After you’ve exchanged conversation with a number of Washingtonians, you wonder what made them decidedly different from others. Then it dawns on you. They are whisperers.
They all seem consciously afraid that they may be overheard. That marks them even in casual conversations, and when they utter secrets they are theatrically overcautious. These are acquired habits, not without foundation. All mankind has a common weakness for spreading gossip. Most people can retail only minutiae. But in Washington, matters that may rock the world are entrusted, or pass through the hands of, those who otherwise would have little to tell beyond back-fence piddle. Furthermore, for one to say his wires are tapped is a mark of self importance.
The capital is overrun by snoops and spies, not only using every cloak-and-dagger device for foreign transmission, but assigned and trained to catch and report inter-bureau information, rumors included.
An observation at a dinner table by a member of Congress or an executive may cause an uproar in Moscow, London or Calcutta. Or it may bring a midnight huddle in a cabinet department or the President’s sound-proofed den.
You meet almost no one of any importance who converses at ease. The thinnest statement or flattest opinion can be amplified and multiplied. If it escapes an official listening post, it may reach a columnist, which is worse.
There has been considerable furor on the subject of Washington wiretapping.
That is a topic which every seasoned editor has learned to recognize as having extraordinary human interest appeal. The phone is such a common, yet tricky instrument, that kitchenmaids who have affairs with delivery boys shiver with horrible fears that their big secrets are being tapped. And this is not confined to small people. In Washington such suspicions are justified.
Many mentally connect wiretapping with the F.B.I. The two have been joined in recurrent publicity. Deliberate left-wing propaganda has exaggerated and exploited the notion. The F.B.I. uses this method, as does any other efficient police force. But emphasis thereon is disproportionate. The practice is widespread with only a modicum of use in criminal investigation. The F.B.I. itself makes a daily check against cut-ins on its own wires, including J. Edgar Hoover’s own private lines. He and his bureau are Enemy No. 1 to the Reds and all their sycophants and sympathizers, the only man in the country who called the shots on the Communist situation since the beginning. And as the eyes and ears of the Department of Justice, the G-men handle dynamite affecting interests from car thieves to disloyal U.S. employes to chairmen of the boards of trusts.
Tapping F.B.I. wires is not a profitable career. The bureau knows all the tricks. New electronic developments now make it possible to intrude on some communications without physical contact with the wire. No instruments can detect such espionage. This is a hazard beyond mechanical defense.
We said everyone in Washington lives in constant fear and dread of being overheard, even if the subject matter is of importance to no one. It becomes habit. Congressmen and officials are cagey when they talk on the phone, though after a few minutes of cryptic conversation they forget and loosen up. When you visit the average office holder in his sanctum he steers you away from the walls, then speaks in an undertone. In your hotel room his eyes wander around the walls, searching for “bugs” which can pick up and record every sound.