F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology

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

F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Bibliography

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

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The F.B.I. and Homosexuality: Chronology

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.

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.

1920

1920s

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.

1920, February

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."

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.

1926

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

1928, April 2

Tolson first joins FBI.

1929, July 31

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

1930

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 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."

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. For a use of the term "mincing" in association with homosexuality OutHistory.org provides a reference from 1965. Curt Gentry continues: "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".

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

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

1936

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

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

1936, August 18

Photo:. Caption: J. Edgar Hoover (r) and Clyde A.Tolson watch the Louis - Sharkey fight on August 18, 1936, New York, New York. Corbis Images:

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

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

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:

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

UNDATED

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

1939

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

1940

1943

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.

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.

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."

1948

Kinsey report on human males sexuality.

1950

1951

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".

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.

1953

The FBI's Sex Deviates program "was expanded in 1953 after a presidential order by Dwight Eisenhower made federal employment of homosexuals illegal."

1954, May 22

Photo: 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

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.”

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 . . .

1960

1964

Cook, Fred. The FBI Nobody Knows 1964

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."

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.”

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"

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.

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.

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 04, 1972

1977

Cohen, Larry. The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover. Film directed by Larry Cohen.

"In 1977, Bureau officials added more gaps to the paper trail by destroying the 300,000 pages in the "Sex Deviate Program."

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.

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.”

Morris, Norval. DIRECTOR OF ALL HE SURVEYED. [Review of Powers, Secrecy, 1987/] New York Times. March 8, 1987

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

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.

1993, April 11

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

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.

1994,

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).

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.

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).

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. “Most men,” he concludes, “would find it an inexcusable invasion of privacy to have another man photograph him while asleep—unless there were a relationship more intimate than a conventional male friendship.”

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).

2010

2011, November 6

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