Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [247]
Chapter 19
1. Former agent Woods was named as having been used by Hoover, in retirement, to offer material on Martin Luther King’s sex life to the press. He denied it in a 1990 interview and said he could not remember ever having filed a report on a senator’s sex activity.
2. Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas resigned in 1969 after disclosures that he was taking money from a convicted criminal whose appeal was pending. In 1965, responding to pressure from President Johnson, Hoover had smoothed the way for Fortas’ Senate confirmation. In 1966, he and the FBI improperly exchanged information on a case then pending before the Court. (Cloak and Gavel, by Alexander Charns, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1992, pp. 53–57, et al.)
3. There is indeed a mass of FBI material on Smathers, including allegations about his sex life. (Smathers FBI docs., FOIPA Release 293, 982/190–47115, Jul. 19, 1991.)
Chapter 20
1. During the furor, the file shows, Hoover engaged in a complex debate with Deputy Attorney General Kleindienst over precisely how to answer a press inquiry into whether or not the FBI had ever ‘instituted’ electronic surveillance of a member of Congress. Hoover tried to avoid answering at all, then settled for saying the FBI had ‘never installed’ a bugging device against a politician. According to a surveillance expert who then worked for the government, the FBI was at the time using a new, secret system, one that did not require a bug as such but functioned thanks to something normally present in all homes and offices. The system is still secret. (H to T, Apr. 13, 1971, TSF 8.)
2. Dowdy was being investigated for bribery and was eventually jailed.
3. Illicit FBI tapping was reportedly not restricted to members of Congress. Robert Amory, a CIA Deputy Director in the fifties, said he saw evidence that the Bureau tapped his office phone. Secretary of State Dean Rusk suspected the FBI of bugging him. And, according to former Agent Norman Ollestad, Hoover sometimes bugged his own colleagues. (WP, Feb. 7, 1971, As I Saw It, by Dean Rusk, NY, Norton, 1990, pp. 197, 559, Waging Peace and War, by Thomas Schoenbaum, NY, Simon & Schuster, 1988, p. 280, Inside the FBI, by Norman Ollestad, NY, Lyle Stuart, 1967, pp. 68, 105.)
4. Gallagher insisted that the bonds in the IRS case had belonged to the Democratic Party and brought him no profit. He believed the charges were a natural sequel to the Life magazine episode.
5. Zicarelli was overheard in 1964 and 1965 – but not in 1960 – talking with a crony about asking for Gallagher’s help with a deportation case. The mobsters also mentioned other public officials in hopeful terms – three judges, a U.S. Senator and a Republican Congresswoman. (Newark Star-Ledger, NYT, Jun. 11, 1969.)
6. As the Watergate tapes show, Smith’s close relations with the FBI were later discussed with President Nixon in the Oval Office. (Transcript, Feb. 16, 1973, p. 7, WHT.)
Chapter 22
1. Lombardozzi died in 1992. His comments were obtained through an intermediary, with the help of London attorney William Pepper, in 1990.
2. In 1948, when Hoover received a Justice Department request for information on the racketeer Longy Zwillman, he said FBI records reflected ‘no investigation’ on the man. This circumlocution concealed the fact that Bureau files contained 600 pages on the mobster. (Gangster, by Mark Stuart, London, Star, 1987, p. 141.)
3. A review of Anslinger’s FBI file suggests that – contrary to the mythology – he and Hoover were friendly toward each other. (FBI 72–56284.)
4. McClanahan went to jail for thirteen months, following a trial featuring mob witnesses from Chicago to Las Vegas.
5. In 1949, when members of the Licavoli mob family asked Davidson how they could thank him for having helped a relative, he suggested they donate $5,000 to a J. Edgar Hoover foundation then being set up to combat juvenile delinquency – no connection with the foundation of that