American History Tellers - J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - Citizens Resistance | 6

Episode Date: May 15, 2019

On March 8, 1971, seven ordinary Americans broke into a poorly guarded FBI regional office in Media, Pennsylvania. They called themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, and they had one purpose: to gather evidence that would prove the agency was engaged in a covert and illegal spying campaign against American citizens. For more than 30 years, Director J. Edgar Hoover had maintained an iron grip on the media, and with it, public perception of the Bureau. But as packages of stolen documents began appearing in newsroom mailboxes, followed soon after by front page stories, a very different narrative about the FBI’s activities began to emerge. It would forever shift the balance of public opinion against the Bureau, and signal the beginning of Hoover’s downfall.Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's 11 p.m. on March 8th, 1971. You're in the FBI's resident agency office in Media, Pennsylvania. But you don't work for the FBI, and the office has been closed for hours. With your flashlight in hand, you navigate the small suite of offices full of file cabinets. You silently signal your associates, following closely behind, each of you carrying two suitcases. There's no telling how much time we really have, so we can't waste a minute. How do

we know which files to take? Take them all. But how will we know what we're getting? We won't. Not until we get back to the safe house. Just let's get to work. You open the first suitcase, place it on the floor, and indiscriminately start stuffing files from the cabinet into the case. There are five cabinets in the small file room. Together, you empty them, one by one. You work quickly, trying to stay quiet. For now, the only sound you hear is the Muhammad Ali-Joe Fraser

fight of the century playing on radios in the apartments above you. You chose this night, knowing most everyone's attention would be on the fight. Your associate pulls a file and pauses. His eyes widen at what he's reading. Oh man, look at this. What? He opens file after file, glancing at the headings. None of these are criminal investigations.

It's all spy stuff. Civil rights, anti-war, meetings, demonstrations. You shake your head. It's just as you suspected. The FBI is watching everyone. It feels horrifying and vindicating in equal parts. You close your first full suitcase, set it aside, and open another. More files go in. You pull on the file drawer closest to you. This one's stuck. Here, let me help. Using a screwdriver, your associate jimmies the cheap file drawer open with a loud crack. You freeze, holding your breath, waiting for the sounds of footsteps or someone coming to investigate.

But all you hear is the muted announcer calling the Ali-Frasier fight. A car drives by outside. You freeze again and turn off the flashlights. You wait and wait. After a while, you get back to work. Soon, you've filled the suitcases and take them out to the outer office. Okay, looks like we're done. Did you get the notepads from the desks? The others nod, saying nothing. All right, we can go out the main door. Another of your accomplices is waiting in a

getaway car outside. The four of you leave the office, but the main hallway is brightly lit. You try to move as quickly as possible, until you hear someone cough and everyone stops for a moment. Nothing. No one's coming. Then you make your way down some steps and peer out the front door's window. An associate leans in. Is the guard looking? The Delaware County Courthouse across the street has a 24-hour security guard stationed on the front steps with a direct view of the building you're in. You squint.

No, sound asleep, as usual. Let's go. The four of you leave the building. To all the world, it looks like you've just packed your luggage and are heading out to catch a late flight. You walk casually to the car and fill the back of the station wagon with the suitcases. You get in the back seat and the driver pulls away. You watch for flashing lights and listen for sirens, but no one is following. I think we did it, folks. I can't believe how easy that was. Yeah, I think we got every single FBI file out of there. I just hope we got something we can use, though. I have a feeling we got everything we need. The information you and your accomplices have just uncovered will unravel the

story Hoover has been carefully weaving about the FBI for decades. In those suitcases piled in the back of a station wagon cruising away from the FBI office is evidence that will spell the beginning of the end for the director. Thank you. your imagination. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Kill List is a true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. Follow Kill List wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. The FBI's resident agency office in Media, Pennsylvania, was hardly a hotbed of covert activity. It was a sleepy regional office.

