Difference between revisions of "F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology"

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=The F.B.I. and Homosexuality:=
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= Chronology, Part 1,  1910-1949=
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See also:
 
See also:
  
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[[F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Bibliography]]
 
[[F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Bibliography]]
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[[F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology, Part 2| F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology, Part 2, 1950-1979]]
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[[F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology, Part 3| F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology, Part 3, 1980-present]]
  
 
[[F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Persons and Groups Investigated]]
 
[[F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Persons and Groups Investigated]]
 
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UNDER CONSTRUCTION
 
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
 
{{unprotected}}
 
{{unprotected}}
=The F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology=
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==1910==
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1908
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:The U.S. Bureau of Investigation was created 1908, “although another year passed” before it was christened with that name (in 1909, apparently). It became known as the FBI in 1935.<ref>Gentry, ''J. Edgar Hoover'', p. 113.</ref>.
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=1910=
  
 
1919, August 1
 
1919, August 1
:On August 1, 1919, Palmer put 24-year-old J. Edgar Hoover in charge of a new division of the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation, the General Intelligence Division. It would investigate the programs of radical groups and identify their members.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids</ref>  
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:On August 1, 1919, Palmer put 24-year-old J. Edgar Hoover in charge of a new division of the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation, the General Intelligence Division. It would investigate the programs of radical groups and identify their members.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids Wikipedia: Palmer Raids]; Curt Gentry,'' J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets'', page 79.</ref>  
  
  
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==1920==
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=1920=
1920s
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'''1920s
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==“antique  shows” and a “lightness in his step”'''==
 
:Potter, "Queer" (2006): refers to snickering newspaper gossip of the 1920s and 1930s that advertised the director’s attendance at “antique  shows” and a “lightness in his step” as he made his daily rounds. Potter's note cites: "Oddly, these gossip items are preserved in a collection of newspaper clippings Hoover kept himself; see J. Edgar Hoover Scrapbooks, RG 65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.<ref>Potter, "Queer" (2006), page 368.</ref>
 
:Potter, "Queer" (2006): refers to snickering newspaper gossip of the 1920s and 1930s that advertised the director’s attendance at “antique  shows” and a “lightness in his step” as he made his daily rounds. Potter's note cites: "Oddly, these gossip items are preserved in a collection of newspaper clippings Hoover kept himself; see J. Edgar Hoover Scrapbooks, RG 65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.<ref>Potter, "Queer" (2006), page 368.</ref>
  
  
 
1920, February
 
1920, February
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=="moral perverts"==
 
:A. Mitchell Palmer, in his journal article ''The Case Against the Reds'' (1920), included in a list of those he opposed as "reds": the International Workers of the World, "the most radical socialists, the misguided anarchists, the agitators who oppose the limitations of unionism, '''the moral perverts and the hysterical neurasthenic women who abound in communism'''."<ref>A. Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the Reds," ''The Forum, A Magazine of Constructive Nationalism'', vol. 68, no. 2, page 168.</ref>  
 
:A. Mitchell Palmer, in his journal article ''The Case Against the Reds'' (1920), included in a list of those he opposed as "reds": the International Workers of the World, "the most radical socialists, the misguided anarchists, the agitators who oppose the limitations of unionism, '''the moral perverts and the hysterical neurasthenic women who abound in communism'''."<ref>A. Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the Reds," ''The Forum, A Magazine of Constructive Nationalism'', vol. 68, no. 2, page 168.</ref>  
  
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1921
 
1921
 
:By 1921 Hoover had set up an index system listing virtually every radical leader and organization in the United States, an index that contained upward of 400,000 names.<ref>Oshinsky, David M. "The Senior G-Man". ''New York Times'', September 15, 1991.</ref>
 
:By 1921 Hoover had set up an index system listing virtually every radical leader and organization in the United States, an index that contained upward of 400,000 names.<ref>Oshinsky, David M. "The Senior G-Man". ''New York Times'', September 15, 1991.</ref>
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 +
 +
1921, August
 +
In August 1921 Hoover had been named “assistant chief” of the Bureau of Investigation within the Attorney General's office.<ref>Gentry, ''J. Edgar Hoover'', p. 111.</ref>
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 +
 +
1924, April
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:In April 1924 Harlan Fiske Stone was sworn in as Attorney General.
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 +
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1924, May
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:In May 1924 Attorney General Stone said to Hoover, “Young man I want you to be Acting Director of the Bureau of Investigation.” The understanding was that the appointment was to be temporary.<ref>Gentry, ''J. Edgar Hoover'', p. 122.</ref>
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 +
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1924, December 10
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:On December 10, 1924 Stone informed Hoover that he could drop the 'Acting' from his title”<ref>Gentry, ''J. Edgar Hoover'', p. 142).</ref>
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1925
 +
:The FBI's monitoring of "obscene or indecent" materials began this year.<ref>Theoharis, Athan. ''From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover.'' Ivan R Dee, July 1, 1991, page 4.</ref>
  
  
 
1920s, late
 
1920s, late
 +
=="a dandyish dresser"==
 
:Fox, John (Historian on staff of FBI: In 2010, the FBI's Historian, Dr. John Fox, commented (in part) to retired Agents that  "rumors regarding the Director's sexual preferences have been around since the late 1920s or early 1930s.  The earliest was a newspaper blurb describing him as a dandyish dresser."<ref>[http://historicalgmen.squarespace.com/rumors-of-j-edgar-hoover-clyd/ Wack, Larry. "Seventy Five Years Of Conjecture About J. Edgar Hoover And Clyde Tolson". ]Accessed November 25, 2011.</ref>
 
:Fox, John (Historian on staff of FBI: In 2010, the FBI's Historian, Dr. John Fox, commented (in part) to retired Agents that  "rumors regarding the Director's sexual preferences have been around since the late 1920s or early 1930s.  The earliest was a newspaper blurb describing him as a dandyish dresser."<ref>[http://historicalgmen.squarespace.com/rumors-of-j-edgar-hoover-clyd/ Wack, Larry. "Seventy Five Years Of Conjecture About J. Edgar Hoover And Clyde Tolson". ]Accessed November 25, 2011.</ref>
  
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==1930==
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=1930=
 
1930s
 
1930s
 
:"assertion by Elliot Roosevelt (son of President Franklin D. and Eleanor) that his father knew about Hoover’s homosexuality in the 1930s but did not feel it was “grounds for removing him [from his directorship of the FBI] . . . so long as his abilities were not impaired.”<ref>Potter, "Queer", (2006), page 372, citing Kessler, The Bureau, 108–11, 43.</ref>
 
:"assertion by Elliot Roosevelt (son of President Franklin D. and Eleanor) that his father knew about Hoover’s homosexuality in the 1930s but did not feel it was “grounds for removing him [from his directorship of the FBI] . . . so long as his abilities were not impaired.”<ref>Potter, "Queer", (2006), page 372, citing Kessler, The Bureau, 108–11, 43.</ref>
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1933, July 30
 
1933, July 30
 +
=="a Y.M.C.A. secretary"==
 
:J. Edgar Hoover appointed director of a new Division of Investigation which would include the Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Identification, and the Prohibition Bureau of the U.S. Attorney General's Office.  Soon after this ''Newsweek'' magazine noted that in light of Hoover's activities as Palmer's assistant during the raids on reds, "some experienced Washington observers express astonishment" at Hoover's appointment as director of the new Division, while the new division chief's manner was described as less that of a cop than that "of a Y.M.C.A. secretary."<ref>Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, page158, note 13. CITE FOR NEWSWEEK ???</ref>
 
:J. Edgar Hoover appointed director of a new Division of Investigation which would include the Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Identification, and the Prohibition Bureau of the U.S. Attorney General's Office.  Soon after this ''Newsweek'' magazine noted that in light of Hoover's activities as Palmer's assistant during the raids on reds, "some experienced Washington observers express astonishment" at Hoover's appointment as director of the new Division, while the new division chief's manner was described as less that of a cop than that "of a Y.M.C.A. secretary."<ref>Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, page158, note 13. CITE FOR NEWSWEEK ???</ref>
  
 +
::Describing Hoover's manner as that of "a Y.M.C.A. secretary" is a coded dig at his masculinity and indirectly at his heterosexuality. Compared with a policeman, a secretary (meaning a leader) of the Young Men's Christian Association was popularly seen as relatively lacking in aggressive masculinity and thus in heterosexual potency.<ref>CITE Take a Stranger By the Hand ?</ref>
  
:Describing Hoover's manner as that of "a Y.M.C.A. secretary" is a coded dig at his masculinity and indirectly at his heterosexuality. Compared with a policeman, a secretary (meaning a leader) of the Young Men's Christian Association was popularly seen as relatively lacking in aggressive masculinity and thus in heterosexual potency.<ref>CITE Take a Stranger By the Hand ?</ref>
 
  
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1933, August 19
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=="walks with a mincing step"==
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[[File:Colliers.Pix.300dpi.jpeg|650px]]
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'''For a larger version of this illustration see:''' [[F.B.I. and Homosexuality: A History|F.B.I. and Homosexuality: A History MAIN PAGE ]]
  
1933, August 19
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:Ray Tucker, ''Collier's'' magazine's Washington D.C. Bureau Chief, writes in an article about the FBI:
:Ray Tucker, ''Collier's'' magazine Washington D.C. Bureau Chief writes in an article about the FBI:
+
::In appearance Mr. Hoover looks utterly unlike the story-book sleuth. He is short, fat, businesslike, and walks with a mincing step. His black hair, swarthy skin and collegiate haircut make him look younger than thirty-eight, but heavy, horn-rimmed spectacles give him an air of age and authority. He dresses fastidiously, with Eleanor blue as the favorite color for the matched shades of tie, handkerchief and socks. A little pompous, he rides in an expensive limousine even if only to a nearby self-service cafeteria." Gentry, , pages 158=159.</ref>
::In appearance Mr. Hoover looks utterly unlike the story-book sleuth. He is short, fat, businesslike, and walks with a mincing step . . . He dresses fastidiously, with Eleanor blue as the favorite colour for the matched shades of tie, handkerchief and socks. A little pompous, he rides in a limousine even if only to a nearby self-service cafeteria . . .. "<ref>CHECK FOR EXACT FULL QUOTE in COLLIERS. Gentry, Hoover, pages 158=159.</ref>
 
  
  
:The reference to "Eleanor blue" associates Hoover with a feminine name, thus questioning his masculinity. As an extra dig, Eleanor blue also associates Hoover with the first name of the new Democratic president's wife.
+
Tucker adds, later in his essay:
 +
:"at one time or another the bureau's files have contained reports on such prominent Americans as Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, the late Senator Thomas J. Walsh, Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Senator William E. Borah, Dean Roscoe Pound, Prof. Felix Frankfurter, Prof. Zechariah Chafeee Jr., Frank P. Walsh and John L Lewis." {{RR}}Any homosexual associations or rumors about any of those people?
  
  
:For a use of the term "mincing", in New York City, in 1842, to reference effeminate men who desired sex with men see Jonathan Ned Katz's ''Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality'' (pages 49 and 357 note 29). Katz also sites another similar reference to "mincing" dating to January 5, 1892, in New York City (page 290). He also refers to a 1933 reference to "mincing" in Chauncey, ''Gay New York'' (page 67).  [http://www.outhistory.org/wiki/1950s_-_Pioneer_Square,_Seattle For a use of the term "mincing" in association with homosexuality OutHistory.org provides a reference from 1965.]  
+
::For a use of the term "mincing", in New York City, in 1842, to reference effeminate men who desired sex with men see Jonathan Ned Katz's ''Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality'' (pages 49 and 357 note 29). Katz also sites another similar reference to "mincing" dating to January 5, 1892, in New York City (page 290). He also refers to a 1933 reference to "mincing" in Chauncey, ''Gay New York'' (page 67).  [http://www.outhistory.org/wiki/1950s_-_Pioneer_Square,_Seattle For a use of the term "mincing" in association with homosexuality OutHistory.org provides a reference from 1965.]  
  
  
:"Less than two weeks after the ''Collier's'' article appeared, a Washington gossip columnist inquired if anyone had noticed that since the Tucker charge "the Hoover stride had grown longer and more vigorous".<ref>Gentry, Hoover, CHECK EXACT QUOTE from ORIGINAL SOURCE. See notes 15 and 16 in Gentry, Hoover.</ref>
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::The reference to "Eleanor blue" associates Hoover with a feminine name, thus questioning his masculinity. As an extra dig, "Eleanor blue" also associates Hoover with the first name of the new Democratic president's wife.
  
