Files

Hoover died during the night of May 1–2, 1972. According to Curt Gentry, who wrote the 1991 book J Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, Hoover's body was not discovered by his live-in cook and general housekeeper, Annie Fields; rather, it was discovered by James Crawford, who had been Hoover's chauffeur for 37 years. Crawford then yelled out to Fields and Tom Moton (Hoover's new chauffeur after Crawford had retired in January 1972). Fields first called Hoover's personal physician, Dr. Robert Choisser, then used another phone to call Clyde Tolson's private number. Tolson then called Gandy's private number with the news of Hoover's death along with orders to begin destroying the files. Within an hour, the "D List" ("d" standing for destruction) was being distributed, and the destruction of files began. However, The New York Times quoted an anonymous FBI source in spring 1975, who said: "Gandy had begun the destruction of files almost a year before Mr. Hoover's death and was instructed to purge the files that were presently in his office."

Anthony Summers reported that G. Gordon Liddy had said of his sources in the FBI: "by the time Gray went in to get the files, Miss Gandy had already got rid of them." The day after Hoover died, L. Patrick Gray, who had been named acting director by President Richard Nixon upon Tolson's resignation from that position, went to Hoover's office. Gandy paused from her work to give Gray a tour. He found file cabinets open and packing boxes being filled with papers. She informed him the boxes contained personal papers of Hoover's. Gandy stated Gray flipped through a few files and approved her work, but Gray was to deny he looked at any papers. Gandy also told Gray it would be a week before she could clear Hoover's effects out so Gray could move into the suite.

Gray reported to Nixon that he had secured Hoover's office and its contents. However, he had sealed only Hoover's personal inner office, where no files were stored, not the entire suite of offices. Since 1957, Hoover's "Official/Confidential" files, containing material too sensitive to include in the FBI's central files, had been kept in the outer office, where Gandy sat. Gentry reported that Gray would not have known where to look in Gandy's office for the files, as her office was lined floor to ceiling with filing cabinets; moreover, without her index to the files, he would not have been able to locate incriminating material, for files were deliberately mislabeled, e.g., President Nixon's file was labeled "Obscene Matters".

On May 4, Gandy transferred 12 boxes labelled "Official/Confidential", containing 167 files and 17,750 pages, to Mark Felt. Many of them contained inflammatory and derogatory information. Gray told the press that afternoon that "there are no dossiers or secret files. There are just general files, and I took steps to preserve their integrity." Yet, Gandy retained the "Personal File."

Gandy went through Hoover's "Personal File" in the office until May 12. She then transferred at least 32 file drawers of material to the basement recreation room of Hoover's Washington home at 4936 Thirtieth Place, NW, where she continued her work from May 13 to July 17. Gandy later testified in court that nothing official had been removed from the FBI's offices, "not even Mr. Hoover's badge." At Hoover's residence, the destruction was overseen by John P. Mohr, the third highest-ranking official in the FBI after Hoover and Tolson. They were aided by James Jesus Angleton, the Central Intelligence Agency's counterintelligence chief, whom Hoover's neighbors saw removing boxes from Hoover's home. Mohr would claim the boxes Angleton removed were cases of spoiled wine.

In 1975, when the House Committee on Government Oversight investigated the FBI's illegal COINTELPRO program of spying on and harassment of Martin Luther King Jr. and others, Gandy was summoned to testify regarding the "Personal Files." "I tore them up, put them in boxes, and they were taken away to be shredded," she told the congressmen about the papers. The FBI Washington field office had FBI drivers transport the material to Hoover's home, then once Gandy had gone through the material, the drivers transported it back to the field office in the Old Post Office Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, where it was shredded and burned.

Gandy stated that Hoover had left standing instructions to destroy his personal papers upon his death, and this instruction was confirmed by Tolson and Gray. She also stated that she destroyed no official papers; that everything was personal papers of Hoover's. The staff of the subcommittee did not believe her, but she told the committee: "I have no reason to lie." Representative Andrew Maguire (D-New Jersey), a freshman member of the 94th Congress, said "I find your testimony very difficult to believe." Gandy held her ground: "That is your privilege."

"I can give you my word. I know what there was—letters to and from friends, personal friends, a lot of letters," she testified. Gandy also said the files she took to Hoover's home included his financial papers, such as tax returns and investment statements, the deed to his home, and papers relating to his dogs' pedigrees.

Curt Gentry wrote:

Helen Gandy must have felt quite safe in testifying as she did, for who could contradict her? Only one other person knew exactly what the files contained, and he was dead.

In J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and His Secrets, Gentry describes the nature of the files:^[10] "their contents included blackmail material on the patriarch of an American political dynasty, his sons, their wives, and other women; allegations of two homosexual arrests which Hoover leaked to help defeat a witty, urbane Democratic presidential candidate; the surveillance reports on one of America's best-known first ladies and her alleged lovers, both male and female, white and black; the child molestation documentation the director used to control and manipulate one of the Red-baiting proteges; a list of the Bureau's spies in the White House during the eight administrations when Hoover was FBI director; the forbidden fruit of hundreds of illegal wiretaps and bugs, containing, for example, evidence that an attorney general, Tom C. Clark,^[11][12] who later became Supreme Court justice, had received payoffs from the Chicago syndicate; as well as celebrity files, with all the unsavory gossip Hoover could amass on some of the biggest names in show business."