G-Man, page 64
Hoover had thanked Nixon for the effusive words, especially the “very gracious references to my administration of the FBI’s activities in the face of unwarranted attacks.” Over the next few years, he came to see more of himself in the young congressman, as Nixon attracted “the lasting hate of the smear artists,” in Hoover’s words, including “the vituperation of all subversives.” Hoover’s enemies were Nixon’s enemies. And his constituency was Nixon’s constituency: the “decent people of the country,” in Hoover’s words, who attended church, joined the American Legion, and sponsored book groups to educate their neighbors about the dangers of communism. Such people thanked Nixon for defending Hoover. “The apparently well planned and carefully executed campaign to discredit Mr. Hoover is of great concern to me,” a railroad engineer wrote to Nixon in 1949, urging him to stick with Hoover in battling “the Menace of Communism.”[9]
When Nixon won the vice presidency in 1952, Hoover sent a note offering to be “of service” if and when the need should arise. “I have followed very closely the manner in which General Eisenhower and you presented your case to the country during the past several weeks,” he wrote, praising the vice president for his “tireless efforts” on the nation’s behalf. Hoover imagined that the election must be “a real source of satisfaction” for Nixon. The outcome satisfied Hoover as well, the start of an era in which he would be not only tolerated but championed in a Republican White House.[10]
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It was not just in Washington that Hoover found a new atmosphere of welcome and belonging during the Eisenhower years. In Southern California, where he and Tolson had been vacationing for more than a decade, Hoover settled into a similar circle of like-minded men. Hoover had always loved his August month on the West Coast, where craggy beaches and overbright sun offered a welcome contrast to Washington’s humidity. “Years ago, I found in Southern California a moment of peace when I felt that God was very near,” he recalled to a reporter in the 1950s, describing how effortlessly the Pacific Ocean at dusk seemed to calm his nerves and strengthen his soul. He especially adored La Jolla, the touristy little beach community in San Diego where he and Tolson had been staying since the late 1930s. “If I had my way, I’d pick up the whole FBI and move it to La Jolla,” Hoover claimed.[11]
Into that scene, in 1952, came a pair of Texas multimillionaires who shared Hoover’s affection for La Jolla, and who sought to convert the neighborhood into a social hub for their friends, business partners, and political allies. Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison were boyhood pals who made their money fast, riding the Texas oil boom to vast riches while the rest of the country struggled through the Depression. By the time Hoover met them in the 1950s, they were in competition for the title of richest man in America. They were also ready to see what that money could do in national politics. As sons of “Solid South” Texas, they had little choice but to engage the Democratic Party. At the presidential level, however, they were keen Eisenhower supporters. Richardson alone gave an estimated $1 million to the campaign in 1952, plus $200,000 to pay for Eisenhower’s various hotel expenses.[12]
Like many of their Texas counterparts, they shared a ferocious commitment to anticommunism. “We all made money fast,” one oil tycoon explained. “We were interested in nothing else. Then this Communist business suddenly burst upon us.” They also shared Eisenhower’s enthusiasm for back-to-God politics, and for the men who could promote it on a national scale. In addition to bankrolling Eisenhower, Richardson threw his weight behind Billy Graham, helping to support the minister’s Washington crusade. To Hoover, who needed neither money nor access, Richardson and Murchison offered something just as valuable. In 1952, they invited him to spend his August vacation at their new hotel in La Jolla, designed as a luxurious getaway for the most favored members of their social, business, and political community. The Hotel Del Charro soon became a second home to both Hoover and Tolson.
Murchison and Richardson designed the Del Charro to be small and unassuming, at least from the outside, with just fifty rooms in a low-slung complex near a pristine crescent pool. Hoover and Tolson usually stayed at one of the freestanding bungalows set off from the main rooms, the most private of the available accommodations. From there, they indulged in the array of delights proffered to the Del Charro’s guests: poolside lunches, luaus, fashion shows, and dinners at the elegant indoor restaurant, with a blue-flowered jacaranda tree bursting out of the roof. “Its atmosphere combines the flavor of the world’s most distinguished resort hotels with the charm and social attributes of a small private club,” the hotel’s manager boasted. For Hoover and Tolson, the Del Charro made California not only soothing but also thrilling, a taste of the old Stork Club glamour transposed to a more private setting.