  
1936, May 1 <CHECK YEAR>
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=="the Hoover stride==
:Alvin Karpis caught by FBI. That "pretty much ended the 'queer' talk" about Hoover, according to Louis Nichols.<ref>Maccabee, Paul. ''John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks Tour Of Crime And Corruption In St Paul 1920-1936.'' Minnesota Historical Society Press, August 15, 1995, page 263, citing Louis Nichols as quoted by Curt Gentry.</ref>
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:"Less than two weeks after the ''Collier's'' article appeared, a Washington gossip columnist inquired if anyone had noticed that since the Tucker charge "the Hoover stride had grown longer and more vigorous".<ref>Gentry, Hoover, CHECK EXACT QUOTE from ORIGINAL SOURCE. See notes 15 and 16 in Gentry, Hoover.</ref>  
  
  
1936, May 8
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1935
:Associated Press. "G-Men Get Two Kidnappers." New York Times, May 6, 1936.
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:The Bureau of Investigation is renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation.<ref>Gentry, ''J. Edgar Hoover'', p. 113.</ref>.
::"Mr. Hoover was in a gay mood as he greeted reporters waiting outside his office after his return from Cleveland this afternoon." (Times, page 8.) For historical documentation of the term "gay" used as code for "homosexual" see: ADD CITES.
 
  
  
 
1935, June 10
 
1935, June 10
:Photo: Original caption: 6/10/1935-Washington, D.C.- J. Edgar Hoover (wearing hat), head of the Department of Justice, is pictured here attending the Frankie Klick-Tony Canzoneri fight. Hoover, pleased with the work of his "G Men" who broke the Weyerhauser kidnaping with two arrests, is pictured with Clyde A. Tolson (hat in lap), Assistant Director of the department. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: BE052352. Date Photographed: June 10, 1935
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:Photo Hoover and Tolson: Original caption: 6/10/1935-Washington, D.C.- J. Edgar Hoover (wearing hat), head of the Department of Justice, is pictured here attending the Frankie Klick-Tony Canzoneri fight. Hoover, pleased with the work of his "G Men" who broke the Weyerhauser kidnaping with two arrests, is pictured with Clyde A. Tolson (hat in lap), Assistant Director of the department. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: BE052352. Date Photographed: June 10, 1935
  
  
 
1935, November 19
 
1935, November 19
:Photo: Original caption:Clyde A. Tolson, assistant director, and John Edgar Hoover, director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: VV7769. Date Photographed: November 19, 1935
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:Photo Hoover and Tolson: Original caption: Clyde A. Tolson, assistant director, and John Edgar Hoover, director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: VV7769. Date Photographed: November 19, 1935
  
  
 
1936
 
1936
:Photo: [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/BE027364/j-edgar-hoover-and-clyde-tolson?popup=1 Original caption: 1936- J. Edgar Hoover (LEFT) and Clyde Tolson.] [Identical hats and suits.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: BE027364
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:Photo Hoover and Tolson: [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/BE027364/j-edgar-hoover-and-clyde-tolson?popup=1 Original caption: "1936-J. Edgar Hoover (LEFT) and Clyde Tolson."] [Identical hats and suits.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: BE027364
  
  
 
1936, April 28
 
1936, April 28
:Photo (including Hoover and Tolson): [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/U770417INP/j-edgar-hoover-with-policemen?popup=1 Original caption:The little matter of dividing the reward of $25,000 in the Lindbergh kidnapping] will probably be referred to the New Jersey Court of Chancery. This was announced today (April 28) by Attorney General David T. Wilentz, after a conference of New York City, Federal and New Jersey Police officials in the office of Police Commissioner Valentine, of New York. One point was definitely settled by the conferees; i.e., that no member of the police departments of New York, New Jersey, or of the Federal Department of Justice, will be permitted to claim, or accept any of the money. Those who attended the conference are pictured, left to right: H. Norman Schwartzkopf, of the New Jersey State Police; Anthony M. Hauck, Jr., Hunterdon County, NJ prosecutor; Clyde Tolson, Director of Personnel of the Department of Justice; David T. Wilentz, Attorney general of new Jersey; J. Edgar Hoover. Corbis Images. Stock Photo ID: U770417INP
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:Photo including Hoover and Tolson): [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/U770417INP/j-edgar-hoover-with-policemen?popup=1 Original caption: "The little matter of dividing the reward of $25,000 in the Lindbergh kidnapping] will probably be referred to the New Jersey Court of Chancery. This was announced today (April 28) by Attorney General David T. Wilentz, after a conference of New York City, Federal and New Jersey Police officials in the office of Police Commissioner Valentine, of New York. One point was definitely settled by the conferees; i.e., that no member of the police departments of New York, New Jersey, or of the Federal Department of Justice, will be permitted to claim, or accept any of the money. Those who attended the conference are pictured, left to right: H. Norman Schwartzkopf, of the New Jersey State Police; Anthony M. Hauck, Jr., Hunterdon County, NJ prosecutor; Clyde Tolson, Director of Personnel of the Department of Justice; David T. Wilentz, Attorney general of new Jersey; J. Edgar Hoover. Corbis Images. Stock Photo ID: U770417INP
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1936, May 1 <CHECK DATE AND INCLUDE CITATION>
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==the 'queer' talk" about Hoover"==
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:Alvin Karpis caught by FBI. That "pretty much ended the 'queer' talk" about Hoover, according to Louis Nichols.<ref>Maccabee, Paul. ''John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks Tour Of Crime And Corruption In St Paul 1920-1936.'' Minnesota Historical Society Press, August 15, 1995, page 263, citing Louis Nichols as quoted by Curt Gentry.</ref>
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 +
:During Alvin Karpis's arrest, according to Karpis's nephew Albert Grooms <recorded when?>:
 +
::"Alvin told Hoover: 'You're a big, brave S.O. B., you let those agents do all the work, and you take all the credit. What makes me mad is that the number one queer in the FBI captured me." H. boiled and told those guys to get Karpis up to St. Paul: Alvin had embarrassed Hoover in front of his own FBI crew!"<ref>Maccabee, Paul. ''John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks Tour Of Crime And Corruption In St Paul 1920-1936.'' Minnesota Historical Society Press, August 15, 1995, citing Curt Gentry <get detailed cites from Gentry> </ref>
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 +
:The FBI is said to have claimed that while Karpis was a fugitive he sent a letter to Hoover threatening to kill the director. Alvin Karpis's nephew, Albert Grooms, said: "The letter [Karpis sent Hoover] said that Hoover was as queer as a three-dollar bill. Alvin and Ma [Barker] laughed and laughed about that letter. Alvin said, 'Just imagine how that queer blew his stack.'" Asked in 1994 to produce a copy of Karpis's letter, the FBI could not.<ref>Maccabee, Paul. ''John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks Tour Of Crime And Corruption In St Paul 1920-1936.'' Minnesota Historical Society Press, August 15, 1995, citing Curt Gentry <get detailed cites from Gentry> </ref>
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 +
 
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1936, May 8
 +
=="Mr. Hoover was in a gay mood"==
 +
:Associated Press. "G-Men Get Two Kidnappers." New York Times, May 6, 1936.
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::"Mr. Hoover was in a gay mood as he greeted reporters waiting outside his office after his return from Cleveland this afternoon." (Times, page 8.)
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:For historical documentation of the term "gay" used as code for "homosexual" see [[History of the word "gay"]]
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 +
 
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1936 June 21
 +
=="Hoover walks with a rather mincing step, almost feminine."==
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:Walter Trohan, "Chief of the G-Men — Record of His Career," Chicago Tribune, June 21, 1936.
 +
:On Hoover walking with "mincing" step. Cited by Nash, Citizen Hoover (1972), page 35 of Chapter 4, "The Gangbusters." See also on: Hoover's distrust of women and his early male friendships.
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 +
[[File:Nash,CITIZEN,p.jpg]]
  
  
 
1936, July 12
 
1936, July 12
:Photo: FBI Officials Capture Alvin Karpis. (L-R) FBI officials W.R. Galvin, E.J. Connelley, Director J. Edgar Hoover, Clyde Tolson and Dwight Brantley participated in the apprehension of renowned criminal Alvin Karpis in New Orleans. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: 42-21707342. Date Photographed: July 12, 1936.
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:Photo Hoover and Tolson: FBI Officials Capture Alvin Karpis. (L-R) FBI officials W.R. Galvin, E.J. Connelley, Director J. Edgar Hoover, Clyde Tolson and Dwight Brantley participated in the apprehension of renowned criminal Alvin Karpis in New Orleans. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: 42-21707342. Date Photographed: July 12, 1936.
  
  
 
1936, August 18
 
1936, August 18
:Photo, Hoover and Tolson (notes Tolson's left hand): [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/U360070ACME/j-edgar-hoover-and-clyde-tolson-at?popup=1 Original caption:J. Edgar Hoover, Chief G-Man (right) and his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson, snapped at ringside as they attended the Louis-Sharkey fight, at the Yankee Stadium in New York City, August 18.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U360070ACME
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:Photo, Hoover and Tolson (note Tolson's left hand): [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/U360070ACME/j-edgar-hoover-and-clyde-tolson-at?popup=1 Original caption:J. Edgar Hoover, Chief G-Man (right) and his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson, snapped at ringside as they attended the Louis-Sharkey fight, at the Yankee Stadium in New York City, August 18.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U360070ACME
  
  
 
1936, August 18
 
1936, August 18
:Photo: Original caption:J. Edgar Hoover, Chief G-Man (right) and his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson, snapped at ringside as they attended the Louis-Sharkey fight, at the Yankee Stadium in New York City, August 18. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U360070ACME. Date Photographed: August 18, 1936
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:Photo Hoover and Tolson Original caption:J. Edgar Hoover, Chief G-Man (right) and his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson, snapped at ringside as they attended the Louis-Sharkey fight, at the Yankee Stadium in New York City, August 18. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U360070ACME. Date Photographed: August 18, 1936
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 +
 
 +
1937
 +
:The FBI's monitoring of homosexual activity began this year.<ref>Theoharis, Athan. ''From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover.'' Ivan R Dee, July 1, 1991, page 4.</ref>
 +
 
 +
 
 +
1937-1977
 +
:According to historian Aaron J. Stockham: "Beginning in 1937 and continuing until 1977, the FBI investigated gays as potential security risks who could be blackmailed.  Numerous men and women were removed from their government and non-government positions because of the information Hoover's bureau dug up.  Only Communists were more systematically investigated by the FBI.  In a forthcoming book, Douglas Charles explores these investigations more thoroughly.<ref>[http://hnn.us/articles/j-edgar-fails-deliver-historical-goods History News Network]</ref>
  
  
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1937, June 22
 
1937, June 22
 
:Photo, Hoover and Tolson. Both in shorts. Hoover in sandles.  [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/U399498ACME/j-edgar-hoover-with-his-assistant-clyde?popup=1 Original caption: J. Edgar Hoover (right), chief G-man, with his assistant, Clyde Tolson, as they attended the Louis-Braddock heavyweight championship fight in Chicago, June 22.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U399498ACME.
 
