Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [37]
On the promise of a ‘new deal’ for the American people, Franklin Roosevelt won the presidency by a landslide. In early 1933, as the inauguration approached, word spread that his Attorney General would be Thomas Walsh, a Senator who identified Edgar with both the Red Raids and later abuses. He said he intended a massive reorganization at the Justice Department, with ‘almost completely new personnel.’
Edgar rushed to ward off the danger. Newly elected politicians, arriving at Washington’s Union Station, were surprised to find themselves greeted by smiling agents from the Bureau of Investigation. Mr Hoover, the agents let it be known, was ready to help in any way possible, even by locating suitable accommodation, as a gesture of his personal goodwill.
In the event, Edgar received an unexpected reprieve. Walsh died of an apparent heart attack aboard the train bearing him to Washington. Talk of firing Edgar continued, however, and his Republican friends rallied around. Herbert Hoover, the outgoing president, interceded at the last possible moment, and in extraordinary circumstances.
On the day of Roosevelt’s inauguration every bank in the nation closed its doors – the final economic humiliation for the defeated administration. It was a day of national crisis. Yet, as Hoover cruised down Pennsylvania Avenue in his limousine next to the new president, he found time to put in a word for Edgar. According to a Secret Serviceman who overheard the exchange – and as confirmed years later by Herbert Hoover himself – he said he hoped there would be no change at the top in the Bureau. Edgar, he said, had an ‘excellent record.’ Roosevelt said he would look into the matter.
In fact the new president had serious doubts about Edgar, and delayed his decision for months. Edgar was made to feel distinctly uneasy. Suddenly, even his expense account was being questioned. Why had he traveled first-class on a train to New York? Had Edgar used a hotel bedroom in Manhattan for official or personal purposes? The White House received an allegation that Edgar was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and a congressional ally, John McCormack, hurried to rebut it.
Senator Kenneth McKellar, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, begged the new Attorney General, Homer Cummings, to dump Edgar. So did several other members of Congress. McKellar’s office had been ransacked during the last months of the Hoover presidency, and he held the Bureau responsible.
Then fate intervened again – this time with the death of Wallace Foster, a former Justice Department official Cummings was considering for Edgar’s job. Edgar, meanwhile, was supplying the Attorney General with derogatory material on a key rival for the directorship, New York private investigator Val O’Farrell.
The man who championed O’Farrell for the job, Postmaster General James Farley, was allegedly surveilled by Edgar for months to come. ‘I think he got an obsession that Farley was a sort of walking symbol of his chances to keep or lose his post,’ a former agent recalled. ‘Hoover threw the works at him. A tap was put on Farley’s office phones. Others were put on his homes in Washington and New York …’2
After months of intrigue, it was Roosevelt himself who decided whether Edgar was to keep his job. One of the men he listened to, significantly enough, was Francis Garvan, Edgar’s superior in the days of the Red Raids. ‘Do not let them lose you that boy Hoover,’ Garvan wrote the President. ‘Each day that you have relations with him or his Bureau you will find him more necessary to your comfort and assurance.’ That was to prove only too true, if not in the complimentary sense Garvan intended.
The deciding vote probably came from Attorney General Cummings, who wanted Edgar to stay on. Roosevelt agreed and on July 29, 1933, the appointment was announced. A great liberal President had taken the first