December 1, 2005
Removing J. Edgar's Name
By Robert
Novak
WASHINGTON -- On Halloween night, crusty conservative Judge Laurence
H. Silberman had a scary tale to tell fellow right-wingers gathered
for dinner at Washington's University Club. He told in more detail
than ever before how J. Edgar Hoover as FBI director "allowed
-- even offered -- the Bureau to be used by presidents for nakedly
political purposes." He called for the director's name to
be removed from the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown
Washington.
"In
my view," Silberman said, "it is as if the Defense Department
were named for Aaron Burr. Liberals and conservatives should unite
to support legislation to accomplish this repudiation of a very
sad chapter in American history." That concluded his speech,
but it was not followed by overwhelming applause. Nor was there
volunteered support for his mission.
Silberman's
plea was not exactly what his listeners expected from him as featured
speaker for the Pumpkin Papers Irregulars, who dine each year
to celebrate Whittaker Chambers hiding in his farm's pumpkins
classified documents conveyed by Alger Hiss to his Soviet spymasters.
The 70-year-old Silberman is a judge in senior status on the U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, capping
a career in high government office dating back 37 years.
His most
recent public service was as co-chairman of the bipartisan presidential
commission on intelligence failures. Its recommendations, implemented
by President Bush, included a separate national security service
within the FBI. The Bureau's initial opposition that it would
undermine the attorney general's authority over the FBI "amused"
Silberman, considering his experience as deputy attorney general
in the Nixon and Ford administrations.
Instructed
by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 to report on secret files
kept by Hoover (who died in 1972), Silberman told the Irregulars:
"It was the single worst experience of my long governmental
service." He said Hoover ordered special agents to report
"privately to him any bits of dirt on political figures such
as Martin Luther King and their families." Silberman said
Hoover used this as "subtle blackmail to ensure his and the
Bureau's power," adding: "I intend to take to my grave
nasty bits of information on various political figures -- some
still active."
Even worse
than "dirt collection," Silberman continued, was Hoover's
offering of Bureau files to presidents. He exempted only Harry
S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower from this use of FBI files,
but said, "Lyndon Johnson was the most demanding."
When President
Johnson's aide Walter Jenkins was arrested for homosexual conduct
in a men's room during the 1964 campaign, Silberman said, LBJ
aide Bill Moyers directed Hoover to find similar conduct on Barry
Goldwater's staff. "Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of
the files," he continued. An "outraged" Moyers
telephoned Silberman, he said, to assert that the memo was "phony."
"Taken aback," said Silberman, he offered an investigation
to publicly exonerate Moyers. "There was a pause on the line,
and then he [Moyers] said, 'I was very young. How will I explain
this to my children?'" "Silberman's account of our conversation
is at odds with mine," Moyers told me when I asked for comment.
During the
1968 campaign, Silberman said Johnson ordered FBI surveillance
on Republican vice presidential candidate Spiro Agnew, not about
the bribery that eventually drove him out of office but to check
whether he was in contact with South Vietnam's government. He
said LBJ also used the FBI to spy on Democrats, including his
aide Richard Goodwin, whom he inherited from President John F.
Kennedy but suspected was too close to Robert F. Kennedy.
"I
think it would be appropriate to introduce all new [FBI] recruits
to the nature of the secret and confidential files of J. Edgar
Hoover," Silberman concluded. "And in that connection
this country -- and the Bureau -- would be well served if Hoover's
name was removed from the Bureau's building."
After polite
applause, a conservative gentleman sitting at my table said he
thought Hoover on balance was a force for good in America. I disagreed,
contending he was a rogue and a law-breaker (though I may be prejudiced
by his plans to tap my telephone that were undone by my FBI sources).
Nearly a month now has passed without any conservative publicly
rising to agree with Larry Silberman that J. Edgar's memory should
not be honored.
Copyright
2005 Creators Syndicate
