G-Man, page 109
In many parts of the country, the public’s judgment was laudatory to the point of hero worship, especially among the white middle-class constituencies who had long risen to Hoover’s defense. “The FBI director has come possibly closer than any other public figure to speaking out for the average man and women [sic] in America—the great mass of people sometimes referred to as a ‘silent majority,’ ” declared the Chronicle of Augusta, Georgia. National Review, still the essential text of the conservative movement, marveled at Hoover’s ability to please such audiences while leading “an agency that is in many ways the very image of the modern superstate—faceless, powerful, adapted to the latest technology, almost inhumanly efficient.” The magazine attributed this feat to Hoover’s origins in the early twentieth century, when belief in federal power had yet to become a stand-in for what the editors sneeringly dismissed as liberal values. By implication, no future director would be able to do what Hoover had done: carry on as a devout conservative and a technocratic state builder at the same time.[23]
Whether liberal or conservative, though, nearly everyone agreed on one point: the outstanding feature of Hoover’s career was how long it had lasted. “J. Edgar Hoover stood guard over America through the trials of the twenties, the turmoil of the thirties and the horrors of war in the forties, fifties, and sixties,” one Democratic congressman recalled in an admiring speech on May 2. Most Americans could not remember a time without Hoover as FBI director, prodding and scolding the nation to live up to his vision. Whatever one might think of that vision, the fact that he was now gone seemed profoundly strange, “as if the Washington Monument was no more,” in the words of the Chicago Tribune. And unlike the collapse of a physical structure, there could be no rebuilding what was lost. “There probably will never be anybody like Mr. Hoover again,” a Christian Science Monitor writer concluded. “Nor should there be.”[24]
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Twenty-seven hours after the discovery of Hoover’s body, a black hearse pulled up to the steps of the Capitol, where a military honor guard stood waiting in a funereal downpour. Hoover’s official ceremony of mourning began at the base of the Capitol steps, as the honor guard hoisted his casket onto their shoulders and began a long, dignified trudge up to the rotunda. Hoping to shield Hoover’s body from vandals, Gandy and Mohr had chosen a lead-lined casket weighing more than half a ton, and the honor guard nearly buckled under the weight. Once inside the Capitol, they laid the casket down atop a rough pine catafalque, draped in black velvet, that had originally been built to receive Abraham Lincoln’s body. John Kennedy had been honored the same way in 1963, after the shock of his assassination. Two other presidents, Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower, had lain in state at the Capitol as well. Hoover was the first unelected civil servant ever to be accorded the honor.
Edward Elson, Hoover’s minister of long standing, now the Senate chaplain, was on hand to accept the body and offer a short blessing. Just after eleven o’clock, hundreds of other federal dignitaries began to stream into the rotunda, amassing in a circle behind the velvet ropes around Hoover’s casket. Nearly the entire Senate came, trickling out from chambers and offices throughout the Capitol. The House opened and then closed its official proceedings so that members could process to the rotunda together, with none other than Hale Boggs up front. All nine Supreme Court justices showed up, their black robes setting them apart from the crowd. So did most of the Cabinet plus a few assorted governors, including California’s Ronald Reagan, who happened to be in town. Nixon stayed away, preserving his star power for the church funeral scheduled for the following day. Other than that, nearly everyone who mattered in Washington seemed to be present—an unmistakable display, even in death, of Hoover’s power and influence. Fifteen of the congressmen were former FBI agents, huddled together in a group. The top fifteen officials of the Bureau stood next to them, with one important exception. Said to be “taking this pretty hard,” according to Mohr, Tolson appears to have stayed home.
Chief Justice Warren Burger delivered the four-minute eulogy, a posthumous seal of approval from the highest court in the land. He narrated Hoover’s life as the story of a local boy made good, rising “from modest beginnings” to “the pinnacle of his profession.” Burger pointed out the critical role that Harlan Stone had played in Hoover’s career by giving the untested young administrator a chance to reform the struggling Bureau. From that point on, Burger said, Hoover had navigated “crisis after crisis” with impressive equanimity, balancing “efficiency in enforcement of laws” with “constitutional limitations.” He attributed Hoover’s success to the director’s willingness to express his “patriotism” and “Christian faith” even when others seemed inclined to scorn them.
