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with congressional investigator Robert Fink, indicated that Sullivan was essentially truthful. His comments may sometimes have been self-serving, but the accusations leveled at Hoover are consistent with other information. His comments remain a unique high-level resource for any study of Hoover. Sullivan was shot dead in 1977 in an apparent hunting accident, shortly before a scheduled appearance before the House committee investigating the assassination of President Kennedy. (The Bureau, by William Sullivan, NY, Norton, 1979, transcript of int. by DES investigator Robert Fink, May 2, 1976, notes of Arthur Schlesinger int., July 26, 1976, ints. Ann Barniker, Charles Bates, Bill Brown, Fred Clancy, Mark Felt, Robert Fink, Richard Helms, Harold Leinbaugh, John McGrail, Robert Mardian, 1988, 1990, David Garrow notes of int. with Charles Brennan.)

Chapter 4

1. Rauh is best remembered as a cofounder of Americans for Democratic Action.

2. Hoover never registered to vote, according to the Washington, D.C., Board of Elections. D.C. residents could not vote at all until 1956, but from 1964 on could vote in presidential elections and for a nonvoting House delegate.

Chapter 5

1. Herbert Hoover was not related to J. Edgar Hoover.

2. While these innovations are generally credited to Hoover, his predecessor Bruce Bielaski insisted they were part of a program he drafted years earlier. (1958 int. of Bielaski, reported to author by Wm. Dufty, 1992.)

3. The best summation of Hoover’s complex file systems is in From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover, edited by Athan Theoharis, Chicago, Ivan Dee, 1991.

Chapter 6

1. Amos aside, it seems three other blacks may have worked as genuine agents. Even that is not certain; they served in New York and Chicago and may also have been used as chauffeurs when Hoover was in town.

2. This alleged surveillance of Farley is distinct from a later operation Roosevelt ordered for political reasons in 1940. In 1933, relations between Roosevelt and Farley were still cordial.

Chapter 7

1. A reader points out that, in Ireland, plainclothesmen of the old G. Division of the Dublin police were long known as GMen. Given that so many FBI agents were of Irish extraction, it seems possible that the appellation was originated not by criminals but within the FBI itself. (corr. Peter McDermott, 1993).

2. Dr Rubye Johnson, Associate Professor of Social Work at Tulane University, suggests that Hoover derived his notions about women and crime from the idea of women as intrinsically evil that circulated around 1900. The notion has long since been refuted, not least by FBI statistics. The ‘red hair’ thesis is ridiculous. (Int. Dr Rubye Johnson, 1992.)

3. It seems three agents fired: Charles Winstead, Clarence Hurt and perhaps Purvis. Winstead is generally credited with firing the shots that killed Dillinger. (FBI HQ 67-3900, et al.)

Chapter 8

1. The woman with the toy gun has been wrongly identified in picture captions as Cobina Wright. Interviews with Wright and Stuart established that this was an error. Stuart had original copies of the photographs, supplied to her by the Stork Club photographer. The pictures were taken at New Year’s 1936, not 1935, as cited elsewhere.

Chapter 9

1. Examples of similar behavior by homosexual officials include President Reagan’s adviser Terry Dolan and Rep. Robert Bauman. (WP, May 11, 1987, Advocate, Apr. 15, 1982, NYT, Oct. 4, 1980, Playboy, Aug. 1990.)

Chapter 10

1. The only serious attempt at independent reporting on Hoover between 1937 and the sixties was a New York Post series in the fall of 1959. Writer William Dufty and David Gelman, now a senior editor at Newsweek, remember the palpable fear they encountered and the countermeasures taken by Hoover. The series was denounced in Congress, and by the National Association of Manufacturers, before it had even been written. Hoover falsely told Joseph Eckhouse, a top Gimbels executive (and thus a vital Post advertiser) that Post editor James Wechsler’s wife had been fired from a previous post for being a Communist. Hoover also