Washington Post put on FBI “Do Not Contact” list

Origins of how entertainment divisions were used to control news: J. Edgar Hoover tried to use his power over 60s-70s’ megahit “The FBI” series to fire anchorman at ABC over “Untouchables” comment, Washington Post put on FBI “Do Not Contact” list

J. Edgar Hoover was furious. ABC News anchor Frank Reynolds had just mocked him on the 6 o’clock evening news, and the network let him do it. Someone was going to have to pay for this. Reynolds would be investigated, and if ABC didn’t fire him, Hoover would yank one of their most popular shows off the air. It was Thursday, Nov. 19, 1970, a week before Thanksgiving. Nixon was in the White House, John Mitchell was Attorney General, and Watergate was just an apartment building and office complex in Washington, D.C.

In those days, Hoover wasn’t just the most powerful man in law enforcement; he was a powerful force in the television industry, as well. From 1965 until his death in 1972, Hoover controlled one of ABC’s top-rated shows – “The FBI,” which starred Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as the straight-arrow FBI Inspector Lewis Erskine.

And Hoover didn’t just control the show figuratively. As revealed in 5,000 pages of FBI memos obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Hoover controlled the hit TV show literally, having final approval over every word in every script and over the hiring of every cast member, writer, director, producer and crewmember. He even approved the show’s sponsors.
And now an angry Hoover was threatening to cancel “The FBI,” which had been a consistent ratings winner for the network, regularly finishing in the top five of the Nielsen ratings. And to make things worse, ABC had just that morning put out a press release saying that the show had been renewed for a seventh season.

Hoover had been in the news that day because former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark had just come out with a new book titled Crime In America. Clark, a longtime Hoover critic who had refused to allow Hoover to continue wiretapping Martin Luther King when Clark was Attorney General in the late-1960s, wrote in his book that the FBI suffered from “the excessive domination of a single person, J. Edgar Hoover, and his self-centered concern for his reputation…”

That alone, however, didn’t make much news. It wasn’t until an enterprising reporter at the Washington Post got Hoover’s response to Clark’s comments that the long-simmering feud between Hoover and Clark made headlines.

The Washington Post was on Hoover’s secret “Do Not Contact” list – meaning that no one in the Bureau was supposed to talk to anyone at the Post without his express permission. Not unlike Nixon’s famous “Enemies List,” Hoover’s was a list of newspapers and reporters who were considered “unfriendly” and uncooperative.

But Ken Clawson was a different kind of reporter at the Washington Post. At 34, he was a little older than most of the young Turks there, and his politics ran to the conservative side – he was a Republican and a staunch Nixon supporter. Even so, he was a rising star at the Post, and he’d been personally assigned to the Justice Department beat by editor Ben Bradlee.
Clawson had been trying to get a sit-down interview with Hoover for months, without any success. But when Clark’s book came out, Attorney General John Mitchell urged Hoover to talk to the reporter.

Hoover relented and gave Clawson 25 minutes – and some juicy quotes.

Clark, Hoover told Clawson, was “a jellyfish” and “a softie,” and the worst attorney general in Hoover’s 45 years with the FBI – even worst than Bobby Kennedy. “At least Kennedy stuck to his guns, even when he was wrong,” Hoover said.

By contrast, Hoover said, John Mitchell, who was then the Attorney General, was an “honest, sincere and very human man. There has never been an Attorney General for whom I’ve had higher regard.”

Five years later, Mitchell would be found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury in the Watergate break-in and cover-up scandal. Nixon’s White House tapes confirmed that Mitchell had participated in a meeting to plan the Watergate break-in, and that he had met at least three times with Nixon in an effort to conceal the White House efforts to cover-up the Watergate crimes. Mitchell would serve 19 months in a federal prison, becoming the first United States Attorney General ever to be convicted of illegal activities and imprisoned.

Ironically, Clawson, would also go down with Nixon. Fifteen months after interviewing Hoover, Clawson stunned his colleagues at the Washington Post by accepting a job as the White House deputy director of communications, and in January of 1974, at the height of Watergate, became White House communications director and chief spokesman for Nixon. “I’m just one of Richard Nixon’s spear-carriers, and proud of it,” he said at the time. He died in 1999.

Clawson’s interview with Hoover in November of 1970 propelled the rift between Clark and Hoover onto the front pages of newspapers, and into the evening’s six o’clock news.

