Chancellor heard the birds first. He opened his eyes and focused on the skylight he had built in the ceiling between the heavy beams of his bedroom. Light was filtering through the tall trees.
He was home. It seemed as if he had been away for years. And it was a very special morning. It was the first morning of his life that he wanted to work in his own home.
He got out of bed, put on his bathrobe, and went downstairs. Everything was as he had left it, but infinitely neater. He was glad he had kept the previous owner’s furniture; it was comfortable and profuse with wood and looked lived in.
He walked across the room to the door leading into the kitchen. It was spotless, everything in its place. He was grateful to Mrs. Alcott, the stern-faced but cheerful housekeeper he had inherited with the house.
He brewed coffee and took it to his office. It had been the previous owner’s study, on the west side of the house with enormous windows in the garden-side walls, light oak paneling everywhere else.
The Nuremberg cartons were stacked neatly in the corner by the door, next to his Xerox machine. That certainly was not how he had left them; he’d opened them indiscriminately, scattering the contents over the floor. He wondered who had gone to the trouble to repack them. Again Mrs. Alcott come to mind. Or had Josh and Tony driven down, trying to put another part of his life together?
The cartons would stay in the corner. Nuremberg could wait. He had something else to do. He walked over to the long hatch table beneath the far window. His equipment was there, all the equipment he needed. Two yellow pads were on the left by the telephone, his sharpened pencils in the pewter tankard beside them. He carried his tools to the large coffee table in front of his leather couch and sat down. There was no hesitation. His thoughts came as rapidly as he could write.
To: Anthony Morgan, Editor.
Outline: Hoover Manuscript—Book Untitled.
In the prologue a well-known military figure—a sympathetic man, a thinker in the George Marshall tradition—has returned from a tour in Southeast Asia. He is about to confound Washington’s military establishment with evidence of grossly inflated success estimates and, more important, proof of incompetence and corruption in the command ranks. Wholesale slaughter has been the result of ineptness and mendacity in Saigon. Those few colleagues who know what he is about to do have pleaded with him not to do it; they claim his timing is disastrous. He replies that the way the war is being prosecuted is a disaster.
The soldier is approached by a stranger, who delivers a message to him, referring to an event that took place years ago; an incident born of temporary derangement, under extreme stress, but nevertheless an act of such impropriety—even indecency—that its revelation would discredit the soldier and destroy his reputation, his career, his wife, and his family.
The stranger demands that the soldier destroy the Saigon report, make no charges, remain silent. In essence, he is to let the military status quo continue—and thus, intrinsically, the slaughter. Failure to do so will result in the exposure of the damaging information. He is given twenty-four hours to decide.
The soldier’s frustration is climaxed by the longest casualty list forwarded from Saigon in months. The moment of decision comes. He is tormented, but ultimately he cannot disobey the stranger’s command.
In his living room he takes a file of papers from his briefcase (the incriminating evidence he brought back from Southeast Asia), crumples the pages and burns them in the fireplace.
There is a change of scene. We see the stranger walk into an enormous vault in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He goes to a cabinet, opens it, and replaces the soldier’s file. He closes the drawer and locks it.
Printed in the center of the drawer’s index tab is:
A-L—Property of the Director
Peter sat back on the couch and scanned what he had written. He wondered if MacAndrew would recognize him-self. From what he had learned about him the fictionalized portrait was applicable. The general’s influence would be sorely missed at the Pentagon. But not by the Pentagon.
In the opening chapter four or five influential, very different people—in government and out—are shown in the grip of various stages of extortion. The blackmailers are concerned only with silencing dissent. Leaders of legitimate organizations representing the disaffected, the underprivileged, and the minorities are attacked. Accusations based on remote association, innuendo, hearsay, and manufactured evidence are hurled at the dissenters, crippling their effectiveness. The country is on its way to becoming a police state.
Peter stopped, struck by the words. Remote association, innuendo, hearsay, and manufactured evidence. They were Phyllis Maxwell’s words.
He went back to his writing.
The main character will be different from the usual suspense novel hero. I see him as an attractive middle-forties lawyer with a wife and two or three children. His name is Alexander Meredith. He is a late bloomer, just beginning to recognize his capacities. He has come to Washington for an interim appointment with the Justice Department. His field is criminal law. He’s a detail man with broad knowledge.
He has been hired to evaluate the procedures used by certain departments of the Federal Bureau of Investigation—a job created by the alarming increase of questionable methods used by the bureau’s field offices. Unsubstantiated charges have been made public; illegal searches and seizures have multiplied. Prosecutors at Justice are concerned that legitimate cases will be thrown out of court due to constitutional violations.
