Records show longtime relationship that was mutually beneficial
By LAUREN MARKOE and JOHN MONK
Staff Writers
TheState.com
WASHINGTON — For more than 50 years, U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond and the FBI — director J. Edgar Hoover in particular — mutually benefited from a close, hidden relationship that gave the South Carolina politician access to the FBI’s secret files.
The relationship is documented in Thurmond’s FBI file, parts of which the bureau released Monday in response to requests by The State and other media. Such releases are made only after the subject of a file has died or when a living subject gives permission.
Monday’s release is about 600 pages, weighs nearly 6 pounds and covers the period from October 1938 — when as a young judge Thurmond paid a “social visit” to the bureau’s Charlotte office — to January 1995, when Thurmond was in his seventh term as a U.S. senator.
The balance of Thurmond’s file — about 1,700 pages — will be released later.
What has been released of Thurmond’s file provides never-before-seen glimpses into the life of an S.C. political icon who retired in January 2003 after having served an unprecedented 48 years in the Senate. He died, at 100, in June of that year.
The Thurmond file exposes the usually concealed intersection of politics and law enforcement — a nexus where politicians enjoy access to confidential files on private citizens and groups.
Thurmond and Hoover — an almost mythic law enforcement figure who was the FBI’s longest-serving director and a zealous anti-communist — corresponded for decades.
Among other favors, the bureau carried out secret investigations for Thurmond.
At the same time, the files show that as Thurmond won election to higher and higher office, the FBI saw him as an increasingly valuable resource. At other times, though, the FBI was wary of his publicity-seeking.
An agent in Savannah wrote in a memo to FBI headquarters in 1954, the year Thurmond first won election to the U.S. Senate:
“Mr. Thurmond has excellent political connections in South Carolina and throughout the South. ... (As a senator) he can and will be of material assistance to the bureau in political and related matters both in South Carolina and nationally.”
FROM THE ORDINARY TO THE INTRIGUING
The pages released Monday include details both mundane and fascinating:
• Despite his close relationship with the FBI, field agents in 1948 sent Hoover detailed evaluations of then-Gov. Thurmond’s presidential bid as the nominee of the segregationist States Rights Party.
• One agent’s conclusion, in a memo to Hoover, was that Thurmond is “sincere,” “thoroughly honest,” “cannot be bought financially” and “slightly sluggish mentally.”
• Thurmond tried to use the FBI to discredit civil rights leaders — including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — judicial nominees and others he disagreed with, often trying to establish a link between these people and communist groups.
• Thurmond received threats from angry constituents and others, some of whom said they would harm or kill the senator.
• Thurmond received a copy of the FBI’s internal bulletin every time a South Carolinian wrote an article in it.
But the wealth of information in the released file is nearly silent on many aspects of Thurmond’s life for which he is best known.
For example, Thurmond was an ardent segregationist in the first part of his career, but the file makes less mention of his opposition to the civil rights movement than might be expected.
No mention is made of Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the daughter Thurmond fathered with a black maid working in his family’s Edgefield home. Thurmond and Washington-Williams, now 79, publicly denied their relationship. After Thurmond’s death, Washington-Williams revealed her parentage and wrote an autobiography.
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