[annals] John Ehrlichman recounts a visit to J. Edgar Hoover's Office
From his first week in office, Nixon demanded secret intelligence on the radicals. "He wanted to know who was doing it, and what was being done to catch the saboteurs," Ehrlichman wrote. The president told his White House counsel to go see Hoover, to establish himself as his friend and White House confidante, and to set up a direct channel for secret communications between the FBI and the White House.
Ehrlichman approached the director with caution. His staff had warned him that every meeting in Hoover's office was secretly filmed or videotaped, "but they did not prepare me for the Wizard of Oz approach that his visitors were required to make." From the corridors of Justice, Ehrlichman was ushered through double doors guarded by Hoover's personal attendants. He walked into a room crammed with tributes to Hoover: plaques and citations emblazoned with emblems of American eagles and eternally flaming torches. The anteroom led to a second, more formal room with hundreds more awards. That led to a third trophy room with a highly polished desk. The desk was empty.
"J. Edgar Hoover was nowhere to be seen," he wrote. "My guide opened a door behind the desk at the back of the room, and I was ushered into an office about twelve or thirteen feet square, dominated by Hoover himself. He was seated in a large leather desk chair behind a wooden desk in the center of the room. When he stood, it became obvious that he and his desk were on a dais about six inches high. I was invited to sit on the low, purplish leather couch to his right.
"J. Edgar Hoover looked down on me and began to talk. He talked non-stop for an hour, touching on the Black Panthers, the Communist Party States, Soviet espionage, Congress, the Kennedys, and much more. But he had little to say about what the president wanted: intelligence on the radical factions of the New Left."
—Tim Weiner, Enemies: A History of the FBI (transcribed from audio)