years back to the Mayflower ; he had been investigated by the Bureau for political subversion and imprisoned for resisting the draft in World War I. The ACLU itself was created in 1920 chiefly to defend the constitutional rights of people prosecuted under the espionage and sedition laws.
Baldwin urged Stone to study a new ACLU report, “The Nation-Wide Spy System Centering in the Department of Justice.” It accused the Bureau of wiretapping, opening first-class mail, bugging, burglaries, political blacklisting, and spying on lawful organizations and individuals. The ACLU said the Bureau had become “a secret police system of a political character.” It noted that Hoover’s files were the fuel for the espionage machine—the General Intelligence Division, and its predecessor, the Radical Division, had driven the Bureau’s spying operations since 1919.
Stone read the report with intense interest. It described precisely the kind of conduct he had forsworn. He handed it to Hoover and asked him what he thought.
Hoover’s future depended on the skill of his scalding seven-page rebuttal. He insisted that the Bureau had investigated only “ultra-radical” peopleand groups breaking federal laws. Many if not most were “charged with activities inimical to our institutions and government.” The Bureau’s work since 1919 had been “perfectly proper and legal.” It had never wiretapped or burglarized anyone. “The Bureau has very rigid rules on matters of this kind,” he wrote. The ACLU, for its part, was “consistently and continually advocating … on the part of the communistic element,” taking civil liberty as criminal license. One week later, on August 7, 1924, Hoover, Baldwin, and Stone sat down for a conversation at the Justice Department. Hoover did most of the talking, as was his custom when confronted with a conversation that posed the potential for trouble. He maintained, as he did all his life, that he was not a willing participant in the Red raids. He assured Baldwin that the days of political espionage were over. He said the General Intelligence Division would be shut down—though he would keep its files unless Congress ordered him to burn them—and the Bureau would stick to the investigation of violations of federal law. He renounced his own past. He was utterly convincing. “I think we were wrong,” Baldwin wrote to Stone a few days later. He told reporters that Hoover was the right man for the job. Hoover responded with a gracious thank-you note. It was his goal, he wrote, “to leave my desk each day with the knowledge that I have in no way violated the rights of the citizens of this country.”
The FBI kept right on infiltrating the ACLU throughout these exchanges of pleasantries, and in the months and years thereafter. In the fall of 1924, the Bureau maintained a spy on the ACLU’s executive board, purloined the minutes of its meetings in Los Angeles, and kept tabs on its donor lists. Seven weeks after his cordial meeting with Baldwin, Hoover was receiving new and detailed reports on the ACLU board’s legal strategies. His files grew to include dossiers on the group’s leaders and prominent supporters, among them one of the world’s most famous women, the deaf and blind Helen Keller. Hers became one file among thousands in the FBI’s unique history of the American civil-liberties movement.
“We never knew about the way that Hoover’s FBI kept track of us,” Baldwin said half a century later. “They never stopped watching us.”
Nor did Hoover abolish the General Intelligence Division. On paper, the division disappeared. But its lifeblood, the files, remained. To preserve their secrecy, Hoover created an entirely new record-keeping system called “Official and Confidential.” These documents were kept under his control. In theory, the Bureau’s centralized records belonged to the Justice Department. They were vulnerable to discovery in the courts or subpoena by Congress.The
Baldwin urged Stone to study a new ACLU report, “The Nation-Wide Spy System Centering in the Department of Justice.” It accused the Bureau of wiretapping, opening first-class mail, bugging, burglaries, political blacklisting, and spying on lawful organizations and individuals. The ACLU said the Bureau had become “a secret police system of a political character.” It noted that Hoover’s files were the fuel for the espionage machine—the General Intelligence Division, and its predecessor, the Radical Division, had driven the Bureau’s spying operations since 1919.
Stone read the report with intense interest. It described precisely the kind of conduct he had forsworn. He handed it to Hoover and asked him what he thought.
Hoover’s future depended on the skill of his scalding seven-page rebuttal. He insisted that the Bureau had investigated only “ultra-radical” peopleand groups breaking federal laws. Many if not most were “charged with activities inimical to our institutions and government.” The Bureau’s work since 1919 had been “perfectly proper and legal.” It had never wiretapped or burglarized anyone. “The Bureau has very rigid rules on matters of this kind,” he wrote. The ACLU, for its part, was “consistently and continually advocating … on the part of the communistic element,” taking civil liberty as criminal license. One week later, on August 7, 1924, Hoover, Baldwin, and Stone sat down for a conversation at the Justice Department. Hoover did most of the talking, as was his custom when confronted with a conversation that posed the potential for trouble. He maintained, as he did all his life, that he was not a willing participant in the Red raids. He assured Baldwin that the days of political espionage were over. He said the General Intelligence Division would be shut down—though he would keep its files unless Congress ordered him to burn them—and the Bureau would stick to the investigation of violations of federal law. He renounced his own past. He was utterly convincing. “I think we were wrong,” Baldwin wrote to Stone a few days later. He told reporters that Hoover was the right man for the job. Hoover responded with a gracious thank-you note. It was his goal, he wrote, “to leave my desk each day with the knowledge that I have in no way violated the rights of the citizens of this country.”
The FBI kept right on infiltrating the ACLU throughout these exchanges of pleasantries, and in the months and years thereafter. In the fall of 1924, the Bureau maintained a spy on the ACLU’s executive board, purloined the minutes of its meetings in Los Angeles, and kept tabs on its donor lists. Seven weeks after his cordial meeting with Baldwin, Hoover was receiving new and detailed reports on the ACLU board’s legal strategies. His files grew to include dossiers on the group’s leaders and prominent supporters, among them one of the world’s most famous women, the deaf and blind Helen Keller. Hers became one file among thousands in the FBI’s unique history of the American civil-liberties movement.
“We never knew about the way that Hoover’s FBI kept track of us,” Baldwin said half a century later. “They never stopped watching us.”
Nor did Hoover abolish the General Intelligence Division. On paper, the division disappeared. But its lifeblood, the files, remained. To preserve their secrecy, Hoover created an entirely new record-keeping system called “Official and Confidential.” These documents were kept under his control. In theory, the Bureau’s centralized records belonged to the Justice Department. They were vulnerable to discovery in the courts or subpoena by Congress.The
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