Meredith has been at the Washington job for a year, and what began as a relatively routine professional assignment has exploded into a series of staggering revelations.
Within the Federal Bureau of Investigation there is an ongoing covert operation designed to gather inflammatory information on a wide spectrum of public and private figures. Meredith makes the connection between several newspaper stories about influential men doing the astonishingly unexpected, and names he has unearthed at the bureau. These are, of course, the victims described in the first chapter. Two are startling. The first is a Supreme Court justice—a man Hoover is known to loathe—who suddenly resigns from the bench. The second is a black civil rights leader publicly condemned by Hoover, who is found dead, a suicide.
Alarmed, Meredith begins a search for concrete evidence of the illegal practices carried out within the FBI. He ingratiates himself with executive personnel close to Hoover. He feigns sympathies he does not have. He digs deeper and deeper, and what he discovers frightens him even more.
At the highest level of the bureau there is a small corps of fanatics blindly devoted to Hoover. They implement policies and carry out orders issued by the director with the full knowledge that many are grossly illegal. Meredith finds that there is one man, assigned to the field office in La Jolla, California, who acts as Hoover’s gunslinger. He consistently appears on the scene when the unexpected action of a national figure takes place. His description will match that of the stranger in the prologue.
Chancellor put down the pencil and finished his coffee. He thought about Alan Longworth, Hoover’s “gunslinger” in reality. Longworth remained an enigma. Assuming the premise that it was remorse over his betrayal of Hoover that had brought the agent to Malibu, why would he jeopardize his current situation in Hawaii? Why had he broken an agreement that could cost him his life? Why, ultimately, had he sent Peter to Daniel Sutherland, who instantly identified the former FBI man?
Was Longworth’s guilt so pervasive that there was nothing left of self-interest? Was his need for revenge so intense that nothing eke mattered? Apparently, that was the case. He had not hesitated to destroy MacAndrew in the process. And because Longworth had done that, Chancellor felt no compunction at including a portrait of the man in his novel.
Meredith gathers in his evidence; it is appalling. J. Edgar Hoover has compiled several thousand dossiers on the nation’s most influential people. They contain all manner of rumors, half-truths, and lies. Also, since few humans are saints, the files are rife with documented facts of the most damaging nature. Sexual appetites and aberrations are dwelled upon at length, the public exposure of which would destroy hundreds of men and women who otherwise conduct themselves responsibly, often brilliantly.
The existence of these files constitutes a threat to the country. What’s terrifying is that Hoover is actually using them. He is systematically making contact with scores of subjects he believes are in opposition to policies he favors, threatening to expose their private weaknesses if they do not retreat from their positions.
Meredith knows that the most alarming question of all must be answered: Is Hoover acting alone or has he allies? For if he has made a pact with his ideological counterparts in the intelligence community, the Congress, or the White House, the republic may well be near a state of collapse.
Meredith decides to take his evidence to an assistant attorney general. From that moment on, his life becomes virtually unbearable. The assistant A.G. is a decent man, although frightened. He is, however, the weapon; members of his staff have leaked portions of Alex’s report back to the bureau. The assistant attorney general removes it, and in his one courageous move, delivers it secretly to the office of a senator.
Peter leaned back on the couch and stretched. He had a prototype for his senator. Less than a year ago the man had been his party’s leading contender for the presidential nomination. He had held millions transfixed with the fiery integrity of his eyes. The incumbent President was no match for the senator’s clarity of thought, the depth of his vision, and his ability to communicate. His reasoned, calm exposition of the issues had evoked a sweeping acceptance across the land. And then something had happened to him. In a brief few minutes during a snowy winter morning the contest had been aborted. An intemperate speech had suicidally been delivered by an exhausted campaigner; the senator was effectively disqualified.
Chancellor leaned forward and took a fresh pencil from the tankard.
A pattern of psychological harassment is implemented against Meredith. His every move is watched; he is placed under continuous surveillance. Telephone calls—some obscene, some threats of physical abuse—are made to his wife. His children are questioned about their father by FBI agents during and after school hours. Automobiles wait outside the Meredith house at night; flashlights shine into darkened windows. Every day becomes a nightmare; the nights themselves are still worse.
The point is to cast doubt upon Meredith’s credibility by discrediting his life. He goes to the authorities; he tries to confront the men at the bureau as well as those following him; he approaches his congressman. All efforts to escape his own personal trial by terror fail. He is driven to the brink of resignation. Even the assistant attorney general will have no more to do with him. The man has been warned. Hoover’s insidious controls are everywhere.
