Enemies: A History of the FBI (87 page)

  
1.
“Edgar, I don’t hear you well”:
LBJ/Hoover, LBJ telephone tapes, Feb. 27, 1964, LBJL.

  
2.
“You’re my brother”:
LBJ/Hoover, LBJ telephone tapes, Nov. 29, 1963, LBJL.

  
3.
“J. Edgar Hoover is a household word”:
Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks Honoring J. Edgar Hoover, May 8, 1964.

  
4.
“One of the troubles”:
McGeorge Bundy oral history, LBJL.

  
5.
“Mr. Hoover’s going down”:
RFK to LBJ, LBJ telephone tapes, July 10, 1964, LBJL.

  
6.
“I have no dealings with the FBI”:
RFK to LBJ, LBJ telephone tapes, July 21, 1964, LBJL.

  
7.
“Mr. Johnson at all times”:
DeLoach oral history, LBJL.

  
8.
“three sovereignties”:
The quotation of LBJ comes from Burke Marshall, RFK’s civil rights deputy at Justice. Marshall oral history, LBJL. It was Marshall’s idea to use the FBI against the Klan. In a written proposal that RFK sent to the White House on June 5, 1964, Marshall presented the Klan’s work as “terrorism” and a threat to the internal security of the United States. Marshall strongly recommended that the FBI identify Klansmen and work undercover to expose the Klan’s infiltration of state and local law enforcement in the Deep South: “The techniques followed in the use of specially trained, special-assignment agents in the infiltration of Communist groups should be of value,” Marshall wrote. “I recommend taking up with the Bureau the possibility of developing a similar effort to meet this new problem.”

  
9.
“We have found the car”:
Hoover to LBJ, LBJ telephone tapes, June 21, 1964, LBJL.

10.
“I haven’t got a better friend”:
LBJ to Hoover, LBJ telephone tapes, June 24, 1964, LBJL.

11.
“You ought to review”:
Dulles to Hoover and LBJ, LBJ telephone tapes, June 26, 1964, LBJL.

12.
“Mr. Hoover never would have changed”:
Marshall oral history, Strober and Strober,
The Kennedy Presidency
, p. 317.

13.
“I want you to gather intelligence”:
Billy Bob Williams oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

14.
“Martin Luther King yelled”:
Donald Cesare oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

15.
“I paid him close”:
Cesare oral history, FBI/FBIOH. No informant in FBI history ever had been paid that much, as far as is known. Some funds for paying FBI informants were raised by Jewish business community leaders in Mississippi, according to several agents, including James O. Ingram, one of the more accomplished counter-Klansmen at the FBI. Jews in Jackson, Miss., “had long supported the FBI, by money and their efforts to help us. They made available money to the FBI for informants,” Ingram said. It is unclear whether Delmar Dennis, whose recruitment dated to the summer of 1964, received funds that originated from outside the FBI. Important FBI informants among Mississippi Klansmen defected before Dennis, including Sgt. Wallace Miller of the Meridian Police Department.

16.
“There would be a Klan meeting”:
Joseph J. Rucci, Jr., oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

17.
“The Bureau was doing”:
Billy Bob Williams oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

18.
“the race riots”:
Hoover to LBJ, LBJ telephone tapes, Sept. 9, 1964, LBJL.

19.
“I’m very grateful to you”:
LBJ to Hoover, LBJ telephone tapes, Oct. 23, 1964, LBJL.

20.
“He told me he had spent”:
RFK oral history, JFKL.

21.
“He
knows
Martin Luther King”:
LBJ to DeLoach, LBJ telephone tapes, Nov. 20, 1964, LBJL.

22.
“He flatly denied”:
Nicholas deB. Katzenbach,
Some of It Was Fun: Working with RFK and LBJ
(New York: Norton, 2008), p. 154.

23.
“I’ll tell you”:
LBJ to Katzenbach, LBJ telephone tapes, March 4, 1965, LBJL.

24.
“We had this case wrapped up”:
Shanahan oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

25.
“We will not be intimidated”:
LBJ televised remarks, March 26, 1965, LBJL.

31.
“T
HE MAN
I’
M DEPENDING ON
”

  
1.
“We’re really going”:
LBJ to Mann, LBJ telephone tapes, April 24, 1965, LBJL.

  
2.
“We have no evidence”:
Undersecretary Thomas Mann to United States Ambassador Tap Bennett, Feb. 25, 1965, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume 32, Dominican Republic.

  
3.
“With Bureau approval”:
Estill oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  
4.
“In my opinion”:
Director of Central Intelligence Raborn to President Johnson, April 29, 1965, LBJ telephone tapes, LBJL.