As the senators, congressmen, justices, and cabinet officers dispersed back to the nation’s business, the public began to trickle in, moving in a slow, circular procession along the velvet ropes. First in line to pay their respects were Lou Nichols and his son, John Edgar, who had witnessed the ceremony from back in the crowd, with Nichols weeping quietly. FBI employees and other law enforcement officers would have the rotunda to themselves from eight to ten in the evening, after the day’s work had been done. Other than that, the rotunda was open to all who wished to attend, and they came in droves, “mourners from every walk of life,” in the words of one wire-service report, up to a thousand people per hour. Many were tourists: Girl Scouts, student groups, or families on a pilgrimage to Washington, happy to take in a free glimpse of history. Others were local residents, police officers and federal workers who saw something of themselves in Hoover. As The Evening Star pointed out, Hoover was “nothing if not a proper Washingtonian,” that rare born-and-bred creature who attained the highest ranks of government work. “Today in Washington, a city that was built and populated by bureaucrats, they are mourning the man who was probably the most powerful of them all,” the paper observed. All told, approximately six thousand people viewed Hoover’s body during the twenty-two hours that he lay in state.[25]
Not everyone who showed up at the Capitol during those hours came with respect and good wishes. At noon, as Burger was delivering Hoover’s eulogy, a small cluster of congressmen, staffers, and anti-war protesters began their own vigil outside in the pouring rain on the Capitol steps, reading out the names of the war dead, young men whose lives were cut short long before they could realize their ambitions. Overnight, it turned into a candlelight “liturgy on the air war,” featuring quotations from Vietnamese peasants and U.S. bomber pilots about the damage the war was doing, read by anti-war celebrities such as folk singer Judy Collins and Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers. Upon hearing rumors that the protesters planned to storm the Capitol and overturn Hoover’s catafalque, the White House sent operatives to the scene with instructions to mingle and try to turn the situation to Nixon’s political advantage—by attacking the protesters if necessary. Though they pushed around at least one anti-war demonstrator, the most vocal counterprotest came from the thirty College Republicans who showed up with signs reading, “Support Our President,” eager to heckle their left-wing rivals.
According to The Washington Post, Hoover’s mourners largely avoided both gatherings, aside from the occasional complaint that the anti-war protesters were being “disrespectful” to the late FBI director. The protesters themselves could not help but point out the day’s strange math, with “a handful” of Americans mourning the deaths of some forty-eight thousand soldiers while “thousands” showed up to pay their respects to a single federal servant.[26]
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At the White House, the most pressing question on the afternoon of May 3 was who would succeed Hoover—a man who, almost by definition, could not be replaced. “The death of J. Edgar Hoover . . . poses a grave problem for President Nixon in terms of politics, administration, and national security,” one columnist noted, observing that Nixon’s choice could not possibly satisfy everyone. As they contemplated Hoover’s legacy, the newspapers offered up lists of possible successors: FBI insiders such as Felt or Mohr, or perhaps a prominent police chief such as Philadelphia’s Frank Rizzo. Nixon had his eye on someone less obvious: a lanky ex-submariner and assistant attorney general named L. Patrick Gray. A Nixon supporter, Gray possessed certain essential qualities that Hoover had lacked. He was understated, pliable, modest, and loyal to the White House.[27]
