FBI: Hoover's Political Spying for Presidents

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EISENHOWER. Responding to an invitation from Ike to brief his Cabinet on racial tensions early in 1956, Hoover rambled on about the lobbying efforts of the N.A.A.C.P. and some Communist groups to influence civil rights legislation, and about the anti-integration activities of Southern politicians.

The only such FBI incident of meddling in political affairs cited in the Eisenhower years, this was no more than an un solicited digression by Hoover.

KENNEDY. The report confirmed that Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to trace Defense Department news leaks, in 1961 and 1962 authorized the wiretapping of several Washington journalists. They included Hanson Baldwin, military analyst for the New York Times, Baldwin's secretary, and Lloyd Norman, Newsweek 's Pentagon correspondent. More vaguely, the report says Robert Kennedy signed orders for taps on six other Americans, including "three Executive branch officials, a congressional staff member and two registered lobbying agents for foreign interests."

The aim was to investigate charges of corruption in the U.S. sugar-import quo tas. Presumably, John Kennedy knew of all these actions.

JOHNSON. Sharply stepping up political intrigue via the FBI, Johnson got Hoover to assign a 31 -member "special squad" to the 1964 Democratic Nation al Convention in Atlantic City, ostensibly to detect any violent agitators. The squad, dispatched without Robert Kennedy's knowledge, supplied "hot line" reports to Johnson's political aides on intraparty battles at the convention.

During the 1964 campaign, Johnson had his aide Bill Moyers ask the FBI for checks on Republican Candidate Barry Goldwater's Senate staff. Hoover's men ran name checks on 15 of them, producing derogatory information on two (a traffic violation on one and a love affair on another). Johnson asked for similar checks on at least seven journalists who had displeased him. They included NBC's David Brinkley, Columnist JOseph Kraft, Associated Press's Peter Arnett, the Chicago Daily News' Peter Lisagor and LIFE'S Richard Stolley (now managing editor of PEOPLE). L.B.J. also sought from the FBI, and duly received, information on critics of the Warren Commission's report on the assassination of Jack Kennedy (though Johnson himself doubted its conclusion, suspecting that Castro had had a hand in the murder). The FBI even forwarded a photo of one critic performing a sexual act.