Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [62]
Edgar’s men had swooped down before dawn, broken down doors, ransacked homes, held their prisoners incommunicado for nine hours, strip-searched them twice and allowed them access to lawyers for just one minute before they appeared in court. It was all reminiscent of the Red Raids of 1920 – and this time Edgar could not deny responsibility.
Suddenly the press was comparing the FBI to the secret police forces of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. In Congress Senator George Norris spoke of ‘an American Gestapo,’ calling Edgar ‘the greatest publicity hound on the American continent.’ The way things were going, he added, there would soon be ‘a spy behind every stump and a detective in every closet in our land.’ As FBI files now reveal, Edgar had a stool pigeon on Senator Norris’ own staff in 1940.
Three days after the Detroit raids, Edgar was called in to see the President. Then, with Clyde in tow, he departed on a surprise ‘vacation’ to Miami Beach. There he ensconced himself in a villa attached to the Nautilus Hotel, an island retreat for the very rich, to shelter himself from the barrage of criticism.
In Washington, Edgar’s aides lobbied furiously to drum up a counterattack. Behind the scenes, agents investigated everyone who had criticized the arrests of the Spanish Civil War activists. Edgar, meanwhile, tried to get Attorney General Jackson to make a statement in his defense. Jackson hesitated. His predecessor Frank Murphy had made him ‘very dubious’ about Edgar, warning that the FBI spied on government officials and tapped their telephones. Edgar denied such charges and offered to resign, and Jackson ended up issuing a compromise statement, expressing confidence in Edgar and committing the government to the protection of civil liberties.
Edgar survived the crisis because he had the most powerful protector of all, the President. Characteristically, Roosevelt made light of the row. ‘Edgar,’ he called across the room at a Washington Press Club reception. ‘What are they trying to do to you?’ ‘I don’t know, Mr President,’ Edgar replied. Roosevelt then made an exaggerated thumbs-down gesture with both hands, proclaiming loudly, ‘That’s for them.’ Everyone present knew Edgar’s job was safe for the foreseeable future.
‘Hoover continued in his job and added to his power,’ observed Roosevelt’s Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, ‘because he managed to worm himself into the complete confidence of the President.’ Edgar achieved that, as he would with future presidents, by sending a stream of political intelligence to the White House.
‘He started playing up to him,’ said William Sullivan, ‘telling him little tidbits of gossip about high-ranking public officials whenever he could …’ Francis Biddle, who followed Jackson as Attorney General, had the same experience. ‘Lunching alone with me in a room adjoining my office,’ Biddle recalled, Hoover began ‘sharing some of his extraordinarily broad knowledge of the intimate details of what my associates in the Cabinet did and said, of their likes and dislikes, their weaknesses and their associations.’
In June 1940, when Roosevelt wrote to thank him for the ‘wonderful job’ he was doing, Edgar responded with flattery. He told the President his note was ‘one of the most inspiring messages which I have ever been privileged to receive … a symbol of the principles for which our nation stands.’
The job Edgar was doing, as both men knew, was far beyond the proper responsibilities of an FBI Director. Roosevelt had asked the FBI to ‘look over’ the mountain of critical telegrams he had received after making a