:Photo, Hoover and Tolson. Both in shorts. Hoover in sandles.  [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/U399498ACME/j-edgar-hoover-with-his-assistant-clyde?popup=1 Original caption: J. Edgar Hoover (right), chief G-man, with his assistant, Clyde Tolson, as they attended the Louis-Braddock heavyweight championship fight in Chicago, June 22.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U399498ACME.
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 +
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1937, September 26
 +
:Hoover, J. Edgar. "War on the Sex Criminal," ''New York Herald Tribune'', September 26, 1937. 13.<ref>Cited by Philip Jenkins in ''Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America'' (2004), page 252.</ref>
  
  
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1938, June 6
 
1938, June 6
:Photo: Original caption:6/6/1938- FL: J. Edgar Hoover and aide (later presumed to be his lover) Clyde Tolson, to direct the hunt for the kidnapper of 5 year old James B. Cash, Jr. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: BE034390<ref>This cannot be the original caption from 1938. If it is ......</ref>
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:Photo Hoover and Tolson: Original caption:6/6/1938- FL: J. Edgar Hoover and aide (later presumed to be his lover) Clyde Tolson, to direct the hunt for the kidnapper of 5 year old James B. Cash, Jr. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: BE034390<ref>This cannot be the original caption from 1938. If it is ......</ref>
  
  
 
1938, December 15
 
1938, December 15
:Photo. Original caption: 12/15/1938-Miami Beach, FL: L to r Guy Hottell, special agent of FBI; J. Edgar Hoover, Chief of the F.B.I. and Clyde Tolson, Assistant to Hoover in pursuit in [of?] sunshine. Corbis Images:  
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:Photo Hoover and Tolson. Original caption: 12/15/1938-Miami Beach, FL: L to r Guy Hottell, special agent of FBI; J. Edgar Hoover, Chief of the F.B.I. and Clyde Tolson, Assistant to Hoover in pursuit in [of?] sunshine. Corbis Images:  
 
:Second version same photo shoot: Original caption:Miami, Florida: J. Edgar Hoover (center) combines business with pleasure on a recent trip to FL. He is shown with two of his Aides, Guy Hottell, (left) special agent of the Washington F.B.I. office, and Clyde Tolson (right), Hoover's assistant. Stock Photo ID: BE027691. Date Photographed: December 15, 1938
 
:Second version same photo shoot: Original caption:Miami, Florida: J. Edgar Hoover (center) combines business with pleasure on a recent trip to FL. He is shown with two of his Aides, Guy Hottell, (left) special agent of the Washington F.B.I. office, and Clyde Tolson (right), Hoover's assistant. Stock Photo ID: BE027691. Date Photographed: December 15, 1938
  
  
 
UNDATED
 
UNDATED
:Photo: Clyde A. Tolson, J. Edgar Hoover, and friends (l to r) relax on the water. [Hoover's hand over Tolson's shoulder.]Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: NA013085
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:Photo Hoover and Tolson: Clyde A. Tolson, J. Edgar Hoover, and friends (l to r) relax on the water. [Hoover's hand over Tolson's shoulder.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: NA013085
  
  
 
UNDATED
 
UNDATED
:Photo: John Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: 42-21707351. Date Photographed: Unknown
+
:Photo Hoover and Tolson: John Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: 42-21707351. Date Photographed: Unknown
  
  
 
UNDATED
 
UNDATED
:[http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/NA013089/j-edgar-hoover?popup=1 Stock Photo ID: NA013089 Photo: J. Edgar Hoover relaxes with his friend Clyde A. Tolson.] [Fishing, shirts off.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: NA013089
+
:Photo Hoover and Tolson [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/NA013089/j-edgar-hoover?popup=1 Stock Photo ID: NA013089 Photo: J. Edgar Hoover relaxes with his friend Clyde A. Tolson.] [Fishing, shirts off.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: NA013089
  
  
 
UNDATED
 
UNDATED
:Photo, Hoover and Tolson. [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/U953892INP/j-edgar-hoover-and-clyde-tolson-walking?popup=1 Original caption: Clyde Tolson and J. Edgar Hoover is [sic] shown here arriving at the U.S. Supreme Court Building.] Corbis Images, no date: Stock Photo ID: U953892INP
+
:Photo Hoover and Tolson. [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/U953892INP/j-edgar-hoover-and-clyde-tolson-walking?popup=1 Original caption: Clyde Tolson and J. Edgar Hoover is [sic] shown here arriving at the U.S. Supreme Court Building.] Corbis Images, no date: Stock Photo ID: U953892INP
  
  
 
1939
 
1939
 
:Photo, Hoover and Tolson: J. Edgar Hoover and his assistant Clyde Tolson sitting in beach lounge chairs. 1939 (publication date). Publication:Los Angeles Daily News.<ref>http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/dlib/lat/display.cfm?ms=uclalat_1387_b16_20733-1&searchType=subject&subjectID=213351 Source:Los Angeles Times photographic archive, UCLA Library. Author: Uncredited photographer for Los Angeles Daily News. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hoover_%26_Tolson.jpg</ref>
 
:Photo, Hoover and Tolson: J. Edgar Hoover and his assistant Clyde Tolson sitting in beach lounge chairs. 1939 (publication date). Publication:Los Angeles Daily News.<ref>http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/dlib/lat/display.cfm?ms=uclalat_1387_b16_20733-1&searchType=subject&subjectID=213351 Source:Los Angeles Times photographic archive, UCLA Library. Author: Uncredited photographer for Los Angeles Daily News. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hoover_%26_Tolson.jpg</ref>
 +
 +
 +
1939, February 10
 +
:Persons in Hiding (film, 1939). Directed by Louis King. Writing credits: J. Edgar Hoover (book "Persons in Hiding") William R. Lipman, (screenplay) and Horace McCoy (screenplay). [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029396/ IMDB]
  
  
Line 175: Line 255:
  
  
==1940==
+
=1940=
1943
+
=Sumner Welles=
:Terry: "FBI documents indicate that as early as 1943, agents under his [Hoover's] direction believed that Hoover was 'queer' and that his relationship with FBI official Clyde Tolson was homosexual in nature. Hoover attempted to suppress these rumors and kept his own private files on 'derogatory information' that named the culprits of such gossip.<ref>Jennifer Terry, ''An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society'' (University of Chicago Press, 1999), page 350. ISBN 0-226-79366-4.</ref>
+
1941, January
:Potter "Queer" (2006): "as early as 1943, Hoover began to use FBI agents systematically to repress those who gossiped in casual conversation about his alleged homosexuality." Citing Athan Theoharis, J. Edgar Hoover, Sex and Crime: An Historical Antidote (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995), 34–35; see also Kessler, The Bureau, 98–99.<ref>Potter "Queer" (2006) page 368.</ref>
+
:The U.S. Secret Service learned in January 1941 that railroad officials were considering legal action against Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, for drunkenly propositioning a number of Pullman porters on two different train trips. President Franklin Roosevelt immediately asked Hoover to conduct a discreet investigation. Hoover did so, confirming that the incidents did occur. Hoover pointed out that many people knew of these incidents and that Welles' advances were the result "more of a mental condition than anything else and there could not be an assurance it would not be repeated in the future." Hoover suggested that if the President wanted to keep Welles, that someone should travel with him and prevent his drinking, and/or prevent his "endeavor to make propositions for such immoral relations." Roosevelt thought this a good solution and the matter was contained in 1941. It became an issue again in 1942-1943, when Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who resented Welles, became concerned about rumors of Welles's homosexual behavior. Roosevelt then accepted Welles's resignation.<ref>Theoharis, ''Sex'', pages  32-33.</ref>
  
:Potter "Queer" (2006):  "Thousands of soldiers, many of them combat veterans, were drummed out of the military by psychiatrists beginning in 1943. Their dishonorable discharges made many homosexuals unemployable and ineligible for the government benefits that expanded the middle class after World War II even while it emphasized their presence in society."<ref>Potter "Queer" (2006), page 368, citing Theoharis,  J. Edgar Hoover, Sex and Crime, 103–8; Bérubé, 149–76; Margot Canaday, “Finding the Lesbian in the State,” paper presented on 3 June 2005 at the Thirteenth
 
Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Scripps College; Terry, 296–314; Robert J. Corber, Homosexuality in Cold War America: Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997) and “Cold War Femme: Lesbian Visibility in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve,” GLQ 11, no. 1 (2005): 1–22.</ref>
 
  
 +
1942, March
 +
=Donald Downes=
 +
:By March 1942, Donald Downes, an agend for William Donovan's Office of Strategic Services. had come to Hoover's attention and the FBI director "reserved a special loathing for Downes" for spying for the British and for being a "sex deviate", as the FBI's many surveillance reports on Downes described him.<ref>Waller, Douglas. ''Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage''. Free Press, February 8, 2011, page 124. Check March 1942 date..</ref>
  
1945, September 2
 
:"the postwar rumors [about J. Edgar Hoover's homosexuality] were probably generated by one of Hoover’s political enemies in the CIA".<ref>Potter, "Queer" (2006), page 372, citing Kessler, The Bureau, 108–11, 43.</ref>
 
  
 +
1942, May 7
  
1948
+
=David I. Walsh=
:Kinsey report on the sexuality of human males.
+
:On May 7, 1942, the ''New York Post'', which had long favored U.S. involvement in the European conflict, implicated the isolationist Senator David I. Walsh in a sensational sex and spy scandal uncovered at a Brooklyn male brothel for U.S. Navy personnel that had been infiltrated by Nazi spies. See: [[David Ignatius Walsh: November 11, 1872 – June 11, 1947]]
  
  
==1950==
+
1943
1950, February 3
+
:Potter "Queer" (2006):  "Thousands of soldiers, many of them combat veterans, were drummed out of the military by psychiatrists beginning in 1943. Their dishonorable discharges made many homosexuals unemployable and ineligible for the government benefits that expanded the middle class after World War II even while it emphasized their presence in society."<ref>Potter "Queer" (2006), page 368, citing Theoharis,  J. Edgar Hoover, Sex and Crime, 103–8; Bérubé, 149–76; Margot Canaday, “Finding the Lesbian in the State,” paper presented on 3 June 2005 at the Thirteenth
:Photo, Hoover and Tolson, etc. [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/U928885ACME/j-edgar-hoover-speaking-to-reporters?popup=1 Original caption: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (right) was reported to have told Senators today that Dr. Fuchs has confessed to giving Russia vital information on assembly of the atomic bomb and some data on the supersecret hydrogen weapon. He is shown talking to reporters after a 3-hour session with a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee. In the center is Clyde Tolson, Associate Director of the FBI.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U928885ACME
+
Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Scripps College; Terry, 296–314; Robert J. Corber, Homosexuality in Cold War America: Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997) and “Cold War Femme: Lesbian Visibility in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve,” GLQ 11, no. 1 (2005): 1–22.</ref>
  
  
1951
+
:Terry, J.: "FBI documents indicate that as early as 1943, agents under his [Hoover's] direction believed that Hoover was 'queer' and that his relationship with FBI official Clyde Tolson was homosexual in nature. Hoover attempted to suppress these rumors and kept his own private files on 'derogatory information' that named the culprits of such gossip.<ref>Jennifer Terry, ''An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society'' (University of Chicago Press, 1999), page 350. ISBN 0-226-79366-4. SEE WHAT HER CITES ARE</ref>
:Potter "Queer" (2006): "In 1951, at the request of several federal agencies, Hoover devised the Sex Deviates program, which sought to identify gays and lesbians working in government. This function was expanded in 1953 after a presidential order by Dwight Eisenhower made federal employment of homosexuals illegal".<ref>Potter "Queer" (2006), page 368.</ref>
 
 
  
1952
 
:"In 1952, . . . a memo [in the FBI's files] noted that Gov. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, the Democratic Presidential nominee, was one of "the two best known homosexuals in the state." It hardly mattered to Hoover that the informant was a college basketball player under indictment for fixing a game or that his evidence was based only on rumor. What did matter was that Stevenson had spoken out against loyalty oaths, criticized Joe McCarthy, and vetoed a bill that would outlaw the Communist Party in Illinois." [New paragraph.] The Crime Records Division of the F.B.I. leaked the homosexual charge to selected members of the press. Rumors flew wildly across the Presidential campaign. <ref>David M. Oshinsky, "The Senior G-Man", New York Times,  September 15, 1991.</ref>
 
  
 +
:Athan Theoharis reproduces FBI documents that show that in 1943 a woman remarked at her bridge party in Cleveland, Ohio, that she had heard that J. Edgar Hoover was homosexual. Someone contacted the Cleveland FBI office about her remarks, and the Cleveland FBI contacted her and chastised her for spreading such rumors. She agreed that at the next meeting of her bridge club she would according to her FBI file: "point out to each of those present that her statement was not founded on fact and that she was deeply sorry that she had made it and it should not have been made at all."<ref>Theoharis, ''Sex,'' pages 35-36. The relevant FBI memo relating to this incident is reprinted in Athan Theoharis, ''From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover''.</ref>
  
1953
 
:The FBI's Sex Deviates program "was expanded in 1953 after a presidential order by Dwight Eisenhower made federal employment of homosexuals illegal."<ref>Potter, "Queer" (2006), page 368.</ref>
 
  
 +
Hoover to Tolson (1943): “Words are mere man-given symbols for thoughts and feelings, and they are grossly insufficient to express the thoughts in my mind and the feelings in my heart that I have for you,” Hoover wrote to Tolson in 1943. “I hope I will always have you beside me.”<ref>http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/life_and_art/2011/11/clint_eastwood_s_j_edgar_were_j_edgar_hoover_and_clyde_tolson_lovers_.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_2</ref>
  
1953, November 17
 
:Photo, Hoover and Tolson. [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/U772154INP/j-edgar-hoover-testifying-to-senate-internal?popup=1 Original caption: FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover is shown as he told a Senate Internal Security Subcommittee today that he was notified in February 1947, that Harry Dexter White was being retained in an important international post, so he could be kept under surveillance. He said that his source of information was Tom C. Clark, then Attorney General.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U772154INP
 
