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‘I was the prison librarian,’ Gallagher recalled in 1991, ‘and Krogh would come in with his two Bibles. He was very religious, a Christian Scientist. He’d sit writing letters at the big table in the library, and sometimes we’d talk. One night, when I was about to close the place and there were only the two of us there, we talked about Hoover.

‘I said I thought the circumstances of Hoover’s death were a bit strange. Because of my war with Hoover, I’d followed everything about him closely. I said to Krogh, “Hoover knew everything that was going on in Washington. He must surely have known about the Plumbers and everything. Do you think Hoover was blackmailing the President?” And then I said, and it surprises me now, “Did you guys knock Hoover off? You had the troops to do it, and the reason …”’

‘It took several seconds for it to sink in. Then Krogh literally jumped out of his chair. And in a highly charged voice he sort of screamed, “We didn’t knock off Hoover. He knocked himself off.” And I said, “My God, that explains a lot about the bastard’s death coming the way it did.” And with that Krogh jumped up, gathered his papers and his Bibles and rushed out of the library. We never had another conversation the rest of the time we were in Allenwood.’

Interviewed in 1991, Krogh recalled knowing Gallagher in the prison. Told what Gallagher had said of their discussion about Edgar’s death, he replied, ‘I might have had a conversation like that, but it was a long time ago. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. I don’t remember it.’ Gallagher, for his part, signed an affidavit swearing to the truth of his account.

There is no way, now, to know why Nixon’s adviser should have said Edgar committed suicide – nor why the subject upset him so much. If evidence along those lines was known to the White House, it has vanished along with so many other mysteries of the Watergate period. Nor is it possible, today, to make a judgment on the allegation that Watergate investigators were unable to track further – that there were break-ins at Edgar’s home before he died. The most troubling claim, that the second break-in involved planting a poison chemical designed to cause death by simulated heart attack, cannot be further assessed outside the judicial system.

After he heard the news of Edgar’s death, Clyde Tolson made two telephone calls. The first was to Helen Gandy, the secretary who had served the Director since 1919. The second was to the office of the Attorney General, and from there the word passed to H. R. Haldeman at the White House. He in turn informed the President – at 9:15 A.M., according to his handwritten notes.

As Haldeman recalled it, the news ‘wasn’t a great surprise’ to Nixon. He said nothing that reflected his reported exchange with Edgar on the phone the previous night. He wrote in his diary, or so we are told in his memoirs:

Hoover … died at the right time; fortunately, he died in office. It would have killed him had he been forced out of office or had he resigned even voluntarily. I remember the last conversation I had with him about two weeks ago when I called him and mentioned the fine job the Bureau had done on the hijacking cases …

Ehrlichman and Haldeman did not recall any reaction by the President to Edgar’s death, aside from his concern for the files. John Mitchell, who had left the post of Attorney General in order to run Nixon’s reelection campaign, had the same worry. His orders that morning, Haldeman noted at the time, were to hunt down ‘the skeletons.’ It was decided not to announce Edgar’s death publicly until eleven o’clock.

Gordon Liddy, Nixon’s dirty-tricks specialist, thought it was vital to find the skeletons. As an FBI veteran, he had once worked with some of Edgar’s most sensitive political files. ‘I called the White House at once,’ Liddy recalled. ‘I said, “You’ve got to get those files. They are a source of enormous power. You don’t have much time. There’s going to be a race on. Get those files.”’

Liddy said he thought he spoke to Ehrlichman, who could