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Edgar’s florist bill, Stutz recalled, was about $250 a month. ‘I never knew who the flowers were for,’ said Stutz, ‘whether they were favors for someone, I couldn’t tell.’ Sometimes Edgar sent Stutz on mysterious missions. ‘I was handed a key in an envelope, and I had to take the usual orchid and deliver it, and return the key when the limo came the next morning. The word was discretion, you know, “Mum’s the word” without exactly saying so. I was to go to a place, get in, put the orchid somewhere and take off. One time I was given a key to an apartment in the Wardman Park Hotel. It had dramatic decor, white furniture with a contrasting carpet. There was a sealed envelope with the flowers. I didn’t know if it was for a lady or a gentleman. I didn’t ask any questions …’

10

‘The FBI is a really great organization. Under J. Edgar Hoover its list of achievements is most impressive. The rub comes in the never-ending effort to fit the halo. Any angel can tell you this is a damnably hard job.’

James Lawrence Fly, former Chairman, Federal Communications Commission, 1956

In the summer of 1937, Edgar celebrated his twentieth anniversary at the Department of Justice. He was presented with FBI Badge No. 1, in gold, an engraved watch and a cowboy hat courtesy of Tom Mix. He and Clyde were photographed, dapper in cream summer suits, up to their waists in a sea of flowers.

The real cause for satisfaction, Edgar knew, was that he had not only survived to serve under Roosevelt, but was now flourishing. Better than that, he was tasting real political power for the first time. Once Roosevelt had grasped the public relations potential of Edgar as champion of an anticrime campaign, he exploited it to the full. He signed special new crime bills, with Edgar standing behind him. He came in person to open the great new colonnaded Justice Department building on Pennsylvania Avenue. ‘This modern mass of stone and aluminum,’ said the press, ‘this $11,000,000 dream of a crime-free America, dwarfs Scotland Yard, the Sûreté, all of them. It is America’s general headquarters in the crime war.’

Even if the crime wave was overblown, Edgar’s FBI was indeed a vast step forward. The fingerprint operation, the technology of crime detection and the disciplined corps of respected agents were genuine assets. In the midst of all the hyperbole, however, the man responsible was glorified beyond all reason. Where mere praise was due, Edgar was idolized.

A few voices were raised in protest. Tennessee Senator Kenneth McKellar accused Edgar before a Senate committee of using public relations to inflate his image. Edgar dodged the questions, concealing the fact that he had propagandists working full-time for him. Then the questions turned personal. ‘Did you ever,’ asked McKellar, ‘make an arrest?’ Edgar was forced to admit that he had virtually no field experience. It had been a somewhat meaningless line of questioning – like asking a headquarters officer whether he had ever killed an enemy soldier – but Edgar was shattered. He had done so much to ensure that the world heard about his macho attitude toward criminals, his ‘Babe Ruth’ build, his alleged fitness and his endless hard work. Now doubt was being cast on his masculinity.

A second attack followed within days, when Congressman Marion Zioncheck mocked him as a ‘master of fiction … a dictator.’ In an astonishing riposte, Edgar called the congressman ‘a public enemy’ who should be driven from public life.

Two days later, Edgar found an opportunity to prove his mettle. When agents in New Orleans located Alvin Karpis, a kingpin of the kidnap gangs, Edgar chartered a fourteen-seater aircraft – a remarkable initiative in those days – and flew south. He was on hand when an eighteen-strong Bureau posse captured Karpis, caught off his guard, on May 1, 1936.

Edgar’s version of the arrest was that he personally disarmed Karpis. The gangster himself, on his release twenty-eight years later, claimed Edgar hid behind a building until