How petty and silly all this stuff now seems.
From a WSJ Opinion Journal article, FBI FILES :
FBI FILES [/] Hoover's Institution [/] Anecdotes from the FBI crypt--and lessons on how to win the war. [/] BY LAURENCE H. SILBERMAN [/] Wednesday, July 20, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
I recently completed a rewarding year as co-chairman of President Bush's commission on intelligence, and I propose to discuss our recommendations regarding the FBI in light of my own unique experience with J. Edgar Hoover.
[…] I was shocked then, when on Jan. 19, 1975, as acting attorney general, I read a front page story in the Washington Post confirming the existence of the files. The story pointed out that the files contained embarrassing material collected on congressmen. When I confronted Kelly, he was initially mystified. He then realized the Post must be referring to files in his outer office, in plain sight, which he had inherited but never examined. Sure enough, they were the notorious secret and confidential files of J. Edgar Hoover.
The House Judiciary Committee demanded I testify about those files, so I was obliged to read them. Accompanied by only one FBI official, I read virtually all these files in three weekends. It was the single worst experience of my long governmental service. Hoover had indeed tasked his agents with reporting privately to him any bits of dirt on figures such as Martin Luther King, or their families. Hoover sometimes used that information for subtle blackmail to ensure his and the bureau's power.
I intend to take to my grave nasty bits of information on various political figures--some still active. As bad as the dirt collection business was, perhaps even worse was the evidence that he had allowed--even offered--the bureau to be used by presidents for nakedly political purposes. I have always thought that the most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends.
[…] Only a few weeks before the 1964 election, a powerful presidential assistant, Walter Jenkins, was arrested in a men's room in Washington. Evidently, the president was concerned that Barry Goldwater would use that against him in the election. Another assistant, Bill Moyers, was tasked to direct Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater's staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files.
When the press reported this, I received a call in my office from Mr. Moyers. Several of my assistants were with me. He was outraged; he claimed that this was another example of the Bureau salting its files with phony CIA memos. I was taken aback. I offered to conduct an investigation, which if his contention was correct, would lead me to publicly exonerate him. There was a pause on the line and then he said, "I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?" And then he rang off. I thought to myself that a number of the Watergate figures, some of whom the department was prosecuting, were very young, too.
Other presidents, according to those files, misused the bureau, although never Truman and Eisenhower. But Johnson clearly was the most demanding. This discovery was particularly painful for me. Although I was a life-long Republican, I had not only voted for LBJ, I had signed an ad supporting him, which got me ejected from the Hawaii Young Republicans.
[…] Some of Johnson's suspicions of the Kennedys were rather amusing. He became convinced that the Washington Star was secretly owned by the Kennedy family and that is why he received less favorable coverage from the Star than from the Post. He insisted that Hoover unearth those connections. Hoover plaintively tried to explain that the Star was owned by the Kauffmann family and that they were Republicans.
But surely the most bizarre episode that I discovered (and can reveal) involves the investigation and trial of Bobby Baker, who had been LBJ's top Senate aide. To say that the president was apprehensive about this episode would be a dramatic understatement. The investigation and trial took place when Bobby Kennedy was attorney general and Jack Miller the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division. During the investigation of Baker's Senate activities, Miller asked the FBI to wire a potential witness. To his astonishment Hoover responded with the ridiculous assertion that it would be improper.
Of course, Hoover promptly reported this to LBJ as he had many activities of the Kennedy Justice Department. However, Miller was not to be deterred. With Kennedy's approval he called a special assistant to Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler to gain help from Treasury agents. The assistant arranged the help and Baker was convicted. Much later, toward the end of the Johnson administration, Hoover discovered Miller's end-around and duly reported it to LBJ, who, furious, demanded that Fowler fire the assistant. Fowler refused. That assistant was Robert Jordan, my Harvard Law School classmate, subsequently general counsel of the Army and later my partner at Steptoe & Johnson.
[…] Mr. Silberman was co-chairman of President Bush's Commission on Intelligence Capabilities. This is adapted from a speech he delivered recently to the First Circuit Judicial Conference. [My ellipses and emphasis]
