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

necessarily because of Lindbergh’s politics. The FBI director already had a thick file on the flier hero, started after Lindbergh supposedly credited the Treasury Department, rather than the FBI, with solving the kidnapping and murder of his infant son.
    FDR was sufficiently pleased with Hoover’s zeal in monitoring Lindbergh and other administration critics that he sent the director an artfully vague note of gratitude. “Dear Edgar,” it began, “I have intended writing you for some time to thank you for the many interesting and valuable reports that you have made to me regarding the fast moving situations of the last few months.” Hoover’s response bordered on the mawkish. “The personal note which you directed to me on June 14, 1940,” he wrote back, “is one of the most inspiring messages which I have ever been privileged to receive; and, indeed, I look upon it as rather a symbol of the principles for which our Nation stands. When the President of our country, bearing the weight of untold burdens, takes the time to express himself to one of his Bureau heads, there is implanted in the hearts of the recipients a renewed strength and vigor to carry on their tasks.” The letter contained an enclosure, the latest information on FDR’s enemies.
    The President’s actions in employing his chief spy catcher against enemy agents and potential saboteurs were legitimate. His siccing Hoover on what he saw as opponents of military preparedness was, if less defensible, at least politically explainable. But the next use to which FDR put Hoover clearly breached an ethical wall. On June 25, 1940, Vincent Astor, conducting another off-the-books operation in New York, gave FDR some curious political intelligence. Wendell Willkie, liberal businessman and political neophyte, had been nominated as the Republican presidential candidate that month in Philadelphia. “Within the last few days,” Astor wrote, “Wendell Willkie has asked J. Edgar Hoover to run on his Vice Presidential ticket. Hoover’s reply to this was that, in view of the many fine things that you had done for him and the FBI, he would consider anything of the sort an act of great disloyalty to you, and therefore would not entertain any such proposition.” Encouraged by Hoover’s fealty, FDR had a little matter that he wanted the director to tend to, keeping an administration skeleton securely in the closet. Vice President Henry Wallace, possessed of an interest in mysticism and the occult, had corresponded with a White Russian spiritualist with whom he traded utopian plans for world peace. Wallace’s handwritten letters to the Russian also supposedly contained disparaging observations about FDR. Wallace claimed that the correspondence was false. Nevertheless, the treasurer of the Republican National Committee had managed to obtain copies, and the RNC had a press release prepared to make public Wallace’s indiscreet comments. Hoover was able to obtain the correspondence and the Republican release, which he showed to FDR, and which indeed brimmed with potential embarrassment for the President.
    How Roosevelt handled the potential threat is now known because of the discovery in recent years of a secret device he had concealed in his office. Inside a drawer of FDR’s desk was a panel with buttons reading Record, Pause, Rewind, Idle, and Playback. They controlled a recording system in place since August 1940. The year before, FDR had been badly burned when he was misquoted after a private meeting in the Oval Office with a group of senators. Word had leaked out that the President had said America’s defense perimeter began at the Rhine. The implication was that the United States would go to war if German troops crossed their own river. A White House stenographer, Henry Kannee, subsequently came up with a solution to avoid repetitions of such distortions—a secret record of what exactly was