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Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [245]

By Root 980 0
Pepper, 1988, 1990.)

10. According to Japanese sources, the Taranto precedent was a key factor in planning Pearl Harbor. By August 1941, when Popov arrived in the U.S. with his warning, Japanese pilots were training hard – in the words of a surviving pilot – ‘for torpedo bombing runs on an enclosed harbor.’ (And I Was There, by Edwin Layton, with Roger Pineau and John Costello, NY, Morrow, 1985, p. 72, int. Hirata Matsumura, International Herald Tribune, Dec. 7, 1991.)

Chapter 13

1. There were football (as opposed to baseball) teams thus named in 1941.

2. These arrests were quite separate from the later internment of some 111,000 Japanese Americans and resident aliens, which Hoover rightly opposed as ‘based primarily on public hysteria and political pressure.’ As late as 1989, a special law was passed to ensure that surviving internees were paid compensation. (NYT, Jun. 30, 1985, WP, Oct. 27, and NYT, Nov. 9, 1989.)

3. Popov and Hoover were to clash again. In 1946, in a signed article in Reader’s Digest, Hoover told a distorted version of the original Popov contact, implying his loyalties were to Nazi Germany and taking credit for the discovery of the microdot system. Confronted by a furious Popov, Hoover agreed changes would be made in future editions of the article. The FBI file records Popov’s visit to HQ that year, but suggests he met only with aides. He insisted he met with Hoover himself. (Reader’s Digest, Apr. 1946, Spy Counterspy, by Dusko Popov, St Albans (UK), Panther, 1976, pp. 176ff, Popov to H, Sept. 6, H to Popov, Sept. 11, Ladd to H, Sept. 11, 1946, unsigned memo, Aug. 16, SAC to Director, Aug. 31, Kelley to Dunn, Oct. 1, 1973, FBI 65–36994, Popov to Iverson, Oct. 10, 1973, Popov Papers.)

4. The intimate nature of Hoover’s relations with the officials Ketchum named makes it plausible that he dined with them regularly, as described. In light of everything else now known about Hoover’s Machiavellian activity over Pearl Harbor, Ketchum’s account cannot be dismissed. (Ints. Betty Rowell, Mrs Edward Tindall, Harold Jinks, Betty Keenan, Mrs Ernest Stevenson and Robert Donihi, 1990, Joseph Keenan to H, Sept 30, 1947, Keenan Papers, Harvard Law School Library, but see P, p. 544n59.)

5. For his World War II service, William Stephenson became the first non-American to receive the Medal for Merit. He also received a British knighthood, as did William Donovan and, later, Hoover. Had he been British, Hoover would have been entitled to style himself Sir J. Edgar Hoover. Less than impressed, probably because of his poor wartime relations with the British, Hoover soon had the British honor deleted from the official list of his awards. (Intrepid’s Last Case, by William Stevenson, NY, Ballantine, 1984, p. 172, A Man Called Intrepid, by William Stevenson, London, Macmillan, 1976, p. 461, Washington Times Herald, Mar. 8, 1946, London Daily Telegraph and Times, Oct. 18, Business Week, Nov. 11, entry HSF 5, Time, Dec. 22, 1947.)

Chapter 14

1. For coverage of Hoover’s role in the Welles affair, see Chapter 9.

Chapter 15

1. Suspicion had first been aroused by a news story on February 9, 1945, suggesting that Roosevelt’s plans for intelligence, made with Donovan at his elbow, would lead to a ‘police state.’ The story was based on a top-secret Donovan memo that had gone only to a handful of officials, including Hoover. The Chicago Tribune correspondent who obtained it, Walter Trohan, has repeatedly denied Hoover was his source and said Roosevelt aide Steve Early gave him the lead. Yet Early was away from Washington for three weeks before the story broke and would hardly have leaked information certain to embarrass his boss. Trohan was at this time becoming close to Hoover – they would eventually become so pally that they addressed each other in jest as ‘Comrade.’ General Donovan, meanwhile, was said to have marked the various copies of the memo in question with tiny textual differences – and it was those inserted in Hoover’s copy that reportedly turned up in the Trohan story. (Donovan and the CIA, by Thomas Troy, Frederick,

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