Hoover's FBI: The Inside Story By Hoover's Trusted Lieutenant – Cartha D. "Deke" DeLoach, 1995 ★★

Sympathy for J. Edgar

J. Edgar Hoover, civil libertarian? According to one of his top aides, yes.

For a time in the 1960s, Cartha DeLoach was the third-ranking executive in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Bureau’s point man with the White House. Watching his boss dicker with President Lyndon B. Johnson on what the FBI could and couldn’t do under the Constitution was for DeLoach both instructive and edifying:

If one great story about the FBI in Hoover’s day remains untold, it is that a titanic war was being waged over whether the FBI would be turned into a partisan national police department. And in almost every case the man defending the Constitution and trying to limit the powers of the bureau was J. Edgar Hoover and the people trying to politicize the bureau were the politicians – from moderate conservatives such as Richard Nixon to liberal icons such as Bobby Kennedy (who as attorney general never saw a wiretap he didn’t like), and of course LBJ.

Hoover’s FBI doesn’t quite get around to telling this story; other FBI anecdotes draw more attention. But it does give one a flavor for the book as a whole, as spirited a defense of Hoover’s public service as you are likely to find – outside of Hollywood hagiographies made to burnish the Director’s ego when he was still alive.

Whether you find his take credible or not, DeLoach’s book offers insight as to what people running the Bureau were thinking when they did such things as eavesdrop on Martin Luther King or conduct widespread surveillance against the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950s and leftist radicals in the 1960s. It also offers fascinating glimpses of other, non-hot-button issues that consumed FBI man hours while DeLoach worked there.

Cartha DeLoach stands behind his boss Hoover at a ceremony in Jackson, Mississippi in 1964. To the left of DeLoach is Roy Moore, special agent in charge of the Jackson office. Image from https://wdet.org/posts/2018/02/08/86382-the-fbis-fraught-complex-history-with-black-america/ 

Also discussed: Was J. Edgar, you know, gay?

Not if you believe DeLoach, responding in 1995 to Anthony Summers’ 1993 The Secret Life Of J. Edgar Hoover and its allegation that Hoover was not only lovers with his deputy director Clyde Tolson, but a cross-dresser besides:

Contrary to what Summers would have you believe, neither Hoover nor Tolson was the least bit effeminate. Both were tough and manly. Hoover was a bull dog. Tolson was a strapping, healthy fellow in his youth. He played first base on the FBI’s champion baseball team, and there wasn’t the slightest sign of weakness or “prettiness” in his face. He was certainly more of a man than Mr. Summers, and I’ve seen both at close quarters.

DeLoach does score some points on the matter, too. He notes how Hoover’s leftist critics enjoy labeling him gay because it’s the one socially safe outlet for their own homophobia. If a man’s private life doesn’t hurt anyone else, it shouldn’t matter to them, right?

But then again, didn’t it matter to Hoover himself? I mean, what about all those secret blackmail files the guy kept on everyone in public life?

DeLoach dismisses this rumor, too. “I can say categorically that during all the years I served at FBI headquarters, I never saw a main file on a legislator – except on those that had been charged with a criminal act within the FBI’s jurisdiction,” he writes.

Hoover in his early days. According to DeLoach, Hoover was always very keen to look the part of an agent, with tailored suits and a trim waistline. When he began putting on pounds, he initiated a Bureau-wide policy for physical fitness - after exempting himself. Image from https://www.thedailybeast.com/fbi-director-hoovers-dirty-files-excerpt-from-ronald-kesslers-the-secrets-of-the-fbi.

One criticism against Hoover DeLoach does endorse is that the man clung to power well past his sell-by date. Hoover first took charge of the Bureau in 1924, back when it was still the Bureau of Investigation. His last day on the job was May 1, 1972, the day before he died.

Simply put, Hoover equated public life with life itself. The perks of office meant everything to him. He had no succession plan because he planned never to leave office:

He was proud and vain, perpetually concerned with covering his own rear, and not above abusing his powers. He could be petty and vindictive. He stayed in office too long, and in so doing, he helped damage the reputation of the FBI he had virtually invented and almost perfected.

DeLoach doesn’t really explain this thought. A key problem with Hoover’s FBI is lack of focus. DeLoach is not building a central thesis so much as anecdote-sharing, pushing back against what he calls lies and misunderstandings in a style too formal for conversation, too loose for anything else. The stories he tells often have a superficial quality, or else, as when countering the gay rumor about Hoover, a sense of being jammed in to satisfy a publisher’s check list. It’s not a fluid narrative.

Hoover and Lyndon Johnson. According to DeLoach, among Johnson's many extralegal requests was that the FBI provide security at the 1964 Democratic convention, to prevent protests. Hoover resisted this, but went along with others. Image from https://www.scpr.org/news/2011/11/22/30001/jfk-assassination-anniversary-private-conversation/.

