WASHINGTON — When Eugene McCarthy ran for president in 1968, he pledged to fire J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director who had outlasted presidents from Calvin Coolidge to John F. Kennedy.
Before long, McCarthy’s calls for new FBI leadership were cataloged and commented upon by FBI officials in a nearly 500-page file, obtained by the Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act.
Much of McCarthy’s file focuses on law enforcement duties surrounding the 1968 campaign, when McCarthy helped galvanize opposition to the Vietnam War by challenging President Lyndon Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination. The Minnesota senator’s strong showing in the New Hampshire primary led to Johnson’s withdrawal from the race.
According to McCarthy’s file, FBI agents looked into death threats against the candidate, and kept records of his public travel and demonstrations. In the process, they also paid close attention to McCarthy’s calls to replace Hoover, collecting several news clippings, letters and memos on the subject.
For example, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Indianapolis wrote to Hoover on April 22, 1968, to inform him of a speech at Indiana University in which McCarthy said the U.S. should “re-examine the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and even reflect on who its director is.”
The file includes several letters from people defending Hoover from McCarthy’s criticism, with copies sent to Hoover.
One list in the file referred to reporters the FBI had identified as friendly, said Athan Theoharis, a retired Marquette University history professor who has written several books on the FBI and Hoover. Another list had reporters who were not to be contacted, Theoharis said.
The FBI even took note of the state of McCarthy’s campaign hotel bills. In August 1968, Joseph Purvis, special agent in charge in the Washington, D.C., field office, wrote to Hoover to tell him about a conversation he had with “one of our good friends at the Mayflower,” a famous Washington hotel. The person’s name is redacted from the file.
Purvis wrote that the campaign had four rooms booked since June, and hadn’t made any payments — with the hotel bill exceeding $20,000 by the end of July.
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