Cross-dressing canard
From F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre
Sir: I am deeply distressed that Patrick Skene Catling has used The Spectator’s pages as a vehicle (Books, 7 May) to perpetuate the rumour that J. Edgar Hoover was a transvestite. There is no evidence to support this rumour — a rumour? No, an outright lie! — and there is some evidence to disprove it.
The lie has been traced to British journalist Anthony Summers, whose 1993 hack biography of Hoover contained the assertion of one Susan L. Rosenstiel that she had seen Hoover cross-dressing in 1958 at a party co-hosted by her husband Lewis Rosenstiel, the chairman of Schenley Industries and a long-time friend of J. Edgar Hoover. The Rosenstiels divorced a few years later, while Hoover was still director of the FBI. Conveniently, Susan Rosenstiel never made any statements about Mr Hoover’s alleged sexual activities until Hoover and Lewis Rosenstiel were both long dead and could not defend themselves.
Mrs Rosenstiel’s statement has never been substantiated, and the evidence that it is a lie is this: when she and Lewis Rosenstiel divorced, she sought a large alimony settlement but was ultimately forced to accept a very small one. If Mrs Rosenstiel had possessed any information about her husband or Hoover which would have embarrassed Lewis Rosenstiel, she surely would have used it as a bargaining chip rather than waiting until after the targets of her falsehoods were safely dead.
Other well-known ‘facts’ about J. Edgar Hoover are demonstrably untrue, such as the canard that he and FBI agent Clyde Tolson (Hoover’s alleged gay lover) are buried together. They are interred in the same cemetery, but their graves are not adjacent.
Anthony Summers at least was honest enough to admit that he despised Hoover, and that he was only interested in depicting Hoover unfavourably rather than accurately.
F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre New York
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