And unlike major FBI offices, it closed by 7 p.m. most nights. The eight accomplices chose it precisely because it was so poorly secured. It had no special locks, cameras, document safes, or security systems. They knew the layout and security arrangements because one of the burglars visited the office, posing as a Swarthmore College student writing a paper about the FBI. She was shown around by one of the agents and created a detailed map that helped them plan the heist. Others cased the exterior for weeks, noting the roots of the agents, apartment residents, local police, and the guard across the street. The burglars were not petty thieves, but an organized resistance.

The Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI was born with a mission to expose Hoover's domestic spying campaigns. They chose to burglarize an FBI office to get information to prove that the FBI was up to more than what Americans saw each week on the FBI television series. They were seven ordinary Americans who feared what they viewed as a national secret police. The members of the Citizens Commission included Temple University religion professor John C. Raines and his wife, civil rights activist Bonnie Raines. The leader of the group was Haverford College math professor William Davidson. Students Keith Forsyth and Judy Feingold were the youngest

members of the group. The two other burglars have never been publicly identified. The previous year, Bonnie Raines attended the peaceful anti-war rally in 1970. There, FBI agents took her picture, but also took her young child's picture. That incident helped convince her that the FBI was conducting a covert campaign against Americans who were legally exercising their First Amendment rights. John Raines was one of the original Freedom Riders who challenged segregation by taking buses across the South in mixed-race groups. It was his experience with the Civil Rights Movement that convinced him that the FBI and Hoover were enemies of democracy.

Raines and his accomplices believed that the Bureau was infiltrating the civil rights movement to disrupt it from within. Raines also believed that Congress and the White House were content with the police state and would never act to address the FBI's threats to civil liberties. So he and the other burglars took the suitcases of files to a safe house 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia, where they spent days sorting the thousands of documents. They stayed up all night, into the early morning of March 9, 1971, reading. They had agreed that any documents relating to criminal investigations would be destroyed. They did not want to hinder any legitimate FBI investigations. But there was much more than paperwork on

criminal investigations. What they discovered shocked them. They found clear evidence that their suspicions were true. The FBI was spying on and actively working to infiltrate, intimidate, and disrupt American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. One of the first documents they read related to a COINTELPRO investigation. It advised agents in the Philadelphia area who were investigating legal dissent groups to redouble their efforts to According to Raines, the documents showed that the FBI had become the Federal Bureau of Intimidation.

As the hours went by, they found more and more evidence that the FBI was systematically suppressing legal dissent. That morning, they took the first steps to let the world know what they had done. Raines called a Reuters News Service reporter from a payphone and read him a statement about the Citizens Commission to investigate the FBI, the burglary, and their plans to release information about the FBI's surveillance and intimidation policies. Of the thousands of documents the Citizens Commission had found, one document in particular would catch the attention of the reporter and become the most important finding to result from the burglary. On a yellow form was a handwritten note with the codename COINTELPRO, New Left. But when the story broke, the burglars were shocked that their announcement wasn't deemed more newsworthy.

The two local papers in Philadelphia each published three-inch stories, buried inside. And for two weeks after the burglary, local news organizations showed no curiosity. The FBI claimed nothing important had been stolen, and the media took them at their word. The Attorney General's office also helped keep the story at bay. On the morning after the burglary, March 9, 1971, Assistant Attorney General William H. Rehnquist, a future Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, testified under oath before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. Rehnquist, a good friend of Hoover and the FBI, testified that the U.S. government engaged in virtually no surveillance

of Americans and that what little surveillance did take place had no chilling effect. Free speech rights were sacred in America, Rehnquist told senators. Rather than legislation, Rehnquist assured the senators that, Meanwhile, the FBI was beginning to realize what kind of information was contained in the stolen files and how damaging their release could be. In a memorandum for Hoover on March 16th, COINTELPRO Chief William Sullivan summarized the problem. Sullivan wrote that the documents could be misconstrued and form the basis for an unfounded allegation that the Bureau engaged in Gestapo-type investigations. Two weeks later, the first FBI document stolen became public. While the committee to investigate the FBI had failed to garner attention

