The Senator, The Director & The Comic Books: Kefauver, Hoover and the 1950 Anti-Comic Book Questionaire
Senator
Estes Kefauver and FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover, had an interesting relationship
over the years. Files reveal a raft of
correspondence between the two, almost all of it complimenting each other,
however the relationship between Kefauver and Hoover got off to a rocky
start. In January, 1947, Hoover was
offended enough by remarks made by Kefauver to raise them with the then US
Attorney General Tom Clark. Hoover took
umbrage at a report issued by Kefauver in which the FBI were painted as novices
and that the Truman administration was planning to cut funding to the FBI as a
whole. Hoover’s outrage was passed on to
both Clark and also Kefauver directly, resulting in an instant apology from
Kefauver in which he claimed ignorance to the remarks and deflected the blame
onto his underlings. “Certainly no one
on the Committee, or connected with the committee wish to do you or the
wonderful work of the F.B.I. an injustice,” Kefauver wrote to Hoover, “and I
regret exceedingly if any injustices were done. The report you will notice is
by the Staff to the Members of the sub-Committee. It was not prepared by the sub-Committee.”
This apology and even the deflection would have appealed to Hoover who forgave
Kefauver, but never forgot the slight.
Files also
reveal that Hoover wasn't that enamored of Kefauver in private, often
complaining about Kefauver using Hoover’s image without permission and
especially irate with Kefauver’s constant requests to the FBI for background
checks and information, with Kefauver going as far as to request that the FBI
provide the same kind of protection to him as the Secret Service did to the
President – a request that was denied – and that his son be given use the FBI
shooting range to ‘try out’ a pistol that he had been gifted as a Christmas
present in 1962. But, no matter what the
FBI might have privately thought of Kefauver, it was always noted that Kefauver
was on a first name basis with J Edgar Hoover and such a relationship came with
a high degree of discretion and politeness.
The connection between Hoover and Kefauver had its advantages
though. In 1960 Kefauver was the subject
of a smear campaign run by the Ku Klux Klan as he was running for re-election.
The smear was that Kefauver was far too liberal to be effective as a Southern
senator, that he had met black leaders in private and public and was
sympathetic to communists and coloured people. The FBI investigated the smear
campaign fully and was able to both identify the people behind it put a stop to
it. Along the way they were able to thwart death threats and other accusations
levied against Kefauver, which seems to be the usual practice for politicians
worldwide.
Whatever
Hoover and the FBI might have thought of Kefauver and vice-versa was irrelevant
to the two major committees that Kefauver headed during his time in the
Senate. In his first, the Investigation
into Organised Crime in 1951, which was famously televised, Kefauver did the
FBI a major favour by turning the spotlight onto the Mafia and avoiding the
tricky question as to why the FBI had never properly investigated their
activities. In 1954 Kefauver released
remarks by Hoover (from 1951) in which Hoover praised the work that the Crime
Committee were undertaking, commenting, rather disingenuously, that Kefauver’s
committee had brought to light a part of crime in America that was previously
hidden from view, and thus giving the impression that the FBI had been acting
all along.
Despite the
assurances of friendship towards Kefauver from Hoover, it didn’t stop the FBI
from collecting information about Kefauver’s private life, all of which was
passed onto an eager Hoover. Kefauver’s
files contained information about potential bribes and bumbling, along with his
apparent interest in young women who were not his wife, the FBI gleefully
passing onto Kefauver a letter from one Marion Horio who, in 1952, complained
about the ‘fat headed’ Kefauver keeping ‘concubines’ and ‘B-Girls’. If the FBI
had chosen to act upon this information in 1952, then history might have been
forever altered in regards to the Senate Hearings into comic books in 1954,
but, as noted, Kefauver had protection at the highest level and the senate
investigation into juvenile delinquency was one that Hoover and the FBI
gleefully leapt into with gusto.
