Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [44]
At first it seemed Clyde would be disappointed – the Bureau had no vacancies. Then, early the next year, the Secretary of War sent a personal recommendation. Edgar reviewed the application form, which bore Clyde’s photograph. It was his first glimpse of an exceptionally handsome young man, an open face above a fashionable wing collar.
Edgar read glowing references from a succession of distinguished men, government Secretaries, the Judge Advocate General, a Missouri newspaper owner and a Republican National Committeeman. Here was a fellow who, very like Edgar, had been President of his sophomore class, a member of the University Senate and a keen participant in fraternity life. Clyde was so personable that he had been taken along on an official War Department trip to the Panama Canal. He was reportedly ‘not at all dissipated,’ and had ‘shown no particular interest in women.’
Edgar hired Clyde, then favored him as no other Bureau recruit would ever be favored – promoting him from rookie agent to Assistant Director in less than three years. Clyde would never have any day-to-day experience in the field. Instead, after just four months in Boston, Edgar brought him back to Washington, ‘because of an emergency.’ At headquarters, Clyde filed stern reports on overtime rules, revealing himself to be a martinet after Edgar’s own heart. Then, after a token fortnight as Agent in Charge in Buffalo, New York, he was promoted to Inspector and brought back to the capital for good.
A year later, Clyde had become one of only two Assistant Directors in charge of administration. And within weeks of that appointment, Edgar was insisting that Clyde be included on White House invitation lists.
This was blatant favoritism. The rapidity of the young man’s rise may have no parallel in any government agency. Clyde was where he was because Edgar saw in him exactly what he needed – a man who could be both an absolutely trustworthy lieutenant and a compatible companion.
Edgar was highly visible, famous for chattering on like a machine gun. Clyde, colleagues noted, was a ‘Sphinx,’ ‘a shadow,’ a man so gray he was ‘invisible if he stood against a gray wall.’ He ‘looked worried even when he felt good’ and made colleagues uneasy with his long silences.
Many agents have expressed a grudging affection for Edgar, the ‘Old Man.’ No one seemed to have a soft spot for Clyde. ‘Tolson,’ said Jim Doyle, a former organized crime specialist, ‘was a No. 1 class asshole. A conniver.’
Clyde was ‘the beady eye,’ a man of ice who took delight in punishing or firing subordinates. A Bureau black joke had him telling Edgar, ‘Gee, I’m depressed. I think I’ll go home for the day and go to bed.’ ‘Clyde, don’t do that,’ came the apocryphal reply. ‘Just look down the list, pick out somebody and fire him. You’ll feel a lot better.’ Tolson, the story goes, beamed and asked hopefully, ‘With prejudice?’
Even those closest to the Director, like Edgar’s secretary, were wary of Clyde. ‘Helen Gandy and Tolson,’ recalled Assistant Director Cartha ‘Deke’ DeLoach, ‘circled around each other like cats. They both had enormous influence on Mr Hoover, and both were scared to death of him. Tolson was smarter than Mr Hoover – he had a razor-sharp mind. His great failing was that he slavishly followed Mr Hoover’s every dictate.’
‘My alter ego is Clyde Tolson,’ Edgar liked to say. ‘He can read my mind.’ Perhaps, but there was one thing Edgar could not relinquish, even to Clyde – total control. Clyde received cantankerous memos from the Director just like everyone else. If there was a case of athlete’s foot in the Bureau gym, it was Clyde who took the flak. If the clock in Edgar’s car was slow, it was Clyde who had to explain why. Ten years into his service, Clyde was still getting a slap on the wrist for leaving documents in his clothes closet at the Bureau.
In Clyde’s eyes, though, Edgar could do no wrong. ‘This is what the Boss wants,’ he would