Art Buchwald Couldn't Make This Man Laugh

CBSNews.com Exclusive: Famed Columnist's FBI File Shows J. Edgar Hoover Was No Fan

(CBS)  By CBSNews.com's Daniel Carty

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Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Art Buchwald poked fun at the powerful during his storied career - but one frequent target, longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, wasn’t laughing.

Hoover, who ran the federal law enforcement agency for nearly a half century, ordered agents to keep close tabs on the humorist - even having one G-man report on a Buchwald interview in Playboy, the columnist’s FBI file reveals.

Buchwald’s columns - including one in which he suggested Hoover didn’t exist and was a phantom named after the vacuum cleaner company - apparently rankled the FBI boss. Hoover repeatedly referred to Buchwald as a “sick comic,” according to the file, amassed over nearly two decades.

The 239-page file was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, which allows such documents to become public after the subject dies. Buchwald, whose Washington Post-based column was syndicated for decades, died in January 2007.

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Editor's Note: CBSNews.com producer Daniel Carty obtained the FBI file on Art Buchwald last year while a student at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism.

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Buchwald’s file dates back to June 18, 1956, when an unnamed FBI informant told agents the writer had received a visa to visit the Soviet Union while working for the New York Herald Tribune.

The informant, whose name was redacted from the FBI files, had been interviewed by Buchwald two years earlier and apparently held a grudge against the columnist for making him, in his words, “look like a fool.” The informant described Buchwald to agents as a “screwball.”

The bureau launched an investigation into the Soviet Union trip and found that Buchwald, who was traveling with a contingent of Air Force officials visiting an air show, had committed no acts of disloyalty and no further action was taken.

Buchwald reappeared on the bureau’s radar in 1961 when, in a satirical column, he claimed to have uncovered the “Orlov Plan.” Buchwald often created fictitious characters, and in this column said Soviet agent Serge Orlov revealed a plan to cripple the United States by using right-wing anti-communist groups to sow seeds of distrust in the nation.

“When I proposed the plan in Moscow the Kremlin thought I was crazy. But they figured they had nothing to lose. Well, you can see the results for yourself. The seeds of doubt about America are being planted by their own people and we’ve been making more progress in wrecking the U.S. Constitution in the last few years than my predecessors have been able to do since the Revolution,” Buchwald quoted “Orlov” as saying.

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Read Key Documents From Buchwald's FBI File

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Not all readers got the Cold War-era satire. Some sent letters to the FBI inquiring about the Orlov “plot.” John Lindsay, a New York congressman who would later become the city’s mayor and run for president, sarcastically praised Buchwald for the "reportorial know-how plus the good sense and good humor to uncover the Orlov Plan. He even beat J. Edgar Hoover."

Hoover, spurred by readers’ letters, renewed his interest in Buchwald. There is a handwritten note from the agency director in the margin of a clipping of the Orlov column: “Let me have summary on Art Buchwald.”

The following year, after moving from Paris to Washington, Buchwald visited FBI headquarters and met with Cartha DeLoach, a high-ranking official who rose to deputy director by the end of his 28-year career in 1970. During the visit, DeLoach criticized Buchwald for a column that suggested one-fifth of the 8,500 registered communists in America actually were undercover FBI agents.

According to a memo prepared for DeLoach, “Buchwald apologized for having written in the vein he did but noted that he meant no harm and was sorry that it was misinterpreted.”

In December 1964, Buchwald turned his pen directly on Hoover, joking that then-President Lyndon Johnson couldn’t fire the FBI director - because the lawman didn’t actually exist.

“What happened was that in 1925 the Reader’s Digest was printing an article on the newly formed Federal Bureau of Investigation and as they do with many pieces they signed it with a nom de plume,” the column read. “They got the word Hoover from the vacuum cleaner - to give the idea of a clean-up. Edgar was the name of one of the publisher’s nephews, and J. stood for jail.”

