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Not that Hoover needed Johnson's kind words. Back in 1947 when
Richard Nixon was a fledging congressman, Hoover helped him immensely by supporting him on
the Alger Hiss case. Hoover gave Nixon his first big political boost with that case.
Also, over the intervening years, Nixon had been friendly with Hoover. Not
the close, long-term friendship that Hoover enjoyed with LBJ, but an important friendship
nonetheless.
Not particularly known as a warm, open person, Nixon, as described by
Powers, "came to the presidency deeply scarred by his close loss to Kennedy in 1960
and the disastrous defeat for the California governorship in 1962. He had learned he
could never relax against his political enemies, no matter how secure his position
seemed....To his mind, he was a victim forced forever to defend himself against
unrelenting and unscrupulous enemies."
Nixon saw Hoover as a man who could help him fight those many enemies just
the way he had done for Lyndon Johnson and other presidents before him.
"Edgar," he told him, "you are one of the few people who is to have direct
access to me at all times. I've talked to [Attorney General John] Mitchell about it
and he understands." That really wasn't completely true since Nixon didn't want
Hoover dropping in his office all the time, but he wanted to show respect for the man to
whom he had owed his start.
Nixon's respect for Hoover did not extend to Nixon's staff who considered
Hoover a tired old relic who lived entirely in the past. Hoover's direct liaison to
the White House was John Ehrlichman, who had poorly concealed contempt for both Hoover and
the FBI. The "Wizard of Oz" was what he called Hoover behind his
back and complained how he had to listen to the old bore rant and rave on his past
glories. "I know," Nixon consoled Ehrlichman, "but it's necessary,
John. It's necessary."
Things were better with Attorney General John Mitchell, who had been
Nixon's campaign manager and law partner. Mitchell was a strong law-and-order
advocate and generally agreed with Hoover on policy. Strangely enough, Nixon asked
Hoover not to do a background investigation on Mitchell, probably to spare the
documentation of his wife Martha's continuing struggle with alcoholism.
Despite the unfriendliness of Nixon's staff, things were going very well
for Hoover when Nixon took office. Hoover continued his COINTELPROs against the
Black Panthers and the New Left. Gentry says that "top priority was given to
creating schisms in the Panther leadership, and in particular between Huey Newton and
Eldridge Cleaver...The Bureau used bogus communications and missing correspondence to
widen the split, so successfully playing on their ideological differences, egos, and
paranoia that each man believed the other had marked him for assassination."
One of the most tragic stories coming out of these programs to disrupt and
discredit the Panthers was what happened to actress Jean Seberg. The Bureau found
out that she was carrying the child of a Black Panther and broke the story to the
Hollywood gossip columnists. The goal was to embarrass her and try to cheapen her
image. Hoover approved the plan, "Jean Seberg has been a financial supporter of
the BPP [Black Panther Party] and should be neutralized."
The negative publicity was devastating to her. Seberg attempted
suicide. A few days later, her baby daughter was born prematurely and died.
Afterwards, Seberg became psychotic and had to be institutionalized. After many
attempts, she finally succeeded in committing suicide in 1979.
Like Johnson, the biggest problems that Nixon had to deal with early in
his administration were leaks and demonstrations. Richard Powers explains how leaks
and demonstrations threatened Nixon's ability to govern the country: "Having to
wage a massive, undeclared war in Asia, while simultaneously trying to negotiate with the
North Vietnamese, made both Johnson and Nixon depend on secrecy to mask their moves.
They had to keep the enemy from knowing about their negotiating positions and to
keep the antiwar opposition from mobilizing to frustrate their war strategy."
Nixon counted on Hoover to control these leaks and demonstrations that
were undermining his presidency. Hoover convinced him that in addition to physical
surveillance and background checks, wiretapping and electronic surveillance were the best
ways to solve the problem. Nixon arranged for Henry Kissinger to provide Hoover the
names of those individuals suspected of leaking critical information.
As the leaks continued, the list of names grew longer and Hoover was
becoming nervous that the wiretapping and electronic surveillance would be discovered.
Finally, when Nixon wanted to wiretap columnist Joseph Kraft, Hoover refused.
From his viewpoint, these wiretaps were reckless and very dangerous if the
American public ever got wind of them.
The problem of the leaks continued and Hoover was continuously pressured
to increase surveillance, which he resisted. By 1970, relations between the White
House and Hoover were very strained. The country was in terrible turmoil on many
fronts. New Left groups had become militant with bombings and takeovers of college
campuses. When Nixon authorized American troops in Cambodia, the college campuses
around the country exploded. A few days later, National Guardsmen wounded nine
students and killed four others at Kent State University in Ohio.
While Hoover was in sympathy with Nixon on controlling the student
activists and black nationalists, he was not about to jeopardize his own position by
involving the Bureau in any widespread intelligence gathering programs, except for ones
that he closely supervised, such as his COINTELPROs.
Nixon was not pleased and on June 5, 1970, called the heads of all of the
intelligence agencies to the White House to chew them out for being disorganized and
ineffective in providing intelligence on the antiwar movement. A committee was
formed and Hoover was the chairman. However, the plan that was drawn up by the other
committee members proposed widespread surveillance methods aimed at all anti-war groups.
Hoover insisted that someone higher up than himself approve this highly
controversial and reckless program. Nixon would not do it, so the program died.
On March 8, 1971, an event occurred which allowed the American public to
get a peak at what the FBI had been up to with its secret programs. A small FBI
office in Media, PA, was burglarized by a group that called itself the "Citizens
Commission to Investigate the FBI." Hundreds of documents were taken.
Most were like time bombs for the Bureau's image.
