thoroughly professional about his job. He is a serious, pleasant
man, and he has trained himself to control his emotions.”
If J. Edgar Hoover used the Osage murder probe as a showcase
for the bureau, a series of sensational crimes in the 1930s stoked
public fears and enabled Hoover to turn the organization into the
powerful force recognized today. These crimes included the
kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s baby and the Kansas City
Massacre, where several lawmen were killed in a shootout while
transporting the Al Spencer Gang member Frank “Jelly” Nash.
White’s old colleague, Agent Frank Smith, was among the convoy
but survived. (The journalist Robert Unger later documented how
Smith and another agent who originally claimed that they hadn’t
been able to identify the shooters, suddenly vividly recalled them
after pressure from Hoover to resolve the cases.) In the wake of
these incidents, Congress passed a series of New Deal reforms that
gave the federal government its first comprehensive criminal code
and the bureau a sweeping mission. Agents were now empowered
to make arrests and carry firearms, and the department was soon
renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “The days of the
small Bureau were over,” Hoover’s biographer Curt Gentry
observed. “Gone, too, were the days when special agents were
merely investigators.” White’s brother Doc was involved in many
of the bureau’s biggest cases during this period—from hunting
public enemies like John Dillinger to killing Ma Barker and her
son Fred. Tom White’s son had also joined the bureau, making
three generations of White lawmen.
Hoover ensured that the identity of the bureau was
indistinguishable from his own. And while presidents came and
went, this bureaucrat, now thick around the waist and with jowls
like a bulldog, remained. “I looked up and there was J. Edgar