The Burglary (100 page)

Read The Burglary Online

Authors: Betty Medsger

3
Representative Hale Boggs:
Donner,
The Age of Surveillance
, 117.

4
Stern persisted:
Letters: Stern to Deputy Attorney General Kleindienst, March 20, 1972; Kleindienst to Stern, April 25, 1972; Stern to Kleindienst, June 30, 1972; Stern to Deputy Attorney General Ralph E. Erickson, August 21, 1972; Stern to Erickson, August 31, 1972; Stern to Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray, September 6, 1972; Gray to Stern, September 18, 1972; Stern to Erickson, September 29, 1972; Stern to Kleindienst, October 26, 1972; Stern to Erickson, January 12, 1973.

5
At first, the department appealed:
Laurence Stern, “Hoover War on New Left Bared,”
Washington Post
, December 7, 1973. In this story is a brief description of Acting Attorney General Robert Bork's decision to release the first COINTELPRO file to NBC reporter Carl Stern. Bork: “The law and the public policy expressed in the Freedom of Information Act did not warrant appealing the District Court decision.” Laurence Stern, author of the article, reports that the release of the COINTELPRO file was the “first time the Justice Department released documents in a Freedom of Information Act challenge.” “Mr. Hoover's Dirty Tricks,”
Washington Post
, March 15, 1974.

6
Long issued a statement:
Book II, Final Report of the Select Committee, April 26, 1976. Theoharis,
Spying on Americans
, 113. Gentry,
J. Edgar
, 587.

7
FBI director Kelley opposed:
Ungar,
FBI
, 32–34.

8
Four months after:
Saxbe,
I've Seen the Elephant
, 193. Hearing on FBI
Counterintelligence Programs, November 20, 1974, House of Representatives, Civil Rights and Constitutional Rights Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary.

9
Two days before:
Ungar,
FBI
, 470. “Hoover's Closet,”
Time
, December 2, 1974.

10
The tipping point:
Seymour Hersh, “Huge CIA Operation Reported in U.S. Against Anti-War Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years, Files on Citizens: Helms Reportedly Got Surveillance Data in Charter Violation,”
New York Times
, December 22, 1974.

11
The programs that:
Ungar,
FBI,
479.

12
“It was not uncommon”:
Jim Edwards, “The Journalist and the G-Man,”
Brill's Content
, November 2000.

19.
CRUDE AND CRUEL

1
Antiwar activists' oranges:
David J. Garrow, “FBI Political Harassment and FBI Historiography: Analyzing Informants and Measuring the Effects,”
Public Historian
10, no. 4 (Autumn 1988): 5–18.

2
Agents hired prostitutes:
Theoharis,
J. Edgar Hoover, Sex, and Crime,
100.

3
The Media break-in changed:
Author interview with Athan Theoharis, February 2013.

4
“an embryonic version”:
Donner,
The Age of Surveillance
, 183.

5
“The bureau constituted itself”:
Ibid., 180.

6
“highly personalized”:
Ibid., 177.

7
Files were maintained:
John M. Goshko, “Hoover's Files Focus on Sex Scandals: Voracious Collector of Rumors,”
Washington Post
, November 24, 1976. Theoharis,
J. Edgar Hoover, Sex, and Crime
, 57–115.

8
“As the director saw”:
Ungar,
FBI
, 466.

9
Frustrated by recent:
Davis,
Assault on the Left
, 4–5. Note: It was the Supreme Court's 1956 reinterpretation of the Smith Act that was particularly upsetting to Hoover. Passed in 1940, it made it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the government by violence. In 1956, as Davis summarizes the court's action, “simple advocacy alone of ideas was not, in and of itself, punishable. The government would now have to prove advocacy of actual violent actions in order to obtain convictions.”

10
The Church Committee investigation:
William M. Kunstler, “Writers of the Purple Page,”
Nation
, December 30, 1978. In summarizing what emerged from the records of the Church Committee and the Socialist Workers Party trial, Kunstler notes that “it is possible for the first time to put in one place the staggering dimensions of what turns out to have been not merely a ‘rough, tough, dirty business' but an everyday tool of law enforcement.” Crewdson, “F.B.I. Was Not as Advertised and Won't Ever Be the Same,”
Nation
, August 1, 1976.