The Del Charro’s ultimate attraction was not the pool, tennis court, or dining room, but the people, an assemblage of concentrated wealth and political power with few rivals on either coast. Alongside Murchison and Richardson came an entourage of new-money Texas characters. Hollywood types showed up as well, including film stars John Wayne, Betty Grable, and Elizabeth Taylor. The real mystique of the Del Charro came from its political insiders, though, many of them drawn from the upper reaches of the Eisenhower administration.[13]
Among the prominent visitors to Del Charro during those early years was Richard Nixon, who arrived poolside in suit and tie with his wife, Pat, one night in the summer of 1955. The Nixons came not at the behest of Murchison and Richardson, but at the invitation of Hoover and Tolson, who had offered to throw a dinner party in the vice president’s honor. The exchange suggested just how comfortable the FBI men came to feel at Del Charro: they acted not only as guests, but as hosts. Hoover wore a shiny shirt with no tie for the occasion, the sort of getup he never would have contemplated in Washington. Tolson acted as bartender. The occasion cemented social ties between the two couples. In addition, it provided Nixon with a valuable point of entrée to the Texas oilmen who had done so much to help Eisenhower’s campaign. “I particularly want to thank you, too, for giving me a chance to get acquainted with your good friends from Texas,” Nixon wrote to Hoover after the dinner.[14]
Hoover and Tolson proved to be among the most famous and pampered of the hotel’s guests, if also among the most inclined toward seclusion and privacy. Murchison and Richardson picked up the hotel tab for them, beginning with the prohibitive room rate of a hundred dollars per day. They also granted Hoover and Tolson sure-thing opportunities in the Texas oil fields, in which the investments would pay out in boom times but would not lose money if the fields dried up. According to legend, Richardson delighted in treating Hoover just like anyone else, barking at him to “get your ass out of that chair and get me another bowl of chili!” At the same time, the Texas hosts went out of their way to please their powerful guest. On one occasion, upon hearing Hoover muse over the gorgeous citrus trees in Florida, Murchison allegedly flew in several fruit trees—peach, plum, and orange—and had them planted overnight outside the director’s cabana.
An even greater tribute was the purchase of the nearby Del Mar horse-racing track, which Hoover loved to frequent. One Texas politician described some awkward encounters when Hoover found himself elbow-to-elbow with the “mobsters” who also enjoyed the track (though apparently “a few of them he got along with quite well”). Richardson and Murchison addressed this shadier side of the business by promising to donate the track’s proceeds to fight juvenile delinquency and support underprivileged boys, citing Hoover’s example as inspiration. They even expressed hopes that Hoover would run their charitable organization, Boys Inc., once he retired from the Bureau.[15]
Critics soon attacked the Del Mar as a giant tax dodge, a way for Murchison and Richardson to fund high times for their inner circle while depriving the public coffers of much-needed revenue. Eventually Hoover’s financial relationship with his Texas patrons, including the no-lose oil investments, would come under scrutiny as well. During the early Eisenhower years, however, life and work hummed along smoothly: signs to Hoover that he had stuck by the right principles during the Truman years, and had earned friends and admirers in high places.[16]
