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DEAN: Total bullshit. The, uh, person who could, would destroy Hoover’s image is going to be this man Bill Sullivan … Also, it’s going to tarnish quite severely some of the FBI and a former president.

NIXON: Fine …

Policemen from across the country lined the route to Congressional Cemetery, where Edgar’s parents lay buried. Clyde had insisted that his friend’s wish was to be buried there rather than at Arlington, as Nixon suggested. The cortege was now reduced to ten limousines, carrying Clyde, Congressman John Rooney, a few colleagues and the handful of relatives, nephews and nieces and their children.

The cemetery, one of Washington’s oldest, was somewhat neglected in those days – an unlikely final destination for a man of Edgar’s stature. The limousines inched their way between the narrow gateposts, and the mourners gathered for the final ceremony. Clyde was pushed to the site in a wheelchair. ‘I was shocked,’ said Edgar’s nephew Fred Robinette. ‘It looked like he didn’t know where he was. He had this vacant stare.’

In the absence of a widow, it was Clyde who received the flag from the coffin. Then it was over. Minutes after the mourners had left, neighborhood children ran to pilfer the flowers from the grave.

Clyde now became a virtual recluse. He refused to accept a condolence call from Acting FBI Director Gray, and he never set foot in the office again. His resignation letter, pleading ill health, was composed by another Bureau official, its signature forged by a secretary. Clyde moved into Edgar’s house and remained there for the rest of his life.

He received the bulk of Edgar’s fortune, officially valued at half a million dollars – $2.3 million at today’s rates – although Justice Department investigators would later suspect that his true wealth was hidden by secret investment accounts. Clyde soon began selling off the myriad collectibles his friend had gathered over the years. They went under the hammer at Sloan’s Auction Gallery, with the vendor’s name concealed by the code name ‘JET’ – for ‘J. Edgar’ and ‘Tolson.’

In his will, Edgar had entrusted the welfare of his two cairn terriers to Clyde. Clyde, however, soon had the dogs put down. He sank into a listless existence, whiling away his days munching candy – a longtime addiction – and watching television.

In the time that remained to him, Clyde would be stirred to action only once, in 1973, when William Sullivan spoke out about the transfer of wiretap records to the Nixon White House. The administration, Sullivan said, had feared Edgar would resort to blackmail to hold on to his job – not least because he ‘had been of unsound mind for the past few years.’

This moved Clyde to write a letter of protest to The Washington Post, dismissing Sullivan as ‘a disgruntled former employee.’ A month or so later, however, when Watergate investigators interviewed Clyde, they doubted his own ‘mental competency.’

Clyde had become a pathetically lonely figure, visited mainly by thoughtful neighbors. One, Betty Nelson, came in to give him chocolate bars and a kiss on Valentine’s Day 1975. He was taken to the hospital in early April and died there of heart failure a few days later.

A new FBI Director, Clarence Kelley, would say Clyde’s death left ‘a great void in the law enforcement field.’ The truth was that he was virtually forgotten. In his final three years, reportedly, his only excursions had been to visit Edgar’s grave at Congressional Cemetery. Now Clyde lay buried there, too, about ten yards from the man he loved. According to cemetery officials, each man had asked to be buried near the other.

President Nixon had responded cynically on the morning of Edgar’s death as he wondered how to replace him. His first choice had been Clyde, not in spite of but because of the fact that he was a virtual invalid. ‘Tolson’s incapacity,’ the President told H. R. Haldeman – a thought duly minuted for the record – ‘may be an advantage.’ Nixon wanted the control of the FBI Edgar had denied him, and a sick man seemed just the candidate.

‘We have not used the power in the first