There was a lot going on in the news on Nov. 19, 1970: the Charles Manson murder trial was in session, as was the My Lai massacre trial. There were 280,000 troops in Vietnam, and the Paris Peace talks were underway in what would prove to be a failed attempt to end the war; but anytime – then or now – that an FBI director calls a former Attorney General a “jellyfish,” that’s news, and newspapers all across the country picked up Clawson’s story, as did the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, which ran a 30-second story on the Hoover-Clark feud that night. But it was Frank Reynolds’ commentary on ABC that blew Hoover’s top. (In those days, it was not uncommon for network news anchors to deliver an occasional editorial comment at the end of the evening’s newscast.)

And that’s what Reynolds did that night. “Clark tells us Hoover does not welcome criticism; few of us do. But in Hoover’s case, he seems to regard it as insubordination. Even when it comes from someone to whom he is, or was, subordinate” the anchorman said in his commentary.
Here’s where it hit Hoover in the gut, dealing with matters that would seem to the FBI chief the very core of his early legacy.

“This may seem a terrible joke, but (Hoover) has been, for these many years, the real ‘Untouchable’ in Washington. Eliot Ness himself would not have dared pulled the plug in the Hoover bathtub had it been found full of gin during the Prohibition years. Unquestionably, he has been a good cop and a useful public servant. He is not, however, above reproach.”
The next day, Nov. 20, 1970, Milton A. Jones, the FBI section chief who oversaw “The FBI” series circulated a memo to the top echelon of the Bureau.

“At the conclusion of the Reynolds/Smith ABC News Program last evening, Frank Reynolds, ABC News Correspondent from New York, commented concerning the Director… He indicated that Mr. Hoover is the ‘real Untouchable in Washington’ and in a sarcastic vein commented that ‘Eliot Ness himself would not have dared pull the plug on the Hoover bathtub had it been found full of gin during the prohibition years.’ “Reynolds’ comments were … certainly in very poor taste. Bufiles (Bureau files) contain no pertinent information concerning Reynolds.”

At the bottom of this memo, Hoover wrote ominously, in his angry, child-like scrawl: “Keep this in mind about ABC.”

The next day, Jones wrote another memo after getting his orders from Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s right-hand man at the Bureau.

“It is noted that Mr. Tolson has instructed that the American Broadcasting Company be advised that the Bureau will not cooperate in the filming of ‘The FBI’ television series for an additional series,” Jones wrote in a memo dated Nov. 21, 1970 – two days after the airing of Reynolds’ commentary.
At the bottom of this memo, Hoover told his subordinate to tell ABC why Hoover had decided to cancel one of their top shows.

“Point out it is due to vicious denunciation by ABC News commentator,” Hoover scrawled in a hand-written note. “I cannot approve further portrayal of FBI TV series on ABC in view of this attitude.”

ABC executives, who had been in the Virgin Islands attending a network convention when they got word of Hoover’s displeasure, flew home in a panic.

Martin Pompadur, the network vice president who worked with the FBI on a regular basis clearing advertisers for the show – all advertisers had to be personally approved by Hoover – got on the phone with FBI Assistant Director Thomas E. Bishop and apologized for the “viciousness” of Reynolds’ behavior. Pompadur then said that even before he made these remarks about Hoover, Reynolds had been notified that he was being taken out of the anchor chair, and speculated that Reynolds had lashed out at Hoover as a form of revenge.

“Pompadur noted that Reynolds has been a continuing problem for ABC insofar as the content of and the manner in which he handles his news broadcasts,” Bishop wrote. “As a consequence, according to Pompadur, he is being dropped from the ABC news staff as of December 7th and is being replaced by Harry Reasoner. Pompadur noted that following Reynolds’ notice of dismissal from ABC he has shown his displeasure in a number of ways that have created problems for ABC.

“Pompadur advised that he fully shares the Director’s feeling concerning this matter and he deeply regrets the concern caused the Director and the Bureau by Reynolds’ viciousness and unwarranted activity.

“Pompadur further advised that he has always respected and admired the Director and the Bureau and is conscious of the fine relationship had by ABC and the FBI. He said that he intended to immediately contact other ABC officials and get to the bottom of this matter.”
According to the memo, “Pompadur indicated that while he can only speculate at this time, that since ABC had made a news release on the same date, Thursday, 11-19-70, regarding the renewal of ‘The FBI’ television series for a seventh season, Pompadur feels, Reynolds may have taken an advantage of this opportunity to embarrass the ABC television network and the Bureau by doing what he did.”