  
5.
“They fly us down in this C-130”:
Paul Brana oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  
6.
“I arrived at the Regency Hotel”:
Kennedy M. Crockett, Memorandum for the Record, Johnson Library, National Security File, May 18, 1965, with copies to Mann, Vance, Helms, Vaughn, and Bromley Smith for Bundy. Balaguer was identified as a recruited FBI source by Wallace Estill and Paul Brana. The record is in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume 32, Dominican Republic. Balaguer’s FBI handler, Heinrich Von Eckardt, was, implausibly, the son and namesake of the German ambassador to Mexico during World War I; the ambassador had been an addressee of the Zimmerman Telegram, the intercepted cable that drew America into the Great War.

  
7.
“Have we done that”:
This tape is shot through with deletions made in the name of national security. Though edited here for length, it conveys a president at the edge of his endurance. The Dominican crisis drove LBJ half-mad, in the eyes of some of his top aides. “Highly dubious reports from J. Edgar Hoover” agitated the president’s mind, said Undersecretary of State George Ball. “The President became the desk officer on the thing. He ran everything himself … This became a thing of such passion, almost an obsession.” But Johnson was starting to lose faith in his own judgment. “I don’t always know what’s right,” LBJ said to Fortas on May 23. “Sometimes I take other people’s judgments, and I get misled. Like sending troops in there to Santo Domingo. But the man that misled me was
Lyndon Johnson
. Nobody else! I did that!”

  
8.
“What would my instruction”:
David Atlee Phillips,
The Night Watch: 25 Years of Peculiar Service
(New York: Atheneum, 1977), p. 155.

  
9.
“provide excellent fodder”:
Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, Sept. 1, 1965, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume 32, Dominican Republic.

  
10.
“That whole operation was really weird”:
Crimmins oral history, FAOH.

11.
“It is an awful mess”:
Hoover to President Johnson, Sept. 10, 1965, LBJ telephone tapes, LBJL.

12.
“The President expected”:
“Subject: Presidential Election in the Dominican Republic,” Dec. 29, 1965, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume 32, Dominican Republic. The memorandum from acting director of Central Intelligence Helms to the CIA’s deputy director for plans Desmond FitzGerald deserves a fuller quotation:

I want to reiterate, for the record, that the President told the Director and me on more than one occasion between May and mid-July, he expected the Agency to devote the necessary personnel and material resources in the Dominican Republic required to win the presidential election for the candidate favored by the United States Government. The President’s statements were unequivocal. He wants to win the election, and he expects the Agency to arrange for this to happen.

If you are finding road blocks in the way of getting on with this operation, I would appreciate being advised, so that the difficulties can be identified to the President with the aim of securing his influence on the side of financial allocations in support of the appropriate candidate. RH

13.
“Hoover has furnished”:
Rostow to Johnson, “Balaguer’s First Appointments,” June 11, 1966, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume 32, Dominican Republic.

32.
C
LEARLY
I
LLEGAL

  
1.
“The Chinese and North Vietnamese”:
Hoover memo for the record, April 28, 1965, cited in Church Committee, “COMINFIL Investigations—The Antiwar Movement and Student Groups.”

  
2.
“We were engaged almost every weekend”:
Gamber oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  
3.
“The demonstrations have been marked”:
Hoover to FBI Special Agents in Charge, May 3, 1966, cited in Church Committee, “Civil Disturbance Intelligence.”

  
4.
“I was, frankly, astounded”:
Katzenbach,
Some of It Was Fun
, p. 182. Katzenbach realized that the surveillance of Martin Luther King was potential political dynamite. The FBI planted its last bug on King in November 1965. But wiretaps on King’s close adviser, the suspected Communist Stanley Levison, remained in place.

  
5.
Hoover had installed 738 bugs:
FBI assistant director James Gale to FBI assistant director Cartha DeLoach, May 27, 1966, FBI/FOIA.

  
6.
“Students for a Democratic Society, which”:
Hoover memo for the record, April 28, 1965, FBI/FOIA.

  
7.
“Wire taps and microphones”:
Hoover to Katzenbach, Sept. 14, 1965, FBI/FOIA.

  
8.
“He cannot be trusted”:
M. A. Jones to DeLoach, Aug. 2, 1965, FBI/FOIA, cited in Church Committee, “Warrantless FBI Electronic Surveillance.”

  
9.
“Just how gullible can he be!”:
Hoover notation on memo to Tolson, “Subject: letter to Sen. Edward Long,” Jan. 21, 1966, FBI/FOIA.

10.
“He was always willing”:
Cartha D. “Deke” DeLoach,
Hoover’s FBI: The Inside Story by Hoover’s Trusted Lieutenant
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1995), p. 58. Fortas had to step down from the Supreme Court in 1969 because of his ethical transgressions; his conduct in
Black v. U.S
. stayed secret for two decades. Fred Black was a business associate of Bobby Baker’s; Baker was the secretary of the United States Senate when Lyndon Johnson was the majority leader, and he had been accused, but not yet convicted, of political corruption. Hoover had it on good authority (including bugs and wiretaps) that Baker had been a procurer of prostitutes for senators of both parties.