J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets Read Free Page B

didn’t believe the director was senile; he thought he was nuts.
    Yet, whatever his true feelings, the news hit Kleindienst hard.
    According to John Mohr, “To put it mildly, he was in a state of shock.” 3
    It was as if a man walking on a tightrope had just been tossed a 500-pound boulder and told to juggle it.
    On February 15, over two months earlier, the White House had announced that Attorney General John Mitchell was resigning to head the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) and that his successor would be Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst. A protégé of Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona—credited with suggesting the “law and order” slogan of his 1964 campaign—Kleindienst had made it through the Senate confirmation hearings without a single dissenting vote, only to be called back after Jack Anderson’s release of the Dita Beard memo; the Senate Judiciary Committee this time focused on Kleindienst’s approval of the out-of-court settlement of three major antitrust cases the government had brought against ITT, and ITT’s almost simultaneous pledge of up to $400,000 toward the cost of the 1972 Republican National Convention.
    Just five days before, the hearings had finally ended, with the payoff charges still unproven, and the committee again voting for confirmation, this time 11 to 14. But the Senate floor fight was still ahead, with the final vote far from certain. *
    At the moment the last thing Kleindienst needed was another complication, and this could be the biggest of them all. Yet, seasoned politician that he was, he must have also realized that the news had a positive side: it was possible, if the right man were nominated and confirmed, that for the first time in decadesthe attorney general would be the actual, instead of merely the nominal, superior of the director of the FBI.
    And the choice would, Kleindienst suspected, probably be his own. Although by law the president would name the new director—a step John Mitchell had predicted would be “the most important appointment to be made by a president in this century”—Kleindienst was fairly sure Nixon would ask him to provide a candidate. 4
    But before that he had to inform the president of the astonishing news.
    Like others once close to Nixon, Kleindienst rarely spoke to him in person anymore. Although still not public knowledge, Nixon’s self-imposed isolation, which had begun during the 1968 campaign, was near complete now. No matter how important the subject, even the attorney general could not call him directly but had to give his message to one of the “palace guard,” usually John Ehrlichman or H. R. Haldeman. Disliking Ehrlichman just as much as Ehrlichman disliked him, Kleindienst wasn’t left much of a choice. Pushing a button which automatically gave him a secure line to the White House switchboard, he identified himself and asked for the president’s chief of staff.
    The president had just come down from his quarters a few minutes before Haldeman entered the Oval Office. His “Oh, hi, Bob,” was left hanging when, without preamble, Haldeman said, “ J. Edgar Hoover is dead. ”
    Following an almost unbearably long silence, the president gasped audibly, then uttered two of his most-favored expletives: “ Jesus Christ! That old cocksucker! ” 5
    As Jeremiah O’Leary entered the city room of the Washington Star, someone yelled, “J. Edgar Hoover is dead!” Muttering, “Oh, shit!” O’Leary headed for the paper’s morgue. But, to his amazement, there was no prepared obit.
    There were, however, at least forty drawers of clippings and the Star being an afternoon paper, not even time to scan them. But having covered Hoover for so many years—for most as a highly favored “special correspondent,” though even he of late had made the dreaded “no contact” list * —O’Leary felt he knew Hoover as well as anyone, and within twenty minutes he’d run off a capsule history of the man, the Bureau, and