J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets by Curt Gentry Page A
Authors: Curt Gentry
Tags: United States, Fiction, General, Historical, History, Biography & Autobiography, 20th Century, Political Science, Law Enforcement, American Government
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according to James, all this seemed of less interest to his father than another discovery he had made. “Say,” Franklin exclaimed to Eleanor, “I never knew that Mitchell Palmer was a Quaker. He was ‘theeing’ and ‘thouing’ me all over the place.” 1
“The morning after my house was blown up,” Palmer later testified, “I stood in the middle of the wreckage of my library with congressmen and senators,and without a dissenting voice they called upon me in strong terms to exercise all the power that was possible…to run to earth the criminals who were behind that kind of outrage.” 2
The following day the New York Times, without any evidence whatsoever, authoritatively stated, “The crimes are plainly of Bolshevik or IWW origin.” 3
The Red scare was on.
Actually it had been building since the Russian Revolution of November 1917, which had excited those in the American Left almost—but not quite—as much as it had frightened their conservative counterparts.
The notion that this was the work of a solitary madman was quickly dispelled. Within an hour of the Palmer blast, similar explosions occurred in eight other cities, causing one death, that of a night watchman outside a judge’s residence in New York. And prior to this, in late April, explosive devices had been mailed to thirty-six of the most prominent men in America, including John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan. Although most never reached their intended victims—the Post Office having held them up because of insufficient postage—a package that arrived at the home of the ex-senator Thomas Hardwick of Georgia blew off both hands of the maid who opened it and severely injured Mrs. Hardwick, who was standing nearby. The next day irate citizens, often aided by local police and APL units, broke up May Day demonstrations in more than a dozen cities.
Although the body of the man believed responsible for the Palmer bombing remained unidentified, there was one clue—some fifty copies of an anarchist flier entitled Plain Words were found scattered around the neighborhood.
But Palmer was not content to hunt down a few dangerous anarchists. He declared war on all radicals and, as the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., put it, at the same time “generalized his own experience into a national emergency.” 4
Immediately after the bombing, Palmer made several changes in the Department of Justice. He appointed his own assistant, Francis P. Garvan, assistant attorney general in charge of all investigation and prosecution of radicals, and he replaced William Allen, O’Brian’s former assistant, as head of the Bureau of Investigation, appointing in his place William J. Flynn. *
Palmer, Garvan, and Flynn made a remarkable trio.
A. Mitchell Palmer was a paradoxical man. While in Congress, where he served five terms, he called himself a “radical friend” of labor, but as attorney general he proudly took credit for breaking half a dozen major strikes. Being a pacifist by religion, he had turned down President Wilson’s offer of the post ofsecretary of war, but while heading the alien property custodian’s office his belligerency had earned him the nickname the Fighting Quaker. Once considered one of the most progressive members of Wilson’s Cabinet, he would soon decide that in times of national crisis it was perfectly legal to abrogate the Bill of Rights.
Francis P. Garvan, Palmer’s chief investigator during the war, was the son of a wealthy contractor and a graduate of Yale. But he was ever sensitive to the fact that his father had been an Irish immigrant and, in referring to the more recently arrived, was given to imitating Palmer and using such terms as “alien filth.” According to Palmer’s biographer Stanley Coben, the attorney general and his assistant had three things in common: “an aversion to certain types of ‘foreigners,’ a feeling that dangerous internal enemies were plotting against the country, and a powerful devotion to
“The morning after my house was blown up,” Palmer later testified, “I stood in the middle of the wreckage of my library with congressmen and senators,and without a dissenting voice they called upon me in strong terms to exercise all the power that was possible…to run to earth the criminals who were behind that kind of outrage.” 2
The following day the New York Times, without any evidence whatsoever, authoritatively stated, “The crimes are plainly of Bolshevik or IWW origin.” 3
The Red scare was on.
Actually it had been building since the Russian Revolution of November 1917, which had excited those in the American Left almost—but not quite—as much as it had frightened their conservative counterparts.
The notion that this was the work of a solitary madman was quickly dispelled. Within an hour of the Palmer blast, similar explosions occurred in eight other cities, causing one death, that of a night watchman outside a judge’s residence in New York. And prior to this, in late April, explosive devices had been mailed to thirty-six of the most prominent men in America, including John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan. Although most never reached their intended victims—the Post Office having held them up because of insufficient postage—a package that arrived at the home of the ex-senator Thomas Hardwick of Georgia blew off both hands of the maid who opened it and severely injured Mrs. Hardwick, who was standing nearby. The next day irate citizens, often aided by local police and APL units, broke up May Day demonstrations in more than a dozen cities.
Although the body of the man believed responsible for the Palmer bombing remained unidentified, there was one clue—some fifty copies of an anarchist flier entitled Plain Words were found scattered around the neighborhood.
But Palmer was not content to hunt down a few dangerous anarchists. He declared war on all radicals and, as the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., put it, at the same time “generalized his own experience into a national emergency.” 4
Immediately after the bombing, Palmer made several changes in the Department of Justice. He appointed his own assistant, Francis P. Garvan, assistant attorney general in charge of all investigation and prosecution of radicals, and he replaced William Allen, O’Brian’s former assistant, as head of the Bureau of Investigation, appointing in his place William J. Flynn. *
Palmer, Garvan, and Flynn made a remarkable trio.
A. Mitchell Palmer was a paradoxical man. While in Congress, where he served five terms, he called himself a “radical friend” of labor, but as attorney general he proudly took credit for breaking half a dozen major strikes. Being a pacifist by religion, he had turned down President Wilson’s offer of the post ofsecretary of war, but while heading the alien property custodian’s office his belligerency had earned him the nickname the Fighting Quaker. Once considered one of the most progressive members of Wilson’s Cabinet, he would soon decide that in times of national crisis it was perfectly legal to abrogate the Bill of Rights.
Francis P. Garvan, Palmer’s chief investigator during the war, was the son of a wealthy contractor and a graduate of Yale. But he was ever sensitive to the fact that his father had been an Irish immigrant and, in referring to the more recently arrived, was given to imitating Palmer and using such terms as “alien filth.” According to Palmer’s biographer Stanley Coben, the attorney general and his assistant had three things in common: “an aversion to certain types of ‘foreigners,’ a feeling that dangerous internal enemies were plotting against the country, and a powerful devotion to
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