What Hoover’s FBI does offer is a window as to what the thought processes were like within Hoover’s closest circle. It is especially illuminating when it comes to Hoover’s problematic relationship with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and its leader, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Simply put, Hoover didn’t like King, an attitude which caused both men considerable trouble. DeLoach claims this was not because of King’s role as an outspoken activist for black equality and fair treatment, but rather because King once claimed that FBI agents in the South were Southerners themselves “influenced by the mores of the community,” i. e. racist.

Hoover, DeLoach writes, viewed this as a cheap headline-grabbing ploy:

It was an outrage – an affront Hoover neither forgot nor forgave. It was the single wellspring of the director’s ongoing animosity.

DeLoach didn’t like King, either, who carried on beyond closed doors, but not out of FBI earshot thanks to wiretapping, with a bevy of women while playing a pious minister for the cameras.

William Sullivan, the FBI's head of domestic intelligence from 1961-1971. DeLoach blames him for the worst of FBI transgressions regarding Martin Luther King Jr., such as sending tapes of King having sex with other women to King's wife Coretta. Eventually DeLoach claims Sullivan lost favor with Hoover by going behind his back one too many times. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_C._Sullivan.

For DeLoach, such spying was acceptable because it was approved by higher-ups, in this case Attorney General Robert Kennedy, as concerned as Hoover and DeLoach were regarding a pair of suspected communists who were high-ranking advisers to King.

DeLoach presents this angle as credible, especially as the 1960s went on and King’s organization focused more on economic and political issues like President Johnson’s war in Vietnam:

We wanted to know if two men with communist ties were running the operation or if King himself was still in charge. Why, we asked ourselves, would King allow [Stanley] Levison to dictate strategy and write virtually all major policy statements? And why would he assign a man with [Jack] O’Dell’s shady character to a key position on his staff when he was in contact with black people of greater skill and stature who were eager to help?

Yet the verdict, as DeLoach notes much later, suggested no serious communist influence in the SCLC. As with DeLoach’s later account of FBI spying on left-wing radicals, he seems unconcerned about civil liberties when there was any potential law-breaking to investigate. This may have been Hoover’s problem, too.

DeLoach’s book does offer fascinating glimpses of the Bureau in action. He gives a marvelous account of the investigation into King’s assassination in 1968, and how the culprit was identified. James Earl Ray was an escaped convict who used multiple pseudonyms but blundered when he dropped his weapon near the scene of the crime.

When James Earl Ray was finally captured in England, FBI agents couldn't draw fingerprints without the suspect's consent. DeLoach gave them an order: “Damn it, man, hand him a glass of water. Then take the glass and lift the latents.” Image from https://www.al.com/news/2018/01/what_happened_to_james_earl_ra.html

Controversial as that arrest would be, it was more successful than the FBI’s handling of the assassination of President Kennedy four-and-a-half years before. In that case, Dallas FBI agent James Hosty got a threatening note from Lee Harvey Oswald, but failed to follow up until Oswald was arrested for Kennedy’s murder. Worse, Hosty destroyed the note at the command of his superior.

DeLoach explains there was nothing nefarious in any of this. Rather, it was emblematic of a CYA attitude at the FBI, promulgated by the boss:

Over the years, FBI failures were never the fault of the director. The press always blamed some poor bastard who’d given Hoover bad advice. I’ll say this: When he asked us for recommendations, we never offered them without considering every possible outcome that might bring official censure.

That is about as far as DeLoach goes in the direction of criticizing Hoover. Actually, Hoover figures surprisingly little in a book bearing his name. DeLoach has more to say about working with Lyndon Johnson, who at one point floated the idea of naming him Hoover’s successor.

While J. Edgar Hoover worked for the U. S. Attorney General as FBI director, he didn't always get along with the men who filled the position. DeLoach recalls Hoover calling Ramsey Clark, LBJ's third attorney general (above), the "Bull Butterfly" for his talent to annoy. When it came to Clark's predecessor, Robert F. Kennedy (below), Hoover told DeLoach recommending RFK's appointment to his brother, President Kennedy, was the "worst damn piece of advice I ever gave!"
Top image from https://pastdaily.com/2019/02/26/ramsey-clark-1967-past-daily/. Bottom image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy.

This may well be because Hoover was such a gray bureaucrat that he didn’t offer much color to draw upon. DeLoach seems at a loss regarding Hoover’s personality. The only meaningful relationship Hoover had from what DeLoach saw was with his mother, Annie Hoover, who died in 1938 and whose Bible sat on Hoover’s desk.

In some ways, Hoover was defined by his limitations. DeLoach notes that the director was slow to recognize the existence of the Mafia because he couldn’t conceive of such a criminal organization. “He didn’t know about it; ergo, it did not exist,” DeLoach writes.

DeLoach credits Hoover with developing the FBI into its own elite organization, employing scientific crime-solving techniques that remain admired to this day. But the Hoover DeLoach worked for had been director for a quarter-century; this is very much an account of a “lion in winter,” as its final chapter is titled. Illuminating, if a trifle too guarded.