with their initial public statement, their plan to release the files certainly did. The committee created three separate packets of information. Each packet contained a cover letter providing context and explaining the significance and themes of the release. Each set of packets would be mailed to news organizations several days apart. Releasing the information incrementally allowed the committee to provide manageable bites of information for reporters to process into news stories. By the time one story was done, another packet would arrive. This approach was designed to keep the story before the public for several weeks. On March 22nd, the first person to report receiving the documents

was a South Dakota Democratic senator named George McGovern. McGovern was one of the most liberal politicians in Washington and had been publicly critical of the FBI. But he immediately returned the packet to the FBI, unreviewed, and issued a statement asking for a full congressional investigation of the burglary, saying, It undermined reasonable and constructive efforts to secure appropriate public review of the FBI. The burglars already believed the Washington establishment incapable of action against the FBI. Now it seems they were proven right. But as McGovern was returning his packet to the FBI, newspaper editors and publishers began wrestling with the question of whether or

not to publish the stolen documents. It's March 9th, 1971. You're the executive editor for the Washington Post. At 10 a.m. this morning, a package was delivered to a reporter on your staff, Betty Medzger. The package contained copies of stolen FBI documents. Now, 12 hours later, it's 10 p.m., and on the front page of tomorrow's paper, there's an empty spot waiting for Medsker's FBI story if it runs. So you're in the office of your publisher, Catherine Graham, trying to convince her not to kill the story. She looks at you, uncertain.

How can we be sure these documents are real? Look, Kay, we've been through this. The Attorney General wouldn't have called us with threats if they were fakes. We need to step carefully here. The lawyers tell me we could be courting serious trouble if we publish them. That's what lawyers always say. And that's what you always say. Well, at least we understand each other. Graham crushes her cigarette in the full ashtray on her desk and lights another. Let's take this one issue at a time. The documents are real. Our lawyers are concerned.

And the Attorney General says publication could endanger lives of federal agents. That's baloney. The only people in danger, based on these files, are people legally exercising their First Amendment rights. He's trying to intimidate us. What about Senator McGovern? Why should he send the documents back? Because he's

a politician, not a newspaper. He trusts us to publish them. Have you spoken to him? No. Kay, I don't consult on editorial decisions with senators. Perhaps we should. Graham stands and looks out the window, her arms folded. Kay, relax. It's our duty to inform the public. This is what we are here for. Don't patronize me. I know why we're here. I'm trying to assure we're still here tomorrow. Fine. But I'm assuming you don't buy the Attorney General's line about endangering agents? Of course not. I'm not stupid. They're desperate to keep those documents out of the news. So what is it then? Why your reluctance? They're stolen. Is it appropriate to publish stolen documents? Are we condoning burglary of federal offices? I'd rather be accused of that than of

ignoring a historic threat to civil liberties. We've published leaked information before. Oh, don't act like this isn't an unprecedented event. These documents weren't leaked from a federal employee. They were stolen. They broke into an FBI office and stole secret documents. Just because it has never been done before doesn't mean we're not right to do it. Right to do it? Right, wrong, there's no clear line here. We have to decide whether our responsibility to reveal this information to the public is more important than our concerns about its source. Yes, that is the crux of the question. So what will the story say? That the FBI, under Hoover, did these things, that they might be unconstitutional, at least that they are very different

from what the public thinks Hoover is up to. We will have to explain that we don't agree with the Attorney General's concerns. Yes, and I've already drafted a statement. You hand over a typewritten page. It's a note from the editors to be included with the story. The note simply says that after painstaking review, the editors have decided that publishing won't harm anyone, nor will it be a

threat to national security. I don't know. They were stolen. It's a risk. Okay, if we don't publish, the Post is going to need a new executive editor. Oh, goodness. So dramatic. Graham stares at you, trying to read the seriousness of your threat. Fine. Publish. You rush downstairs and give a thumbs up. Medsger's story, headlined Stolen Documents Describe FBI Surveillance Activities,