  
 +
1943, December 17
 +
=John Monroe: "J. Edgar Hoover is a fairy"=
 +
:Theoharis, ''Sex'', says: On this date an FBI agent reported to his superior that D.C. businessman John Monroe had allegedly bragged that he had "no fear of the F.B.I inasmuch as he 'was the only one who had positive proof that J. Edgar Hoover is a fairy.'" His report was not relayed to Hoover until January 18, 1944. (Monroe was being investigated for having used his government connections to secure dismissal of a suit by the Office of Price Administration against a Brooklyn baking company.)<ref>Theoharis, Sex, 34-36. Theoharis is cited by :Potter "Queer" (2006) page 368: "as early as 1943, Hoover began to use FBI agents systematically to repress those who gossiped in casual conversation about his alleged homosexuality." Potter also cites Kessler, The Bureau, 98–99. <See what's in Kessler.></ref>
  
1954, May 22
+
:On January 18, 1944, Hoover protested to the special agent in charge of the FBI's New York Field office about this "gross" mishandling of the rumor and demanded to know "why this matter was not reported from Dec 17 to Jan 18." Hoover simultaneously ordered his senior aides to take "vigorous action" to address this failure "to promtly report" the homosexual allegation to Hoover.  The Director also asked that Monroe be made to "put up or shut up" concerning the allegation about Hoover. FBI Assistant Director Louis Nichols was sent to confront Monroe and "dress down" and threaten him with "crim[inal] slander unless can [he can] prove" the allged allegations. Monroe signed a statement denying to Nichols that he had made the aspersion about Hoover, claiming that he himself was the victim of character assassination. (Monroe was at that time involved in a libel suit with the columnist Drew Pearson, and told Nichols his suspicion that Pearson had passed this rumor to the FBI.) <Check Pearson's and Jack Anderson's FBI files?> Hoover did not believe Monroe's denial and he remained a subject of FBI investigations. Monroe was indicated in 1945 and convicted in 1946 for violating price ceilings set by the Office of Price Administration.
:Photo, Hoover and Tolson: [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/U1057939/edgar-j-hoover-and-his-assistant-at?popup=1 Original caption: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (right) and his assistant Clyde Tolson, at Pilmico Race Track, MD. for running of preakness. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U1057939. Date Photographed: May 22, 1954.
 
  
  
1958
+
1944, June
:According to a strongly contested account in Anthony Summers' biography of Hoover: In 1958 the bisexual millionaire distiller and philanthropist Lewis Solon Rosenstiel asked Susan, his fourth wife, if—having been previously married to another bisexual man for nine years—she had ever seen “a homosexual orgy.” Although she had once surprised her sixty-eight-year-old husband in bed with his attorney, Roy Cohn, Susan told Summers that she had never before been invited to view sex between men. With her consent the couple went one day not long after this odd question to Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel. Cohn, a former aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy and a Republican power broker, met them at the door. As she and her husband entered the suite, Susan said, she recognized a third man: J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), whom she had met previously at her New York City Upper East Side townhouse. Hoover, Lewis had explained, gave him access to influential politicians; he returned these favors, in part, by paying the director’s gambling debts.Susan described what happened at this meeting. Cohn warned her that she should pretend not to recognize Hoover, who was in “full drag.
+
:This month an Office of Strategic Services employee named Towell contacted the FBI's wartime security divison to obtain permission for an OSS agent to "select copies of obscene material" from FBI files. The material was to be used to counteract a Japanese program which sent out obscene photos of American girls in an effort to show the lax morals of Americans. The OSS planned to disseminate similar photos of Japanese girls. He was advised that the FBI had "a collection of 25 to 30 photsgraphs of this nature" in its Obscene File. Hoover allowed an OSS agent to "obtain copies".<ref>Theorharis, ''Sex'', pages 48-49.</ref> See also: 1951, May.
  
:As she recalled, the legendary crime fighter, anti-Communist, and crusader against sexual perversion
 
::was wearing a fluffy black dress, very fluffy, with flounces, and lace stockings, and high heels, and a black curly wig. He had make-up on, and false eyelashes. It was a very short skirt, and he was sitting there in the  living room of the suite with his legs crossed. Roy introduced him to me as “Mary” and he replied, “Good evening,” brusque, like the first time I’d met him. It was obvious he wasn’t a woman, you could see where he’d shaved. It was Hoover. You’ve never seen anything like it. I couldn’t  believe it, that I should see the head of the FBI dressed as a woman.
 
  
:Two blonde boys then entered the “tremendous bedroom, with a bed like in Caesar’s time,” and the orgy began. Hoover removed his dress and underpants, revealing a garter belt, and the boys “work[ed] on him with their hands,” one wearing rubber gloves. Her husband, Lewis, then “got into the act” while Hoover and Cohn watched; finally, Cohn had “full sex” with each boy. Operating as a figure of power, not desire, Hoover demanded sexual pleasure but did not give it to others. Susan recalled that he “only had [the boys], you know, playing with him.” A year later the Rosenstiels returned to the Plaza. This time the boys were “dressed in leather,” and Hoover wore a red dress and a black feather boa. He had one boy read from the Bible while the other fondled him, again wearing gloves. Hoover soon “grabbed the Bible, threw it down, and told the second boy to join in the sex.
+
1945, September 2
 +
:"the postwar rumors [about J. Edgar Hoover's homosexuality] were probably generated by one of Hoover’s political enemies in the CIA".<ref>Potter, "Queer" (2006), page 372, citing Kessler, The Bureau, 108–11, 43.</ref>
  
:Despite her husband’s urging Susan Rosenstiel did not join either scene; her claim to truth rests on her status as a detached, female heterosexual among gay men. But this claim, after the fantastic quality of the story, is where the problems begin. For one thing, historians and respectable journalists usually rely on corroborated evidence . . . <ref>Potter, "Queer Hover", 355-356: This account is taken from Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1993), 253–55.</ref>
 
  
 +
1946
 +
:Athan Theoharis provides FBI files about a Detroit businessman who, during a trip to New York City, made remarks to his host suggesting that J. Edgar Hoover was homosexual. An agent from the FBI's Detroit office, reporting on his interview with the businessman, said he had warned the man that if he ever again called Hoover a homosexual he "might take care of him right there on the spot." The Detroit agent predicted that the man "will not repeat such a statement in the future." The agent described the man has "scared to death" that the FBI was "going to investigate him".<ref>Athan Theoharis, ''From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover''. The case is also discussed in Theoharis, Sex, pages 35, 36.</ref>
  
==1960==
 
1964
 
:Cook, Fred. ''The FBI Nobody Knows'' 1964
 
::What does this say about Hoover's personal life and character?
 
  
 
+
1948
1965
+
:Kinsey report on the sexuality of human males.
:[http://www.life.com/gallery/42072/j-edgar-hoovers-watching-you#index/7 Life magazine. On Rock Hudson's FBI file:]
 
::A 1965 memo "recommends Los Angeles to be authorized to interview movie actor Rock Hudson." Why, exactly? Much of the memo is blacked out, but one uncensored line offers a hint at the reason: "Los Angeles has advised that it is general common knowledge in motion picture industry that Hudson is suspected of having homosexual tendencies." Four years later [1969?], when it was reported that Hudson was to star as an FBI man in a planned (but apparently never made) movie called The Seven File, a memo again mentions the allegations that he was gay. "The Los Angeles Office has been instructed to remain alert concerning all developments."
 
 
 
 
 
1965, September 19
 
:Inman, Richard, a homophile activist battling police extortion of homosexuals in South Florida writes to Mattachine-Washington co-founder Jack Nichols [who is using pseudonym Warren Adkins), stating that he knows via a friend inside the FBI that there was one "boss man of the syndicate's homo shakedown detail for the whole of the U.S." <ref>Carter, ''Stonewall'', pages 93-94, note 8 page 286, citing James T. Sears, ''Lonely Hunters: An Oral History of Lesbian and Gay Southern Life, 1948-1968'' (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), p. 244. Carter suggests that the boss man in question is Edward Murphy.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1965, August 5
 
:"DETECTIVE AT HOTEL IS HELD IN EXTORTION". ''New York Times'', August 5, 1965.
 
::A 39-year-old house detective [Edward Murphy] at the New York Hilton was arrested early yesterday as the leader of a gang that had extorted a total of $100,000 from "rich playboys and executives." "The case broke, the police said, with the arrest on March 14 [1965] of John Aitken" for impersonating an officer. On July 25 [1965] William Burke was arrested for impersonating an officer.
 
::Carter, ''Stonewall'' (June 2004) suggests that Murphy headed a national blackmail operation that had or knew of evidence against Hoover and Tolson.
 
::The last article in the ''Times'' that mentions Edward Murphy is: Roth, Jack. "NINE SEIZED HERE; Hogan Says Gang Preyed on Homosexuals and Others". ''New York Times'', February 18, 1966.
 
::Nine members of a nationwide ring that included bogus policemen who preyed primarily on homosexuals to extort money on threats of arrest were taken into custody here yesterday . . . ."
 
::Among the defendants in custody was "Edward Murphy, 41 years old, of 167 Christopher Street, a former hotel security guard . . . ."
 
 
 
 
 
1966,  August 17
 
:"Blackmailer [John Felebaum] Gets Five Years in Homosexual Case". New York Times, August 17, 1966.
 
::"Assistant United States Attorney Andrew J. Maloney said one of the ring's victims had committed suicide after being interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He did not identify the victim."
 
 
 
 
 
1968
 
:Shortly after Richard Nixon's election victory in 1968, he ordered an adviser, John Ehrlichman, to establish immediate White House contact with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Ehrlichman phoned J. Edgar Hoover, the bureau's legendary Director, who invited him to his office. Bored by Hoover's conversation, Ehrlichman wondered how anyone could take this man seriously. "A few weeks later, Hoover phoned the President. There were rumors, he said, about homosexual activity "at the highest levels of the White House staff." They came from a bureau informant, who had mentioned Ehrlichman. Of course, the F.B.I. would check out these rumors if the President so ordered. He did. The rumors proved false. But Hoover had sent his calling card. Mr. Ehrlichman would not take him lightly again."<ref>Oshinsky, David M. "The Senior G-Man". ''New York Times'', September 15, 1991, citing Ehrlichman's memoirs.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1968
 
:''The Homosexual Handbook'', published in 1968, has a last chapter titled "Uncle Fudge's List of Practical Homosexuals Past and Present . . ." that includes the name of J. Edgar Hoover on page 267. Carter, in ''Stonewall'' (June 2004), says that "After the book appeared, pressure from the FBI caused it to be withdrawn."  The publisher soon reissued the book, but without Hoover's name.<ref>Cartner, ''Stonewall'', pages 94-95, citing in note 10, page 286: ''Straight News'', page 269, and Donn Teal, ''The Gay Militants'', pages 65.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1969, June 24
 
:Potter. "Queer" (2006): "President Nixon’s aide H. R. Haldeman noted in his diary [of this date] what was likely a regular occurrence: “Hoover . . . reported to [Attorney General John] Mitchell that columnist Drew Pearson had a report that [John] Erlichman, [Dwight] Chapin, and I had attended homosexual parties at a local Washington hotel. Pearson was checking before running the story . . . [and so] at Mitchell’s suggestion, we agreed to be deposed by the FBI to clear this up.”<ref>Potter. "Queer" (2006), page 369 citing H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994), 66.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1960s, late
 
:"It is possible that the first published allegation of Hoover’s homosexuality appeared in the late 1960s in Al Goldstein’s sex tabloid, ''Screw''"<ref>See Gay Talese, ''Thy Neighbor’s Wife'' (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980), 229. Cited in Potter, Queer, page ?</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
==1970==
 
1970, January 1
 
: Life Magazine. Caption: "(L-R) FBI dir. J. Edgar Hoover and his asst. Clyde Tolson looking at menus in the Mayflower Hotel where they lunched together each workday for 40 years." [Looking pained; identical pepper grinders; identical suits.] Time Life Pictures/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Jan 01, 1970.<ref>http://www.life.com/news-pictures/50613576/clyde-a-tolsonj-edgar-hoover</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1971, October 18
 
:“I emphatically deny that I have at any time under any circumstances ever said or remotely suggested that Mr. Hoover was a homosexual,” [reporter Jack] Nelson wrote [to Hoover] on Oct. 19, 1971. <ref>For full story see: Serrano, Richard A. Serrano, "An FBI director with a grudge". ''Los Angeles Times'', November 6, 2011, 8:03 p.m. (on this list), and [http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/hoover_worried_lice-covered_ferret_journalist_would_report_he_was_gay.php "Hoover worried"]</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1972, May 4
 
:Photo: Original caption:Clyde A. Tolson, Associate Director of the FBI, is helped to his car, after attending burial of his life-long friend, J. Edgar Hoover, in the Congressional Cemetery. Shortly thereafter, Tolson submitted his resignation, citing "ill health." Tolson is a native of Laredo, Montana. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U1738097. Date Photographed: May 4, 1972
 
 
 
 
 
1975
 
:"revelations, in the 1975 Senate investigations led by Frank Church of Idaho, that the CIA and FBI had been engaged in long-term intelligence gathering operations against its own citizens and domestic political groups"<ref>Potter, "Queer" (2006), page 381.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1977
 
:Cohen, Larry. ''The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover''. Film directed by Larry Cohen.<ref>Poveda and others (1998), page 291.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
:"In 1977, Bureau officials added more gaps to the paper trail by destroying the 300,000 pages in the "Sex Deviate Program."<ref>David M. Oshinsky, "The Senior G-Man", New York Times,  September 15, 1991.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1978
 
:Powers, Richard Gid, “One G-Man’s Family: Popular Entertainment Formulas and J. Edgar Hoover’s F.B.I.,” American Quarterly 30, no. 4 (1978): 471–92.
 