You’ll note that I have used Hoover’s name. As they say, I speak ill of the dead without the slightest compunction—?
It was not “they” who said that, thought Chancellor, pausing for a second. It was Phyllis Maxwell who said it.
—? and, Mean Person, I intend to use it in the book. I see no reason to even faintly disguise the identity or cloak it in some nonsense like J. Edwin Haverford, praetor of the Federated Branch of Intelligence. I want to call him what he was: a dangerous megalomaniac who should have been forced from office twenty years ago. A monster—?
Phyllis Maxwell again. When he thought about it, the newspaperwoman had painted such a memorable—and grotesque—portrait that she was as much a springboard as Longworth had been. Her fury was contagious.
—whose tactics were more in tune with the policies of the Third Reich than those of a democratic society. I want people to be outraged by J. Edgar Hoover’s manipulations. (So you’d better show this to the legal department—Steve will probably have apoplexy and start some kind of estate search to see if there are relatives around who might sue.)
The preceding material will require six chapters, or roughly one third of the book. At this juncture, the focus will shift from Meredith to the victims of Hoover’s extortions. Primarily to the senator who is revealed to have been a target of Hoover’s.
Since these victims are men of considerable influence in the government, it’s credible that two of them would make contact. Here it will be the senator and an outspoken member of the cabinet who has opposed the President and is forced to resign. I envision a scene in which two strong figures admit to being helpless under Hoover’s assault. They are worthwhile giants brought to bay by an aging jackal.
However, a positive result comes from their meeting. They recognize the obvious: If Hoover can silence them, he can silence others. So they gather together a small group of men—
Peter lifted the pencil from the paper. He remembered Daniel Sutherland’s words about the Washington group: “And women, Mr. Chancellor.” But what kind of women would be recruited? Or selected? He smiled to himself. Why not a newspaperwoman? A character patterned after Phyllis Maxwell. However, unlike her; in the book the woman had to be a victim before becoming a member of the group. That was vital.
—and women for the purpose of mounting a defense against Hoover’s insidious attacks. They have a starting point: Hoover’s gunslinger. They go to the intelligence community and are covertly given every scrap of information that can be unearthed about the man. Dossiers, service records, bank statements, credit references—everything available.
Chancellor stopped writing. There it was again, the enigma named Longworth. Sutherland said that they had appealed to the agent’s conscience and had rewarded him with a soft job in Maui, his safety guaranteed. All that was, perhaps, credible, but what had Hoover been doing in the meantime? Had he just sat on his ass and said, “Sure, Alan, my boy. Your twenty years are up and you deserve your pension, and you have my best wishes for a pleasant retirement”?
Not likely. The Hoover that had been described to him would have had Longworth killed before cutting him loose.
There had to be another explanation.
The gunslinger is reached by the senator’s group. Through a combination of pressures he is recruited, and a medical deception is mounted. The man complains of prolonged abdominal pains and is sent to Walter Reed Hospital. The “report” is forwarded to Hoover: The agent is riddled with duodenal cancer. It has spread beyond surgery; his life expectancy is no more than a few months at best.
Hoover has no alternative. He releases the man, believing the agent is going home to die.
Thus, the anti-Hoover Nucleus is formed. The “retired” field agent is isolated and put to work. It will be established that he not only had access to the files but, being less a saint than an opportunist, pored over the dossiers with an appetite worthy of a KGB bureaucrat in the middle of a purge.
He provides the anti-Hoover group with hundreds of names and biographies. Names and facts trigger other names and additional facts. A master list of potential victims is prepared.
Its scope is frightening. Included are not only powerful men in the three branches of government but leaders of industry, labor, the academic world, and the news media.
The Nucleus—the name of the Washington group—must act immediately.
Confidential appointments are arranged. The agent is sent to scores of subjects, warning them of Hoover’s dossiers.
Their strategy will be described in rapid scenes. I won’t dwell on the specific information. It would be too confusing to introduce a whole new set of characters.
Speaking of the characters, I’ll get to them shortly. I want to carry out the plot line first.
Peter took a new pencil.
The turning point comes with two events: The first is when Alexander Meredith is contacted by the Nucleus. The second is the decision on the part of two or three of the Nucleus to assassinate Hoover.
This decision will be arrived at gradually, for these men are not killers. They come to regard assassination as an acceptable solution, and that is their unacceptable flaw. When Meredith learns of this, knowing that it is the decision of superior minds, all his values are put to a final test. For him murder cannot be a solution. He now struggles against opposing forces: the fanatics of the Bureau and those of the Nucleus.