is pasted into place and sent downstairs to the Pressman. It'll appear on the front page on March 24, 1971. With his threat to resign, Ben Bradley, executive editor of the Washington Post, convinced Katherine Graham to publish the story. Other editors and publishers were not so brave. The New York Times and Los Angeles Times both immediately returned the documents to the FBI. But the Post's decision to publish pressured other newspapers to cover the story. After it ran, the dam broke. The New York Times published its own story. After that, as the second and third packets arrived, the Post and New York Times carried follow- story. After that, as the second and third packets arrived,

the Post and New York Times carried follow-up stories. The Los Angeles Times and other newspapers continued to cooperate with the Bureau, though, returning the files. But reaction to the stories made Senator McGovern and journalists who refused to publish look foolish. Members of Congress who had always been supportive of the FBI were shocked. They called

for an immediate investigation of the Bureau. Newspaper editorials referred to the FBI as a secret police and Big Brother. Apparently without recognizing the irony in their statement, editors of the Philadelphia Inquirer, a newspaper that had always been an unquestioning supporter of Hoover and the FBI, noted, all 200 million of us in this country are in a bad way, and our freedoms may be in jeopardy if we are dependent upon information from burglars to find out what the Federal Bureau of Investigation is doing. Predictably, the FBI engaged its supporters in Congress and the news media to declare, as they had many times before when criticism arose, that a communist-inspired smear campaign was underway. Unfortunately for Hoover, his army of supporters had diminished over the

years. By 1971, ardent defenders like broadcaster Fulton Lewis Jr. and columnist George Sokolski were dead. Hoover's trusted public relations aide, Deke DeLoach, had left the FBI. Ultimately, a few members of Congress were all Hoover could rely on to come to his defense. Congressman Roger H. Zion, an Indiana Republican, declared that, A major communist front-originated attack is taking place on America's top law official. Director J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI is now being subjected to a relentless attack by the far left. But despite this full-throated

defense and others, the damage was done. For the first time, the public and members of Congress were confronted with the extent of Hoover's domestic spying. But the secret documents released by the burglars was only among the first of a series of challenges in the early 1970s that exposed the limits of the Bureau's decades-old public relations formula. Still more challenges to this strategy came from within. The architects of Hoover's PR machine were aging out and leaving behind an agency ill-equipped to protect the FBI's heroic legacy from attack. This is the emergency broadcast system. A ballistic missile threat has been detected inbound to your area.

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You can listen to Scamfluencers and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid and Kill List early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening. It's August 16th, 1971, and you're attending the weekly meeting of the FBI's executive conference, the Top Bureau Leadership. You're here as the FBI's number three man, a position you've held for less than a year. Tom Bishop, the assistant director in charge of the Crime Records Division, the division in charge of the FBI's public relations, offers a proposal. The director has asked us to discuss a new media policy. The basic premise is that we will not provide any comment to anyone from the New York Times, CBS, NBC, or the Washington Post. It's an extension of our policy not to speak to the Los Angeles Times.

This makes you uncomfortable. Should the FBI just stick its head in the sand? Tom, you think it's wise to just ignore the kinds of stories we are seeing lately? I believe it is if we can't get a fair shake from those publications. But Jack Nelson at the Los Angeles Times is tearing us apart with allegations about the director's television show money. Jack Anderson's columns are brutal too. Shouldn't we work to counter them? I believe our policy is putting pressure on the LA Times.