 
 
 
 
1978, May
 
:Bell, Arthur. "Skull Murphy: The Gay Double Agent". ''Village Voice'' May 1978, pages 1, 17-19.
 
:Bell, page 1.
 
:[http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=DuFLAAAAIBAJ&sjid=tIsDAAAAIBAJ&dq=the%20gay%20double%20agent&pg=4731%2C2861327 Bell, page 17.]
 
::He says he started informing undercover for the FBI in 1965 about a national ring blackmailing homosexuals. Murphy says that J. Edgar Hoover "was one of my sisters. He was the biggest fuckin' extortionist in this country. He had presidents by the balls. He had a record on everybody and his brother." He adds: "Every thing I know [about mobsters]  is on file at certain law enforcement agencies for certain people who are doing investigations."
 
:Bell, page 18.
 
:Bell, page 19.
 
::My double agent days started in '66 with the extortion ring. It was supposed to be a one-shot deal. We locked up 21 guys. They're all dead now, except three of them."
 
::Carter says that Murphy says that the Mafia had photographs of Hoover involved in sex acts.<ref>Cited in Carter, ''Stonewall'', note 3, page 285.</ref> Photographs are not mentioned in the Bell interview--JNK
 
 
 
 
 
==1980==
 
1980
 
: It is possible that the first published allegation of Hoover’s homosexuality appeared in the late 1960s in Al Goldstein’s sex tabloid, Screw; see Gay Talese, Thy Neighbor’s Wife (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980), 229.<ref>Potter, Queer, page ?</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1983
 
:Powers, Richard Gid. ''G-Men: Hoover’s FBI in American Popular Culture'' (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983).
 
 
 
 
 
1984, March 6
 
:Anderson, Scott P. Anderson, “ACLU Seeks Data about FBI Spying on Gays since 1950,” ''Advocate'', 6 March 1984.<ref>Potter, Queer, page ?</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1984, September 24
 
:Stadler, Matthew. <Title? Report on FBI in gay press]> ''New York Native'', 24 September 1984.<ref>Potter, Queer, page ?</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1984, October 30
 
:[Article on FBI and homosexuality.] Advocate, 30 October 1984.<ref>Potter, Queer, page ?</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1984, December 11
 
:Balter, Michael. “Decades of FBI Surveillance Unveiled,” Advocate, 11 December 1984.<ref>Potter, Queer, page ?</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1984, December 7
 
:Christopher Street. [Report on the FBI in the gay press]. 7 December 1983<ref>Potter, Queer, page ?</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1980s, late
 
:"by the late 1980s Hoover could not avoid being articulated as a closeted gay man because he persecuted and reviled other homosexuals."<ref>Potter, "Queer", page 369</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1987
 
:Powers, Richard Gid. SECRECY AND POWER The Life of J. Edgar Hoover. Illustrated. 624 pp. New York: The Free Press.
 
::Norval on Powers:"Mr. Powers avoids preoccupation with the question of whether Hoover's 44-year close and daily association with the handsome Clyde Tolson was overtly homosexual; but he sketches the details of their working days and holidays together, and concludes that their relationship was ''spousal'' and ''so close, so enduring, and so affectionate that it took the place of marriage for both bachelors.'' To me it seems clear that sexual sublimation accounts in part for the astonishing and unwavering energy Hoover dedicated to the virtuous task he saw himself as privileged to perform - the creation of a great law enforcement agency."<ref>Morris, Norval. DIRECTOR OF ALL HE SURVEYED. [Review of Powers, Secrecy, 1987/] New York Times. March 8, 1987.</ref>
 
 
 
::Oshinsky on Powers: "In 1987 the historian Richard Gid Powers provided a compelling portrait of the young Hoover in "Secrecy and Power." In his view, Hoover was a natural product of his environment: "Southern, white, Christian, small-town, turn-of-the-century Washington." His neighborhood was homogeneous -- and closed." <ref>Oshinsky, David M. "The Senior G-Man". ''New York Times'', September 15, 1991.</ref>
 
 
 
::Potter on Powers: "already in 1987 Powers pointed to Hoover’s “straitlaced Presbyterian upbringing and his almost fanatical conventionality” to argue that the relationship with Tolson may have been loving but not sexual. “Yet human sexual drives being what they are,” Powers retreats, “it is also possible that it was a fully sexual relationship. There is no compelling evidence for a definitive judgment in either direction. Weighing all known information, such a term as ‘spousal relationship’ describes most fairly what is known about the bonds between the two men, bonds that grew stronger and more exclusive with the passing years.”<ref>Potter, "Queer" (2006), pages 366-67 citing Powers, ''Secrecy and Power'', 172–73. See also Powers 2004.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1987, March 8
 
:Morris, Norval. "Director of All He Surveyed." [Review of Powers, ''Secrecy'', 1987.] ''New York Times''. March 8, 1987
 
 
 
 
 
1987, October 17
 
:Ginsberg, Allen, interviewed by Obie Benz.<ref>Cited in Carter, ''Stonewall'', pages 94-95, 319, etc.</ref>
 
::Ginsberg says that a friend or acquaintance told him in 1947 about being accosted for sexual purposes in a Washington, D.C. hotel by J. Edgar Hoover. Ginsberg also says in this same interview that Hoover "insisted there was no organized crime. In fact, in those years [the late 1940s] I had the fantasy that the Mafia might have secret movies of J. Edgar Hoover in the basement with some big, hairy Mafia Lothario and were blackmailing him so he'd lay off organized crime, because he insisted there was no organized crime."
 
 
 
 
 
1988
 
:Cox, John Stuart and Athan Theoharis. The Boss:
 
::The authors spoke of J. Edgar Hoover as "molded by a family life reminiscent of a Dickens novel. Yet they, too, portrayed him as a captive of his parochial culture -- a man of narrow interests and "homely tastes.<ref>"Oshinsky, David M. "The Senior G-Man". ''New York Times'', September 15, 1991.</ref>
 
::Potter, Queer (2006): The authors argued "that despite Hoover’s “overriding preference for male companionship” he was not a sexual person. They drew on niece Margaret Hoover’s observation that her uncle saw marriage as a distraction from his career. Indeed, this explanation is so ubiquitous among family members that we have to imagine that they gossiped about him too. Theoharis and Cox then argue, in contrast to Powers, that Hoover’s failure to act on his sexual desires made him into “what the clinical literature calls a ‘defended person’” who diverted this unused and unsatisfied sexual desire into his work. His perversions of state power were, therefore, a visible manifestation of closeted homosexual fantasies. “The entire structure of his life,” they write, was “designed to hide his own unacceptable impulses and turn them into external threats.”  In other words, Hoover’s sexual acts took the form of political acts.<ref>Potter, "Queer" (2006), page 367.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
==1990==
 
1990
 
:Frank Buttino, a 20-year veteran FBI agent filed suit in 1990, challenging his dismissal as a security risk after he admitted being homosexual.<ref>Poveda and others (1998), page 137.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1990, May 7
 
:Theoharis, Athan. <On FBI's smearing of A. Stevenson as homosexual.> Nation, 7 May 1990.<ref>Potter, "Queer", page ?</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1991
 
:Gentry, Curt. J. EDGAR HOOVER: The Man and the Secrets. Illustrated. 846 pp. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991.
 
 
 
 
 
:Theoharis, Athan, ed. SECRET FILES OF J. EDGAR HOOVER. 370 pp. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1991.
 
 
 
 
 
1991, September 15
 
:Oshinsky, David M. "The Senior G-Man". ''New York Times'', September 15, 1991
 
 
 
 
 
1991, September 16
 
:“Our Own KGB: Spreading Rumors about J. Edgar Hoover Would Invite a Visit,” ''New York Native'', 16 September 1991.
 
::Potter, "Queer" (2006): "Hoover sent agents out to threaten those who gossiped about him and “Junior,” as the ''New York Native'', a gay community newspaper, reported in 1991. This sort of intimidation would suggest that the gossip triggered a higher level of concern than mere lies usually command. Hoover used federal agents to “closely monitor these rumors, alert him to them, and then act forcefully to defend his reputation,” as Theoharis admits. He “made [the rumors of his homosexuality] a high FBI priority,” unlike, say, monitoring the activities of the Bonnanno crime family.<ref>Potter, "Queer" (2006), page 373 citing “Our Own KGB: Spreading Rumors about J. Edgar Hoover Would Invite a Visit,” New York Native, 16 September 1991; Theoharis, J. Edgar Hoover, Sex and Crime, 33, 39; and “FBI Wiretapping: A Case Study in Bureau Autonomy,” ''Political Science Quarterly'' 107, no. 1 (1992): 117–18.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1991, November
 
:North, Marc. ''Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy''. Hardcover: Carroll & Graf 1st edition (November 1991). ISBN-10: 088184747X. ISBN-13: 978-0881847475
 
::"There is a distinct possibility that he was also probably homosexual." List of reasons.  Page numbers not available on Google Books version. Includes source notes.
 
 
 
 
 
1992
 
:Theoharis, Athan. “FBI Wiretapping: A Case Study in Bureau Autonomy,” ''Political Science Quarterly'' 107, no.
 
1 (1992): 117–18. etc.
 
 
 
 
 
1993, February 11
 
:Weiss, Murray. "J. Edgar's Slip Was Showing". ''New York Post'', February 11, 1993, cited in Carter, ''Stonewall'' (June 2004).
 
::Carter describes this as a "newspaper story about the 1960s national homosexual blackmail ring" that quotes law enforcement sources who had worked on the case as saying that their investigation into the nationwide blackmail ring had turned up a photograph of Hoover 'posing amiably' with the racket's ringleader [who, Carter suggests, was Edward Murphy] and had uncovered information that Clyde Tolson . . . had himself  'fallen victim to the extortion ring.' After federal agents joined the investigation, both the photograph of Hoover and the documents about Tolson disappeared."<ref>Cited in Carter, ''Stonewall'', page 96, and note 13 page 286.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1993, March 2
 
:Summers, Anthony. ''Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover''.
 
::Claims JEH was being blackmailed by organized crime, which had a photo of him committing a homosexual act.<ref>Poveda and others (1998), 122.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1993, April 11
 
:Rich, Frank, “Men in Uniform,” ''New York Times'', 11 April 1993
 
 
 
 
 
1995
 
:Theoharis, Athan.  ''J. Edgar Hoover, Sex and Crime: An Historical Antidote''.
 
::Potter "Queer" (2006): Theoharis’s work is particularly important because his 1995 book,  J. Edgar Hoover, Sex and Crime: An Historical Antidote, is the only work devoted to disproving the sexual rumors about Hoover, and it is routinely cited as authoritative “proof” that the Rosenstiel story is false. Theoharis’s authority on these questions is grounded in his reputation as one of the most knowledgeable and dedicated scholars of the FBI and one who has meticulously documented Hoover’s violations and manipulation of American law for decades before this controversy erupted.  He has also been an activist in the field of political history, changing the terms of the discipline by challenging the government’s right to keep secrets from scholars and citizens. He was a plaintiff in the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed in the 1970s, which made available many of the FBI records on which he and subsequent historians, including myself, have relied.
 
 
 
::After Susan Rosenstiel’s story became public Theoharis became a frequent commentator in both general interest and academic publications. He vigorously refuted her claims in a series of articles that ultimately produced J. Edgar Hoover, Sex and Crime, which departs from his normal archival methods to address the historiographical problems presented by the controversy.
 
