Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 5, 1993 TAG: 9302050225
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
BOOK SAYS MAFIA BLACKMAILED FBI'S EX-DIRECTOR HOOVER
A new book contends that the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was a closet homosexual blackmailed by the Mafia with compromising photos into denying for decades the existence of organized crimeAuthor Anthony Summers writes in his book, "Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover," that top organized crime figures Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello obtained photos of Hoover's alleged homosexual activity with longtime aide Clyde Tolson and used them to ensure the FBI did not target their illegal activities. Excerpts were released Thursday.
For years, Hoover denied the existence of organized crime.
There have long been rumors - some dating back to the 1930s - that Hoover was homosexual, often arising from his sharing a bachelor house with Tolson for years.
But another Hoover biographer who heard the rumors of homosexuality and mob blackmail said Thursday he was never able to corroborate them.
Hoover was FBI director from 1924 until he died in 1972. Tolson also is dead.
As head of the FBI, Hoover made a habit of squirreling away information about the sexual lives of Washington's power elite, including John and Robert Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt and others, according to a number of biographers.
Summers' book, published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, is excerpted in the March edition of Vanity Fair and is the subject of a "Frontline" documentary airing Tuesday on PBS.
This is the fifth book written by Summers, a former British Broadcasting Corp. journalist.
The book quotes two former OSS officials who say they saw pictures of Hoover engaged in a sexual act with Tolson. One, John Weitz, said he could not recognize anyone in the photo he was shown at a dinner party in the 1950s but was told by his host, whom he would not identify, that it depicted Hoover and Tolson.
Summers writes that electronics expert Gordon Novel said that CIA counterintelligence chief James J. Angleton, now deceased, showed him several photos, including one of Hoover engaged in sexual activity with Tolson.
Summers writes that the Mafia may have obtained the photos from the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the CIA.
He offers the theory that OSS chief William Donovan and Hoover, while feuding over control of foreign intelligence, investigated each other and Donovan came up with the photos.
The Summers book quotes Susan Rosenstiel, the fourth wife of mobster and liquor distributor Lewis Solon Rosenstiel, as saying she saw Hoover dressed up in women's clothes and involved in homosexual play at sex parties at the Plaza Hotel in New York City in the 1950s.