I had a shouting match with an editor there. I told him unless they get rid of that SOB Nelson, they'll get nothing from us. Yeah, but Nelson's still there and still writing stories about the director. He called the FBI Recreation Association a slush fund. Keeps asking about our financial arrangements on the TV show. He's making the director look foolish. The no comments policy makes us look guilty. No, I believe we're making progress. Your predecessors never felt a total ban on contact was wise,

especially with those kinds of influential publications. But times have changed. This is my advice to the director. Lou Nichols maintained contact with everyone, friends and enemies. It paid off. Deloach was tougher on them, but never refused a call from anyone. Things have changed. Well, maybe that's because we're not talking to reporters. All they want to write about is corruption and COINTELPRO. We are still catching criminals. We're still innovating in the laboratory. The FBI is

still the FBI. Yeah, but the reporters aren't interested in crime anymore. The burglary changed everything. Suddenly, we're spies. Yeah, and I think we need to get an alternative story out there. We need to maintain back channels to those publications. We have plenty of other friends in the media. But we're talking about the New York Times, the Post, CBS, NBC. We don't have any friends there. They drive the agenda for everyone else. The director and I agree that this is our best policy going forward. I urge you to reconsider.

This decision is final, and there's nothing left to consider. Two years to grin. The executive committee, a rubber stamp for Hoover's proposals you're discovering, approves the blanket no-comment policy over your objections. You worry that the policy reflects Hoover's diminished capacity and Bishop's lack of talent more than any real strategy. Tom Bishop, head of the Crime Records Division, joined the FBI in 1941, having never before held a full-time job. He was a competent administrator, but had no background in public relations when he was brought to Washington in 1966. With time, he might have developed into a competent PR chief,

but in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Bishop found himself under siege by stories criticizing the FBI. Without the savvy, charming Deke DeLoach or the affable Lou Nichols to guide FBI public relations, the Bureau had little or no response to the challenges it faced from journalists and elsewhere in the early 1970s. Clyde Tolson, Hoover's attack dog and closest advisor on public relations and other matters, suffered a series of severe strokes in the late 60s. By 71, he rarely went to the office. Hoover himself suffered from high blood pressure and other ailments, and there was speculation among reporters and members of Congress that his iron-fisted control of the FBI had slipped, and the Bureau's friends in the media,

the people it could rely on, also fell ill, retired, or passed away one by one. Hoover himself was in his mid-70s and faced several health challenges. He was increasingly stubborn and unwilling to adapt the public image of science and restraint that he had developed more than 30 years earlier. At a time when the press was attacking the FBI as never before, Hoover left himself exposed. Where Nichols, DeLoach, and even Tolson were master strategists, Bishop was a functionary, mostly comfortable offering various takes on, no comment, in response to critical articles. And one by one, a series of public relations challenges chipped away at the FBI's public image. In late 1970, an FBI agent who was studying for a master's degree wrote a private letter to his professor in response to a class assignment. In it, he defended the FBI from

charges it was an American Gestapo, but referred to the Bureau as an overcautious bureaucracy that had failed to pay attention to organized crime. When he asked an FBI clerk to type the letter to his professor, the clerk told her supervisor about it. Furious, Hoover suspended the agent for 30 days and transferred him from New York to Butte, Montana. The agent, whose wife was ill with cancer, resigned and went public, and the resulting stories and no comments from the Bureau unmasked Hoover's petty and vindictive side. South Dakota Democratic Senator George McGovern didn't hold his tongue this time, pushing back on the suspension by issuing a statement to the press. In response, Hoover asked Bishop to draft a reply to McGovern. It was tone-deaf and vengeful.

You are not the first person I have encountered during almost 50 years in Washington whose ambition has far exceeded his ability, and I cannot help but wonder how many other esteemed career public servants will be maligned and abused before your political balloon runs out of hot air. This letter and others like it were signed by Clyde Tolson and other Bureau officials and released to the public. The venom and contrived nature of the FBI responses fueled further criticism of Hoover's public relations operation. McGovern, then a presidential contender, made the front pages with his criticism of the FBI. Hoover's responses were buried inside the newspapers. The Bureau no longer had the relationships needed to drive media coverage