 
 
::In the book Theoharis forcefully maintained that truth is foundational to history and that Summers was operating in a universe different from that of the professional historian.<ref>Potter "Queer" (2006), page 375.</ref>
 
 
 
::“Each of the allegations [about Hoover's homosexuality] turned out to be baseless,” Theoharis notes, “either because records that would have confirmed the allegations had been destroyed or because what was being offered was an eyewitness account. A principal source of the rumors were criminals, and of course, the gay community.” Gay men spread these rumors because of a political agenda, Theoharis adds, “‘outing’ Hoover, whether to expose his hypocritical homophobia or to show that homosexuals could hold sensitive government positions without compromising national security.”<ref>Potter, "Queer" (2006), page 377, citing Theoharis, J. Edgar Hoover, Sex and Crime, 44–45, 53..</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1995, August 15
 
:Maccabee, Paul. ''John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks Tour Of Crime And Corruption In St Paul 1920-1936.'' Minnesota Historical Society Press, August 15, 1995. ISBN-10: 0873513150. ISBN-13: 978-0873513159
 
:references to "queer" Hoover by Alvin Karpis. Includes citations.
 
 
 
 
 
1996
 
:Arts and Entertainment Network (A&E) TV special:  "J. Edgar Hoover: Private and Confidential". Anthony Summers told a story from his book about Hoover and his associate director, Clyde Tolson, holding hands in a taxi. Bill Bonnano, son of crime boss Joseph “Joey Bananas” Bonnano, asserted later in the show that the family’s lawyer [Roy Cohn] possessed pictures of a cross-dressed Hoover that protected his clients from federal investigations.<ref>Potter, "Queer" (2006), page 363, citing: Joshua Gamson, ''Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Summers, 13; quotations from the A&E special  are from my [Potter's] own transcriptions. The blackmail theory has been widely repeated; it can be found in Diarmuid Jeffreys, The Bureau: Inside the Modern FBI (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995), 84.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
1994,
 
:Rich, Frank. “The Smearing Game,” ''New York Time''s, 6 November 1994;
 
 
 
 
 
1995
 
:Jeffreys, Diarmuid.'' The Bureau: Inside the Modern FBI'' (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995). Includes the theory that J. Edgar Hoover was blackmailed into not attacking the Mafia (page 84).
 
 
 
 
 
1998
 
:Gamson, Joshua. ''Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)
 
 
 
:Potter, Claire Bond. ''War on Crime: Bandits, G-Men and the Politics of Mass Culture'' (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998);
 
 
 
 
 
1998, November 9
 
:Poveda, Tony, Richard Powers, Susan Rosenfeld and Athan G. Theoharis. ''The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide'' Published: (Nov 9, 1998). Search term: "homosexual": Frank Buttino, a 20-year veteran FBI agent filed suit in 1990, challenging his dismissal as a security risk after he admitted being homosexual.<ref>Poveda and others, page 137.</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
==2000==
 
2002
 
:Kessler, Ronald. ''The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI'' (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002).
 
 
 
 
 
2004
 
:Johnson, David K. ''The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
 
 
 
 
 
:Powers, Richard Gid. ''Broken: The Troubled Past and the Uncertain Future of the FBI'' (New York: Free Press, 2004).
 
::From page 242: "the only evidence I know that their [Hoover's and Tolson's] relationship might have gone beyond a very close friendship is a series of snapshots I found among Hoover's papers of Tolson sleeping in his pajamas. All indications are that they were taken by Hoover, and that he kept them with his intimate family and private records. Most men would find it an inexcusable invasion of privacy to have another man photograph him while asleep -- unless there were [sic] a relationship more intimate than a conventional male friendship."<ref>FULL CITE FOR THESE PHOTOS?</ref>
 
::Potter, "Queer" (2006) says that in this book Powers excludes heterosexuality as a possibility for Hoover, "saying that archival photographs of Tolson in his pajamas are a compelling statement about Hoover’s sexuality.<ref>Potter, "Queer" (2006), pages 367, citing Powers, ''Broken'', pages 241–42,</ref>
 
 
 
 
 
2004, June
 
:Carter, David. ''Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution.'' New York: St. Martins Press, June 2004.
 
::Reports that Edward Murphy, a convicted criminal and homosexual connected to the Mafia, and associated with or the leader of a blackmail ring that preyed on homosexuals, claimed in a 1978 article that the Mafia had evidence and photos providing evidence of homosexual activity on the part of J. Edgar Hoover as well as Clyde Tolson. The source is Arthur Bell. "Skull Murphy: The Gay Double Agent". ''Village Voice'' May 1978, pages 1, 17-19.
 
::Another major source that connects Murphy and the FBI are Carter's interview with John Paul Ranieri, dated March 17, 24, 30, 1998.
 
::Carter also cites Murray Weiss, "J. Edgar's Slip Was Showing". ''New York Post'', February 11, 1993.
 
::Carter also mentions specific issues of the Mattachine Newsletter attacking Murphy.
 
 
 
 
 
2005
 
:Friedman, Andrea. “The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip and Cold War Politics,” American Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2005): 1105–29.
 
 
 
 
 
2006, September
 
:Potter, Claire Bond. "Queer Hoover: Sex, Lies, and Political History". Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2006, pages ???-???.
 
::Potter says: "perverted sex is a constant theme bordering on obsession in Hoover’s own writing about criminals, Communists, and social equality movements. If his personal sex life is poorly documented, evidence that he disliked and distrusted what he perceived as sexual deviance is ample. He believed all criminals were sexual perverts. He loathed interracial sex and the communal sexual practices on the left and in the civil rights movement. From early on he culled pornography from surveillance dossiers and kept it in his private files, he used sexual evidence to intimidate political opponents, and he displayed a visceral, public hatred for women whose actions or beliefs he saw as undermining a national security agenda . . . . (page 365, citing Jeffreys, 67).
 
 
 
::"Hoover’s history as a political figure cannot be separated from the history of sexuality. Gay or not, the greatest privilege of Hoover’s life was one he worked to deny to every other citizen of the United States: the right to be free of surveillance and keep one’s own secrets.<ref>Potter, "Queer", 378.</ref>
 
 
 
==2010==
 
2010, January 12
 
:[http://www.judiciaryreport.com/images/hoover-gay-1-12-10.jpg Oliphant? [cartoon, FBI agents talking among selves, Hoover in dress]. Caption: "'I was about to say 'If ol' J. Edgar was still running things, we wouldn't be having this image problem . . . .'" CHECK DATE OF FIRST PUB. AND PROVIDE ORIGINAL CITE
 
  
  
2011, November 6
+
1948-1971
:Serrano, Richard A. Serrano, "An FBI director with a grudge". Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2011, 8:03 p.m.
+
:[http://www.governmentattic.org/3docs/FBI-MattachineSociety_1948-1971.pdf FBI Surveillance of Mattachine Society, 1948-1971]
::The longtime FBI director was convinced that [Los Angeles Times reporter Jack] Nelson planned to write that he was homosexual.<ref>http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-hoover-nelson-20111107,0,6943487,full.story</ref>
 
:: In February 1970, a top aide to President Nixon [Clark R. Mollenhoff] warned J. Edgar Hoover that a new reporter in town, Jack Nelson, was said to be gunning for the FBI.
 
::For two years in the early 1970s, Hoover nursed an obsession with the new reporter in the nation's capital.
 
::FBI records released recently under the Freedom of Information Act reveal, for the first time, what fueled his fixation: Hoover was convinced — mistakenly — that Nelson planned to write that the FBI director was homosexual.
 
::There is no indication Nelson had any interest in the subject, and he never wrote about it. Nevertheless, he became the focus of Hoover's anxieties.
 
::John Fox, the FBI's in-house historian, said Nelson arrived on the scene at a time when Hoover was feeling vulnerable. A published report that the director was gay could well have ended his career, and that possibility — unfounded or not — had Hoover on edge. "He saw it as an attack on his manhood," Fox said.
 
::The newly released records show that Clark R. Mollenhoff, a former Washington reporter and columnist who was then special counsel to Nixon, wrote Hoover on White House stationery that Nelson was planning another "highly critical series of stories on the FBI."
 
::In June 1970, a reporter for an Alabama newspaper told agents that Nelson had been sent to Washington to write "derogatory" articles about Hoover. The reporter, whose name was redacted, told the FBI that at a conference in Cambridge, Mass., a drunken Nelson had "indicated he had a statement from somebody in the 'Department' stating that Mr. Hoover was a 'homosexual' and that he was planning to use this information in the article," according to an FBI memo.
 
::By January 1971, Hoover was sufficiently concerned about Nelson's intentions that he brought the matter up with Atty. Gen. John Mitchell, his boss. "We have received several recent reports reflecting extensive efforts on his part to embarrass the FBI and me," Hoover wrote.
 
::In a second letter to Mitchell that month, Hoover said Nelson drank excessively and had boasted of his intention to write "that I am a homosexual."
 
::Hoover continued: "While I have no reluctance to stand on my record and to let the facts of both my personal and official life speak for themselves, I nonetheless wanted you to have this background information regarding stories that should soon appear."
 
::The effort was unsuccessful, and two weeks later [Dave] Kraslow [the Washington Bureau Manager of the LA Times] sat down with the director. In a recent interview, Kraslow, now 85, said Hoover complained bitterly about Nelson's supposed plan to identify him as a homosexual.
 
::"The spittle was running out of his lips and the corners of his mouth," Kraslow said. "He was out of control."
 
::In a written account of the meeting from 1971, Kraslow said Hoover had threatened to sue Nelson for criminal libel "should such a lie ever appear in print," and "he was careful to point out it was not intended as a threat, but as a promise."
 
::"I defied him to produce any informant who would stare me in the face or who would stare Jack Nelson in the face and say that Jack Nelson had on any occasion intimated that Hoover was a homosexual," Kraslow wrote.
 
::Kraslow refused to fire Nelson. Rather, he asked his reporter to write a rebuttal, which was sent to Hoover.
 
::"I emphatically deny that I have at any time under any circumstances ever said or remotely suggested that Mr. Hoover was a homosexual," Nelson wrote on Oct. 19, 1971.
 
  
  
2011, November 25
+
1948, January
:Clendinen, Dudly. "J. Edgar Hoover, ‘Sex Deviates’ and My Godfather". New York Times, November 25, 20011.
+
=Anthony Leviero/Lawrence Spivak=
::Just before Christmas in 1952, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the F.B.I., let President Dwight D. Eisenhower know that the man Eisenhower had appointed as secretary to the president, his friend and chief of staff, my godfather, Arthur H. Vandenberg Jr., was a homosexual.
+
:Hoover receives a rumor that Anthony Leviero, a New York Times reporter, has been commissioned by the publisher of ''The American Mercury'' publisher, Lawrence Spivak, to write "a highly critical 'smear' article in the nature of a profile" which would charge Hoover "with perversion." The article would also allegedly contend that Hoover claimed "personal credit" for the accomplishments of local police, other government departments," and other FBI associates, and had taken sides in politically-relevant investigations. To respond to this alleged threat Hoover and his associates mounted a multi-pronged attack. Tolson accosted Spivak in a restaurant and asked how the "smear article" was developing. Louis Nichols contacted a former business partner of Spivak's, asking to kill the article. Nichols also met with Spivak and Leviero, who denied the piece on Hoover was a "smear".<ref>Theoharis, ''Sex,'' pages 27-39; Theoharis, ''The Boss'', pages 210-211.</ref>
  
::It was part of a pattern of persecution that would destroy thousands of lives and careers. Earlier that year, the American Psychiatric Association’s manual had classified homosexuality as a kind of madness, and Republican senators had charged that homosexuality in the Truman administration was a national security threat.
 
  
 +
=Next: [[F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology, Part 2| F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology, Part 2, 1950-1979]]=
  
 
==Notes==
 
==Notes==

Latest revision as of 16:11, 11 December 2012

The F.B.I. and Homosexuality:

Chronology, Part 1, 1910-1949

See also:

F.B.I. and Homosexuality: A History MAIN PAGE

F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Bibliography

F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology, Part 2, 1950-1979

F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology, Part 3, 1980-present

F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Persons and Groups Investigated


UNDER CONSTRUCTION

OPEN ENTRY: This entry is open to collaborative creation by anyone with evidence, citations, and analysis to share, so no particular, named creator is responsible for the accuracy and cogency of its content. Please use this entry's Comment section at the bottom of the page to suggest improvements about which you are unsure. Thanks.

1908

The U.S. Bureau of Investigation was created 1908, “although another year passed” before it was christened with that name (in 1909, apparently). It became known as the FBI in 1935.[1].


