Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [181]
Cummings’s pleas were drowned out in the din of scathing commentary, much of it fueled by the Bureau’s go-it-alone policies. Wisconsin politicians, echoing complaints from the Chicago police and Matt Leach’s Indiana State Police, criticized the Bureau for failing to work with local authorities. “There has been a pathetic lack of cooperation between federal, state, and local authorities,” snapped Senator Royal Copeland, chairman of the Senate Racket Investigating Committee. The special prosecutor, Joe Keenan, shot back: “I don’t know where or when we will get [Dillinger], but we will get him. And you can say for me that I hope we get him under such circumstances that the government won’t have to stand the expense of a trial.”
For the first time, the Bureau found itself the target of withering press attacks. In fact, it was the first many Americans had ever heard of the Bureau of Investigation or J. Edgar Hoover or Melvin Purvis; several newspapers ran articles explaining who they were. More than one suggested Hoover would be forced to resign. COMIC OPERA COPS, the Milwaukee Sentinal called them. “The government authorities . . . have made [the Dillinger manhunt] a farce-comedy—except that it has turned to tragedy in killing innocent bystanders rather than the hunted desperado,” the Chicago Times editorialized. In his syndicated column, Will Rogers joined the jeering section. “Well, they had Dillinger surrounded,” Rogers quipped, “and were all ready to shoot him when he came out. But another bunch of folks came out ahead; so they shot them instead. Dillinger is going to get in accidentally with some innocent bystanders some time, then he will got shot.”1
Back on the nineteenth floor, Purvis tried to avoid the reporters, but it was impossible; they thronged the hallway beyond Doris Rogers’s desk. Simply walking to the elevator meant running a gauntlet. When they managed to corner him Monday night, Purvis tried to put a positive spin on things. “We’ve got more evidence to work on than we ever had before in hunting Dillinger,” he said. “We’ll have him before long. His trail is getting broader every minute.”
Doris Rogers was struck by how beaten the agents appeared as they returned to their desks that day. They seemed shell-shocked, but it was more than that; it was the first time, Rogers realized, that many of the younger men understood they could actually get killed. Their thrilling postgraduate job was no longer a game. For the moment, none of the men could bring themselves to talk about what had happened. No one wanted to talk about Jay Newman, who lay in a Wisconsin hospital bed, nor about Carter Baum, an office favorite. Baum’s body was returned to Washington, where it was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery.
“I am in a rather depressed mood,” Cummings told reporters after the private service. “In any event, this will serve to accentuate the seriousness of the problem which confronts the people of this nation. As I have said before, those who had expected that the campaign against organized crime would be easily won were those who did not realize the situation. As things move along, there inevitably will be disappointments, setbacks, and sorrows. We have had a setback. We have been touched by sorrow. That is the part which makes all of us the more determined to go on. We will go on. This campaign against predatory crime will be finished.”2
Internally, Hoover’s reaction to Little Bohemia was curiously muted. The man who fired off blistering memos to agents a minute late for work had almost no criticism for Clegg and Purvis. Too many senior men were involved—men Hoover had hired—to identify a scapegoat. Of all the internal reports generated in the following two weeks, the sole note of disfavor came in a memo Hoover wrote three nights