Public Enemies (2 page)

Authors: Bryan Burrough

BOOK: Public Enemies

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Complexity is one reason authors have tended to focus their books on a single public enemy. Yet these six story lines truly comprise a single narrative, the unifying element being the involvement of the FBI. The Bureau told a sanitized version of the War on Crime story in several books, beginning with the lurid
Ten Thousand Public Enemies
in 1935 and culminating with Don Whitehead’s
The FBI Story
in 1956. These books are, at best, incomplete; at worst, misleading. They were the stories J. Edgar Hoover wanted told, not the ones that actually happened.

For years the principal obstacle to an objective narrative was the FBI’s penchant for secrecy; Hoover was unwilling to share information with anyone interested in telling the whole truth. This helps explain why, as large as these criminals loom in American legend, there are surprisingly few credible books about them. For twenty-five years the stories of the Depression-era outlaws remained the province of newspaper reporters and pulp writers, many of whom weren’t above concocting dramatic scenes and imaginative dialogue. Not till the late 1950s, with the popularity of
The Untouchables
television show, did serious authors begin to approach the subject of the War on Crime. Dillinger and Floyd have since attracted multiple biographers. Bonnie and Clyde, buoyed by the popularity of the 1967 movie, have garnered a half-dozen books. The first biography of Machine Gun Kelly didn’t appear until 2003.

By far the best of these books is
Dillinger Days.
Writing thirty years after the events told, Toland was able to interview a number of participants, including several former FBI agents. While he accepts an FBI canard or two—most notably the myth of Ma Barker’s criminal genius—his remains the book by which all others must be measured. What makes a fresh look at the War on Crime possible is the release of the FBI’s files. Prodded by local historians, such as Robert Unger in Kansas City and Paul Maccabee in St. Paul, the Bureau has now made public all its files on Dillinger, Floyd, Nelson, the Barker Gang, Machine Gun Kelly, and the Kansas City Massacre. Taken together, they comprise nearly one million pages of daily reports, telegrams, and correspondence, as well as hundreds of statements taken from witnesses and participants, everyone from Dillinger’s sister to Nelson’s tailor.

As one might expect, the files are a trove of new information. There are dozens of never-before-seen statements from the criminals and their gun molls, an unpublished autobiographical essay from Kathryn Kelly, disclosure of the bribes that freed Dock Barker from prison, as well as confirmation of an overlooked Dillinger robbery two months before his death. For all this, the FBI files shed the most penetrating light on the FBI itself. They vividly chronicle the Bureau’s evolution from an overmatched band of amateurish agents without firearms or law-enforcement experience into the professional crime-fighting machine of lore—a story Hoover was never eager to have told. In the early months of the War on Crime, we see Hoover’s men botching stakeouts, losing suspects, forgetting orders, and repeatedly arresting the wrong men—their mistakes would be comical if not for the price paid by the innocent. But deep amid the thicket of reports and correspondence, many of them festooned with Hoover’s tart, handwritten comments, one can literally see the FBI grow up. The agents learn how to use guns, establish professional methods, and recruit informants. Above all, this is a book about how the FBI became the FBI.

The files allowed me to pursue one of my central aims: to reclaim the War on Crime for the lawmen who fought it. Men like Charles Winstead and Clarence Hurt, the two agents who killed Dillinger, have long remained anonymous, even as movies are made about the murderers they hunted. The FBI wanted it that way. Critics say this was because Hoover wanted the glory for himself, which may be true. But keeping agents anonymous also fueled Hoover’s institutional aims, fostered teamwork, and allowed agents to slip into undercover assignments. For the first time, the FBI files allow us to understand which agents did what, and who screwed up when. By and large, it is not a pretty story; one can understand why Hoover wanted the files kept secret.

Over the course of four years of research, I was able to augment the stories from FBI files with much new information uncovered in the last forty years. A manuscript discovered in 1989 by two intrepid Dillinger buffs, William Helmer and Thomas Smusyn, shines new light on Dillinger’s final weeks. Another valuable resource was two thousand pages of unpublished interview transcripts that Alvin Karpis of the Barker Gang gave before his death. Several FBI agents also wrote unpublished manuscripts I was able to review. I’ve listed all my sources of information in notes at the back of the book.

Please keep one thing in mind as you read: This book was not “imagined,” as with some recent popular histories. It was reported. The conversations and dialogue in this book are taken verbatim from FBI reports, the Karpis transcripts, contemporary news articles, and the memories of participants. If you’re wondering how I learned something, check the source notes. If I don’t know something, I’ll tell you. If there’s a mystery I can’t clear up—and there are a few—I’ll make that clear. Any errors are mine and mine alone. I hope you enjoy it.

Bryan Burrough
Summit, New Jersey
December 2003

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Federal Bureau of Investigation