The column attracted much attention, with citizens ranging from Nebraska housewives to Indiana high school students writing to the director seeking the truth, according to correspondence in the bureau's files. In many cases, they received notes personally signed by Hoover, often with enclosures like “Communism and The Knowledge to Combat It!”

The column did not endear Buchwald to Hoover. In June 1965, an unnamed ABC News correspondent called DeLoach to inform him that Buchwald would be at his house one evening for a monthly poker game, in which the humorist had won money in 17 out of the last 18 sessions. The goal of the call was to set up a prank to throw Buchwald off his game. Hoover was to place a call to Buchwald during the evening informing him that agents had been ordered to pick him up following the article questioning the director's existence.

The crowd of would-be card sharks, which was to include key U.S. diplomat Llewellyn Thompson and officials from the White House and U.S. Information Agency, optimistically dubbed the game “Buchwald Will Lose Tonight.”

Hoover’s response: “I most certainly would have nothing to do with such a motley crew.”

Besides tracking poker games, agents also filled out their Buchwald files by perusing the April 1965 issue of Playboy magazine. The columnist told Playboy, “You’re allowed to make fun of the FBI because they have such a good sense of humor.” The FBI agent who read the interview was careful to note the rest of magazine was “typical trash,” according to internal memos.

Through the years, Hoover’s responses to Buchwald’s work got more colorful and personal. In response to one 1966 column predicting that communists would win the 1984 elections and actor George Hamilton would be the president overseeing the crisis, Hoover responded, “Who is the author of this tripe?” On a number of occasions, handwritten notes in the file labeled Buchwald a “sick, alleged humorist.”

In 1975, three years after Hoover’s death, Buchwald requested his own file, at which point the FBI stopped compiling information about him. In subsequent years, Buchwald continued to entertain audiences with columns and numerous books.

In 2006, when he started experiencing kidney failure, he chose to discontinue dialysis treatment and opted instead to live his remaining few weeks in hospice care. Even then, Buchwald’s humor was irrepressible.

Still alive five months after entering the hospice, he claimed to have earned the nickname “the man who would not die.” He even left the hospice in July 2006 to return to his Martha's Vineyard home, where he completed a book titled "Too Soon to Say Goodbye," which included eulogies from family and friends that had not yet been delivered.

He finally passed away on Jan. 17, 2007.

[one-american]

Typical CBS propaganda to run this stupid story about a typical slimy liberal writer.

[devman95]

further proof of the insanity of j. edgar hoover...and further reminder of the need to be wary about handing the government broad spy powers. nice piece of journalism and a welcome change from the usual pedestrian affairs that populate this website.

[devman95]

further proof of the insanity of j. edgar hoover...and further reminder of the need to be wary about handing the government broad spy powers. nice piece of journalism and a welcome change from the usual pedestrian affairs that populate this website.

[tootall10142]

I put this man on the list with larry flyn, hugh hefner ,richard pryor and george carlin. THese men are and were some of the few who stood and are still laughing at the people that spent time money and restless nights protecting the egos of the heads of our govt.

[mcvet]

Took a Republican President with guts to have Hoover "resign". He had too much on the Pervert boys for them to do a d&mn thing.

Posted by Obama4Janito at 06:24 PM : Jun 25, 2008
+
ROFLMAO Right!! ROFLMAO Now folks we all should give THIS Nazi a BIG Sieg Heil! Can you imagine, taken into account the SMALL BRAIN he was working with, the time to come up with this?? ANYONE who can work that hard with so LITTLE to work with must be acknowledged!! SO let''s all stand and shout it out!! SIEG HEIL!! ROFLMAO

[mcvet]

No, it was Lyndon Johnson. Johnson knew that J. Edgar had learned about and was keeping private the information about Jack Kennedy''''s first marriage which had largely been expunged from the public record by the agents of Jack''''s father, Ambassador Joe Kennedy, before Jack''''s marriage to Jackie.