His attempts to stop the assassination and expose the illegalities of the bureau supply the momentum to carry the book to its conclusion.
Fictionally, the most difficult aspect of the narrative will be precisely what horrifies Alex Meredith: the decision on the part of two or three extraordinary people to accept murder as the solution.
The blocks of logic here will have to be built carefully, so that no other solution appears to be at hand. I think the acceptance of assassination will come with two events “rearranged” from recent history: the withdrawal of the most qualified man from the presidential race, and the resignation of an innovative justice of the Supreme Court.
The Nucleus recognizes both of these catastrophes as the work of J. Edgar Hoover. Irreparable damage is being done to the body politic.
The pencil broke, its point shattered under the force of his pressure. He was getting angry again, and the rage should be used later, when he was writing the novel itself. Now was the time to think.
History had provided a peaceful solution. A madman’s death and the destruction of his recorded poisons had allowed the Nucleus—if Sutherland was right—to disband. The alert was over.
These were the facts. But he was not dealing with historical reality. What would such a group of concerned, decent people do if faced with the collapse of the checks and balances so vital to the open form of government? Would such a group consider execution? Assassination?
In one sense they would have no alternative. Yet in taking that action, they would be plunging themselves down to the same level as the murdered man. Therefore, not all would subscribe to such a solution, and no such solution would be openly proposed.
But two, or perhaps three, might consider it the only decision that could be made. And here would be the Nucleus’s flaw. Murder is murder, its definition altered only by specific conditions of war. Those who employ murder as a solution are ultimately no better than their targets. The Nucleus would harbor two or three members who would become committed killers.
As Peter conceived it fictionally.
In the Nucleus are two men, and perhaps a woman (the dramatic possibilities here are interesting), of stature, dedicated to the principles espoused by the rest of the group. What we see, however, is a gradual change in their perspectives. It is born of frustration and anguish, a genuine detestation of Hoover’s progress and the Nucleus’s apparent ineffectiveness. It is brought to a head by the manipulation of a presidential election and the repressive shaping of the court. They have been pushed to the wall; no alternatives remain. There is only assassination.
But that would remove only half the cancer, the other half being Hoover’s files. They must be taken. They cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of his successor after his death.
These rebels within the Nucleus conceive of a plan of execution and theft I think it should be written in a crosscut documentary style, the suspense heightened by the ingeniousness of the plan itself and the realization that at any moment an error of timing or reaction could blow it all apart.
This is as far as I want to go with the plot line at the moment.
Peter stretched his arms, wincing as a sharp pain shot through the muscles of his left shoulder. He did not give it an instant’s thought His concentration was on the page in front of him. Now it would begin. The people.
He started with shadows, formless shapes slowly coming into focus. And then names. As was his custom, he would sketch out his cast of characters, restricting each to a couple of pages, knowing that each in turn would lead to his or her own friends and enemies, known and unknown. Characters gave birth to other characters; it was often as simple as that.
In addition to those he had already considered—the soldier in the prologue, Alexander Meredith, Hoover’s gun-slinger, the senator, and the cabinet member—he would flesh out the group—the Nucleus—first. There would be several from outside the government: a scholar, a lawyer, perhaps. And unquestionably a judge, but not a Negro judge—that he could not do. There was only one Daniel Sutherland. And the women: They would have to be thought about carefully. The temptation to invent too close a fictional counterpart of Phyllis Maxwell had to be resisted. But some aspects of her would go into the book. He leaned forward and began.
There is a man in his seventies, an attorney named …
He could not tell how long he had been writing. Time was blurred, his concentration absolute. The sun was at quarter point in the sky, its rays streaming through the north window.
He looked at the pages next to the yellow pad; he had sketched no fewer than nine characters. His energy was flowing; he was grateful beyond words because the words were there at last.
The telephone rang, disorienting him. He walked across the room to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Is this here a writer by the name of Chancellor? A Peter Chancellor?” The man on the line spoke with a thick southern accent.
“Yes. This is Peter Chancellor.”
“What are you trying to do to me? You got no right—?”
“Who is this?”
“You know goddamned well who ah am.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Fun-nee. Your friend Longworth come to see me in Washington.”
“Alan Longworth?”
“You got it. And you’re huntin’ in the wrong fields! You want to start a Nigra’ version of 1861 all over again, you go right ahead. But you better know what you’re doin’.”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about Now, who the hell is this?”
“Congressman Walter Rawlins. Today’s Wednesday. I’ll be in New York on Sunday. We’re goin’ to meet.”
“Are we?”
“Yes. Before we both get our goddamned heads shot off.”