Opinion

Flashback: Bonnie Parker And J. Edgar Hoover Huddled in Chicago, 83 Years Before Bill And Loretta

Richard Lavinthal Legal PR Expert
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In late June 1933. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s official chauffeured limousine was parked in a government-only lot at Chicago’s LaSalle Street Station. The crime-fighting legend and FBI Assistant Director Harold, “Pop” Nathan had just arrived on the famed Twentieth Century Limited from New York City’s Grand Central Station.

Hoover and Nathan watched a mud-caked, black Ford Model T pull up near the limousine.  The driver, a woman in her twenties, was fairly well dressed. The short blonde wore a flared skirt, bolero jacket and cloche hat, all of which desperately needed dry cleaning.

Hoover’s FBI protective detail had been caught off-guard when the Model T pulled up but after carefully scoping out the Ford’s lone occupant and finding no contraband allowed it to remain near Hoover’s Pierce-Arrow.

Twenty-three-year-old Bonnie Elizabeth Parker, driving a stolen car, was about to leave Chicago after the mid-year meeting of the Women’s Auxiliary of The American Society of Armed Bank Robbers until a mobbed up Chicago PD intelligence officer spilled the beans. Bonnie knew she had to stage a “chance meeting” with Hoover. Snuffing her cigar out on the Model T’s running board, she closed the door and sauntered over to Hoover’s limo.

One of the biggest meeting coincidences in American crime-fighting history would never have been known if a Chicago Daily Times reporter hadn’t looked out a train station window and recognized both Hoover and Parker. (Note: While Bonnie Parker later became as violent a killer as Clyde Barrow, no charges had been lodged against her at that point.)

Parker rapped on Hoover’s rolled-up bullet-proof window. After Hoover cranked it down she said, “Want to schmooze for a few moments? We can have a social talk about grandchildren and traveling but not — heaven-forbid — violent crime, bank robbery or machine gun murders.”

“Why sure little lady,” Hoover replied. “Come on in.” Hoover sent Nathan into the station for bagels and ordered their protective detail 50 feet back from the limo. For the next 30 minutes Parker and Hoover hobnobbed. After making their goodbyes she left for a safe house in Indiana where Clyde and the rest of the Barrow gang was holed up.

Forced to hold an impromptu news conference after the meeting was leaked, Hoover said the chance tete-a-tete did not include any conversation about possible “prosecution or execution of Clyde or Buck Parker or anyone else in the Barrow Gang.”

Recently FOIA-obtained handwritten Hoover notes of the meeting disclose that 1) Bonnie constantly winked at the top G-man; 2) used suggestive body language; and 3) insisted that Clyde and “The Catholic Hour” radio host Bishop Fulton J. Sheen were cut from the same humble cloth. Barrow also attended Catholic Mass every week, even as he cased banks to rob, she told Hoover.

At his unscheduled presser Hoover admitted only that, “She did come over and say hello, and speak to me and talk about her grandchildren and travels and things like that. That was the extent of that. And no discussions were held into any cases or things of that nature.”

A national outcry arose for Hoover to detach himself from any Bonnie and Clyde case and once back in Washington he announced he would henceforth recuse himself from any investigation of the Barrow Gang.

“I am leaving the decision of how to investigate Bonnie and Clyde up to the professionals in the Chicago PD,” and will not in any way be involved in any decision,” Hoover said.

“Of course,” Hoover added, “this doesn’t mean that I won’t meddle once the decision is made. That perky Bonnie is a sweet kid.”

If you believe that Bonnie Parker chatted up J. Edgar Hoover in a car in Chicago it’s easy to accept that the Attorney General of the U.S. just happened to allow an impromptu 30-minute “social call” in an airplane in Phoenix from a former president whose wife, who coincidentally may be the target of a massive criminal investigation that sprang from a FOIA request stonewalled by the State Department.

The Daily Caller just exclusively reported that Mrs. Clinton finally will meet with the FBI tomorrow.

Was Attorney General Lynch just saving taxpayers’ postage by hand-delivering Mrs. Clinton’s grand jury letter to the former president?