F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology, Part 3

Continued from: F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology, Part 2

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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.

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.

1984, September 24

Stadler, Matthew. <Title? Report on FBI in gay press]> New York Native, 24 September 1984.

1984, October 30

[Article on FBI and homosexuality.] Advocate, 30 October 1984.

1984, December 11

Balter, Michael. “Decades of FBI Surveillance Unveiled,” Advocate, 11 December 1984.

1984, December 7

Christopher Street. [Report on the FBI in the gay press]. 7 December 1983

1980s, late

"by the late 1980s Hoover could not avoid being articulated as a closeted gay man because he persecuted and reviled other homosexuals."

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."

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."

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

1990, May 7

Theoharis, Athan. <On FBI's smearing of A. Stevenson as homosexual.> Nation, 7 May 1990.

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.

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."

1993, March 2

Summers, Anthony. Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover.

Claims J. Edgar Hoover was being blackmailed by organized crime, which had a photo of him committing a homosexual act.

According to Summers' highly contested research: 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.”

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.”

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 . . .

1993, April 11

Rich, Frank, “Men in Uniform,” New York Times, 11 April 1993

1994, November 6

Rich, Frank. “The Smearing Game,” New York Times, 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).

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.

“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.”

1995, June 25

DeLoach, Cartha D. ("Deke"). Hoover's FBI: the Inside Story by Hoover's Trusted Lieutenant. Regnery Publishing, Inc. 1st edition (June 25, 1995). Search: "homosexual" = 17 pages, including 66, 74, 76.. Search "homosexuality" , 74, 75, 76.

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.

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.

1999, September 23

Andrew, Christopher. The Sword And The Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive And The Secret History Of The KGB. Basic Books. 1st edition (September 23, 1999) ISBN-10: 0465003109. ISBN-13: 978-0465003105.

KGB spread rumors about J. Edgar Hoover's alleged homosexuality in an effort to discredit him and the U.S. In 1976, the KGB also forged an FBI memo of June 20, 1940 in which J. Edgar Hoover reported that Senator Henry Jackson was a homosexual. During the 1976, the KGB also sent memo to the U.S. press alleging that Richard Perle and Senatory Jenry Jackson were members of a gay sex club. In 1977, the KGB sent another memo to the U.S. press about Jackson's alleged homosexuality.

2000

2002

Kessler, Ronald. The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002).

2002

Morris, III, Charles E. "Pink herring & the fourth persona: J. Edgar Hoover's sex crime panic". Quarterly Journal of Speech, Volume 88, Issue 2, 2002, pages 228-244.

Abstract: During the 1930s, sexuality significantly shaped J. Edgar Hoover's public discourse. In response to a homosexual panic that plagued the nation's men and endangered his public persona, Hoover engaged in a passing performance. His masking rhetoric employed the pink herring, a tactic that manipulated a moral panic about sex crime to stabilize gender and sexual norms, divert attention from his private life, and silence an invisible audience that I term the fourth persona.

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."

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.

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.

2007

Leik, Karen Elizabeth Leick and Claire A. Culleton, eds. Modernism on File: Modern Writers, Artists, and the FBI: 1920-1950. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2007.

Baldwin, James, page 28; Hemingway, Ernest pages 67-68; Hoover, J. Edgar, page 68; Mann, Erika, page 224, 235; Mann, Klaus, pages 224, 232; McKay, Claude, page 12; Rukeyser, Muriel, many pages.

2010

2010, January 12

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

2010, September

Feldstein, Mark. Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 2010, ISBN: 978-0-374-23530-7, ISBN10: 0-374-23530-9.

"homosexual", 28 references; "Hoover", 48 references. See also Anderson, Jack; Chapin, Dwight; Ehrlichman; Haldeman; homosexual ring; Nixon; Pearson, Drew; Radford, Charles; Steward, W. Donald;

2011, November 6

Serrano, Richard A. Serrano, "An FBI director with a grudge". Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2011, 8:03 p.m.

The longtime FBI director was convinced that [Los Angeles Times reporter Jack] Nelson planned to write that he was homosexual.

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

Clendinen, Dudly. "J. Edgar Hoover, ‘Sex Deviates’ and My Godfather". New York Times, November 25, 20011.

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.

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. (See also: 1952 ; 1956, late.)

See also:

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

F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Bibliography

F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology, Part 1

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