The stolen documents told the story of widespread surveillance and
wiretapping of the Black Panthers, the SDS and other New Left organizations, the Jewish
Defense League, and the Ku Klux Klan. Copies were sent to Senator George McGovern
and Congressman Parren Mitchell of Maryland, but both men turned the documents over to the
FBI. Finally, excerpts of the documents were published in a leftist journal.
The public now knew that the FBI was guilty of extensive invasion of
privacy. A top FBI executive saw the burglary as a "watershed event that
changed the FBI's image, possibly forever, in the minds of many Americans."
Carl Stern, a newsman for NBC, noticed the word "COINTELPRO" on
the top of one of the stolen documents and decided to find out what it meant. It
took him two years to find out and by that time Hoover was dead.
The FBI was under siege. Earlier in 1971, there had been a series of
negative articles and revelations about the Bureau, its large expenditures on bullet-proof
limousines, its poor record on minority hiring, the capricious firing of an agent whose
wife was dying, sagging morale. Hoover was no longer untouchable. He was
becoming a target.
In April, Hoover had to fend off a full-scale investigation of Bureau
practices. Senator Edward Kennedy was calling for Hoover's resignation.
Senator Sam Ervin, chairman of the Senate Committee on Constitutional Rights was given the
opportunity to investigate the FBI, but he declined saying, "I think [Hoover] has
done a very good job in a difficult post."
That same month, Hoover dismantled the COINTELPROs. The risk of
exposure was just too great to continue them. While this did not mean that all
domestic intelligence programs were ended, only a few selected operations would be allowed
in highly controlled situations.
In June of 1971, documents called the "Pentagon Papers" were
leaked to the New York Times. The "Pentagon Papers" was a history
of U.S. decision making processes on Vietnam policy during the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations. Mitchell ordered Hoover to find out who leaked this top-secret
document. It came out quickly that Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department
employee, had leaked the information, but it was not known if he did this on his own or
with accomplices.
Hoover gave it a low priority. When Nixon found out, he was furious
because he saw Ellsberg's action as part of a large conspiracy to undermine his policies.
Ellsberg's wealthy father-in-law was a friend of Hoover's and Hoover refused to
interrogate him. This was the last straw for Nixon: "I wanted someone to
light a fire under the FBI investigation of Ellsberg...If a conspiracy existed, I wanted
to know, and I wanted the full resources of the government brought to bear to find out.
If the FBI was not going to pursue the case, then we would have to do it
ourselves."
In July, Nixon had Ehrlichman find a way to get things done outside the
FBI. Ehrlichman had Egil "Bud" Krogh put together a team which included
ex-FBI man G .Gordon Liddy and ex-CIA agent Howard Hunt to stop the leaks of secret
government information. Appropriately enough, the group to stop the leaks was called
"The White House Plumbers." Nixon later blamed Hoover for pushing him down
the path to Watergate.
The fall of 1971 was not a good time for Hoover. William Sullivan,
the dynamic leader who Hoover had been grooming as his successor, betrayed the director.
Among other activities that made Hoover doubt him, Sullivan wrote a long letter to
his boss: "....What I am trying to get across to you in my blunt, tactless way
is that a number of your decisions this year have not been good ones; that you
should take a good, cold, impartial inventory of your ideas, policies, etc. I do not
want to see your reputation built up over these many years destroyed by your own decisions
and actions...I do not want to see this FBI organization I have gladly given 30 years of
my life to....fall apart or become tainted in any manner..."
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Hoover in fall of 1971
(Yoichi Okamoto)
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Several days later, Hoover argued with Sullivan for hours
and requested his resignation. The separation was very bitter and the story in its
entirety got back to Nixon. The publicity surrounding Sullivan's departure was very
unfavorable to Hoover. Reluctantly, Nixon made a decision to get rid of Hoover, but lost
his nerve when Hoover refused to take Nixon's gentle prodding to resign.
By the end of the year, Hoover was still firmly in the saddle.
"With Mark Felt as his right-hand man, he had once again established firm control
over the FBI. He had ended the COINTELPRO operations that had posed the greatest
danger to himself and the Bureau, and he had resisted all efforts to draw the FBI into
reckless new ventures." (Powers)
Nixon's aides tried one other dramatic attempt to get Hoover to support
one of their schemes. A scandal had erupted over an internal memo that ITT lobbyist
Dita Beard had written to ITT officials. In writing, she claimed that Attorney
General John Mitchell had agreed to settle antitrust actions against ITT in exchange for a
$400,000 Republican campaign contribution.
A plan evolved that had Beard swear the memo was a forgery and then have
the FBI laboratory "prove" that it was. One of the president's men, John
Dean of Watergate fame, was sent to Hoover to request the involvement of the FBI
laboratory. Hoover agreed readily. The only problem was that the memo was not
a forgery and the FBI laboratory had proven it. Very much to Hoover's credit, he
refused to change the lab report.
Hoover told Mark Felt, "Call Dean right back and tell him to go jump
in the lake! I want to cooperate when I can, but this request is completely
improper!" Eventually, the report was released and Nixon was furious.
Again there were talks about "promoting Hoover" out of his current position to
the "director emeritus," but nothing came of it.
In May of 1972, Hoover was nearing his fifty-five-year anniversary with
the Justice Department. May 10, 1924, Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone had given
Hoover the responsibility of reforming the corruption-ridden Bureau of Investigation.
After all the threats and compromises that he had been forced to make over the
decades, he was still able to say that the FBI remained the organization that he built
upon his own principles and standards -- a unique achievement in the history of the
federal government.
Hoover never made it to his fifty-five-year anniversary. He died at
the age of seventy-seven on May 2.
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