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Eisenhower’s victory even brought a certain grudging accommodation between Hoover and the federal institution he distrusted above all others: the Central Intelligence Agency. Since its formation in 1947, the CIA had grown into the most significant, if also the most mysterious, of the intelligence services—“even more important than the FBI,” in the judgment of columnist Drew Pearson. While Hoover focused on domestic anticommunism, the CIA had taken on the world, encouraged by the National Security Council not simply to gather information but to “counter Soviet and Soviet-inspired activities” through a variety of covert means. By the end of 1948, the agency had manipulated its first foreign election, throwing millions of dollars around Italy in an effort to stave off communist victory. Over the next few years, it tried (and usually failed) to build up forces of anticommunist spies, guerrilla fighters, and Western-minded intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain.[17]
Nobody outside of the CIA knew precisely what the agency was up to. But Hoover had picked up enough information to know that he didn’t like it. He found the CIA’s broad secrecy privileges unfair, given how often the FBI had been forced into fights to keep its policies and files under wraps. “A lot of this stuff about confidential operations is horsefeathers,” he said, contradicting his own oft-held stance. “A few things must be kept secret, but the taxpayers have a right to know how an agency is spending their money.” He also worried about the CIA’s personnel practices. The agency had scaled up in just a few years, without using what Hoover viewed as proper methods, training, and screening. He accused the agency of harboring communists, homosexuals, and spies—and in at least a few of those cases, his suspicions turned out to be true. One Venona cable even hinted that Walter Bedell Smith, director of the CIA beginning in 1950, might have been turned by the Soviets during his time in Moscow as American ambassador.
Such, at least, were the reasons Hoover offered when asked about his obvious hostility toward the agency. As any insider could see, though, there was also a more personal side to the rivalry. Hoover still resented Truman’s rebuff and the loss of the FBI’s South American operations. Beginning in 1947, he simply extended those resentments to the CIA. He viewed the agency as a group of arrogant freelancers out to violate the very norms and laws that the FBI was supposed to protect. FBI officials referred to the CIA’s covert operations group as a “gang of weirdos” and Bedell Smith himself as “a ‘stinker’ & not a little one either,” in Hoover’s words. When his own officials attempted to cooperate nonetheless, Hoover dismissed their entreaties as “slobbering palaver.” “We know they have no use for us,” he declared. And he, in turn, had no use for an agency that he believed never should have been created.[18]
As the first new president in the agency’s history, Eisenhower faced a host of urgent questions: What should he do with Truman’s creation? Who should lead it? Were there limits to what the CIA could or should be doing in the midst of the Cold War? Hoover had strong opinions on the matters. On December 30, 1952, weeks before the inauguration, he met with Eisenhower to discuss them. Hoover’s first priority was to prevent the agency from being handed over to former OSS chief Bill Donovan, who was once again making a bid to be put in charge. Eisenhower acceded to that request. But the man he chose instead had his own history of run-ins with the FBI. Less than three weeks after his meeting with Hoover, Eisenhower announced the nomination of longtime CIA official Allen Dulles as head of the agency.[19]
Like Donovan, Dulles came out of the OSS, a son of privilege recruited to wartime adventurism from a white-shoe law firm. Hoover therefore viewed him with suspicion—“a ‘Charley McCarthy’ for Donovan,” as one FBI report put it in 1947, with Donovan as the master ventriloquist and Dulles as his dummy. There were few ties of culture or common sympathy to help mend the rift. Dulles had come of age as the consummate Republican insider, his path to power all but assured from birth. His grandfather and uncle had both served as secretary of state—an honor that Eisenhower now bestowed upon his brother, John Foster Dulles.
