Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [144]
Edgar ordered all the circulated copies to be retrieved within hours of delivery. No one outside the Bureau ever read the report, which Edgar referred to thereafter as ‘baloney.’>2
In 1959, meanwhile, Edgar made public speeches saying he hoped ‘to keep such pressure on hoodlums and racketeers that they can’t light or remain anywhere.’ In September, in Chicago, an FBI surveillance microphone hit the jackpot. Sam Giancana was overheard referring repeatedly to ‘the Commission,’ the cabal that ruled organized crime nationwide. He even ran through the names of its members, ticking them off one by one.
Agents regarded this as a major breakthrough, but it did not move Edgar to change his stance. Three years later he would still be insisting that ‘no single individual or coalition of racketeers dominates organized crime across the nation.’
By late 1959, agents working on the new Top Hoodlum Program realized something was badly wrong. Agent William Turner, on an inspection visit to the Bureau’s Los Angeles office, concluded the program was ‘dead in the water.’ In Chicago, the specialist staff was cut from ten agents to five. ‘Mr Hoover seemed to lose interest,’ recalled Chicago’s Bill Roemer. ‘Organized crime was no longer his top priority.’
In New York, agent Anthony Villano was told by his superior that recent operations against the Mafia were probably ‘only a temporary operation designed to satisfy criticism and would be disbanded after the heat died down.’ In New York, where 400 agents were working on Communism that year, just four were assigned to organized crime.
Edgar’s much-trumpeted onslaught on the mob had turned out to be a phony war. It would become real enough, however, just two years later. In Attorney General Robert Kennedy the mob chieftains – and Edgar – would meet real opposition at last.
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‘Hoover passed along gossip to the President he served, and that practice could raise questions in a President’s mind. What did Hoover know about him? In theoretical terms, that put Hoover in the position of a veiled blackmailer.’
Dean Rusk, former Secretary of State
In October 1955, Joseph Kennedy had returned from a foreign vacation to an America in turmoil. President Eisenhower had just survived a near-fatal heart attack, and many doubted whether he would be fit enough to run in 1956. Would the Democratic candidate be Adlai Stevenson? If so, would Kennedy’s thirty-eight-year-old son John be on the ticket for Vice President?
The Kennedy political machine was beginning to roll. The prize that had eluded the father was now on the horizon for the son. That fall day, however, Joseph Kennedy enthused about a very different possibility – that within twelve months America might elect President J. Edgar Hoover. At home in Hyannis Port, the family headquarters in Massachusetts, he dictated this letter:
Dear Edgar,
I think I have become too cynical in my old age, but the only two men I know in public life today for whose opinion I give one continental both happen to be named Hoover – one John Edgar and one Herbert – and I am proud to think that both of them hold me in some esteem … I listened to Walter Winchell mention your name as a candidate for President. If that should come to pass, it would be the most wonderful thing for the United States, and whether you were on a Republican or Democratic ticket, I would guarantee you the largest contribution that you would ever get from anybody and the hardest work by either a Democrat or Republican. I think the United States deserves you. I only hope it gets you.
My best to you always.
Sincerely,
Joe
The notion that Edgar might yet run for the White House was merely a flattering gesture by his old congressional allies. Yet Edgar framed Joe Kennedy’s letter and kept it on his office wall for the