THE ADMINISTRATION: Bugging J. Edgar Hoover

A top Senate aide used to begin his first telephone conversation of each week with a hearty "F— J. Edgar Hoover." To the startled listener on the other end of the line, he explained: "Just clearing the lines." During the debate over G. Harrold Carswell's nomination to the Supreme Court, Indiana Senator Birch Bayh became so disturbed over an inexplicable strategy and information leak that he called in an expert to examine his office for listening devices. The expert "swept" Bayh's office—the same suite occupied by Richard Nixon when he was a Senator—with a detector and picked up blips from...

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