J. Edgar

Brokeback Mountain at the FBI

I’m back in computer rage. Yupp I wrote it last night and lost it in transfer to blog. Even Mac couldn’t help. They just said sorry. Okay, let’s stop bellyaching and get on with it

I am not neutral when it comes to J. Edgar Hoover. We go back a long way. He created an enormous diary of my life from 1932 to 1965. Over 750 pages of the Schrank file. I estimate it must have cost the taxpayers at least $50,000 dollars.

Okay, when did J. Edgar really got pissed at me? It was at a Machinist Union Convention in the late forties. Grand rapids Michigan. I was on a floor mic arguing a resolution on trade policy. “We should not be trading with countries where workers are denied the rights to bargain collectively.” As I’m speaking a guy from the Press Table hands me a note. Reading and talking it says,” “There are a couple of FBI agents in the balcony taking notes.” “ Brother Chairman point of order. Ask those two guys in the balcony if they are members of this union.” Luckily for me they jump up and start to run. “Stop them, don’t let getaway. catch them!” Mr Chairman they are FBI agents and I want to know how they got into this hall?“ (Only members of the union were permitted.)

Pandemonium in the hall. “Get em, go after them. Who let em in?” The union leadership are ringing their hands like a lot of crooks caught red handed. After the session concludes Abe Raskin the Labor Reporter for the NY Times asks me what is my objection to the FBI sitting in the convention? “Look if we let J. Edgar Hoover stick his pig snout into our union business we will all become victims of his blackmail files.”

Early next morning the phone rings me outa bed. It’s our Local union lawyer. “Schrank have you gone crazy? J. Edgar will never ever forgive you for what’s on the front page of today's Times. Hoover is a man who is obsessive about his looks. How could you call him a pig?” “Well doesn’t he look like one?” Well, that was the start. For the foreseeable future J. Edgar never let up on me. That’s how I got that big fat file with his name, or Toulson on every other page.

The file shows Hoover is beside himself wanting to know how come our FBI Agents can't get union cards to get them into the convention. He's after all the Midwest FBI offices demanding an explanation. (Never knew why this was in my file?) Turns out they were X FBI agents working for the Chicago Chamber of Commerce who had declared me the most dangerous radical in the AFofL Unions. Their publication was known as "Red Channels. Their business was outing radicals primarily in the theater and movies.

Back to the movie. So here is J. Edgar struggling with his gay demons. He has hired Clyde Toulson as his depatty who Eastwwod thinks is his lover. They have a lovers spat. End up breaking glasses and wrestling down on the floor where they embrace in a bloody lovers kiss. You know what Clint? I don’t give a shit about all this, “Oh maybe he was Gay.” I care much more about the terrible harm this man has done with his gigantic blackmail files. He used them against all who as judge and jury he decides is a threat to the country and more important to him. How do you think he lasted for 47 years? He even had F.D.R. in check as he threatened to blow his cover of the affair with his secretary. Yes his victim list started up there with the like of Martin Luther King all the way down to me. How so me?

In the late forties he was trying to get me indicted under the Taft Hartley law for signing the non communist affidavits. My luck. He was stopped by the Truman White House. They said that he could not require people in the Labor Movement to testify against me. They actually told him to knock off the investigation. Look, it was some time during a court hearing on my expulsion from the Machinist for writing the pamphlet on the Taft Hartley Law that I learned about my immunity from J. Edgar.

It was at a urinal. The guy next to me a lawyer for the International Union said, “listen Schrank they are not going to indict you.” “Really, pray tell how do you know?” Well, you see they don’t want all you know about what went on during the 1944 Presidential Election Campaign. After all you were on the Democratic National Labor Committee working for Dan Tobin President of the Teamsters. Whatever it is that you know they don’t want to hear about in some Federal Court.” “Really, so that's what this is all about.” So, I thought have I got people I could also blackmail if J. Edgar succeeded in blackmailing me?” I must confess, I don;t know what the urinal talker was talking about.

I continue to wonder what on earth got Clint Eastwood all worked up about J.Edgar's sexual orientation? The real issue her is his paranoid. masterful. evil Henry the 111 kind of control of other peoples lives through blackmail? Now there’s a story that needs to be told in defense of individual rights. Clint Eastwood where are you?