their way. Reporter Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times had become, by 1971, the primary focus of Hoover's anger at the press. In a letter to Hoover, Nelson submitted a series of pointed questions that suggested that he had a source directing him to ask about possible corruption in the FBI. How often did Hoover's office get new carpeting? How much did Hoover's armored limousine cost? Did he get a new one every year? Where did the money from the FBI television series go? Who really wrote Hoover's book, Masters of Deceit, and where did those profits go? How many hours a week did FBI employees spend working on the television series? Did any FBI agents or funds go into the remodeling

of Hoover's private home? Nelson closed the letter, writing, We feel the questions posed above deal with subjects that are clearly within the area of the public's right to know. We hope you will give us an early reply. Unsurprisingly, Hoover encouraged Bishop to offer no comment in response. We don't wrestle with skunks, he wrote on a memo in bright blue ink. Bishop crafted a variety of creative but non-responsive answers to Nelson's questions, but it was clear inside the Bureau that Nelson was on to something.

On October 13, 1971, a furious Hoover defied his own policy against contact with Nelson's newspaper. He met with an L.A. Times executive to complain about Nelson's vendetta against him and share some of the FBI's rumors and innuendo. Nelson was a drunk, Hoover claimed, with a Jekyll and Hyde personality. Hoover complained that Nelson was behind rumors about the director's homosexuality that continued to spread throughout Washington. But Hoover's tirade failed. Nelson pushed back. He wrote a letter to Hoover and the Attorney General,

naming reporters in Washington who'd been told by FBI agents that Nelson was a heavy drinker. He noted that Bishop had once referred to him as an SOB in a conversation with a LA Times editor. And Nelson asked that his letter to Hoover and the Attorney General be included in the FBI's dossier on him. This request was a shot aimed at the FBI's secret spying activities, revelations unearthed by that year's burglary of FBI files. And at about the same time, the last of Hoover's most trusted advisors, William C. Sullivan, left the Bureau. Sullivan had sided against Hoover in a disagreement with President Richard Nixon over wiretapping records. Hoover wanted to hold on to the records,

which documented wiretaps that Nixon had ordered on journalists. Sullivan, hoping to curry favor with Nixon, turned them over to the White House. Hoover's relationship with Nixon was complex. While Nixon and Hoover shared similar political views, the director was beyond the federal mandatory retirement age, and at any time, the president could force retirement on Hoover. Nixon also feared the contents of Hoover's secret files. Like presidents before him, Nixon no doubt wondered what Hoover might have on him. Hoover fired Sullivan the day he found out about the betrayal, losing his last remaining

advisor with any public relations savvy. Adding insult to injury, the firing became front-page news. In an October 2, 1971 article, Ken Clausen of the Washington Post cast Hoover as the villain in the story of Sullivan's firing. Clausen reported that Hoover's claim that Sullivan had voluntarily resigned was, according to an FBI source, a lie of the highest Hooverian order. New York Post editor James Weschler reported that Sullivan had been declared a non-person in the FBI. According to Weschler, to veteran Hoover watchers in the Capitol, the only explanation is the increasing irascibility and insecurity that the FBI chief has been manifesting in his later years amid the growth of public criticism

and the deterioration of morale within the Bureau. A month after the Sullivan firing, yet another damaging story broke. Clausen reported that the FBI had, on orders from the White House, investigated CBS news reporter Daniel Shore. This story seemed to confirm concerns that Hoover, his faculties perhaps slipping due to his age and health issues, had lost control of the FBI.

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Buy it now. Stream free on Freeview and Prime Video. It's the morning of May 2nd, 1972. You're a housekeeper performing your normal duties for your employer, J. Edgar Hoover. It's about 7.20 a.m., and you're preparing the director's usual breakfast, two soft-boiled eggs, white toast, and black coffee, served every day at 7.30 sharp. The director is zealous about his routines, but today he doesn't seem to be keeping to them. The only person joining you in the kitchen this morning is James Crawford,

a handyman and former driver for Hoover. You turn to him with a growing worry. Mr. Hoover has not come down. What do we do? No? Well, have you checked on him? Not yet. He seems so tired lately.