Nixon’s idea was not necessarily to appoint Gray as permanent FBI director, but to use him as a placeholder, an “acting director” who could fill the position until after the November election. Strategizing about how to present this choice to the public, Nixon instructed press secretary Ron Ziegler to frame it as an act of homage to Hoover, a way of keeping the FBI insulated from “the whims of partisan politics.” To other aides, he was more frank about his agenda. Under the 1968 crime bill, any permanent FBI director would have to be approved by the Senate, currently under Democratic control. Given the continuing fallout from the Media burglary, confirmation hearings were likely to “open up the whole damn FBI business,” Nixon speculated, and to produce “the goddamnedest investigation” of the FBI that the country had ever seen. In Nixon’s nightmare vision, the next several months would be consumed by revelations about the FBI’s secret surveillance policies and harassment of Martin Luther King. A Senate investigation might even reveal the wiretaps that Hoover had initiated on behalf of the White House, a political disaster that could cost Nixon the election.[28]
Appointing Gray as acting director was supposed to solve that problem. In addition, it would give the White House “a presence in the bureaucracy over there,” as Nixon and Haldeman agreed in one conversation, an insider voice less loyal to the FBI than to the president. Ehrlichman expanded upon this strategy in a lengthy memo to Nixon, prepared in the harried hours after Hoover’s death and before Nixon’s meeting with Gray. As a public servant, Gray was well known for his “loyalty, ability and demonstrated competence,” Ehrlichman wrote—with an emphasis on the first of the three. Nixon could thus ask Gray to defuse whatever land mines Hoover might have left behind: “to locate and sequester all surreptitious investigation of the Administration or its personnel in which Hoover may have engaged for protective purposes.” The chief job of the acting director, as Ehrlichman described it, was not to preserve Hoover’s mythical nonpartisan independence, but to bend the FBI, at long last, to Nixon’s will. “Gray’s primary assignment is to consolidate control of the FBI, making such changes as are necessary to assure its complete loyalty to the Administration,” Ehrlichman wrote. The Nixon White House underestimated just how difficult that would be. The mission would ultimately put Gray on a collision course with what was, even in death, still Hoover’s institution.[29]
Nixon made it clear that he expected more deference from Gray than he had gotten from Hoover. At the same time, he hoped Gray would hold on to at least some of Hoover’s hard-punching style. “You’ve got to be a conspirator, you’ve got to be totally ruthless, you’ve got to appear to be a nice guy, but underneath you need to be steely tough,” Nixon informed his new FBI director. “You know that, believe me, is the way to run that bureau.”[30]
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Felt later recalled the shock and dismay that swept through the Bureau’s upper ranks at the news of Gray’s appointment on May 3. “It did not cross my mind that the president would appoint an outsider to replace Hoover,” he later wrote, lamenting the “many trained executives” passed over in favor of Gray. As the number-three man under Hoover and Tolson, Felt had assumed that he would at least be in the running for the job. He also counted himself a Hoover man, trained to resist encroachments by outsiders and to protect the Bureau’s autonomy in the face of political pressure. That afternoon, though, Felt grudgingly welcomed Gray to the FBI. “Frankly, most of us were hoping the president would select an insider,” he told his new boss, “but I can assure you that all of us will do everything we can to help you.”[31]
Not all Hoover’s former employees were so accommodating. According to John Mohr, Gray had put in a mysterious appearance at the Bureau not long after Hoover’s death, inquiring into Hoover’s “secret files,” the object of Washington gossip and speculation for at least a generation. Gray was acting in his capacity as assistant attorney general, not yet as FBI director. Perhaps as a result, Mohr brushed him off. Gray returned the next morning, just before nine a.m., to ask again about where the secret files were hidden. This time, Gray was more “agitated,” Mohr recalled, and Mohr “got a little agitated myself,” suspicious that Gray was less concerned with protecting Hoover’s legacy than with locating any “secret files that would embarrass the Nixon administration.” When Gray warned, “I am a hardheaded Irishman and nobody pushes me around,” Mohr spat back that he was “a hardheaded Dutchman,” ready to do what needed to be done to safeguard Hoover’s Bureau.
