nothing. State’s Attorneys investigated and did nothing. The
Attorney General investigated and did nothing. It was only when
the Government sent Department of Justice agents into the Osage
country that law became a thing of majesty.”
Hoover was careful not to disclose the bureau’s earlier bungling.
He did not reveal that Blackie Thompson had escaped under the
bureau’s watch and killed a policeman, or that because of so many
false starts in the probe other murders had occurred. Instead,
Hoover created a pristine origin story, a founding mythology in
which the bureau, under his direction, had emerged from
lawlessness and overcome the last wild American frontier.
Recognizing that the new modes of public relations could expand
his bureaucratic power and instill a cult of personality, Hoover
asked White to send him information that he could share with the
press: “There is, of course, as you can appreciate, a difference
between legal aspects and human interest aspects and what the
representatives of the press would have an interest in would be
the human interest aspect, so I would like to have you emphasize
this angle.”
Hoover fed the story to sympathetic reporters—so-called friends
of the bureau. One article about the case, which was syndicated by
William Randolph Hearst’s company, blared,
NEVER TOLD BEFORE! —
How the Government with the Most Gigantic Fingerprint System on
Earth Fights Crime with Unheard-of Science Refinements; Revealing
How Clever Sleuths Ended a Reign of Murder and Terror in the Lonely
Hills of the Osage Indian Country, and Then Rounded Up the Nation’s
Most Desperate GangIn 1932, the bureau began working with the radio program The
Lucky Strike Hour to dramatize its cases. One of the first episodes
was based on the murders of the Osage. At Hoover’s request,