Posted by joe1022joe at 08:03 PM : Jun 25, 2008

ROFLMAO Right! I remember these Klan types passing around this garbage during the 60 attempt to tar Kennedy. It''s amazing! THERE was NO first marriage you Idiot! It was a rumor started by the KLAN in an effort to defeat the "Liberal" Kennedy! GOOD GRIEF!! Sieg Heil Y''all. ROFLMAO

[dakotaclark]

Hmmm...

J. Edgar Hoover was a bully who liked taking credit for the work done by many others.

He was mean-spirited and vindictive, and everyone knows what happened if you made it onto his sh@# list. Plus, he was more than just a little bit squirrelly in his own right.

More than likely, he was nuttier than a fruitcake. AND, speaking of fruitcake, he had some very strange, shall I say, close personal attachments, and living arrangements, with select male staff.

In short, though he did oversee many positive law enforcement accomplishments, he got away with blackmail, treating people poorly, and doing illegal things, because he was the director of the F.B.I.

It is disgraceful that there is a building named for him. Instead of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, it should just be Federal Bureau of Investigation Headquarters.

To learn more about John Edgar Hoover, go to http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhooverE.htm or,
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAtolson.htm or,
http://www.crimemagazine.com/05/jedgarhoover,0719-5.htm

[ubrew12]

Hoover is proof that the true enemy to the security-obsessed among us... is the class clown.

One imagines the two of them, in heaven or somewhere, Buchwald patiently trying the teach Hoover the humanizing power of laughter.

[joe1022joe]

It was Eisenhower (I think) who tried to have Hoover replaced and was told, "it is better to have him in the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in"

Regards,
Posted by Nancy_Naive at 12:44 PM : Jun 25, 2008

No, it was Lyndon Johnson. Johnson knew that J. Edgar had learned about and was keeping private the information about Jack Kennedy''s first marriage which had largely been expunged from the public record by the agents of Jack''s father, Ambassador Joe Kennedy, before Jack''s marriage to Jackie.

[carpriddler]

Edgars power was in his ability to blackmail mail the powerful about their secret *** lives. Just think if he was still in power when Clinton was in office!

[estabwary]

Too bad Artie didn''t make ladies unmentionables for a living.

[obama4janito]

What do you expect from a frootcake even the Kennedys were too afraid of.

Took a Republican President with guts to have Hoover "resign". He had too much on the Pervert boys for them to do a d&mn thing.

[neobrian-2009]

Only A Gay RepubliCon would Say ''. The political affinity of the media left wing kept Buchwald''''s column alive. He wasn''''t funny.

Posted by joe1022joe at 11:26 AM : Jun 25, 2008
Joe000Joelovesboys Is a Typical Non-heterosexual Re-Con ,..Probably lives in Idaho with Larry " The Wide Stance" Craig !

[bobnjersey]

[i can''''t understand why the gorilla has to worry about the gnat.]
[Posted by bogusbones at 12:45 PM : Jun 25, 2008]

because the gorilla is really just a gnat in a gorilla suit.

[neobrian-2009]

J . Edgar Bush ,..W`s Godfather
Hoover Was a True RepubliCon !
Gay,Greedy,Opportunistic ,He Took a Wide stance against Democrats !
W WILL be held in the Same History as Hoover !
" ONE Who Sucked The USA !

[nolalou]

Hoover was one paranoid SOB!

[gkc99]

J. Edgar was only really happy when he was wearing his pink tutu and little black pushup bra.

[froondoon]

I seem to remember a column by Buchwald which was supposed to be an FBI file describing Buchwald himself. "Suspect is constantly checking to see if his fly is open..."

[ubrew12]

Title: "Art Buchwald Couldn''t Make [Hoover] Laugh"

Buchwald apparently lacked a pair of fishnet stockings.

[andrew_693]

this article demonstrates how stupid right winger have always been. The same ones you see today scared of terrorism.