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As with any government agency, law enforcement is hardly immune from the reach of political influence. Logan Sanford, the KBI’s second director who served from 1957 to 1969—and an ardent champion of Nye’s loyal service—noted, in a 1988 interview reviewing his accomplishments as director, that he was fairly free from political pressures himself, one reason the KBI grew stronger and progressed as far as it did during his tenure. When Sanford was offered the post by then Attorney General John Anderson, the AG simply said, “You take over, you run it, if I have any objections, I’ll let you know.”[211]
In that same interview, nearly two decades after his retirement, “Sanford noted that politics did not play a role during his time with the KBI, and until after he had left there was never a hint of political involvement in hiring practices or direction of the Bureau”[212]—clearly implying that political forces had already influenced official KBI affairs.
But Harold Nye, the director succeeding Sanford, was loath to bend to the will of politicians, and that intractability eventually put his head on the line.
With the election of Vern Miller as Kansas attorney general—and his taking office in 1971, two years into Harold Nye’s tenure as KBI director—the bureau’s immunity to political influence was about to expire.
Miller, a flamboyant “super cop” as colleagues and the press dubbed him,[213] had promised in his election campaign to combat the possession of marijuana and amphetamines and “leap into the drug-ridden hippie communes of Lawrence [Kansas] with both feet.”[214] And leap he did, quite literally, to the chagrin of many in Kansas law enforcement, though much to the amusement of the media.
Imagine, if you will, the most senior law enforcement official in the state hiding in the trunk of an undercover agent’s car at the scene of a “major” drug bust in Wichita. Once Miller whispered the signal by radio to reinforcements surrounding the area, he popped out of the trunk and leaped into action. Officers rushed to the scene, where they found the AG holding a suspect at gunpoint.
But the night was young, so Miller got back into the trunk for another raid in another section of town, where—after lying in wait for half an hour, still in the trunk—he again popped out on signal, surprising the suspect who fled the scene with Miller in hot pursuit for two blocks, where the attorney general finally tackled the perp, and sat on him until arresting officers arrived to take him away. Fortunately for all, the press had been staged nearby to memorialize the events.
In an unmistakable sign validating Logan Sanford’s chagrin over politics impacting KBI affairs, Vern Miller made it clear he wanted his own man installed as director of the bureau—the position currently held by Harold Nye—whose occupant serves solely at the pleasure of the attorney general. And by all accounts, this attorney general had little pleasure for by-the-book traditionalists he couldn’t control.
On the very day he took office, January 11, 1971, Miller abruptly replaced Nye as KBI director, preferring instead someone who would be “responsive to the attorney general’s office and its role.”[215] Someone unlike Harold Nye, whose contempt for the bootlicking side of politics—especially the “go along to get along” attitude many powerful politicians expect from those in their orbit—put him at odds with the new AG, who instead picked Sergeant Fred Howard, an old friend of Miller’s from the Kansas Highway Patrol, to replace Nye as head of the bureau.
Under the state’s civil service statutes, however, Miller could not fire Nye without cause, a man whose performance was first-rate. A fifteen-year veteran of the KBI, Harold Nye was well-liked and widely respected within and beyond the bureau, so Miller needed to find some solution that would ease internal resentments and avoid a mass exodus of seasoned agents loyal to Nye.
Unfortunately, mired in a situation over which he had little control, Nye gave the AG the opportunity he needed to make his move. Harold’s son Ron tells the tale:
Between January and June of 1971 Dad was working with FBI agents out of Kansas City on a major undercover operation, one not coordinated with other KBI personnel or even the attorney general. For whatever reasons the feds made it clear that my dad couldn't bring anyone else into this, it was a big deal, something about organized crime syndicates, I think, and the FBI may have suspected there was corruption higher up, where a strict "need to know" basis had to be enforced. The FBI trusted my dad, he'd worked with them for years, and being an independent sort Dad had no issues with discretion; the less he had to deal with higher-ups, the better. But by this time Miller was out to get him, and actually had Dad followed, searching for any reason to fire him.
I used to race hot rods on the weekend, and one night Dad showed up at my house terribly agitated. He said he'd been working a covert operation out of town with his FBI buddies, but told the boss he was in Topeka. While the operation was underway Dad noticed he was being tailed by someone, and since he couldn't use his state car, he needed a "getaway," and asked if my gasser “Godzilla” was here. I said “Yes,” and he said, “Let's go!”
Without another word, I grabbed my keys and we jumped into Godzilla and took off. We hauled out of the driveway, headlights off, and I pushed that gasser as hard as it would go. Whoever was in that vehicle following us never got close enough to see my license tag.
Speeding down Topeka Boulevard I took a highway on-ramp heading west. My car easily hit 150 mph and I never saw the headlights of our tail even once. Certain we had lost them, I took the next exit off and Dad, seeing a pay phone, asked me to pull over. As I sat there with the engine off, I was able to hear his conversation; he'd called an FBI agent in Kansas City and was explaining his situation about the AG. Dad asked the agent if he would come into the office with him and explain what they were working on, but the agent said No, he was not going to take on the AG and "blow up" their undercover work. And that was that.
On the ride back home Dad was pretty upset, grousing about the predicament he was in now. He couldn't reveal his activities to the AG, which was the only way he could explain why he was not where he said he was. It didn't take long for Miller to take Dad down on some non-existent "morals" violation. Unable to defend himself, Dad was fired on the spot.
But when the AG learned that he had no legal grounds to fire him, the only thing he could do was reduce Dad to the lowest possible rank, Agent 1, and exiled him to the boonies of western Kansas, where he could run a backwater division there and keep his mouth shut.
No one knew the true reason behind Miller’s decision to fire Harold Nye. But Ron is convinced his father knew something of sufficient gravity that higher ups did not want made public. Whatever this knowledge might have been, Ron believes it was related to the Clutter investigation, the one case that had bothered his dad ever since it was officially closed in 1960.
