The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [390]
As Bobby read the files and listened to the various agents, he learned of America’s secret history. He came across names of entertainers he had admired, politicians with whom he had worked, and celebrated business leaders. In May, Bobby made a trip to the FBI offices in Chicago. The attorney general was a vociferous reader of FBI files, and by now he knew that determined special agents in Chicago were dedicated to going after the syndicate, tailing Sam Giancana, the local leader, and bugging his hangout at the Armory Lounge.
As soon as Bobby was introduced to the assembled agents, Marlin Johnson, the special agent in charge, began his prepared statement. Johnson spoke the language not of a gritty, hands-on cop but of a ward politician, praising his visitor and then touting his own accomplishments. “Mr. Johnson,” Bobby interrupted, “I didn’t come here to hear a canned speech about how magnificent you are…. We’ll listen to the agents who are out on the street, the men who are doing the work you think is so great.”
Later in the day William F. Roemer Jr., one of those agents, played a tape for the attorney general from a bug that had been placed in the Democratic headquarters in Chicago’s first ward. As Bobby sat there, he heard Pat Marcy, a Democratic organizer whom he had met during the campaign, talking to two cops about one of their colleagues who refused bribes. The three men decided that they had no choice but to murder the man. Bobby listened to the tape, asked Roemer to play it again, and said nothing more.
Bobby could have left that day and subtly scuttled an investigation that might one day touch on associates of the Kennedys. It was even possible that some of the accused would call out his father’s name. That was not just hypothetical, for according to Cartha DeLoach, the deputy director, in 1961 the FBI bugs heard Giancana talking of the $25,000 he had contributed to the Kennedy campaign.
Many Democrats would have cried foul at the bugging of Democratic Party headquarters, believing that the FBI was eavesdropping on a citadel of democracy in its pursuit of the corrupt. Bobby did not do that either, but by word and deed he flailed the agents onward in their pursuit of the Mafia underground. Bobby had little use for the finer nuances of civil liberties. He did not always grasp that in defending the rights of those who least deserved them, one defended the rights of all. He had not flinched at hearing the results of the bugging of the Democratic offices in Chicago. It was a war out there, and Bobby wanted his brave soldiers to have the weapons that would let them win.
Bobby’s defenders suggest that he did not know that the bug had been placed there by the FBI but was told the Chicago police had put it there. That was hardly much of a distinction. If Kennedy had been opposed to breaking into houses and offices to place listening devices, he presumably would have been equally against any other law enforcement organization doing it and feeding misbegotten information to the FBI. It was perhaps more dangerous for local police to be placing bugs than the FBI, which at least would exercise some controls.
“In one particular instance, in a field office, one of his people asked him when Bobby was personally listening to the conversation on the tapes brought on by microphone, ‘Isn’t this illegal?’ “recalled DeLoach. “And he said, ‘Yes, everything about it is illegal.’ And then he demanded that we get better equipment. Later on he denied he knew anything about the usage of microphones. But he did and he encouraged that. It was explained to him on a number of occasions. And the material was brought over to him