J. Edgar – The Power Behind The Throne?

The renewed interest in the life of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover following Clint Eastwood’s biopic has led to the reissuing of Irish author Anthony Summers’ controversial early ’90s biography, Official And Confidential: The Secret Life Of J. Edgar Hoover. Undoubtedly, the most sensational aspect of the book was the section dealing with Hoover’s alleged transvestism.

Critics of Summers’ book have suggested that one of the chief sources for the claim, “society divorcée” Susan Rosentiel, was an unreliable witness given that she pleaded guilty to an attempted perjury charge in 1971, although Summers argues in the introduction that the charge may have been initiated by Rosentiel’s former husband, liquor millionaire Lewis Rosenstiel, in an attempt to obstruct an investigation into his alleged Mafia links.
Nonetheless, at the time of the book’s original publication, pro-Hoover commentators lined up to condemn Summers on television and in the press. This didn’t prevent the Hoover transvestism claim becoming a staple reference in US popular culture, with Bill Clinton making a crack about it, Jay Leno and David Letterman regularly alluding to it, and one of the Naked Gun movies even using it as the basis for a gag.
“I was entirely responsible for that,” says Summers in his slow, considered tones, sitting in the lounge of Brooks Hotel in Dublin. “I didn’t go looking for it – I found it. I sought out Susan Rosenstiel because her husband had been extremely close to Hoover, and she told me the story. Initially, I didn’t quite know what to make of it, but if you look at the end of the Rosenstiel section of the book, there’s a reference to a second source. None of the newspapers reported that at the time, and they still haven’t reported it.
“There were two other sources – two guys, who at the time I interviewed them, had not been in touch for many years. Ten years earlier, thus in a different time frame to Rosenstiel, and in a different city, they had been shown a photograph of Hoover dressed as a woman, in old flapper’s clothes, which is exactly the same as the way that he’s described by Susan Rosenstiel. I had them first, before I had Susan Rosenstiel, and I hadn’t known what to make of it. I wouldn’t have used them without having Rosenstiel, and I wouldn’t have used Rosenstiel without having them. I was able to adhere to that old reporter’s tenet: if it’s very controversial, or it’s questionable, get it from two sources.”
Given that Official And Confidential is such a detailed and extensive book, which also closely examines Hoover’s targeting of the civil rights movement and various political enemies, Summers admits to being slightly miffed that the transvestism angle, irresistible though it was, proved to be the element seized on by the media to the exclusion of virtually everything else.
“It’s a four or five page sequence, something quite short, in a book that’s 600 pages long,” he notes. “I was actually rather chagrined, when with lip-smacking enthusiasm, the whole of the United States... no author can regret a lot of people buying a book, but I kind of regret that so many people bought the book because of the suggestion that J. Edgar Hoover wore drag. I hadn’t quite anticipated the firestorm of publicity that it would set off.
“For me – and this is where I join the producers and director of the movie – by far the most important thing is the lesson that one learns from Hoover’s life, which is that, in a democracy, you cannot have somebody serve more than a limited period in office, let alone in law enforcement, in a position of total power. The likelihood is that even if the person is a saint, because of having huge power, in the end they’re going to sin.
“Hoover was allowed to be there for a ludicrous 48 years, and he did sin, and as a result of what’s emerged about him since he died, I think the law now has it that the FBI director cannot hold office for more than a limited period of time. In fact, because of 9/11, and Homeland Security and all that, FBI director Mueller, who became FBI director under George W. Bush, had his term extended, but only briefly. I mean, there’s no question in the United States – nobody will ever be director of the FBI for decades.”
Among the politicians Hoover accumulated information on were JFK and Robert Kennedy, although the book suggests that in the aftermath of Marilyn Monroe’s death, both brothers were forced to use the FBI to cover up their relations with the actress.
“There’s a scene in the film where Attorney General Robert Kennedy is visited by Hoover,” notes Summers, “and Hoover talks to him about having tapes of his brother, the President, having sex with a woman. As Hoover’s leaving, Robert Kennedy says, ‘I’ll just keep these transcripts of the tape recording’, and Hoover says, ‘Yeah, I just want you to know I’ve kept copies.’ And that was the way he instilled fear in people. But the interesting thing, filmically and historically, is that in the movie, Hoover says something along the lines of, ‘We have tapes of your brother making love with an East German spy.’
“It was Monroe he was talking about. I know because I talked to the guy who was monitoring the recordings. Although Kennedy did have an affair with an East German woman, who may or may not have been a spy, there is no suggestion historically that they had tapes of that. What they did have was a recording of Kennedy having sex with Marilyn Monroe. I know it, I believe it, it’s pretty well documented now. I did an interview with a guy who took me to where he was when he monitored the recording.
“I thought it was amusing, because I reckon Eastwood or the screenwriter felt, ‘God, in the middle of the movie, we can’t just drop in the name Marilyn Monroe as an incidental detail.’ You’re either going to do a big turn on Marilyn Monroe, or nothing at all. So they replaced her with a vague reference to an East German spy.”
Also explored in Official And Confidential is Hoover’s relationship with another US president, Richard Nixon. In some ways, it’s difficult to believe that two such flawed, damaged individuals could have wielded such enormous power in American society. But you could say that they deserved each other.
“There’s a wonderful scene in the movie, which is completely true to life, because I heard it from Nixon’s closest associates,” says Summers. “When he heard that Hoover was dead, Nixon said – and the words are in the book – ‘Jesus Christ, that old cocksucker.’ Then he addresses the public, and says, ‘This great and honourable man with a marvellous record.’ Pure Nixon.”

Official And Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover is available now, published by Ebury Press.