After the incident Corcoran confided to Joseph Shimon, and to Washington lobbyist Henry Grunewald, what the "favor" had been. While he was at the Bureau, Corcoran said, Edgar used him to deal with a "problem." He said Edgar had been arrested in the late twenties in New Orleans, on sex charges involving a young man. Corcoran, who had by then left the FBI and had powerful contacts in Louisiana, said he had intervened to prevent a prosecution.

Corcoran was to die in a mysterious plane crash in 1956 near Spanish Cay, a Caribbean island owned by a close associate of Edgar's, oil millionaire Clint Murchison. Most of the documents in his FBI file have since been destroyed. While Corcoran's account may never be proven, it does not stand alone. Joe Pasternak, the veteran film producer remembered for his relaunch of Marlene Dietrich in the late thirties, told of another close call. He knew Edgar, and claimed personal knowledge of a sordid episode that occurred in California. "He was a homosexual," Pasternak said. "Every year he used to come down to the Del Mar racetrack with a different boy. He was caught in a bathroom by a newspaperman. They made sure he didn't speak. . . . Nobody dared say anything because he was so powerful."

 

(9) Harry S. Truman, memo on J. Edgar Hoover (12th May, 1945)

We want to Gestapo or Secret Police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex life scandals and plain blackmail when they should be catching criminals. They also have a habit of sneering at local law enforcement officers. This must stop. Cooperation is what we must have.

 

(10) William Sullivan, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover's FBI (1979)

Hoover was always gathering damaging material on Jack Kennedy, which the president, with his active social life, seemed more than willing to provide. We never put any technical surveillance on JFK, but whatever came up was automatically funnelled directly to Hoover. I was sure he was saving everything he had on Kennedy, and on Martin Luther King, Jr., too, until he could unload it all and destroy them both. He kept this kind of explosive material in his personal files, which filled four rooms on the fifth floor of headquarters.

Kennedy was aware that Hoover was an enemy, of course, and he kept his distance. He never asked Hoover for any gossip or any favors. If he heard that Hoover was leaking anti-Kennedy stories, JFK would call the director right away and ask him to put the statement on the record. Hoover always did, but somehow, between Kennedy's phone call and Hoover's official statement, the director's remarks softened considerably. Kennedy couldn't stop Hoover from talking behind his back, but he could do something about Hoover's public statements, and he did. Kennedy would also call Hoover over to the White House two or three times just to remind him who was boss. Kennedy didn't say it that bluntly, but Hoover got the message.

I shouldn't have been surprised then at Hoover's cold-blooded attitude when Kennedy was murdered, but it was unsettling nonetheless.

 

(11) Telephone conversation between Lyndon B. Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover (23rd November, 1963)

J. Edgar Hoover: I just want to let you know of a development which I think is very important in connection with this case. This man in Dallas (Lee Harvey Oswald). We, of course, charged him with the murder of the President. The evidence that they have at the present time is not very strong.... We have the gun and we have the bullet. There was only one and that was found on the stretcher that the President was on...

Lyndon B. Johnson: Have you established any more about the visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico in September?

J. Edgar Hoover: No, that's one angle that is very confusing. We have up here the tape and this photograph of the man who was at this Soviet Embassy, using Oswald's name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet Embassy down there.

 

(12) Telephone conversation between J. Edgar Hoover and White House aide Walter Jenkins (24th November, 1963)

The thing I am concerned about, and so is Katzenbach (Deputy Attorney General), is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.

 

(13) Telephone conversation between Lyndon B. Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover (29th November, 1963)

Lyndon B. Johnson: Are you familiar with this proposed group that they're trying to put together on this study of your report...

J. Edgar Hoover: I think it would be very very bad to have a rash of investigations on this thing.

Lyndon B. Johnson: Well, the only way we can stop them is probably to appoint a high-level one to evaluate your report and put somebody that's pretty good on it... that I can select... and tell the House of Representatives and the Senate not to go ahead with their investigations...

J. Edgar Hoover: This fellow Rubenstein (Jack Ruby) is a very shady character, has a bad record - street brawler, fighter, and that sort of thing - and in the place in Dallas, if a fellow came in there and couldn't pay his bill completely, Rubenstein would beat the very devil out of him and throw him out of the place... He didn't drink, didn't smoke, boasted about that. He is what I would put in a category of one of these "egomaniacs." Likes to be in the limelight. He knew all the police in that white-light district.... and he also let them come in, see the show, get food, liquor, and so forth. That's how, I think, he got into police headquarters. Because they accepted him as kind of a police character, hanging around police headquarters... They never made any moves, as the pictures show, even when they saw him approaching this fellow and got up right to him and pressed his pistol against Oswald's stomach. Neither of the police officers on either side made any move to push him away or grab him. It wasn't until after the gun was fired that they then moved... The Chief of Police admits that he moved him in the morning as a convenience and at the request of motion-picture people, who wanted to have daylight. He should have moved him at night... But so far as tying Rubenstein and Oswald together we haven't as yet done. So there have been a number of stories come in, we've tied Oswald into the Civil Liberties Union in New York, membership into that and, of course, this Cuban Fair Play Committee, which is pro-Castro, and dominated by Communism and financed, to some extent, by the Castro government.

Lyndon Johnson: How many shots were fired? Three?

J. Edgar Hoover: Three.

Lyndon Johnson: Any of them fired at me?

J. Edgar Hoover: No.

Lyndon Johnson: All three at the President?

J. Edgar Hoover: All three at the President and we have them. Two of the shots fired at the President were splintered but they had characteristics on them so that our ballistics expert was able to prove that they were fired by this gun... The President - he was hit by the first and third. The second shot hit the Governor. The third shot is a complete bullet and that rolled out of the President's head. It tore a large part of the President's head off and, in trying to massage his heart at the
hospital on the way to the hospital, they apparently loosened that and it fell off onto the stretcher. And we recovered that... And we have the gun here also.

Lyndon Johnson: Were they aiming at the President?

J. Edgar Hoover: They were aiming directly at the President. There is no question about that. This telescopic lens, which I've looked through - it brings a person as close to you as if they were sitting right beside you.

 

(14) The Schweiker-Hart Congressional Report (1976)

On December 3, 1963, the UPI wire carried a story ... under the following lead: "An exhaustive FBI report now nearly ready for the White House will indicate that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone and unaided assassin of President Kennedy, Government sources said today." When he was informed of these news articles. Director Hoover wrote, "I thought no one knew this outside the FBI." According to (Assistant FBI Director) William Sullivan, Hoover himself ordered the report "leaked" to the press, in an attempt to "blunt the drive for an independent investigation of the assassination."

 

(15) Letter published in the New York Times (1970)

If there had been a Mr. Hoover in the first half of the first century, A.D., can you imagine what he would have put into his files about a certain trouble-maker from Nazareth, his moral attitudes and the people he consorted with.

 

(16) Dr. Benjamin Spock on hearing of Edgar Hoover's death on 2nd May, 1972.

It was a relief to have this man silenced who had no understanding of the underlying philosophy of our government or of our Bill of Rights, a man who had such enormous power, and used it to harass individuals with whom he disagreed politically and who had done so much as anyone to intimidate millions of Americans out of their right to hear and judge for themselves all political opinions.

 

(17) Attorney General Laurence Silberman, after discovering Edgar Hoover's secret files in 1974.

J. Edgar Hoover was like a sewer that collected dirt. I now believe he was the worst public servant in our history.