Joseph E. Persico by Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR, World War II Espionage

the attorney general’s qualms. The nation was in peril.
    FDR was not yet done. He asked Attorney General Jackson later that May if there existed “any law or executive order under which it would be possible for us to open and inspect outgoing . . . or incoming mail to and from certain foreign nations” to uncover “Fifth Column activities—sabotage, antigovernment propaganda, military secrets, etc.” Jackson responded with the answer the President did not want to hear. Opening mail was illegal. Nevertheless, Hoover, who by now well understood his president, began training FBI agents in mail-opening techniques.
    The furtive and dour Hoover and the gregarious and charming Roosevelt developed a surprising rapport, something approaching friendship. Whenever he arrived at the President’s office, Hoover experienced the arms thrown up in welcome and the flattering use of his first name. As Sam Rosenman once described a Roosevelt greeting, “[H]e could make a casual visitor believe that nothing was so important to him that day as this particular visit, and that he had been waiting all day for this hour to arrive.” Ed Tamm recalled accompanying his boss to the White House as many as thirty times, and the director and FDR, Tamm said, “got along very, very well. There was always an obvious manifestation of friendship and admiration. Of course, Mr. Roosevelt had the ability to give that impression to everyone he dealt with, but he was
very, very
friendly to Mr. Hoover.” As Hoover himself put it, “I was very close to Franklin Delano Roosevelt personally and officially.”
    Hoover was already the scourge of liberals that he would remain for the rest of his life. His wiretapping, bugging of rooms, surreptitious break-ins, “black bag jobs” in bureau parlance, outraged champions of civil liberties in Congress. None of the disapproval hurt him at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. On May 16, 1940, FDR was guest of honor at the annual black-tie White House Correspondents dinner. Spotting Hoover among the guests, Roosevelt called out from the dais, “Edgar, what are they trying to do to you on the Hill?” “I don’t know, Mr. President,” Hoover answered. FDR made a thumbs-down gesture, and added with a voice loud enough for all to hear, “That’s for them.” Of course, the two men were using each other. But, there was more to it than mutual exploitation. Francis Biddle, who by then had succeeded Robert Jackson as attorney general, and who had known Roosevelt at Groton as the most patrician of Grotonians, commented, almost in disbelief, “The two men liked and understood each other.”
    Why should the President not have appreciated his federal police chief? Hoover appeared to be doing a splendid job, particularly at spy catching. German intelligence agents in the United States had been communicating with the Abwehr through a shortwave radio station on Long Island. Hoover’s men uncovered the operation and, instead of shutting it down, took it over. Their informant had been William Sebold, a German-born naturalized American citizen. During a visit to Germany, Sebold had been contacted by Abwehr agents who threatened the lives of his family still living in Germany if he did not spy for them. He agreed, but immediately upon his return to the United States reported the contact to the FBI, which took him on as a double agent at fifty dollars per week. He was to pretend to be working loyally for the Fatherland by radioing intelligence via the Long Island station. Sebold’s phony messages were exploited by the Departments of State, War, and Navy to feed false information to the Nazi regime. The flow of traffic coming from Germany tipped off the FBI to Abwehr intelligence targets and revealed new agents who had been recruited in America.
    So complete was the President’s confidence in Hoover that the relationship began to move into areas testing