11
“The FBI abuses”:
F. A. O. Schwarz Jr., “Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans,”
Record of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York
32 (January/February 1977).

12
On the first day:
Schwarz, testimony on first day of Church Committee investigation of FBI, “Intelligence Activities—Federal Bureau of Investigation,” 30, November 18, 1975.

13
He used his secret power:
John Kifner, “F.B.I. Sought Doom of Panther Party: Senate Study Says Plot Led to Internal Splits, ‘Gang Warfare' and Killings,”
New York Times
, May 9, 1976.

14
“Never once”:
Schwarz and Huq,
Unchecked and Unbalanced,
based on Church Committee, Book II, 14, 141.

15
Schwarz has concluded:
Ibid., 6, 45.

16
Among all of the political:
Garrow,
The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr.,
101–50.

17
Chicago Black Panther leader:
Jeffrey Haas, “Fred Hampton's Legacy,”
Nation
, November 24, 2009. Gentry,
J. Edgar Hoover
, 620–21.

18
People knowledgeable:
Rosenfeld,
Subversives
, 419–24, 429, 432–35, 441, 445–46. Seth Rosenfeld, “FBI Files Reveal New Details About Informant Who Armed Black
Panthers,”
Mother Jones
, September 7, 2012,
http://cironline.org/reports/fbi-files-reveal-new-details-about-informant-who-armed-black-panthers-3833
.

19
In Memphis:
Marc Perrusquia, “FBI Admits Noted Memphis Civil Rights Photographer Ernest Withers Was Informant,”
Memphis Commercial Appeal
, July 3, 2012. Perrusquia, “Memphis FBI Agent Led Cadre of Informants That Included Ernest Withers,”
Memphis Commercial Appeal
, December 19, 2010. Perrusquia, “Withers Secretly Gave FBI Photos of Martin Luther King's Staff, Spied on Memphis Movement,”
Memphis Commercial Appeal
, March 30, 2013.

20
A Los Angeles agent:
Gentry,
J. Edgar Hoover
, 647. “The FBI vs. Jean Seberg,
Time
, September 24, 1979. Ronald J. Ostrow, “FBI Probe of Actress Jean Seberg Found More Extensive Than Reported,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 9, 1980. Kevin Roderick, “Bellows, Jean Seberg and the FBI,”
LA Observed
, March 13, 2009. Lorraine Bennett, “Actress Jean Seberg Found Dead in Her Auto in Paris,”
Los Angeles Times
, Septem-ber 9, 1979. “FBI Admits Spreading Lies About Jean Seberg,”
Los Angeles Times
, September 13, 1979. Ronald J. Ostrow, “Extensive Probe of Jean Seberg Revealed: FBI File Shows Actress Was Investigated from 1969 to '72,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 6, 1980. Allan M. Jalon, “A Faulty Tip, a Ruined Life and Hindsight,”
Los Angeles Times
, April 23, 2002.

21
Publicly, he was the ringmaster:
Schrecker,
The Age of McCarthyism
, 27.

22
In fact, Hoover provided:
Oshinsky,
A Conspiracy So Immense
, 257.

23
He gave HUAC:
J. Edgar Hoover, “Speech Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities,” March 26, 1947,
http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/hoover-speech-before-the-house-committee-speech-text/
.

24
The job of HUAC:
Navasky,
Naming Names
, 319.

25
Those unverified:
O'Reilly,
Hoover and the Un-Americans
, 195.

26
The accused had no access:
Robert Justin Goldstein, “Prelude to McCarthyism: The Making of a Blacklist,”
Prologue
(journal of the U.S. National Archives & Records Administration) 38, no. 3 (Fall 2006),
http://www.archives.gov
.

27
The large contribution:
Athan Theoharis, “The FBI and the American Legion Contact Program, 1940–1966,”
Political Science Quarterly
100, no. 2 (Summer 1985): 271–86.