In an interview for this article, Pompadur was asked why he would say that Reynolds might have been trying to sabotage ABC’s relationship with the FBI. Pompadur, who is now an executive vice president of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and chairman of News Corp Europe, admitted: “I may have said that to score some points.”

A few minutes after he hung up with Pompadur, Bishop received a phone call from James C. Hagerty, vice president of ABC’s corporate relations. Hagerty, who had been a reporter at the New York Times from 1934-42, and who later served as President Dwight Eisenhower’s press secretary and spokesman during all eight years of his administration, had known Hoover for years. He told Bishop that he had cleared his schedule and wanted to come to Washington immediately – that day, if possible – to talk to Hoover about this situation.

Hagerty flew down from New York the next day and met with Hoover in his office at the Justice Department. After reminiscing about the good old days when President Eisenhower was their boss, they got around to talking about Reynolds.

Hagerty noted that “while his current responsibilities involve Corporate Affairs, he is himself essentially a newsman, and that he tries when he is able, to oversee the activities of the ABC News Department.” In that dual capacity, a memo about that meeting states, he told Hoover that Reynolds “was being removed as anchorman on the ABC News team and being replaced by Harry Reasoner and Howard K. Smith effective 12-7-70. Hagerty said that if they could, ABC would get rid of Reynolds entirely and will do so when his current contract expires. Hagerty noted that his contract notwithstanding, they were doing the best they can with him at the present time by getting him out of the public eye as much as possible, since he has been a source of problems and embarrassment to the network.”

Hagerty told Hoover, “Reynolds is bitter and upset over this development and is capable of saying almost anything at the present time to embarrass the ABC network. Hagerty said that it is his feeling that Reynolds’ (remark) may well have been designed by Reynolds to generate a rift between the Bureau and ABC.”

Hagerty went on to butter up Hoover, telling him that “the FBI was the most prestigious law enforcement agency in the world, and that the organization was the end product of the vision, diligence and dedication of one man – Mr. Hoover.”

After that, Hoover relented. As long as Reynolds was out, ABC could keep “The FBI” on the air.
According to the memo about their meeting, Hoover told Hagerty that “the Bureau was shocked at the malicious attack made by Reynolds,” but that “in view of the fact that Reynolds was being removed as anchorman on the ABC News team, and in view of Mr. Hagerty’s personal interest, the Director would approve participation of the Bureau in the telecasting of ‘The FBI’ for a seventh season (1971-72).”

With that settled, the FBI memo notes that Hoover and Hagerty then had “a lively discussion concerning the caliber of newsmen we have in this country today,” with Hoover singling out Walter Cronkite, the Washington Post and the New York Post as being particularly bad representatives of good journalism. The memo notes that the two old friends then “had a brief discussion concerning…the fine job being done by Vice President (Spiro) Agnew” – who would resign in disgrace three years later after pleading no contest to accepting $29,500 in bribes during his tenure as governor of Maryland.

And that was it. Hoover and Hagerty said their goodbyes, and Hagerty rushed to a phone and called his bosses at ABC to tell them the good news – the show could go on.

Frank Reynolds was removed as anchor a few weeks later, but stayed on as a field correspondent for ABC. He returned as co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight in 1978, and died in 1983 at the age of 59.

His son, Dean Reynolds, who is now a correspondent for CBS News, was outraged – and bemused – by the network official’s “craven” attempt to save their highly rated TV show at the cost of the news division’s integrity.

Shown the documents, he said: “It’s clear that Hoover had the ABC Entertainment people by the nuts because of ‘The FBI’ show. This would be very embarrassing to the network if something like that were to happen today. I don’t think people would recover from it. There’s no Hoover out there today, but who knows what Dick Cheney is doing.

“Hoover was dangerous on many fronts. He had things on people and they couldn’t get rid of him, and he played that card all the time. What in the hell was ABC doing giving Hoover carte blanche on this show? They could have done ‘The FBI’ without him. They were perfectly in their rights. But the use of the word ‘vicious’ to describe my old man…I’m sorry he’s not around. He would have loved this. It’s quaint that they thought they could do this, but I come back to the suspicion that stuff like this may still be going on today.”

Next: Part 3 of The Secret Files of ‘The FBI’: J. Edgar Hoover vs. Martin Luther King.

David Robb is a former labor, legal and investigative reporter at The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety. This series is a follow-up to his 2004 book Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies.

Michael Ravnitzky uncovered the documents and provided research for this series.