1910

1919, August 1

On August 1, 1919, Palmer put 24-year-old J. Edgar Hoover in charge of a new division of the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation, the General Intelligence Division. It would investigate the programs of radical groups and identify their members.[2]


1919, November 7

On November 7, 1919, a date chosen because it was the second anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, agents of the Bureau of Investigation, together with local police, executed a series of well-publicized and violent raids against the Russian Workers in 12 cities. The Palmer Raids were attempts by the United States Department of Justice to arrest and deport radical leftists, especially anarchists, from the United States. The raids and arrests occurred in November 1919 and January 1920 under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.[3]


1920

1920s

“antique shows” and a “lightness in his step”

Potter, "Queer" (2006): refers to snickering newspaper gossip of the 1920s and 1930s that advertised the director’s attendance at “antique shows” and a “lightness in his step” as he made his daily rounds. Potter's note cites: "Oddly, these gossip items are preserved in a collection of newspaper clippings Hoover kept himself; see J. Edgar Hoover Scrapbooks, RG 65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.[4]


1920, February

"moral perverts"

A. Mitchell Palmer, in his journal article The Case Against the Reds (1920), included in a list of those he opposed as "reds": the International Workers of the World, "the most radical socialists, the misguided anarchists, the agitators who oppose the limitations of unionism, the moral perverts and the hysterical neurasthenic women who abound in communism."[5]


1921

By 1921 Hoover had set up an index system listing virtually every radical leader and organization in the United States, an index that contained upward of 400,000 names.[6]


1921, August In August 1921 Hoover had been named “assistant chief” of the Bureau of Investigation within the Attorney General's office.[7]


1924, April

In April 1924 Harlan Fiske Stone was sworn in as Attorney General.


1924, May

In May 1924 Attorney General Stone said to Hoover, “Young man I want you to be Acting Director of the Bureau of Investigation.” The understanding was that the appointment was to be temporary.[8]


1924, December 10

On December 10, 1924 Stone informed Hoover that he could drop the 'Acting' from his title”[9]


1925

The FBI's monitoring of "obscene or indecent" materials began this year.[10]


1920s, late

"a dandyish dresser"

Fox, John (Historian on staff of FBI: In 2010, the FBI's Historian, Dr. John Fox, commented (in part) to retired Agents that "rumors regarding the Director's sexual preferences have been around since the late 1920s or early 1930s. The earliest was a newspaper blurb describing him as a dandyish dresser."[11]


1926

"rumors of Hoover’s homosexuality had circulated in print from the moment he became director in 1926".[12]


1928, April 2

Tolson first joins FBI.


1929, July 31

Hoover makes Tolson head of Buffalo, NY, office of FBI


1930

1930s

"assertion by Elliot Roosevelt (son of President Franklin D. and Eleanor) that his father knew about Hoover’s homosexuality in the 1930s but did not feel it was “grounds for removing him [from his directorship of the FBI] . . . so long as his abilities were not impaired.”[13]


1930, August 16

Tolson named assistant director of FBI for Personnel and Administration.


DATE?

Hoover creates for Tolson the new post of assistant to the director of the FBI.


1933, July 30

"a Y.M.C.A. secretary"

J. Edgar Hoover appointed director of a new Division of Investigation which would include the Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Identification, and the Prohibition Bureau of the U.S. Attorney General's Office. Soon after this Newsweek magazine noted that in light of Hoover's activities as Palmer's assistant during the raids on reds, "some experienced Washington observers express astonishment" at Hoover's appointment as director of the new Division, while the new division chief's manner was described as less that of a cop than that "of a Y.M.C.A. secretary."[14]
Describing Hoover's manner as that of "a Y.M.C.A. secretary" is a coded dig at his masculinity and indirectly at his heterosexuality. Compared with a policeman, a secretary (meaning a leader) of the Young Men's Christian Association was popularly seen as relatively lacking in aggressive masculinity and thus in heterosexual potency.[15]


1933, August 19

"walks with a mincing step"

Colliers.Pix.300dpi.jpeg For a larger version of this illustration see: F.B.I. and Homosexuality: A History MAIN PAGE

Ray Tucker, Collier's magazine's Washington D.C. Bureau Chief, writes in an article about the FBI:
In appearance Mr. Hoover looks utterly unlike the story-book sleuth. He is short, fat, businesslike, and walks with a mincing step. His black hair, swarthy skin and collegiate haircut make him look younger than thirty-eight, but heavy, horn-rimmed spectacles give him an air of age and authority. He dresses fastidiously, with Eleanor blue as the favorite color for the matched shades of tie, handkerchief and socks. A little pompous, he rides in an expensive limousine even if only to a nearby self-service cafeteria." Gentry, , pages 158=159.</ref>


Tucker adds, later in his essay:

"at one time or another the bureau's files have contained reports on such prominent Americans as Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, the late Senator Thomas J. Walsh, Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Senator William E. Borah, Dean Roscoe Pound, Prof. Felix Frankfurter, Prof. Zechariah Chafeee Jr., Frank P. Walsh and John L Lewis." Research Request:Any homosexual associations or rumors about any of those people?


For a use of the term "mincing", in New York City, in 1842, to reference effeminate men who desired sex with men see Jonathan Ned Katz's Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality (pages 49 and 357 note 29). Katz also sites another similar reference to "mincing" dating to January 5, 1892, in New York City (page 290). He also refers to a 1933 reference to "mincing" in Chauncey, Gay New York (page 67). For a use of the term "mincing" in association with homosexuality OutHistory.org provides a reference from 1965.


The reference to "Eleanor blue" associates Hoover with a feminine name, thus questioning his masculinity. As an extra dig, "Eleanor blue" also associates Hoover with the first name of the new Democratic president's wife.


"the Hoover stride

"Less than two weeks after the Collier's article appeared, a Washington gossip columnist inquired if anyone had noticed that since the Tucker charge "the Hoover stride had grown longer and more vigorous".[16]


1935

The Bureau of Investigation is renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[17].


1935, June 10

Photo Hoover and Tolson: Original caption: 6/10/1935-Washington, D.C.- J. Edgar Hoover (wearing hat), head of the Department of Justice, is pictured here attending the Frankie Klick-Tony Canzoneri fight. Hoover, pleased with the work of his "G Men" who broke the Weyerhauser kidnaping with two arrests, is pictured with Clyde A. Tolson (hat in lap), Assistant Director of the department. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: BE052352. Date Photographed: June 10, 1935


1935, November 19

Photo Hoover and Tolson: Original caption: Clyde A. Tolson, assistant director, and John Edgar Hoover, director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: VV7769. Date Photographed: November 19, 1935


1936

Photo Hoover and Tolson: Original caption: "1936-J. Edgar Hoover (LEFT) and Clyde Tolson." [Identical hats and suits.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: BE027364


1936, April 28

Photo including Hoover and Tolson): Original caption: "The little matter of dividing the reward of $25,000 in the Lindbergh kidnapping will probably be referred to the New Jersey Court of Chancery. This was announced today (April 28) by Attorney General David T. Wilentz, after a conference of New York City, Federal and New Jersey Police officials in the office of Police Commissioner Valentine, of New York. One point was definitely settled by the conferees; i.e., that no member of the police departments of New York, New Jersey, or of the Federal Department of Justice, will be permitted to claim, or accept any of the money. Those who attended the conference are pictured, left to right: H. Norman Schwartzkopf, of the New Jersey State Police; Anthony M. Hauck, Jr., Hunterdon County, NJ prosecutor; Clyde Tolson, Director of Personnel of the Department of Justice; David T. Wilentz, Attorney general of new Jersey; J. Edgar Hoover. Corbis Images. Stock Photo ID: U770417INP


1936, May 1 <CHECK DATE AND INCLUDE CITATION>

the 'queer' talk" about Hoover"

Alvin Karpis caught by FBI. That "pretty much ended the 'queer' talk" about Hoover, according to Louis Nichols.[18]
During Alvin Karpis's arrest, according to Karpis's nephew Albert Grooms <recorded when?>:
"Alvin told Hoover: 'You're a big, brave S.O. B., you let those agents do all the work, and you take all the credit. What makes me mad is that the number one queer in the FBI captured me." H. boiled and told those guys to get Karpis up to St. Paul: Alvin had embarrassed Hoover in front of his own FBI crew!"[19]
The FBI is said to have claimed that while Karpis was a fugitive he sent a letter to Hoover threatening to kill the director. Alvin Karpis's nephew, Albert Grooms, said: "The letter [Karpis sent Hoover] said that Hoover was as queer as a three-dollar bill. Alvin and Ma [Barker] laughed and laughed about that letter. Alvin said, 'Just imagine how that queer blew his stack.'" Asked in 1994 to produce a copy of Karpis's letter, the FBI could not.[20]


1936, May 8

"Mr. Hoover was in a gay mood"

Associated Press. "G-Men Get Two Kidnappers." New York Times, May 6, 1936.
"Mr. Hoover was in a gay mood as he greeted reporters waiting outside his office after his return from Cleveland this afternoon." (Times, page 8.)
For historical documentation of the term "gay" used as code for "homosexual" see History of the word "gay"


1936 June 21

"Hoover walks with a rather mincing step, almost feminine."

Walter Trohan, "Chief of the G-Men — Record of His Career," Chicago Tribune, June 21, 1936.
On Hoover walking with "mincing" step. Cited by Nash, Citizen Hoover (1972), page 35 of Chapter 4, "The Gangbusters." See also on: Hoover's distrust of women and his early male friendships.

Nash,CITIZEN,p.jpg


1936, July 12

Photo Hoover and Tolson: FBI Officials Capture Alvin Karpis. (L-R) FBI officials W.R. Galvin, E.J. Connelley, Director J. Edgar Hoover, Clyde Tolson and Dwight Brantley participated in the apprehension of renowned criminal Alvin Karpis in New Orleans. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: 42-21707342. Date Photographed: July 12, 1936.


1936, August 18

Photo, Hoover and Tolson (note Tolson's left hand): Original caption:J. Edgar Hoover, Chief G-Man (right) and his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson, snapped at ringside as they attended the Louis-Sharkey fight, at the Yankee Stadium in New York City, August 18. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U360070ACME


1936, August 18

Photo Hoover and Tolson Original caption:J. Edgar Hoover, Chief G-Man (right) and his right-hand man, Clyde Tolson, snapped at ringside as they attended the Louis-Sharkey fight, at the Yankee Stadium in New York City, August 18. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U360070ACME. Date Photographed: August 18, 1936


1937

The FBI's monitoring of homosexual activity began this year.[21]


1937-1977

According to historian Aaron J. Stockham: "Beginning in 1937 and continuing until 1977, the FBI investigated gays as potential security risks who could be blackmailed. Numerous men and women were removed from their government and non-government positions because of the information Hoover's bureau dug up. Only Communists were more systematically investigated by the FBI. In a forthcoming book, Douglas Charles explores these investigations more thoroughly.[22]


1937, March 3

Photo, Hoover and Tolson. Original caption:Photo shows some of the Federal Agents who are in Miami, Florida, to set up a new bureau of the department as they recently relaxed in the sun, while enjoying a game of backgammon. Left to right are J. Edgar Hoover, Chief of the Department; Clyde Tolson, Assistant Director of the F.B.I.; and, standing, Guy Hottel, Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Division. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U384154ACME


1937, June 22

Photo, Hoover and Tolson. Both in shorts. Hoover in sandles. Original caption: J. Edgar Hoover (right), chief G-man, with his assistant, Clyde Tolson, as they attended the Louis-Braddock heavyweight championship fight in Chicago, June 22. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U399498ACME.


1937, September 26

Hoover, J. Edgar. "War on the Sex Criminal," New York Herald Tribune, September 26, 1937. 13.[23]


1938

Hoover, J. Edgar. Persons in Hiding. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1938. ASIN: B000VJZM30
CHECK CONTENT. NOTE IRONY. See contents page and chapter: "My Boy Is Different".


1938, February 13

Van Gelder, Robert. "J. Edgar Hoover Discusses Crime and Criminals". [Review of Hoover's Persons in Hiding.] New York Times, February 13, 1938


1938, April - 1939

Photo, Hoover and Tolson. Appoximate date: Photo: Original caption:J. Edgar Hoover is seen here with Clyde Tolson at the KFS version of Hellzapoppin, at the Winter Garden. [Laughing.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: U875304INP.


