Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [57]
‘The way they handled public affairs,’ recalled the journalist Fletcher Knebel, ‘can only be described as blackmail. Nichols told me, “Look, we can do a lot for your career – if you’ll play ball with us …” I later found out what that meant. When I wanted to interview the mighty Director for Look magazine, they’d agree only if I wrote the piece before I did the interview, which is of course all wrong. I’m sorry to say my bosses eventually agreed, and Nichols went through it all like a schoolmarm. The story that came out was really watered down, but not enough for them. The next time I bumped into Hoover, he wouldn’t speak to me.’
Reporters who did not appreciate the Bureau, Edgar told the Society of Former Agents, were ‘journalistic prostitutes.’ He carried on a courteous correspondence with Drew Pearson – who for thirty-seven years wrote a Washington Post column specializing in ‘inside’ stories – while railing against him in private. He built up a 4,000-page file on Pearson and, according to Roosevelt’s Vice President, Henry Wallace, kept him under surveillance during World War II.
The columnist remained uncowed, and persistently criticized Edgar – notably over his laissez-faire attitude toward organized crime. By 1969, when Pearson died, Edgar had been reduced to impotent scribblings in the file. ‘This whelp,’ he raged, ‘still continues his regurgitation.’ The columnist was ‘a jackal,’ his writings ‘psychopathic lyings.’
To Edgar, New York Post editor James Wechsler was ‘a rat.’ The illustrious Walter Lippmann became just another ‘coyote of the press’ when he displeased Edgar. Tom Wicker, at The New York Times, would be described as a ‘jerk’ with ‘mental halitosis,’ Art Buchwald as a ‘sick alleged humorist.’
When it could be done secretly, reporters were actively harassed. The huge file on Carey McWilliams, who became editor of The Nation, covers thirty-two years of investigation, surveillance and probing into his private life to establish whether he was a Communist. He was not.
Once journalists were identified as enemies, Edgar stopped at nothing to discredit them. He would tell the White House that columnist Joseph Alsop was a homosexual, and Los Angeles Times executives that reporter Jack Nelson was a drunk. There is no evidence that either allegation was true.1
Such tactics proved highly effective. In the first thirty-five years of Edgar’s directorship only one publication – The New Yorker – would attempt any reporting at all not harnessed to FBI handouts and grace-and-favor interviews.
Edgar rarely had any trouble with broadcasters, who gobbled up FBI exploits for their entertainment value. This began in 1935, when, through tame reporter Rex Collier, Edgar negotiated a contract giving himself total control over ‘G-Men,’ a radio series about famous Bureau cases. Later, the propaganda became more ambitious. Louis Nichols organized the writing of the book The FBI Story, which became a Warner Brothers movie of the same name.
Edgar had cultivated Jack Warner for years. As a matter of course, agents greeted him at airports and smoothed his path as he traveled around the world. The actor Jimmy Stewart, who starred in the film, got similar treatment. The television series ‘The FBI,’ which would begin in 1965, was totally controlled. Edgar and Clyde read the scripts, while an FBI agent watched over the shooting.
Edgar learned that massive self-promotion paid off as early as 1935, when Time put him on the cover – the first of four appearances – and declared that his name was now a household word. Universities and organizations began showering him with