Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [34]
A second black man, former truck driver James Crawford, joined the retinue in 1934 as head chauffeur and handyman. He would arrive at Edgar’s house at 7 A.M., having first driven the Director’s personal car to headquarters to pick up the official limousine, so that no one could claim an official car was being used on private time. Crawford’s working day involved driving Edgar to the office, waiting on standby all day, then working until midnight if his boss had a function in the evening. He was to serve Edgar for thirty-eight years, continuing to work as domestic and gardener after ill health forced him to retire from the Bureau.
Two other blacks, Jesse Strider in Los Angeles and Leo McClairen in Miami, were to chauffeur Edgar during his vacations. Once he became established he used Pierce-Arrow and Cadillac armored limousines, custom-built by Hess and Eisenhardt. Except for the President, he was the only federal official to have the use of such vehicles, apparently because of regular threats against his life. The President, however, had only one such car, which was moved around the country as required. Edgar had three (they would cost $30,000 each by the end of his career) at his disposal in Washington, California and Florida – and at one point a fourth in New York City. On occasion, the cars were moved around by military transport aircraft.
Washington folklore had it that Edgar’s drivers had to keep the car engine running when they waited for him, even if it meant waiting for hours, so that he was never delayed for an instant. Harold Tyler, an Assistant Attorney General during the Eisenhower administration, discovered this story was true. ‘Hoover came to our house one night,’ he recalled. ‘I thought he’d only stay a short while, but he stayed on and on. I went out for a moment to check on booze or something and I found his driver standing there. He looked very embarrassed and said “I’ve run out of gas.” He’d just been afraid to switch off the engine. Hoover just felt he could get away with these things …’
One morning in 1946, on the way to work, Edgar was to hand Crawford an official letter – notification that suddenly, after thirteen years, he was being promoted to the rank of Special Agent. Noisette was promoted, too, but both went back to their servants’ duties once they had attended the agents’ training program. They were not real agents, just players in one of Edgar’s propaganda games. Leo McClairen, who did become a star agent on the Miami Fugitive Squad, was an exception. He resumed his chauffeur role, however, whenever Edgar visited Miami.
The elevation of a few blacks was merely a plot to placate the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which had publicly accused the FBI of having a ‘lily-white’ hiring policy. The Bureau remained a white preserve until the sixties. Jack Levine, the Jewish agent who went through his training in 1961, was appalled to hear instructors refer openly to blacks as ‘niggers.’ One told recruits that the NAACP was a Communist front. A first-aid lecturer said that, while the most effective resuscitation method was mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, an alternative system could be used if the victim was black.
Attorney General Robert Kennedy made a sport of nagging Edgar about the need to hire more blacks. He raised the subject again and again, often summoning Edgar back as he was leaving the room to ask, as if it were an afterthought, ‘Oh, by the way, Edgar, how many blacks have you hired this month?’ The Bureau’s whites-only policy was under serious pressure for the first time.
A handful of blacks suddenly found themselves being asked to join the FBI. Aubrey Lewis, a former Notre Dame football star turned coach, found himself seated next to a high-ranking Bureau official at a Hall of Fame dinner attended by President Kennedy. He was recruited soon after, and in June 1962 – along with former Bureau clerk James Barrow – became one