I didn't want to disturb him. I'm sure everything's fine. The man's 77 years old. He deserves to sleep in if he wants to. He's been under some terrible strain. The papers won't leave him alone. I try not to read that garbage. He has slept late a few times recently. See? I'm sure he'll be down any minute. You pour yourself some coffee and sip it nervously. What if something has happened to him? I've been with him for decades. The man is indestructible. The two of you know the director perhaps better than anyone, except maybe Clyde Tolson. You glance at your watch. It's now 745. He's 15 minutes late. I think we should check on him. I guess we should, but I've got the key, so I'll go first. The two of you climb the stairs to Hoover's bedroom on the second floor.

The door is, as it always is, locked. You knock. There's no answer. Crawford pulls out the key, unlocks the door, and opens it just a crack. Mr. Hoover? It's James. Everything okay? There's no response. Crawford knocks again as he pushes the door open wider. The thick curtains are drawn. It's dark with just a sliver of sunlight coming through the gap in the drapes. He's not on the bed. Check the bathroom. Crawford, his eyes still adjusting to the dark, maneuvers around the bedroom to the bathroom. The bedroom is full of an eclectic set of mementos and art. It would be easy to knock something over, so Crawford steps gingerly. He peeks into the bathroom. Nobody here. There's only one other place to check. Crawford tiptoes to the far side of the bed and slumps his shoulders.

You rush to see, but he catches you midway. He shakes his head, tears welling in his eyes. It's no use. He's gone. Good evening. J. Edgar Hoover has died at the age of 77, a cause given as high blood pressure. For almost every living American generation, Hoover, the director of 77, the cause given is high blood pressure. For almost every living American generation, Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, stood as the symbol of incorruptible law enforcement and untouchable who liked to boast that his men

could not be bought. For many Americans, Hoover's death was a milestone moment. The director was an American icon, and his death after 48 years as FBI director was a shock to many. On May 3, 1972, Hoover became the only civil servant in American history granted the honor of having a viewing and memorial service in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. It's an honor bestowed on only 35 Americans since 1852. Hoover's coffin arrived in a driving rain and was placed on the same platform that once held Abraham Lincoln's casket, covered in an American flag, in a place of honor reserved for presidents, members of Congress, and war heroes. At a brief memorial in the Rotunda, Chief Justice Warren Burger called Hoover a man of great courage who would not sacrifice principle to the popular clamor.

Hoover was buried in Congressional Cemetery in southeast Washington, D.C., about a half mile from where he was born in 1895. In the hours, days, and weeks after Hoover's death, FBI officials labored to secure the secret files that had held the potential to obliterate the director's diminishing legacy. Immediately upon being notified of Hoover's death, the director's secretary, Helen Grandy, began working down a to-do list the director had provided her for when he died. Grandy, who had been with him for his entire tenure as director, began sorting and moving files from the director's office to his home. The most important files were the director's personal and confidential ones, held in the cabinets of the director's office.

Those files contained the most sensitive secrets Hoover's agents had uncovered over the prior 48 years. Grandy arranged to have hundreds of thousands of files moved to Hoover's basement. She then sat at her typewriter and submitted her resignation. She spent the several weeks following Hoover's death in the director's basement shredding files. She later claimed the only files she removed were the director's personal papers. What she did not say is that Hoover considered all FBI files his own personal property. The truck driver who moved the files described hauling 25 file cabinets full of documents to Hoover's house, and the contents of every one were destroyed. With Hoover's death, Clyde Tolson became director of the FBI.

