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Helen Gandy

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                             Helen W. Gandy
                                Enlarge
   Helen Gandy in her office in the Justice Department in the 1940's
         Born April 8, 1897
              Fairton or Port Norris, New Jersey
      Died    July 7, 1988
              DeLand or Orange City, Florida
   Occupation Secretary/Civil servant
     Spouse   None; never married

   Helen W. Gandy ( April 8, 1897 – July 7, 1988) was an American civil
   servant. Gandy, who at age twenty-one left her native New Jersey for
   Washington, D.C., was the secretary to Federal Bureau of Investigation
   director J. Edgar Hoover for fifty-four years. Hoover called her
   "indispensable" and she exercised great behind-the-scenes influence on
   Hoover and the workings of the Bureau. Following Hoover's death in
   1972, she spent weeks destroying his "Personal File," thought to be
   where the most incriminating material he used to manipulate and control
   the most powerful figures in Washington was kept.

Background

   Annie Gandy, her mother, painted by Thomas Eakins.
   Enlarge
   Annie Gandy, her mother, painted by Thomas Eakins.

   Gandy, "a wraith-like, grim-faced spinster from New Jersey" (in Athan
   Theoharis and John Cox's phrase), was born in Rockville, one of three
   children (two daughters and a son) of Franklin Dallas and Annie
   (Williams) Gandy. She grew up in Fairton or Port Norris (sources
   differ) and graduated from Bridgeton High School. In 1918, aged
   twenty-one, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she later took classes
   at Strayer Business College and George Washington University's law
   school.

   Gandy briefly worked in a department store in Washington before she
   found a job as a file clerk at the Justice Department in 1918. Within
   weeks, she went to work as a typist for Hoover, effective March 25,
   1918, having told Hoover in her interview she had "no immediate plans
   to marry." She, like Hoover, would never marry, both being completely
   devoted to the Bureau.
   J. Edgar Hoover, director of the F.B.I, photographed in 1961. Gandy
   worked for him from 1921 to his death in 1972.
   Enlarge
   J. Edgar Hoover, director of the F.B.I, photographed in 1961. Gandy
   worked for him from 1921 to his death in 1972.

   When Hoover went to the Bureau of Investigation (as it was then known)
   as its assistant director on August 22, 1921, he specifically requested
   Miss Gandy return from vacation to help him in the new post. Hoover
   became director of the Bureau in 1924 and Gandy continued in his
   service. She was promoted to "office assistant" on August 23, 1937, and
   "executive assistant" on October 1, 1939. Though she would receive
   promotions in her civil service grade subsequently, she would retain
   her title as executive assistant to her retirement on May 2, 1972, the
   day Hoover died. Hoover said of her "if there is anyone in this Bureau
   whose services are indispensable I consider Miss Gandy to be that
   person." Despite this, Curt Gentry reported:

          Theirs was a rigidly formal relationship. He'd always called her
          'Miss Gandy' (when angry, barking it out as one word). In all
          those fifty-four years he had never once called her by her first
          name.

   Theoharis and Cox would say "her stern face recalled Cerberus at the
   gate," a view echoed by Anthony Summers in his life of Hoover, who also
   pictured Gandy as Hoover's first line of defense against the outside
   world. When Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Hoover's nominal boss,
   had a direct telephone line installed between their offices, Hoover
   refused to answer the phone. "Put that damn thing on Miss Gandy's desk
   where it belongs," Hoover would declare.

   Curt Gentry would describe her influence:

          Her genteel manner and pleasant voice contrasted sharply with
          this domineering presence. Yet behind the politeness was a
          resolute firmness not unlike his, and no small amount of
          influence. Many a career in the Bureau had been quietly
          manipulated by her.

          Even those who disliked him, praised her, most often commenting
          on her remarkable ability to get along with all kinds of people.
          That she had held her position for fifty-four years was the best
          evidence of this, for it was a Bureau tradition that the closer
          you were to him, the more demanding he was.

   William C. Sullivan, an agent with the Bureau for three decades,
   reported in his memoir when he worked in the public relations section
   answering mail from the public, he gave a correspondent the wrong
   measurements for Hoover's personal popover recipe, relying on memory
   rather than the files. Gandy, ever protective of her boss, caught the
   error and brought it to Hoover's attention. The director then placed an
   official letter of reprimand in Sullivan's file for the lapse. W. Mark
   Felt, deputy associate director of the Bureau, wrote in his memoir that
   Gandy "was bright and alert and quick-tempered—and completely dedicated
   to her boss."

The Files

   J. Edgar Hoover died during the night of May 1- May 2, 1972. When his
   housekeeper, Annie Fields, discovered the body on the morning of the
   second, her second call (after telephoning acting director Clyde
   Tolson) was to Gandy, who learned the news at 8:40 A.M. 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 F.B.I. source in the spring of 1975 that "Gandy had begun
   almost a year before Mr. Hoover's death and was instructed to purge the
   files that were then in his office."
   L. Patrick Gray, was appointed Acting FBI Director by President Nixon
   after Hoover's death.
   L. Patrick Gray, was appointed Acting FBI Director by President Nixon
   after Hoover's death.

   Anthony Summers reported that G. Gordon Liddy stated his sources in the
   F.B.I. said "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 he 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 Bureau's central files, had been kept in
   the outer office, where Gandy sat. Curt 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. And 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".

   The next day, May 4, she turned over twelve boxes of the
   "Official/Confidential" containing 167 files and 17,750 pages to Mark
   Felt. Many of them contained 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."
   Gandy retained the "Personal File".

   Gandy worked on going through Hoover's "Personal File" in the office
   until May 12. She then transferred at least thirty-two file drawers of
   material to the basement rec room of Hoover's Washington home at 4936
   Thirtieth Place, Northwest, where she would continue her work from May
   13 to July 17. Gandy later testified nothing official had been removed
   from the Bureau's offices, "not even his badge." There the destruction
   was overseen by John P. Mohr, the number three man in the Bureau 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.

   When the House Committee on Government Oversight investigated the
   F.B.I.'s spying on and harassment of Martin Luther King, Jr. and others
   in 1975, Gandy was called to testify. "I tore them up, put them in
   boxes, and they were taken away to be shredded," she told the
   congressmen about the papers. The Bureau's Washington field office had
   F.B.I. 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 that this instruction was confirmed
   by Tolson and Gray. Gandy stated that she destroyed no official papers,
   that everything was personal papers of Hoover. The staff of the
   subcommittee did not believe her, but she told the committee "I have no
   reason to lie." Representative Gene 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 his home also 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.

Later years

   While she officially retired the day Hoover died, she spent the next
   few weeks destroying his papers and Hoover left her $5,000 in his will.
   In 1961, she and her sister, Lucy G. Rodman, donated a portrait of
   their mother by Thomas Eakins to the Smithsonian Museum of American Art
   . Gandy lived in Washington, D.C., until 1986, when she moved to
   DeLand, Florida, where a niece lived. An avid trout fisherman
   (according to her Washington Post obituary), she died of a heart attack
   in 1988, either in DeLand (says her New York Times obituary) or in
   Orange City, Florida (says her Post obituary).
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