Of the two, Allen was the more gregarious and sociable. He was also deadly serious about the need for a centralized intelligence apparatus. In 1947, Dulles had met behind closed doors with congressmen writing the National Security Act, the law that brought the CIA into being. Many observers assumed that he would be appointed to direct the agency the following year, after Thomas Dewey won election as president. With that in mind, in 1948 he helped to author a report recommending that the CIA take a greater role in domestic counterintelligence, thus consolidating the nation’s anticommunist and anti-Soviet activities under one roof. The idea did not go over well with Hoover. “Irrespective of the merits or demerits of that it seems to me they ought to get CIA in shape first,” he wrote icily. The agency “already has more than it properly handles or digests.” He retaliated by recommending the formation of an intelligence-coordinating committee with no CIA involvement—a move that one agent later characterized as the “low point” in FBI-CIA relations.[20]
All of which meant that Dulles had his work cut out for him in 1953. On March 4, he called upon Hoover at Bureau headquarters, expressing his “highest regard and respect for the FBI” as well as his “intention to maintain good cooperative relations.” Hoover met the gesture with less tact, warning Dulles that he wanted “cooperation from the heart” and not just “lip service.” The two men sat down in person only a handful of other times over the course of the Eisenhower years. Slowly, though, Hoover began to accept the inevitable: that the CIA was here to stay. Although he never liked that fact, he found that having a supportive president in the White House at least made it easier to work side by side.[21]
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The Eisenhower years would later be held up as an example of covert intelligence run amok: CIA-backed coups in Guatemala and Iran, a spy tunnel carved out beneath the city of Berlin, secret testing of LSD on uwitting subjects. Less often noticed are the ways that those years also empowered the FBI, providing Hoover not merely with cultural ballast and genial social outings, but with the institutional and political support to carry out many of his long-term aims. From his first days in office, Eisenhower stressed the centrality of the FBI to his vision of anticommunism and domestic security. Hoover embraced the license that Eisenhower afforded him.
The idea of promoting the FBI as a signature feature of the Republican White House came largely from one man—not Hoover but Herbert Brownell, Eisenhower’s pick for attorney general. A corporate lawyer by trade, Brownell boasted a long and determined history within Republican politics. As Dewey’s campaign manager, he had borne much of the blame for the surprise loss in 1948. By 1952, he had set out to find a winning candidate and settled on Eisenhower far earlier than most. Brownell had helped convince Eisenhower to run, and then stayed by his side as a “wise counsellor and trusted confidant,” in the words of one profile. As Time pointed out, he had two things that Eisenhower desperately needed: a “legal mind” and a “political brain.” When Eisenhower appointed him attorney general, everyone understood that the president would be relying on Brownell for strategic advice. “The shortest half-mile in Washington after Jan. 20 will be the one running from the Justice Department to the White House,” the Washington News predicted.[22]
The close association between the president and the attorney general might have gone badly for Hoover, becoming a means of excluding the FBI from decision-making power. But Brownell arrived in office with two goals in mind. First, he wanted to reorganize the Justice Department, which he deemed to be in “pretty bad shape,” unable to keep all its employees properly paid and working together. Second, Brownell sought to ensure that whatever happened at Justice—including at the FBI—provided political benefits to the president. Brownell saw Hoover as an underutilized resource with enormous institutional power and popular acclaim that could be captured for Republican ends. He also recognized that Hoover felt battered and underappreciated after almost eight years under Truman. “I think his experiences during the Truman administration had been frustrating to him,” Brownell later reflected.[23]
What followed was a pageant of symbolic and practical support that could hardly have been imagined during the Truman years. Under Brownell’s leadership, the Department of Justice relaxed its oversight of “bugs” (or microphone plants), giving Hoover carte blanche to run the FBI as he saw fit. Brownell also pushed Congress to enact legislation allowing wiretap evidence to be used in espionage cases, a change Hoover had sought ever since the Coplon trials. Eisenhower supported that initiative and added to it with Executive Order 10450, which would become one of the most infamous measures of his presidency. The policy expanded Truman’s government employee loyalty program to include offenses related to the “habitual use of intoxicants to excess,” “drug addiction,” and “sexual perversion,” as well as to “sympathetic association with a saboteur, spy, traitor, seditionist, anarchist, or revolutionist.” Eisenhower made the FBI a key authority on such matters, ordering Hoover to conduct investigations into any government employee deemed suspicious. If and when the FBI found cause for concern, such employees could be fired and banished forever from federal employment. Under Eisenhower’s policy, in short, Hoover could make or break the career of almost any federal employee in Washington.[24]
