The Administration: Off the Chest & into the Fire

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Somewhat awed by the size of their scoop, the newsladies anxiously asked if they could quote Hoover on that. Indeed they could, said the FBI chief. But the next day one of his aides entered some qualifications. "He didn't say everything King said was a lie," said the agent. "Just that specific point on Albany." Exactly when had King said such a thing about the FBI in Albany? A Hoover aide produced a quote in a Nov. 20, 1962, clipping from the Chicago Defender, a Negro newspaper.

"Appalled & Surprised." King's fellow civil rights leaders—including Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, James Farmer and A. Philip Randolph—came angrily to his defense during a visit to the White House, got what they later described as noncommittal answers from President Johnson. King himself responded with a telegram to Hoover: "I was appalled and surprised at your reported statement maligning my integrity. What motivated such an irresponsible accusation is a mystery to me. I have sincerely questioned the effectiveness of the FBI in racial incidents, particularly where bombings and brutalities against Negroes are at issue, but I have never attributed this merely to the presence of Southerners in the FBI." In a cutting statement to the press, King said that Hoover's assertion seemed to indicate that the G-man "has apparently faltered under the awesome burdens, complexities and responsibilities of his office."

In addition to his broadsides against the Warren Commission and the Rev. Dr. King, Hoover took the occasion of his kaffeeklatsch with the newswomen to denounce law enforcement in New York City ("New York's Central Park —no one dares walk there even in the daytime, and there are holdups on 5th Avenue at 9:30 or 10 at night"), and inveigh against "bleeding hearts," a term that, to his mind, embraced everyone from local judges who "ought to have more guts when it comes to handing down sentences" against juvenile delinquents, to Supreme Court justices.

"Stuck." Such public outspokenness was most uncharacteristic. Beyond frequent releases about crime and the threats of Communism within the U.S.,* Hoover has generally limited himself to more mute, though sometimes surprising, expressions of his sentiments. He resented Robert Kennedy's efforts as Attorney General to take a hand in running the FBI, and he has barely spoken to Bobby since President Kennedy's assassination. He sent a bouquet of flowers to the hospital room of Walter Jenkins even as the FBI was being assigned by President Johnson to investigate the Jenkins case.