He held the position just long enough to submit his resignation to the Attorney General. President Nixon, no doubt in an effort to solidify his own control of the FBI and its files, appointed a malleable figurehead, L. Patrick Gray, as acting director. Gray was a Justice Department official but had no law enforcement experience. One of Gray's first major reform acts as acting director was to disband the public relations-oriented crime records section. In 1973, Gray was nominated to become permanent director of the Bureau. But the nomination was withdrawn following revelations that he passed files

relating to the Watergate investigation to the Nixon administration. Gray later said that the gravest mistake of his life was getting involved with Richard Nixon. But for the FBI, the incident was just another public relations disaster. Hoover's death accelerated the feeding frenzy around Washington as investigations of the director's COINTELPRO and other secret spying campaigns ramped up. Without a powerful, iconic figure like Hoover at the head of the FBI, it seemed that there was less fear of speaking out.

The appointment of a respected former agent, Clarence Kelly, in 1973 solidified FBI leadership, but it did nothing to contain the public relations damage or stop the revelations. On December 5, 1973, FBI Director Kelly sent a written warning to every one of the Bureau's 8,767 agents. Kelly ordered them to cease any investigative activities that could abridge in any way the rights guaranteed citizens by the Constitution. When word of Kelly's order leaked, as it inevitably would, it was received as an admission of the sins of the Hoover era. Why order agents to stop violating constitutional rights unless they were violating constitutional rights? In 1975, following reports that the FBI

had maintained files on members of Congress, the U.S. Senate authorized a comprehensive investigation into the activities of the CIA and FBI. The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities came to be known as the Church Committee for its chairman, Idaho Democratic Senator Frank Church. In late 1975 and into 76, news from the Church Committee hearings made headlines around the country. Among the revelations from the hearings were details of the FBI's efforts to marginalize and even blackmail the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In addition, the committee released some details of the illegal COINTELPRO operations to disrupt dissident groups. Former FBI official Deke DeLoach confirmed to the Church

Committee that COINTELPRO included a mass media program to distribute rumors, innuendo, and other fake news to friendly reporters with a goal of undermining legal dissent. The Church Committee also uncovered the wiretaps against journalists initiated by the Nixon administration seeking to find leaks in its midst. In a New York Times column, Nicholas Horrock noted that the hearings painted a sinister picture of Hoover's tenure and of the director himself. He wrote, A lot of what is now labeled wrong among the Bureau's methods was an outgrowth of the personality and attitude of J. Edgar Hoover. J. Edgar Hoover was a giant in American history. To his credit, he created an innovative and highly

effective law enforcement agency. His agents were pioneers in the use of science and criminal profiling, among many other innovations. But ultimately, Hoover turned the FBI into a tool of his own paranoia. The director leveraged the enormous power of the agency he built to spy on Americans in a legally disrupt constitutionally protected dissent. After Hoover's death, new limits were placed on the FBI's authority. Directors were limited to 10-year terms. Changes to the Freedom of Information Act opened up Hoover's files for review.

But the FBI cannot be separated from Hoover's legacy, even with the passing of nearly 50 years since the death of its longest-serving and most famous director. On September 30, 1975, President Gerald Ford dedicated a new FBI building, constructed at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest in Washington, D.C. That building bears Hoover's name. Next week on American History Tellers, I have a conversation with renowned historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough.

His new book, The Pioneers, explores the explorers and settlers who brought the American ideal West. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now ideal West. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you're listening on a smartphone, tap or swipe over the cover art of this podcast. You'll find the episode notes, including some details you may have missed. You can also find us and me on Twitter and Facebook. Follow the show at A.H. Tellers, and I'm at Lindsey A. Graham,

and thank you. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship. Sound design by Derek Behrens. This episode is written by Matthew Cecil, edited by Audrey Dilling and Emma Cortland, edited and produced by Jenny Lauer Beckman. Our executive producer is Marshall Louis, created by Hernán López for Wondery. In November 1991, media tycoon Robert Maxwell mysteriously vanished from his luxury yacht in the Canary Islands.

But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed. It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse, and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multi-million dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that define their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that define their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our lives.

In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually curdles into desperation, and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness to do anything to get ahead. Follow Business Movers wherever you get your podcasts.

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