J. Edgar Hoover looked at the computer print-out of the White House phone logs. There were over seventy calls from the pretty dark-haired girl to the President in the two years since he became President, and the loose sheets from the files recorded their many meetings in hotel rooms and even in the White House itself.
It wasn’t a lunch that the FBI Director was looking forward to. He felt no embarrassment about the material itself. He saw too many files on well-known people to be surprised, shocked or embarrassed. But in this particular case his problem was how to start. How to lead into the subject. And how to leave it so that the President didn’t seek some revenge on him or the FBI in retaliation.
He was actually going into the private room, where the table was laid for a working lunch, when he suddenly realized how it could best be done. Just the summary showing the girl’s relationship with Giancana would be enough. He had been a prime target of the Kennedys for years. The President wouldn’t need the details filling in. Hoover didn’t like either of the Kennedys all that much himself, and he was well aware that they both disliked him intensely.
He sat waiting for the President and then stood as the door opened. John F. Kennedy nodded to him briefly and then turned to give instructions to one of his aides before closing the door.
“I can give you twenty minutes, Mr. Hoover. I thought we could eat as we talk.”
“I can be away in ten minutes, Mr. President. I don’t need to interrupt your lunch.”
“What is it this time? Cubans or Russians?”
Hoover held out two single pages of typescript. “If you could read that, Mr. President. It doesn’t need any discussion or comment from me.”
The President took the two flimsy sheets and sat at the dining table pushing the place-setting to one side. He read it slowly, his chin resting in his hand. Just once he raised his head, gazing in thought towards the window, then turning back to the summary. Finally he looked up, pushing the two sheets across the table to where Hoover was still standing.
“Leave it to me, Mr. Hoover.” He stood up, his eyes hard and his mouth determined. “You’d better take your papers.”
“They’ll be in my private safe, Mr. President.”
“I’m sure they will, Mr. Hoover.” And the President walked across to a telephone on a small mahogany desk. As he stretched out a finger to press a button he turned towards the older man. “Good-day, Mr. Hoover.”
“Good-day, Mr. President.”
Extract from transcript of CIA phone surveillance, February 1962
PERSON UNDER SURVEILLANCE:
Angelo Bruno.
STATUS:
Mafia head Philadelphia.
INCOMING CALLER IF IDENTIFIED:
Willie Weisburg.
STATUS:
Associate of Angelo Bruno.
Weisburg: “… see what Kennedy done. With Kennedy a guy should take a knife, like one of them other guys, and stab and kill the fucker, where he is now. Somebody should kill the fucker. I mean it. This is true. But I tell you something. I hope I get a week’s notice. I’ll kill. Right in the fucking White House. Somebody’s got to get rid of this fucker.”
As the months went by Boyd spent much of his free time with Otto Schultz and his family and friends. None of the friends were connected with the CIA but they were all aware that Otto Schultz was a senior man at Langley. There were sometimes joking references to his job but that was as far as they went.
Boyd had operated as an SIS field agent in a number of countries but he found Americans easier to get on with than Europeans. The bonhomie was, perhaps, overdone, but it made for easy relationships and a lack of the usual bureaucratic difficulties that applied in most foreign countries. There were two or three pretty girls whom Patsy manoeuvred in Boyd’s direction. He took them out and obviously enjoyed their company. He slept with one of them and had vaguely thought of marriage, until she announced one weekend that she was marrying a White House aide whom they all disliked as an obvious boot-licker.
Boyd’s favourite place was Great Falls, particularly the old pathways linking the locks on the abandoned Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. He sometimes persuaded the family to hire bicycles for long rides along the canal bank. They were amused that their visitor took them to places that they had never been to before despite living in the area. It was on one of these trips when Otto Schultz and Boyd had been left to guard the picnic basket while the others explored that Schultz first broached the question.
“We’ve asked for your posting to be extended, Jimmy. How do you feel about that?”
“Flattered, I suppose. I don’t suppose London will agree. They don’t like us getting our feet under other people’s tables for too long.”
Schultz smiled at the phrase. “What’s that other thing you say—knock ’em for six?”
Boyd laughed. “I don’t know why that amuses you so.”
“It’s kinda neat. Anyway, would you like to stay?”
“If it doesn’t hinder my promotion—yes.”
“One or two people have asked me if you’d be interested in joining us. All official and above board. No funny business.”
Boyd turned his head to look at the American. “To do what, Otto?”
“We spend a lot of time dealing with Britishers, one way and another. Goodies and baddies. We think we sometimes go about it the wrong way and maybe you
