Hoover's Home Improvements

The FBI, in peace and war, kept J. Edgar comfy

The next head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whom President Carter is likely to nominate this week, will have a lot of image repairing to do at the house that J. Edgar Hoover built and ran for 48 years with a handful of longtime aides. New revelations about the director's imperial peccadilloes have emerged regularly since his death in 1972. Last week the Justice Department released a report that added more detail to the picture of petty privilege and cronyism at the FBI's top level during the Hoover reign.

The 40-page report was prepared by Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility, which was assigned to probe allegations of wrongdoing by high officials of the Hoover regime in 1976. The order was given by then Attorney General Edward Levi, after he concluded that the FBI's own investigation of the charges was a whitewash. Mostly, the report dwells on just how much Hoover, a stickler for rules as far as ordinary agents were concerned, could tolerate improper use of bureau resources by high officials--especially himself. In fact, much of the purpose of the FBI's exhibits section, which is supposed to prepare courtroom mock-ups of crime scenes, seemed to be to care for Hoover's colonial house in the capital's wealthy northwest district.

Exhibits-section employees painted the house annually. They also built a front portico, dug a fish pond and equipped it with a pump and lights, and made shelves, telephone stands and an Oriental fruit bowl for Hoover. They repaired his air conditioners, stereo equipment, tape recorders, television sets, electric wiring, lawn mowers and a snow blower. They sodded portions of his yard, installed artificial turf, planted shrubbery, built a deck in the rear of the house, a redwood fence, a flagstone court and sidewalks. They designed and constructed a power-operated window, reset clocks, polished metal, retouched wallpaper, provided firewood and rearranged furniture. "Employees were on call night and day for this work," notes the report; they "felt compelled to follow orders for fear of losing their jobs, or of arbitrary transfers or promotion delays."

The Justice investigators found that similar services were provided (on a lesser scale) to Hoover Aides John P. Mohr and Nicholas Callahan. These men were found to have destroyed records of an FBI "recreation" fund after Hoover's death, and after Callahan had spent $39,590 of the money for an unexplained "library fund." The two former officials, along with G. Speights McMichael, another aide to Hoover, were also held responsible for a questionable business arrangement. This involved purchases of electronic equipment, without competitive bidding, from the Washington-based U.S. Recording Co. between 1963 and 1975. One such purchase of burglar-alarm equipment in 1971 cost $147,261.50, while the same equipment could have been bought from a New York supplier for $81,357. An agent who complained about the cozy --and illegal--purchasing arrangement was told he was not a "team player" and transferred. Apparently, the Hoover aides valued U.S. Recording's silence about FBI eavesdropping practices; they also enjoyed frequent poker parties with the firm's owner, Joseph Tail. No evidence was found of payoffs from the company to FBI officials.

Crucial evidence in the investigation was supplied by John P. Dunphy, former chief of the exhibits section, who, in exchange for his testimony, was al lowed to plead guilty to the single misdemeanor of using bureau lumber to build himself a birdhouse.

Attorney General Griffin Bell, who released the report, said he did so because he felt a need to restore the integrity of the FBI. The report, he said, is "intended to assure the nation that the Justice Department can investigate arid police itself." But the assurance seemed somewhat weakened by the fact that the probe will yield no indictments because the statute of limitations has run out. Evidently there are still more tales to be told about the house that J. Edgar Hoover built. Last week some FBI agents were privately critical of another, as yet unpublicized ritual of the Hoover era: the granting of $500 to $1,000 awards for outstanding service (known within the bureau as MVPs, or Most Valuable Player awards). It seems that headquarters officials liberally bestowed the cash on themselves, but shared it only stingily with their front-line field agents. As one FBI official observed: "The brass took care of themselves first."

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