Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [47]
‘We did a little gambling, jai alai, horseracing, shuffleboard,’ Hottel recalled. ‘At the Flamingo Hotel, in Miami, they had a court with sides on it, and you could go up there and sunbathe all you wanted in the nude. Hoover liked the sun, but Tolson didn’t like it too much.’ On the record, Hottel limited himself to saying that Edgar and Clyde kept their distance from women. ‘They didn’t date them. They might take them out to dinner, but they didn’t date them – you know …’
Hottel had more to say on the subject in the forties when, as Agent in Charge of the Washington field office, he became a problem drinker. Former police Inspector Joseph Shimon, whose career in law enforcement in Washington spanned three decades, recalls that time.
‘When Hottel went on the drunk,’ said Shimon, ‘he’d go into different bars and start telling stories about the sex parties at Hoover’s house, you know, with the boys. To give you an idea of the influence Hoover had, when Hottel’s wife would call in and say, “He’s on a drunk,” we would get an order over the Teletype to the police department, to cover the bars and pick him up right away and send him over to the FBI. That was to keep him from talking. You know, that’s tremendous power. That happened so many times …’
Edgar did not fire Hottel. Perhaps, after so many years of intimacy, he simply knew too much. ‘He wasn’t fabricating,’ said Shimon. ‘He had attended some of the parties, let’s put it that way. According to him, some of the top boys who were holding the top jobs at the FBI were participating. They were kind of promoted over other people. I guess sometimes, in order to be promoted, you had to be one of the boys …’
A further serious allegation came from Jimmy G. C. Corcoran, who had become Edgar’s trusted associate while working as an FBI Inspector in the twenties.
‘After he left the Bureau,’ said Shimon, ‘Jimmy became very powerful politically. During World War II he was a lobbyist, and he was retained by a business group to get congressional help for them to open up a factory – for a $75,000 fee. That was illegal during the war, and we got a tip-off from the Attorney General’s office that the FBI were going to set Jimmy up when he went to pick up his $75,000 at the Mayflower Hotel.
‘Jimmy was really mad. He went to Harvey’s Restaurant and sent word to Hoover that Jimmy Corcoran wanted him to come out right now or he was going to create a scene.
‘Hoover came out in the end, and said, “What’s the matter, Jimmy?” and Jimmy called him a lot of dirty words and said, “What d’you mean trying to set me up?” Hoover said, “Gee, Jimmy, I didn’t know it was you.” And Jimmy said, “For Chrissake, how many J. G. C. Corcorans do you know?… This is what I get for doing you a favor, you dirty S.O.B …” And the outcome was that Jimmy went and collected his $75,000. And he wasn’t arrested.’
After the incident Corcoran confided to Shimon, and to Washington lobbyist Henry Grunewald, what the ‘favor’ had been. While he was at the Bureau, Corcoran said, Edgar used him to deal with a ‘problem.’ He said Edgar had been arrested in the late twenties in New Orleans, on sex charges involving a young man. Corcoran, who had by then left the FBI and had powerful contacts in Louisiana, said he had intervened to prevent a prosecution.
Corcoran was to die in a mysterious plane crash in 1956 near Spanish Cay, a Caribbean island owned by a close associate of Edgar’s, oil millionaire Clint Murchison. Most of the documents in his FBI file have since been destroyed. While Corcoran’s account may never be proven, it does not stand alone. Joe Pasternak, the veteran film producer remembered for his relaunch of Marlene Dietrich in the late thirties, told of another close call. He knew Edgar, and claimed personal knowledge of a sordid episode that occurred in