1938, June 6

Photo Hoover and Tolson: Original caption:6/6/1938- FL: J. Edgar Hoover and aide (later presumed to be his lover) Clyde Tolson, to direct the hunt for the kidnapper of 5 year old James B. Cash, Jr. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: BE034390[24]


1938, December 15

Photo Hoover and Tolson. Original caption: 12/15/1938-Miami Beach, FL: L to r Guy Hottell, special agent of FBI; J. Edgar Hoover, Chief of the F.B.I. and Clyde Tolson, Assistant to Hoover in pursuit in [of?] sunshine. Corbis Images:
Second version same photo shoot: Original caption:Miami, Florida: J. Edgar Hoover (center) combines business with pleasure on a recent trip to FL. He is shown with two of his Aides, Guy Hottell, (left) special agent of the Washington F.B.I. office, and Clyde Tolson (right), Hoover's assistant. Stock Photo ID: BE027691. Date Photographed: December 15, 1938


UNDATED

Photo Hoover and Tolson: Clyde A. Tolson, J. Edgar Hoover, and friends (l to r) relax on the water. [Hoover's hand over Tolson's shoulder.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: NA013085


UNDATED

Photo Hoover and Tolson: John Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson. Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: 42-21707351. Date Photographed: Unknown


UNDATED

Photo Hoover and Tolson Stock Photo ID: NA013089 Photo: J. Edgar Hoover relaxes with his friend Clyde A. Tolson. [Fishing, shirts off.] Corbis Images: Stock Photo ID: NA013089


UNDATED

Photo Hoover and Tolson. Original caption: Clyde Tolson and J. Edgar Hoover is [sic shown here arriving at the U.S. Supreme Court Building.] Corbis Images, no date: Stock Photo ID: U953892INP


1939

Photo, Hoover and Tolson: J. Edgar Hoover and his assistant Clyde Tolson sitting in beach lounge chairs. 1939 (publication date). Publication:Los Angeles Daily News.[25]


1939, February 10

Persons in Hiding (film, 1939). Directed by Louis King. Writing credits: J. Edgar Hoover (book "Persons in Hiding") William R. Lipman, (screenplay) and Horace McCoy (screenplay). IMDB


1939, June 28

Photo, Hoover and Tolson: Original caption: Clyde Tolson (left) of the Department of Justice, and chief G-Man, J. Edgar Hoover, as they attended the Louis-Galento title fight at the Yankee Stadium, June 28. Corbis Images. Stock Photo ID: U510040ACME.


1940

Sumner Welles

1941, January

The U.S. Secret Service learned in January 1941 that railroad officials were considering legal action against Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, for drunkenly propositioning a number of Pullman porters on two different train trips. President Franklin Roosevelt immediately asked Hoover to conduct a discreet investigation. Hoover did so, confirming that the incidents did occur. Hoover pointed out that many people knew of these incidents and that Welles' advances were the result "more of a mental condition than anything else and there could not be an assurance it would not be repeated in the future." Hoover suggested that if the President wanted to keep Welles, that someone should travel with him and prevent his drinking, and/or prevent his "endeavor to make propositions for such immoral relations." Roosevelt thought this a good solution and the matter was contained in 1941. It became an issue again in 1942-1943, when Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who resented Welles, became concerned about rumors of Welles's homosexual behavior. Roosevelt then accepted Welles's resignation.[26]


1942, March

Donald Downes

By March 1942, Donald Downes, an agend for William Donovan's Office of Strategic Services. had come to Hoover's attention and the FBI director "reserved a special loathing for Downes" for spying for the British and for being a "sex deviate", as the FBI's many surveillance reports on Downes described him.[27]


1942, May 7

David I. Walsh

On May 7, 1942, the New York Post, which had long favored U.S. involvement in the European conflict, implicated the isolationist Senator David I. Walsh in a sensational sex and spy scandal uncovered at a Brooklyn male brothel for U.S. Navy personnel that had been infiltrated by Nazi spies. See: David Ignatius Walsh: November 11, 1872 – June 11, 1947


1943

Potter "Queer" (2006): "Thousands of soldiers, many of them combat veterans, were drummed out of the military by psychiatrists beginning in 1943. Their dishonorable discharges made many homosexuals unemployable and ineligible for the government benefits that expanded the middle class after World War II even while it emphasized their presence in society."[28]


Terry, J.: "FBI documents indicate that as early as 1943, agents under his [Hoover's] direction believed that Hoover was 'queer' and that his relationship with FBI official Clyde Tolson was homosexual in nature. Hoover attempted to suppress these rumors and kept his own private files on 'derogatory information' that named the culprits of such gossip.[29]


Athan Theoharis reproduces FBI documents that show that in 1943 a woman remarked at her bridge party in Cleveland, Ohio, that she had heard that J. Edgar Hoover was homosexual. Someone contacted the Cleveland FBI office about her remarks, and the Cleveland FBI contacted her and chastised her for spreading such rumors. She agreed that at the next meeting of her bridge club she would according to her FBI file: "point out to each of those present that her statement was not founded on fact and that she was deeply sorry that she had made it and it should not have been made at all."[30]


Hoover to Tolson (1943): “Words are mere man-given symbols for thoughts and feelings, and they are grossly insufficient to express the thoughts in my mind and the feelings in my heart that I have for you,” Hoover wrote to Tolson in 1943. “I hope I will always have you beside me.”[31]


1943, December 17

John Monroe: "J. Edgar Hoover is a fairy"

Theoharis, Sex, says: On this date an FBI agent reported to his superior that D.C. businessman John Monroe had allegedly bragged that he had "no fear of the F.B.I inasmuch as he 'was the only one who had positive proof that J. Edgar Hoover is a fairy.'" His report was not relayed to Hoover until January 18, 1944. (Monroe was being investigated for having used his government connections to secure dismissal of a suit by the Office of Price Administration against a Brooklyn baking company.)[32]
On January 18, 1944, Hoover protested to the special agent in charge of the FBI's New York Field office about this "gross" mishandling of the rumor and demanded to know "why this matter was not reported from Dec 17 to Jan 18." Hoover simultaneously ordered his senior aides to take "vigorous action" to address this failure "to promtly report" the homosexual allegation to Hoover. The Director also asked that Monroe be made to "put up or shut up" concerning the allegation about Hoover. FBI Assistant Director Louis Nichols was sent to confront Monroe and "dress down" and threaten him with "crim[inal] slander unless can [he can] prove" the allged allegations. Monroe signed a statement denying to Nichols that he had made the aspersion about Hoover, claiming that he himself was the victim of character assassination. (Monroe was at that time involved in a libel suit with the columnist Drew Pearson, and told Nichols his suspicion that Pearson had passed this rumor to the FBI.) <Check Pearson's and Jack Anderson's FBI files?> Hoover did not believe Monroe's denial and he remained a subject of FBI investigations. Monroe was indicated in 1945 and convicted in 1946 for violating price ceilings set by the Office of Price Administration.


1944, June

This month an Office of Strategic Services employee named Towell contacted the FBI's wartime security divison to obtain permission for an OSS agent to "select copies of obscene material" from FBI files. The material was to be used to counteract a Japanese program which sent out obscene photos of American girls in an effort to show the lax morals of Americans. The OSS planned to disseminate similar photos of Japanese girls. He was advised that the FBI had "a collection of 25 to 30 photsgraphs of this nature" in its Obscene File. Hoover allowed an OSS agent to "obtain copies".[33] See also: 1951, May.


1945, September 2

"the postwar rumors [about J. Edgar Hoover's homosexuality] were probably generated by one of Hoover’s political enemies in the CIA".[34]


1946

Athan Theoharis provides FBI files about a Detroit businessman who, during a trip to New York City, made remarks to his host suggesting that J. Edgar Hoover was homosexual. An agent from the FBI's Detroit office, reporting on his interview with the businessman, said he had warned the man that if he ever again called Hoover a homosexual he "might take care of him right there on the spot." The Detroit agent predicted that the man "will not repeat such a statement in the future." The agent described the man has "scared to death" that the FBI was "going to investigate him".[35]


1948

Kinsey report on the sexuality of human males.


1948-1971

FBI Surveillance of Mattachine Society, 1948-1971


1948, January

Anthony Leviero/Lawrence Spivak

Hoover receives a rumor that Anthony Leviero, a New York Times reporter, has been commissioned by the publisher of The American Mercury publisher, Lawrence Spivak, to write "a highly critical 'smear' article in the nature of a profile" which would charge Hoover "with perversion." The article would also allegedly contend that Hoover claimed "personal credit" for the accomplishments of local police, other government departments," and other FBI associates, and had taken sides in politically-relevant investigations. To respond to this alleged threat Hoover and his associates mounted a multi-pronged attack. Tolson accosted Spivak in a restaurant and asked how the "smear article" was developing. Louis Nichols contacted a former business partner of Spivak's, asking to kill the article. Nichols also met with Spivak and Leviero, who denied the piece on Hoover was a "smear".[36]


Next: F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology, Part 2, 1950-1979

Notes

  1. Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, p. 113.
  2. Wikipedia: Palmer Raids; Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, page 79.
  3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids#Preparations
  4. Potter, "Queer" (2006), page 368.
  5. A. Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the Reds," The Forum, A Magazine of Constructive Nationalism, vol. 68, no. 2, page 168.
  6. Oshinsky, David M. "The Senior G-Man". New York Times, September 15, 1991.
  7. Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, p. 111.
  8. Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, p. 122.
  9. Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, p. 142).
  10. Theoharis, Athan. From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover. Ivan R Dee, July 1, 1991, page 4.
  11. Wack, Larry. "Seventy Five Years Of Conjecture About J. Edgar Hoover And Clyde Tolson". Accessed November 25, 2011.
  12. Potter, "Queer Hoover", page 256.
  13. Potter, "Queer", (2006), page 372, citing Kessler, The Bureau, 108–11, 43.
  14. Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, page158, note 13. CITE FOR NEWSWEEK ???
  15. CITE Take a Stranger By the Hand ?
  16. Gentry, Hoover, CHECK EXACT QUOTE from ORIGINAL SOURCE. See notes 15 and 16 in Gentry, Hoover.
  17. Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, p. 113.
  18. Maccabee, Paul. John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks Tour Of Crime And Corruption In St Paul 1920-1936. Minnesota Historical Society Press, August 15, 1995, page 263, citing Louis Nichols as quoted by Curt Gentry.
  19. Maccabee, Paul. John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks Tour Of Crime And Corruption In St Paul 1920-1936. Minnesota Historical Society Press, August 15, 1995, citing Curt Gentry <get detailed cites from Gentry>
  20. Maccabee, Paul. John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks Tour Of Crime And Corruption In St Paul 1920-1936. Minnesota Historical Society Press, August 15, 1995, citing Curt Gentry <get detailed cites from Gentry>
  21. Theoharis, Athan. From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover. Ivan R Dee, July 1, 1991, page 4.
  22. History News Network
  23. Cited by Philip Jenkins in Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America (2004), page 252.
  24. This cannot be the original caption from 1938. If it is ......
  25. http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/dlib/lat/display.cfm?ms=uclalat_1387_b16_20733-1&searchType=subject&subjectID=213351 Source:Los Angeles Times photographic archive, UCLA Library. Author: Uncredited photographer for Los Angeles Daily News. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hoover_%26_Tolson.jpg
  26. Theoharis, Sex, pages 32-33.
  27. Waller, Douglas. Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage. Free Press, February 8, 2011, page 124. Check March 1942 date..
  28. Potter "Queer" (2006), page 368, citing Theoharis, J. Edgar Hoover, Sex and Crime, 103–8; Bérubé, 149–76; Margot Canaday, “Finding the Lesbian in the State,” paper presented on 3 June 2005 at the Thirteenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Scripps College; Terry, 296–314; Robert J. Corber, Homosexuality in Cold War America: Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997) and “Cold War Femme: Lesbian Visibility in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve,” GLQ 11, no. 1 (2005): 1–22.
  29. Jennifer Terry, An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society (University of Chicago Press, 1999), page 350. ISBN 0-226-79366-4. SEE WHAT HER CITES ARE
  30. Theoharis, Sex, pages 35-36. The relevant FBI memo relating to this incident is reprinted in Athan Theoharis, From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover.
  31. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/life_and_art/2011/11/clint_eastwood_s_j_edgar_were_j_edgar_hoover_and_clyde_tolson_lovers_.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_2
  32. Theoharis, Sex, 34-36. Theoharis is cited by :Potter "Queer" (2006) page 368: "as early as 1943, Hoover began to use FBI agents systematically to repress those who gossiped in casual conversation about his alleged homosexuality." Potter also cites Kessler, The Bureau, 98–99. <See what's in Kessler.>
  33. Theorharis, Sex, pages 48-49.
  34. Potter, "Queer" (2006), page 372, citing Kessler, The Bureau, 108–11, 43.
  35. Athan Theoharis, From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover. The case is also discussed in Theoharis, Sex, pages 35, 36.
  36. Theoharis, Sex, pages 27-39; Theoharis, The Boss, pages 210-211.