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It is unlikely that at this stage, even with his resources, Edgar fully comprehended the complexities of the Kennedy relationship with organized crime. He simply did what he knew best – collected dirt, let the brothers know he had it and obstructed Robert Kennedy in ways that amounted to insubordination.

A Justice Department official, dispatched to the FBI’s Chicago office to improve liaison, arrived to find the Agent in Charge had left town. Knowing Kennedy’s man was on the way, Edgar had deliberately ordered him to Des Moines, Iowa. At headquarters he deliberately snubbed Kennedy himself. ‘The entire time Bob was Attorney General,’ said Joe Dolan, ‘he had a Tuesday and Thursday lunch in his office with the Assistant Attorneys, myself and others invited, including Hoover. Hoover came to a couple of the lunches the first month, and after that he was a no-show.’

If Robert visited a field office, Edgar stayed away. When he did travel himself, there was a galling reminder that things had changed. Once there had been a picture of Edgar on the wall of every office, a lone Big Brother presence. Now it was flanked by one of President Kennedy, distributed across the country on the instructions of his brother.

This was a war of attrition. Yet Edgar and the brothers Kennedy continued to act out, as one writer put it, ‘an Oriental pageant of formal respect.’ Perhaps the Kennedys, used to years of inane courtesies between Edgar and their father, half-hoped to coexist with Edgar by stroking his ego, remembering his anniversaries and praising him in public. They would humor the old man, even if they thought him half-crazy. Edgar, an old hand at the game, sent this handwritten note to Robert on June 9, 1961:

Dear Bob,

… Your confidence and support mean a great deal to me, and I sincerely trust I shall always merit them.

Sincerely,

Edgar

A note from the President, December 5, 1961, when Edgar received his latest award:

Dear Mr Hoover,

The Mutual of Omaha Criss Award is further proof of the high esteem in which all America holds your record of untiring effort in the field of federal law enforcement … I am proud to add my congratulations to you and to express again my gratitude for your outstanding contributions to the nation.

Sincerely,

John F. Kennedy

Edgar, who replied that he was ‘touched,’ had just received a tip-off that the President was planning to fire him. Agents were deployed in an intense investigation, as assiduous and as painstaking as that into any crime. Yet a few days later ‘Edgar’ was thanking ‘Bob’ for the invitation to his Christmas party, and making his excuses.

The Kennedys had a less than festive Christmas in 1961. On December 19, on the golf course at Palm Beach, the President’s father suffered a debilitating stroke. His right side and face were paralyzed, and though he lived on for eight years he would never speak intelligibly again. A few months earlier, when the press had carried stories of quarreling between John and Robert and Edgar, Joseph had been at hand to calm things down. From now on, though Edgar was to visit him during his recuperation, his role as peacemaker was over.

Nor would Joseph be there, henceforth, to intervene in his sons’ tangled relations with the Mafia. From now on, the boys were on their own.

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‘Aside from the moral issues, the morass of potential blackmail in which the Attorney General found himself must have appalled him … How could the CIA and John Kennedy have been so stupid?… The potential for blackmail extended beyond Giancana. J. Edgar Hoover would also be able to hold these stories over John and Robert Kennedy as long as they lived.’

Harris Wofford, former Kennedy aide, 1980

On January 6, 1962, the columnist Drew Pearson made a daring prediction: ‘J. Edgar Hoover,’ he said, ‘doesn’t like taking a back seat, as he calls it, to a young kid like Bobby … and he’ll be eased out if there is not too much of a furor.’

It was only a brief comment in a radio broadcast, but what Pearson said made ripples in Washington.