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The FBI file on the elder Kennedy suggests a man taking out political insurance. At sixty-seven, he was a figure of immense power but dubious history. Biographers agree that, like Lewis Rosenstiel’s fortune, a great part of the Kennedy fortune derived from Prohibition bootlegging in league with organized crime. Frank Costello liked to say he had ‘helped Joe Kennedy get rich,’ that they had been partners.

Kennedy’s years as Ambassador to London, at the start of World War II, had sealed his personal political fate. He thought the Germans were the right leaders for Europe, opposed America’s entering the war and believed Hitler was bluffing. He said he would cheerfully ‘sell Poland down the river,’ and that influential American Jews threatened the peace of the world. Learning that Kennedy was also scheming against him politically, President Roosevelt summoned him home, persuaded him not to withdraw his support during the 1940 election, then fired him.

Roosevelt thought Kennedy a ‘thief,’ ‘one of the most evil, disgusting men I have ever known.’ Harry Truman said he was ‘as big a crook as we’ve got anywhere in this country.’ Kennedy and Edgar, however, had an enduring relationship.

They had met, some say, as long ago as the twenties, when Kennedy was financing movies in Hollywood. He introduced Edgar to a clutch of movie stars – decorative females who looked good at his side and belied the rumors about his homosexuality. A quarter of a century later, Edgar and Clyde had become occasional guests at the Kennedy winter retreat in Florida. When there were first discussions about setting up a J. Edgar Hoover Foundation, Kennedy promised a large contribution. He once offered Edgar a princely salary to join the Kennedy organization as ‘security chief.’

From 1943, for his part, Kennedy was a Special Service contact for the FBI, complete with Bureau symbol and running file, ready to use his influence in industry and the diplomatic world ‘for any advantage the Bureau might desire.’ Years later, knowing Edgar’s jealousy of the CIA, he leaked to Edgar what he learned as a member of Eisenhower’s board on Foreign Intelligence.

From 1951 the FBI maintained a Resident Agency, staffed by four agents, at Hyannis Port. Since it had no other discernible purpose, unkind observers said it existed ‘solely to appease and serve the Kennedys.’ Bureau agents buttered up ‘the Ambassador,’ extended courtesies to the family – and kept Edgar briefed on what its members were doing.

Edgar’s career seemed assured as the fifties drew to a close. He was already laden with honors, and President Eisenhower doled out a new one, the President’s Award for Distinguished Civilian Service. Officials in Indiana declared a J. Edgar Hoover Day in 1959, and another was planned for Illinois.

Above all, Edgar remained close to the seat of power and to the man he hoped would be the next president. As politicians geared up for the 1960 election, Edgar was seen a good deal with his protégé of the McCarthy era, Vice President Richard Nixon. It was, rather, a matter of Nixon making sure he was seen with Edgar. They went to the races together and, when Edgar celebrated his thirty-fifth year as Director, Nixon came to his office to pay obeisance.

Nixon was the clear Republican favorite, but the Party’s popularity was at its lowest ebb in twenty years. Edgar, like many others, covered his bets. He ordered agents to supply Nixon with research material for his speeches and kept a weather eye on the Democrats.

The Democrats were juggling Joseph Kennedy’s son John, now forty-two, the senator from Massachusetts; veteran contender Adlai Stevenson; Senator Hubert Humphrey; and Lyndon Johnson. For all his father’s blandishments, John Kennedy was not the candidate Edgar preferred. If there was to be a Democrat in office, he favored Johnson.

Edgar had known Johnson since the thirties, when he had first come to Washington, and they had been close neighbors since the forties. Edgar sometimes visited the Johnsons