dais behind his desk to stand on. If Hoover was intimidated by the
sight of this monstrous Texan, he didn’t show it: he told White
that he needed to discuss a matter of the utmost urgency with
him. It had to do with the murders of the Osage. White knew that
the sensational case was one of the bureau’s first major homicide
investigations, but he was unfamiliar with its details, and he
listened as Hoover spoke in staccato bursts—a strategy that
Hoover had devised in his youth to overcome a bad stutter.
In the spring of 1923, after the Osage Tribal Council had passed
the resolution seeking the Justice Department’s help, the then
director, Burns, had dispatched an agent from the bureau to
investigate the murders, which by then totaled at least twenty-four
Osage. The agent spent a few weeks in Osage County before
concluding that “any continued investigation is useless.” Other
agents were subsequently dispatched to investigate, all to no avail.
The Osage had been forced to finance part of the federal
investigation with their own money—an amount that would
eventually reach $20,000, the equivalent today of nearly
$300,000. Despite this expenditure, Hoover had decided, after
assuming command of the bureau, to dump the case back on state
authorities in order to evade responsibility for the failure. The FBI
agent who was in charge of the Oklahoma field office had assured
Hoover that the transfer could be handled without any
“unfavorable comment” in the press. Yet that was before the
bureau, Hoover’s bureau, had blood on its hands. A few months
earlier, agents had persuaded the new governor of Oklahoma to
release the outlaw Blackie Thompson, who’d been captured and
convicted of bank robbery, so that he could work undercover for
the bureau to gather evidence on the Osage killings. In field
reports, the agents noted excitedly that their “undercover man”
had begun to work among “the crooks in the oil fields and get the
evidence he has promised us.” The agents proclaimed, “We expect