Enemies: A History of the FBI (78 page)

20.
“played into the hands of the radicals”:
Daugherty,
Inside Story
, p. 166. Bureau memos on Senator Borah’s speech calling for the release of fifty-three men still imprisoned under the Espionage Act were filed on March 12, 1923.

21.
“My image as a Bolshevik”:
Burton K. Wheeler with Paul F. Healy,
Yankee from the West
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), pp. 200–204. While United States senators such as Borah and Wheeler backed recognition of Russia, American socialists were denouncing the Soviets for killing real and imagined enemies of the state. Eugene Debs had fired off a telegram to the Kremlin in November 1922, saying: “I protest with all civilized people in the name of our common humanity” against political murder committed by the Communists. Debs telegram to Lenin quoted in
The New York Call
, November 1922.

22.
“the Communist leader in the Senate”:
Daugherty,
Inside Story
, p. 214.

23.
“the most colossal conspiracy”:
Richard A. Whitney,
Reds in America
(New York: Beckwith Press, 1924), pp. 17–19, 48–54.

24.
“If you knew of a great scandal”:
Russell,
Shadow of Blooming Grove
, p. 582.

25.
“Get rid of this Bureau of Investigation”:
Crim testimony,
Investigation of the Hon. Harry M. Daugherty
, United States Senate, 68th Congress, 1st Session, Vol. 3, p. 2570ff.

26.
“exceedingly bad odor”:
Alpheus Thomas Mason,
Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law
(New York: Viking, 1956), pp. 147–149.

7.
“T
HEY NEVER STOPPED WATCHING US
”

  
1.
“ultra-radical”:
Hoover to Stone, July 31, 1924, FBI files, ACLU.

  
2.
“I think we were wrong,” “to leave my desk each day,”
and
“We never knew”:
in “They Never Stopped Watching Us: A Conversation Between Roger Baldwin and Alan F. Westin,”
Civil Liberties Review
4 (November/December 1977), p. 25.

  
3.
“The activities of the Communists”:
Hoover to Donovan, Oct. 18, 1924, FBI. Hoover gave this answer to his immediate superior, the newly appointed chief of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, William J. Donovan, destined to become the leader of American espionage during World War II and the godfather of the CIA.

  
4.
“official matters”:
The statute enacted in 1916 says “the Attorney General may appoint officials … to detect and prosecute crimes against the United States [and] to conduct such other investigations regarding official matters under the control of the Department of Justice and the Department of State as may be directed by the Attorney General.” Nearly sixty years later, President Ford’s attorney general, Edward H. Levi, testified that this statute could not stand scrutiny: “the statutory basis for the operations of the Bureau cannot be said to be fully satisfactory.”

  
5.
“This Bureau cannot afford”:
Whitehead,
The FBI Story: A Report to the People
(New York: Random House, 1956), p. 71.

  
6.
“see that every secrecy is maintained”:
Hoover to Special Agents in Charge, Aug. 6, 1927, FBI/FOIA.

  
7.
“the entire membership of all New York unions”:
David Williams, “ ‘They Never Stopped Watching Us’: FBI Political Surveillance, 1924–1936,”
UCLA Historical Journal
2 (1981).

8.
R
ED
F
LAGS

  
1.
“The workers of this country”:
House Committee to Investigate Communist Activities, Investigation of Communist Propaganda, 71st Congress, 2nd Session (1930), p. 348.

  
2.
“no department of the government”:
Hamilton Fish, Jr., “The Menace of Communism,”
The Annals
156 (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1931), pp. 54–61.

  
3.
“never been established by legislation”:
Memorandum of a telephone call between J. Edgar Hoover and Congressman Fish, Jan. 19, 1931, cited in “Counterintelligence Between the Wars,”
CI Reader
, National Counterintelligence Executive.

  
4.
“to secure a foothold”:
Hoover to Attorney General Mitchell, Jan. 2, 1932, cited in “Counterintelligence Between the Wars,”
CI Reader
, National Counterintelligence Executive.

  
5.
“active Communist unit”:
Hoover to Kelley, Jan. 20, 1931, cited in “They Never Stopped Watching Us.”

  
6.
“We are now engaged in a war”:
Cummings quoted in Kenneth O’Reilly, “A New Deal for the FBI: The Roosevelt Administration, Crime Control, and National Security,”
Journal of American History
69, no. 3 (1982).

  
7.
“the criminal standing army”:
Hoover’s warning about 4.3 million criminals at large in America were debunked, albeit quietly, in a report to the Senate by the Brookings Institution, included in
Investigation of Executive Agencies of the Government
, 75th Congress, 1st Session (1937).