There were, in fact, two major sets of files in Hoover’s office, materials that had been sequestered from the general system under his explicit instructions. The first was the Official & Confidential File, 164 folders containing information of such exquisite sensitivity that it was kept under lock and key in Hoover’s filing cabinets. Their title suggested a systematic designation, but the collection was mostly a hodgepodge of reports and rumors, some dating as far back as the investigation into the 1920 Wall Street bombing. If there was no hard-and-fast rule for what made it into the O&C File, though, certain investigations were obvious: the inquiries into John Kennedy’s sexual assignations, the “special” performed for Johnson at the 1964 Democratic convention, the wiretaps, bugs, and dirty tricks against King. In one of his few moments of official engagement following Hoover’s death, Tolson ordered the O&C File transferred to Mark Felt, who was, implicitly, supposed to shield them from any outside query. That included inquiries from the Nixon White House, which was assumed to be looking out for its own interests, and not necessarily those of Hoover’s Bureau.
The other collection consisted of what was known as the Personal File, papers of special significance for Hoover’s private life rather than necessarily for the Bureau’s business. Hoover had begun sorting through those folders in the months before his death, fearful that he would soon be forced to retire and lose control of their contents. He gave up quickly. Gandy later insisted that the files consisted overwhelmingly of personal correspondence—“letters from and to, and the original letters from, and the carbon of letters to personal friends.” Congressional investigators would conclude, with good evidence, that official Bureau documents were in there as well. In either case, what Gandy did next constitutes a painful loss for the historical record. Before his death, Hoover asked her to destroy the entire Personal File. She began carrying out his wishes on the day he died and continued on for at least two months, tearing up each piece of paper before sending it along for shredding or incineration.[32]
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Around the same time that Hoover had ordered the Personal File destroyed, he also set about revising his will, the last best evidence of who and what really mattered to him. The final version was the document of a patriarch, albeit one without a wife or children, aimed at rewarding the handful of intimates whose relationships with him had involved submission and dependency. A lump sum of $5,000 went to Gandy, who had spent more than half a century keeping his schedule and executing his wishes. To James Crawford and Annie Fields, whose domestic labors had been so critical to his life at Thirtieth Place, he gave $3,000 and $2,000, respectively. Crawford also received Hoover’s clothing, which he was supposed to split with Hoover’s longtime receptionist Sam Noisette. Hoover gave nothing to his nieces and nephews, or to any blood relative, the final indignity in a lifetime of unraveling family relations. But he did recognize his two namesakes—John Edgar Ruch, son of his college friend and Palmer Raids coconspirator George Ruch, and John Edgar Nichols, Lou Nichols’s son—with gifts of jewelry and cufflinks. Everything else—the house and dogs, the photographs and autographs, the oil investments and jade collection and nude statuary—went to Tolson, now recognized as the equivalent of Hoover’s spouse and next of kin.[33]
Hoover’s funeral operated according to a different logic, less a mapping of personal sentiment and obligation than a final grand political show. Nixon attended to many of the details, consulting with speechwriters and aides about the proper venue and setting, and about the political message he hoped to send. “We’re gonna have a hell of a ceremony for him,” Nixon had vowed within hours of Hoover’s death, picturing something “big”—a “national memorial” befitting Hoover’s status and popularity. Nixon had hoped to stage the funeral out at Arlington National Cemetery, with its magnificent outdoor amphitheater, but Hoover had requested to be buried in the family plot at Congressional Cemetery, making the stalwart National Presbyterian Church a more logical choice. Nixon accommodated that request—apparently Hoover’s only one—as long as the funeral included one key element. “It might be that I have to give the eulogy myself,” he told Haldeman, convinced that his personal history with Hoover made him the “one who can do it right.”[34]
Over the next day and a half, Nixon met several times with the young speechwriter assigned to draft the eulogy. He spent the morning of May 4 rehearsing their words in the Oval Office, as aides popped in and out to discuss Vietnam, talks with the Soviets, and the delicate question of funeral seating arrangements. At the Capitol, police stood at attention while the military honor guard carried Hoover’s thousand-pound casket back down the steps and into a waiting hearse. From there, a motorcade—one patrol car, plus eleven officers on motorcycles—escorted the hearse across town to National Presbyterian in time for the eleven o’clock funeral. Toward the end of the journey, as the motorcade approached the church along Nebraska Avenue, officers from the Metropolitan and Park police joined in the pageantry, lining the road in one last law-and-order salute.[35]