28
In an internal memorandum:
Sullivan to DeLoach memorandum, July 19, 1966.

29
That is illustrated:
Theoharis,
J. Edgar Hoover, Sex, and Crime
, 150–51.

30
To name a few:
Mitgang,
Dangerous Dossiers
, 37–188. Raines,
Alien Ink,
187–266, 319–65.

31
Science fiction writers:
Alison Flood, “Ray Bradbury Investigated for Communist Sympathies,”
Guardian
, August 30, 2012.

32
So were some publishers:
Mitgang,
Dangerous Dossiers
, 194–208.

33
A wide array:
Peter Dreier, “Albert Einstein: Radical Citizen and Scientist,”
Truthout
, June 25, 2012,
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9192-albert-einstein-radical-citizen-and-scientist
. Jerome,
The Einstein File
, 121, and many other pages.

34
“The politics of alien”:
Arthur Miller, “Why I Wrote
The Crucible
,”
New Yorker
, October 21, 1996. Miller, “Are You Now or Were You Ever?,”
Guardian
, June 17, 2000. Ungar,
FBI
, 257.

35
“he tangled with the FBI”:
Tom Knudson, “FBI Was Out to Get Freethinking DeVoto,”
High Country News
, August 8, 1994.

36
“We have occasional qualms”:
Bernard DeVoto, “Due Notice to the FBI,”
Harper's
, October 1949.

37
For instance, when he:
Theoharis and Cox,
The Boss
, 37.

38
It was widely believed:
Ungar,
FBI
, 257.

39
at least
150
: Angus Mackenzie, “Sabotaging the Dissident Press,”
Columbia Journalism Review,
March–April, 1981.

40
Consistent with Hoover's:
Ibid., 129.

41
To deal with professors:
Rosenfeld,
Subversives
, 29.

42
Some universities:
Schrecker,
No Ivory Tower
, 43–47, 264. George Striker, “College
Files Open to Official Investigations,”
Columbia Spectator
, April 8 1953. Lewis,
Cold War on Campus,
19.

43
For campuses in small towns:
David M. Oshinsky, “Cold War on Campus,”
New York Times,
September 28, 1986.

44
Entire academic disciplines:
Keen,
Stalking Sociologists
, 5, 203–7. Price,
Threatening Anthropology
, 3, 6, 346.

45
A
1958
study:
Keen,
Stalking Sociologists
, xvii.

46
The threatening atmosphere:
Lewis,
Cold War on Campus
, 14–15.

47
the type of research:
Ibid., 205–6.

48
In one of Hoover's largest:
Rosenfeld,
Subversives.
This book traces Hoover's thirty-year effort to control the University of California and, in the process, destroy the reputations of and remove administrators, faculty, and students, an effort in which Ronald Reagan joined him after becoming governor of California in 1967.

49
The files on the Berkeley:
Ibid., 517n5.

50
The FBI had been:
Ibid., 157–59.

51
Savio was followed:
Ibid., 499.

52
“I know Kerr is”:
Seth Rosenfeld, “The Cautionary Tale of Clark Kerr,”
Los Angeles Times
, December 4, 2003. Kerr,
The Gold and Blue
, 69. “In Memoriam—Clark Kerr,” posted by the faculty senate of the University of California upon the death of Kerr, December 1, 2003,
http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/inmemoriam/clarkkerr.html
. In his memoir, Kerr described Hoover's scribbled note—“I know Kerr is no good”—and wrote that “I look on this as an honorary degree.”

53
When President Johnson:
Rosenfeld,
Subversives
, 229–31.

54
It was not the first time:
Ibid., 232–33.

55
Against his own judgment:
Ibid., 3–5.

56
Hoover often treated:
Gentry,
J. Edgar Hoover
, 645. Ungar,
FBI
, 475. Schwarz and Huq,
Unchecked and Unbalanced
, 18, based on Church Committee Report, Book III, 425–26.

Other books

The Beats in Rift by Ker Dukey
Town In a Lobster Stew by Haywood, B.B.
John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel by John Maddox Roberts