Inside the FBI: attracting the Director's scrutiny were Communists, security risks, and people who made untoward jokes

National Review, May 11, 1992 by Natalie Robins

J. EDGAR HOOVER'S treatment of right-wingers he didn't like was basically no different from his treatment of left-wingers he didn't like. He was just as skeptical, just as scornful, and just as vindictive toward Wm. F. Buckley Jr. as he was toward Murray Kempton.

Buckley's name first entered the FBI's indexes when he was just 16 years old, in a November 22, 1941, report concerning his father, "President of the Pantepec Oil Co. of Venezuela, a foreign corporation." However the 690-page file did not really begin to grow until 1949. In that year, Buckley, as chairman of the Yale Daily News, asked an FBI official to participate in a student debate about the Bureau, a request prompted by some anti-FBI articles that had appeared in the Harvard Crimson. Buckley told the special agent in charge of the New Haven office that these articles "were journalistically poor" and vicious." It was eventually decided at headquarters that the New Haven agent and Associate Director Louis Nichols would participate in the forum, although Hoover was not happy about this arrangement. In a very lengthy marginal note, he wrote: "I don't like this at all. As I understood originally they wanted us to meet informally and to outline our policies and problems and answer questions for honest enlightenment. Now it has degenerated into a public assembly as a debate. . . . I will approve Nick going but I will do so reluctantly."

The forum was a great success, however, and Nichols later wrote Buckley how pleased he was with "his kind references to the Director," concluding, "I hope that we will never let you down."

Buckley comments: That's interesting that Hoover was never really in favor of Nichols coming up to Yale, because I got a letter from him after the debate was over which is just oleaginous. . . . He was unbelievably pleased, and then he invited me to come down and see him next time I was in Washington.

"When I mentioned to Lou Nichols that I was not going to graduate school, he said, Well, why don't you come in to the FBI?' And I stalled .. because I was deep cover at the time with the CIA....

"Nichols told me that they would be willing to waive the obligation of agents being lawyers if I were immediately to join the Bureau, and I said, `Gee thanks, but I've got other things on my mind.' I think I said that I was terribly mixed up with the aftermath of God and Man at Yale and was trying to write another book.... [Il had a tour of the Bureau when I was receiving my CIA secret training."

On October 26, 1950, the FBI reported on the special tour of headquarters given the day before to Buckley and his wife, who met with the Director "within a matter of minutes after their arrival at the Bureau." The report even includes a comment Mrs. Buckley made afterward: "I just can't get over it and he is so busy," and details how both Buckleys fired Thompson machine guns. Mrs. Buckley, however, says, "I have never fired a machine gun in my life."

There were several minor entries in the Buckley file over the next five years; then, in 1955, the FBI reported that Buckley had recently launched NATIONAL REVIEW, and on November 23, a Bureau official wrote a memo saying, "I think the Director would be interested in looking at it ... It is believed that this journal and the writers connected with it may be of some value to the Bureau."

In 1957, Buckley sent Louis Nichols a copy of the press release announcing that Whittaker Chambers had joined the staff Of NATIONAL REVIEW; it was accompanied by a note: "I wanted you to know ahead of the gang."

Over the years, Buckley continued to send Nichols releases, articles, and other items of interest; all of these were warmly acknowledged, either by Nichols or by the Director himself. "Buckley is the outspoken anti-Communist" was the identifying wording always typed next to copies of anything received from Buckley, a description implying that the Bureau approved of him, and he always approved of it. He continued "a very close association" with Nichols.

Buckley explains: "A man named Gaty, a bachelor-a Wichita man-left . .. a million and a half dollars to sort of right-wing-type things. He named ten trustees, and J. Edgar Hoover was one of them. But Hoover said, no, he couldn't serve-because he wouldn't serve on anything-so I then nominated Nichols, saying, obviously, the guy who left the money wanted someone representing the FBI. So as a result, we had one meeting a year-the bylaws specified that if you attended the annual meeting you had the absolute right to assign $10,000 to your favorite charity, so everybody was always there. Nichols was elected and so we went to ten meetings together-the idea was to exhaust the corpus within ten years. So I saw a lot of him during that period. Nice guy. Not a very secure sense of humor."

The Unforgivable Sin

But in 1967 Buckley committed the unforgivable sin: he ridiculed Hoover. The May 30, 1967, issue Of NATIONAL REVIEW parodied the New York Times, and on the mock front page was an article saying that J. Edgar Hoover had submitted his resignation as director upon his arrest on a morals charge. On May 25, 1967, Buckley was removed from the Special Correspondents' list because he "attempted to be humorous at the expense of the Director." Hoover called the article "a new low in journalism," and never forgave him. From that time on, every reference to Buckley mentioned the parody.