In 1955, John Lindsay was a rising star at the US Department of Justice and in good graces with then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
But over the next decade and a half, the charismatic, Kennedy-esque New York City mayor’s bromance with the larger-than-life G-man soured right up until Hoover’s 1972 death, according to a review of 96 pages of once-classified FBI files obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act.
“This will be welcome news to many!” cheered Hoover in a gleeful note scribbled at the bottom of a 1970 press clip from the now-defunct Washington Evening Star, reporting Lindsay would not seek re-election as NYC mayor in 1973.
The files not only cover the longtime liberal Republican’s time working for the DOJ in the mid 1950s, but also his time as Congressman from 1959 through 1965, his tumultuous tenure as mayor of a cash-strapped, crime-ridden New York from 1966 through 1973, and his failed 1972 presidential bid after switching to the Democratic Party.
Hoover kept an eye out for “communist” and “un-American” activities surrounding the American civil rights champion and his political appointees, according to the files.
“Recently Mayor’s John Lindsay of New York (as reported by Paul Harvey on national radio) stated ‘the real heroes of [Vietnam War] are those who dodge the draft and protest’ etc.,” wrote one person to Hoover in May 1970, the day after the infamous massacre of antiwar demonstrators at Kent State University.
“Sir, how in the name of freedom can a leader of this stature speak such despicably pro-Vietcong, pro-flag-burning, pot-smoking words and retain his position with scarcely anything said in refutation?”
Early in his career, Lindsay, a lawyer who also served as a lieutenant in the US Navy during World War II, was so well thought of by the feds that he had rare access to Hoover.
In 1955, while working as an executive assistant to the US Attorney General, he scored a private tour of the FBI’s headquarters in Washington DC that included a meet and greet with Hoover for Lindsay, his wife Mary, and some female friends.
“I now have a party of four (count em*) beautiful girls accompanying me on the tour at 3:00 p.m. tomorrow – a blonde, two brunettes, and a chestnut,” wrote Lindsay in a typed memo to Hoover dated Feb. 24, 1955, that underlined the word “four.”
“They are all members of the J. Edgar Hoover fan club so I hope you’ll be free for one minute to say hello (I’m willing to share!).”
“I will see them,” wrote Hoover on the same memo, approving the visit by signing his name as “H.”
The released files offer no examples of the feds investigating Lindsay for wrongdoing, but they do include a series of other letters from people whose names were redacted accusing the pol of being unfit for office or unpatriotic for opposing the Vietnam War.
“Are we to permit what I consider one of the most dangerous men in our country to take it over,” said one person ripping Lindsay’s presidential campaign in an Oct. 16, 1971 letter to then-US Sen. Bob Dole and cc’ed to Hoover.
The FBI director also received a 1969 letter from a Hoover loyalist ripping “pretty boy” Lindsay for “lust[ing]” the White House “with the vim and vigor of a Kennedy.”
Hoover noted in official records that she was backing then-Conservative Democratic Comptroller Mario Procaccino for mayor and was on his “Special Correspondents List”—a term then used to refer to key Hoover allies.
The FBI felt Lindsay was too self-serving.
A March 1967 interoffice memo signed by FBI agent R.E. Wick accuses Lindsay of being “highly unethical,” alleging he broke an embargo agreement with the feds over the release of national crime statistics for political purposes. In a speech before the NYPD’s Holy Name Society, the then-mayor announced crime was up 11 percent nationwide — yet “the city was below that figure,” wrote Wick.
The files also note a series of threats allegedly made on Lindsay’s life.
In August 1967, Hoover said in a letter to the US Secret Service that a woman had been arrested by the NYPD and charged with possessing a firearm and plotting to “assassinate” Lindsay for a $20,000 bounty.
Hoover also noted the arrest was reported by local media and that the feds’ earlier investigations into the same woman — whose name was redacted — found she may have been a member of the “Uniformed Communist Police” and a “Tito Communist” loyal to Josip Broz Tito, then-president of the former Yugoslavia.
Sid Davidoff, a longtime lobbyist who was part of Lindsay’s inner circle when he was mayor, told The Post he’s “not surprised” Hoover “kept a file” on his ex-boss, who passed away in 2000.
“He was the first major Republican to come out against the [Vietnam] War,” said Davidoff, who once famously earned a spot in 1972 on then-President Richard Nixon’s Top 20 “Enemies List.”