P
ART
II  •  World War

9.
T
HE
B
USINESS OF
S
PYING

  
1.
“a very careful and searching investigation”:
Hoover memorandum of conversation, May 10, 1934.

  
2.
“subversive activities in the United States”:
Hoover memos, Aug. 24 and 25, 1936.

  
3.
“men of zeal, well-meaning”:
Olmstead v. U.S
., 227 U.S. 438 (1928).

  
4.
“probably have laughed”:
Vetterli to FBI HQ, July 25, 1938, cited in Raymond J. Batvinis,
The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007), p. 23. My retelling of the Rumrich case relies on research by Batvinis, a former FBI counterintelligence agent, whose account is the first complete and straightforward narrative of the tale.

  
5.
On October 14, 1938, Hoover:
Hoover’s plans for intelligence and counterintelligence are in two crucial documents: “The Work, Function, Organization of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Time of War,” Oct. 14, 1938; and Hoover’s memorandum, enclosed with letter from Cummings to Roosevelt, Oct. 20, 1938. The documents are cited, respectively, in Batvinis,
Origins
, and “Counterintelligence Between the Wars,” and together represent a basis for regarding Hoover as the true founding father of central intelligence in the United States.

  
6.
“He stated that he had approved”:
Hoover memorandum, Nov. 7, 1938.

10.
T
HE
J
UGGLER

  
1.
“You know I am a juggler”:
FDR quoting himself at a special study group on Latin America, May 15, 1942, Presidential Diary, p. 1093, Henry Morgenthau Papers, FDRL. The quotation forms the thesis of Warren F. Kimball’s classic study,
The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991).

  
2.
“On June 26, 1939, FDR”:
It read: “It is my desire that the investigation of all espionage, counter-espionage, and sabotage matters be controlled and handled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice, the Military Intelligence Division [MID] of the War Department, and the Office of Naval Intelligence [ONI] of the Navy Department. The Directors of these three agencies are to function as a committee to coordinate their activities.”

  
3.
“take charge of investigative work”:
Public statement of the president, Sept. 6, 1939. Attorney General Murphy said at a news conference held the same day: “Foreign agents and those engaged in espionage will no longer find this country a happy hunting ground for their activities. There will be no repetition of the confusion and laxity and indifference of twenty years ago. We have opened many new FBI offices throughout the land. Our men are well prepared and well trained. At the same time, if you want this work done in a reasonable and responsible way it must not turn into a witch-hunt. We must do no wrong to any man. Your government asks you to cooperate with it. You can turn in any information to the nearest local representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  
4.
“Twenty years ago inhuman and cruel things”:
Murphy quoted in J. Woodford Howard Jr.,
Mr. Justice Murphy: A Political Biography
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 205–210.

  
5.
“Same rule prevails”:
Hoover notation, Tamm to Hoover, Dec. 22, 1937, FBO/FOIA.

  
6.
“inconsistent with ethical standards”:
Nardone II
, 308 U.S. 338.

  
7.
“greatly concerned”:
Hoover to Jackson, April 13, 1940, Library of Congress, Robert H. Jackson Papers, Box 94, Folder 8.

  
8.
“the very definite possibility”:
Hoover to L. M. C. Smith, Chief, Neutrality Laws Unit, Nov. 28, 1940, FBI,
CI Reader
, “The Custodial Detention Program.”

  
9.
“the various so-called radical”:
Tolson to Hoover, Oct. 30, 1939, FBI,
CI Reader
, “Scope of FBI Domestic Intelligence.”

10.
“liberty in this country”:
Memo to E. A. Tamm, Nov. 9, 1939, FBI,
CI Reader
, “Scope of FBI Domestic Intelligence.”

11.
“watched carefully”:
Memo to E. A. Tamm, Dec. 2, 1939, FBI,
CI Reader
, “Scope of FBI Domestic Intelligence.”

12.
“entirely confidential”:
Hoover to Field Offices, Dec. 6, 1939, FBI,
CI Reader
, “Scope of FBI Domestic Intelligence.”

13.
August T. Gausebeck:
The
Rueckwanderer
plot is detailed in Norman J. W. Goda, “Banking on Hitler: Chase National Bank and the Rückwanderer Mark Scheme, 1936–1941,” in
U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis
, published by the National Archives Trust Fund Board, Washington, D.C., 2005. The work is based on documents released and analyzed by the National Archives interagency working group on Nazi records.