Official and Confidential by Anthony Summers Page B

Martin’s colleague Ben Bradlee. ‘It was so stupid. But the really ridiculous thing was the fact that he had that sort of investigation done on a decent, respected reporter just because he’d requested an interview.’
    As for black agents, Edgar’s attitude was that of most white southerners of his generation. ‘Coloreds’ were fine as the help, but they were to be excluded from the professions. The notion that law enforcement officers should address black people courteously seemed outlandish to him as late as 1966. ‘Instead of saying, “Boy, come here!”’ he noted scornfully, ‘they want to be addressed as Mr …’
    Edgar kept the Bureau in a state of apartheid as long as he possibly could. There was one black agent when he took office, an ‘Uncle Tom’ figure called James Amos, who had started out looking after President Theodore Roosevelt’s children. He had become an agent thanks to Edgar’s predecessor, William Burns, and was used as a penetration agent against black activists. Amos was the first black agent, and would have been the last had Edgar had his way.
    Of nine black men who rose from the lower grades in Edgar’s first forty years, five served as his personal lackeys. 1 Edgar’s first flunkey was Sam Noisette, who moved up from messenger to become the keeper of his office door. Each morning, when a buzzer alerted him to his master’s arrival in the basement garage, Noisette would wait poised to greet him at the elevator. He stayed on hand until Edgar left at night, obsequious to a fault, addressing visitors in a suitably ‘darkey’ accent.
    Noisette was a competent artist, and Edgar encouraged him. His painting of the Director’s dog, Spee De Bozo, hung in Edgar’s home, and others were displayed in the anteroom at the office. Edgar reproached aides who failed to attend Noisette’s annual exhibition, and some officials bought pictures just to keep the boss happy.
    A second black man, former truck driver James Crawford, joined the retinue in 1934 as head chauffeur and handyman. He would arrive at Edgar’s house at 7 A.M., having first driven the Director’s personal car to headquarters to pick up the official limousine, so that no one could claim an official car was being used on private time. Crawford’s working day involved driving Edgar to the office, waiting on standby all day, then working until midnight if his boss had a function in the evening. He was to serve Edgar for thirty-eight years, continuing to work as domestic and gardener after ill health forced him to retire from the Bureau.
    Two other blacks, Jesse Strider in Los Angeles and Leo McClairen in Miami, were to chauffeur Edgar during his vacations. Once he became established he used Pierce-Arrow and Cadillac armored limousines, custom-built by Hess and Eisenhardt. Except for the President, he was the only federal official to have the use of such vehicles, apparently because of regular threats against his life. The President, however, had only one such car, which was moved around the country as required. Edgar had three (they would cost $30,000 each by the end of his career) at his disposal in Washington, California and Florida – and at one point a fourth in New York City. On occasion, the cars were moved around by military transport aircraft.
    Washington folklore had it that Edgar’s drivers had to keep the car engine running when they waited for him, even if it meant waiting for hours, so that he was never delayed for an instant. Harold Tyler, an Assistant Attorney General during the Eisenhower administration, discovered this story was true. ‘Hoover came to our house one night,’ he recalled.‘I thought he’d only stay a short while, but he stayed on and on. I went out for a moment to check on booze or something and I found his driver standing there. He looked very embarrassed and said “I’ve run