Records Show J. Edgar Hoover's Disdain for Columnist

FBI Director Spied on Jack Anderson, Referred to Him as a 'Jackal' and Accused Him of 'Vicious Lies'

In caustic comments on internal FBI memos, bureau director J. Edgar Hoover referred to prominent Washington columnist Jack Anderson with undisguised contempt, calling him "a jackal," while agents combed his articles for errors and hints about possible sources.

"This fellow Anderson and his ilk have minds that are lower than the regurgitated filth of vultures," Hoover typed on a memo dated April 30, 1951. It is one of hundreds from FBI files on Anderson, who died in 2005.

Anderson was a Hoover critic, once saying that the aging director, running the bureau well into his 80s, should have resigned a decade before. Other journalists suggested the same, but Anderson delivered that and a long career's worth of critical assessments of the bureau in a blunt style that enraged FBI officials.

FBI documents turned over to the Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act include copies of his columns with critical notes in the margins, summaries of his movements while under surveillance and memos detailing efforts to find sources who leaked information from deep inside government agencies.

The leaks fueled Anderson's Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated column, "Washington Merry-Go-Round," and helped him produce stories on scandals such as Watergate and the arms-for-hostages deal known as Iran-contra.

Anderson's muckraking style, honed under the column's founder, Drew Pearson, earned him a spot on President Nixon's enemies list, inspired Republican operatives to plot his killing and caused heartburn in Hoover's office at the FBI.

In one February 1971 memo, an unnamed agent went on for six pages, summarizing a radio interview in which the columnist "discussed the daily habits of the director and associate director . . . including their means of transportation to FBI headquarters in the morning, the place where they take lunch and dinner."

FBI officials claimed incessantly over the years in internal documents that the columnist got his facts wrong.

"This is the greatest conglomeration of vicious lies that this jackal has ever put forth," Hoover scribbled next to a copy of one Anderson column. The column said that Hoover had collected more than a quarter of a million dollars in royalties from three books researched and ghostwritten for him by FBI agents on government time.

Hoover, in another instance, used the same characterization when he tried to clear the air with House Speaker Carl Albert.

But Anderson was sympathetic to at least some of Hoover's campaigns, including his pursuit of communists, the documents show.

In a Jan. 15, 1967, appearance on the "Long John Nebel" radio show, Anderson described himself as a liberal but urged so-called right-wingers to let Hoover and the FBI handle investigations of suspected communists.

"I think he's been pretty careful about not violating civil rights," Anderson said of Hoover. "I have no quarrel with his investigation of communists. I would urge the extremists of the nation to let him continue to do it and not to interfere with him -- not to try to do it themselves."

After Anderson died Dec. 17, 2005, FBI agents called Anderson's widow to say they wanted to search his papers. At the time, the FBI confirmed it wanted to remove any classified materials from Anderson's archives, located at George Washington University, before they were made available to the public.

The government eventually backed off.

Anderson's biographer, George Washington University journalism professor Mark Feldstein, said he was pleased the FBI was finally releasing its files on the journalist. "I'm still not convinced this is all of it," Feldstein added.

The documents, which were released Sept. 30, are heavily edited, and some names have been removed.

"Why they would still need to censor these documents after he's dead and his sources are gone, at this stage, seems pretty questionable to me," Feldstein said Friday. "But this new material is a good thing for historians, scholars and, ultimately, the public, to find out what the FBI was up to in the dark days of J. Edgar Hoover."