Hoover, Pecker, and Trump—the Wheel Turns, the Game is the Same
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My President and his lawyer thought they could buy all the dirt their friend had on Mr. Trump. But J. Edgar Hoover had taught later generations how to play the game for fun, profit, and power.
They never had a chance.
J. Edgar Hoover, speaking to the National Police Academy in 1942:
Never before was there greater need for unity, for a calm appraisal of the forces which work against us. The rabble-rousing communists, the goosestepping bundsmen, their stooges and seemingly innocent fronts…
How do we remember J. Edgar Hoover?
My parents and my parents’ parents may have known him as a sort of anti-crime superhero. That was how he was portrayed throughout my grade school youth. He was the subject of movies and television shows.
Many of my generation and later remember what was revealed when the adulation began to wane. He was a determined racist, digging up dirt on Civil Rights leaders. He not only disliked and distrusted black people, he disliked and distrusted those who did not dislike and distrust black people.
The same speech in 1942, less than 4 months after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan, the speech urging unity, still contains vitriol against that other enemy, liberals:
…and last, but by no means least, the pseudo-liberals, adhere to the doctrine of falsification and of distortion. They seek to weaken law enforcement in every conceivable manner as their first step for turning law and order into revolution and into chaos.
Hoover was famously enraged when the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. His description of Dr. King as reported in the New York Times:
…the most notorious liar in the country.
His early career seems improbable. He began as little more than an exceptionally efficient clerk that knew how to keep extremely accurate, highly indexed files. He worked for the Department of Justice during World War I. He was paid just $990 a year, not much even then. But the job did get him an exemption from being drafted into a war that, decades later, was described by George Will as young men trying to wear out machine guns with their chests.
J. Edgar Hoover carefully recorded, and cross-referenced for quick access, information on suspected spies and saboteurs. He was good at it. Very good. Before long, he was in charge of jailing, without trial, foreigners suspected of disloyalty. His authority to arrest kept growing, even after the war. The flow of information into his filing system increased with his authority over agents he could direct in gathering all that information.
The ability to keep and index those files helped in his miraculous upward trajectory. The public didn’t find that out for decades. It was an open secret in Washington.
Along with evidence against potential national enemies came stray bits about innocent people with something to hide. Some of those innocent people happened to be elected officials.
Sometimes collateral information was specifically targeted.
In 1952, Harry Truman wrote out a couple pages of notes that included a few lines for posterity.
We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. F.B.I. is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex life scandles [sic] and plain blackmail when they should be catching criminals.
With decades of practice, the routine became a science.
One Senator, Edward Long from here in Missouri, felt that some FBI tactics had gone too far. He had become a critic. So Hoover sent an aide, Assistant Director Cartha DeLoach. It took decades for an aide to Senator Long to swear in an affidavit what happened in 1966:
Senator, I think you ought to read this file that we have on you. You know we would never use it, because you’re a friend of ours, but you never know what unscrupulous people will do. And we just thought you ought to know the type of stuff that might get around and might be harmful to you.
The Senator became a reliable ally.
Kind of artful, isn’t it? I’m your friend, and I’ll always be your friend. You DO want to be friends, don’t you? WE would never use this, but someone less ethical might. And if we found it, so could they. Aren’t you glad we’re friends?
Now that we’re friends, may I ask a small favor? Then another, and another?
Spies use that sort of technique to pull compromised officials, and other prominent people, into even more compromising situations. Occasionally, so can private citizens.
When President Trump’s extremely loyal private lawyer, Michael Cohen, turned out to have some regard for his own legal future, it was hard to for him to claim any credibility. Critics of President Trump might see some credibility issues on that side as well. But even so, how do you find truth when both sides have a history of untruth?
Well… sometimes there is corroboration.
I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David. You know, so that I’m gonna do that right away I’ve actually come out…
Give me…
and I’ve spoken to Alan Weiselberg about how to set the whole thing up with…
So what are we gonna do?
…funding. Yes and it’s all the stuff, all the stuff because you never know where that company never know what he’s gonna…
Maybe he gets hit by a truck.
Correct. So I’m I’m all over that and I spoke to Alan about it when it comes time for the financing which will be…
What, what financing?
We’ll have pay some…
We’ll pay in cash
No, no, no, no, no. I’ve got. No, no, no.
When that recording came out, it meant that Donald Trump knew about payments to a porn star to remain silent about an affair that might have tipped the coming election if it had come out. So, later on, in releasing the tape, Michael Cohen proved that he was telling the truth and President Trump was, well, lying.
Now it turns out part of that recording means a little more than we had thought.
MSNBC starts by quoting a report:
We need to update you on President Trump’s controversial relationship with the National Enquirer and its owner, David Pecker. The New York Times reporting:
He, Mr. Trump, and his lawyer at the time, Michael D. Cohen, devised a plan to buy up all the dirt on Mr. Trump that The Enquirer had, and its parent company had collected, on him, dating back to the 1980s.
So now that middle part of the Cohen tape, the part about all the stuff has new meaning.
Yes, and it’s all the stuff, all the stuff because here you never know where that company never know what he’s gonna…
Maybe he gets hit by a truck.
Correct.
David Pecker had a safe, a very special safe, in his office that contained very special files on very special people. Mr. Trump was one of those very special people. David Pecker was the publishing version of J. Edgar Hoover. Mr. Pecker is now said to be cooperating with authorities who are conducting the famous witch hunt. But back then, Donald Trump and Michael Cohen considered him to be a friend. Surely he would be open to a deal.
…the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David…
Just pay him what he paid for all those decades of information, plus a fee, of course. A man has to make a profit. Then transfer the files to us.
But then our faithful reporter adds this:
That plan was never finalized.
Well, hell. I could’ve told you that.
Sure, David Pecker was a good friend, the very best.
But friendship or not, business always comes first. The way the Hoover-secret-spy-Pecker game is played is to, yeah, be friends — but keep the files.
What were these guys thinking? Didn’t they know?
Now this, from CNN:
Orr testifying to a congressional committee this week that Steele told him at a July 2016 breakfast that Russian intelligence believed they had then candidate Donald Trump “over a barrel”, according to a source familiar with the testimony.
What Bruce Orr meant is that the Russians had information that would compromise Donald Trump that they could leverage Donald Trump.
Of course, this represents no worry for Donald Trump.
Vladimir Putin is a very good friend. The very best.
Many thanks as always to our partner and friend at FairandUnbalanced.
In case you missed it: When Truth Isn’t True—The American Way Is Under Assault
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Yes. The game is the same and always has been I suspect.