In 1948
Hoover became aware of Kefauver’s interest in juvenile delinquency in January
1948 when he read Kefauver’s remarks in the Congressional Record. The comments
so moved Hoover that he dashed off a quick note of praise, the results of which
would see the FBI providing its resources to Kefauver and his Senate Committee. In May, 1950, Kefauver visited Washington and
attempted to meet Hoover with a view of obtaining information. It wasn’t to be as Hoover was out of the
office when Kefauver stopped by, resulting in a memo being dashed off to
Hoover’s right hand man, Clyde Tolson.
The memo mentioned how Kefauver was keen to get his hands on speeches
and articles by Hoover about the ‘evils of comics’ and general advice on how to
screen people in his office. Hoover
later wrote on the memo, “Ok to send articles but I think we should avoid
telling him how to run his investigation”.
In this way Hoover was able to keep his distance, while appearing to be
assisting.
In August,
1950, Kefauver wrote to a number of Government agencies, professionals, academics
and comic book publishers asking them to complete a questionnaire. The answers to the questions – seven in total
for non-comic related people and four for comic book related people – resulted
in over seventy respondents. The answers
themselves took up 254 pages of a report tabled during the senate hearings, but
this report was not made freely available to the public, thus the questions,
and answers, have remained unseen but for a few people. Here, for the first
time since 1950, are the questions and answers that were submitted both to and
from the FBI.
The ten
pages that the FBI sent back to Kefauver were quoted during the senate hearings
as absolute proof that comic books corrupted the youth of the day. This is despite the FBI pointing to other
factors in the community at the time and the overall positive effects that
non-crime and non-horror comic books could have on children. Education
standards, religion, lack of parental guidance, poverty, lack of respect for
law and authority and more were cited in the report, yet these were glossed
over during the senate hearings. One
answer that was certainly overlooked and ignored was the FBIs response when
asked for statistics to prove juvenile crime can be directly linked to comic
books. “The FBI does not have statistical data regarding the number of crimes
which can be traced directly to the reading of comic books.” Either the FBI had no record, or there simply
was no proof anywhere. The truth, as history as shown, was more the latter than
the former. Still, this didn't dissuade Kefauver from his campaign to eliminate
comic books from the face of America and, by proxy, the rest of the world.
Immediately
after the senate hearings, in June, 1954, Kefauver made arrangements to appear
on national television and in doing so managed to anger Hoover. The FBI were contacted and informed that
Kefauver planned to directly quote a 1951 letter from Hoover on the subject of
juvenile delinquency, and as such the television station required a “good
photograph” of the director. The memo
was passed on to Hoover who angrily wrote at the bottom, “I certainly don’t
approve of this” and the matter was closed.
Kefauver made one more attempt to link his crusade on juvenile
delinquency with Hoover, extending an invite in October 1957 for Hoover to appear
on a proposed new television show about the subject. This time the message got across, Hoover did
not appear on television, had no desire to and it would be a waste of the
producer to even approach the FBI.
Despite the
often bizarre and inappropriate requests Hoover and Kefauver remained in close
contact, exchanging books and letters.
1960 saw the major investigation into the smear campaign which would
have brought the two men together yet again.
In their last noted exchange, Hoover wrote to Kefauver when the latter
fell ill in May 1963 and was admitted to hospital with pneumonia. Kefauver
wasted no time in responding and when Kefauver passed away in August, 1963,
Hoover instantly sent a telegram to his wife, expressing his deep sorrow at her
loss. Ironically the comic book industry
that Kefauver had done so much to destroy in 1954 was starting to re-emerge
with Marvel Comics beginning to establish its super hero universe and DC also
following suit, ironically in the same month Kefauver died, linking their
pre-Kefauver era with their post-Kefauver era with Justice League of America
#21 with a cross-over between the Justice Society of America and the Justice
League. It was proof that the comic book
industry could survive almost anything that was thrown at it. It was hit by Kefauver, and the FBI, and hit
hard, but the blow wasn't as fatal as first thought. People whose careers
Kefauver had ruined with his crusade slowly started to find work in their
chosen industry, some never returned, others thrived and became bigger and
better than ever.
Kefauver
would have hated what was published after his death. That alone is a worthy epitaph.
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