J. Edgar Hoover

The story of J. Edgar Hoover's cross-dressing was first published in the 1993 biography "Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover" by British journalist Anthony Summers. While discredited, the story has been perpetuated in editorial cartoons and analyzed in academic studies. Summers was not the first to accuse Hoover of homosexuality. Gay rights activist and child pornographer Guy Strait, arrested in the Lyric scandal, "claims to be the first person to accuse the respected law enforcement leader of being a closet queen."

Another tale in Summer's book achieved far less resonance. He also claimed that two of the Lyric boys wound up in the FBI director's bed, or at least his limousine. The story focuses on the summer of 1969, and is on pp. 377-378, and starts with the director's documented friendship with Billy Byars, Jr. and his family. Billy Byars, Sr. "had used the bungalow next to Edgar's at [Texas oilman Cliff Murchison's] Del Charro Hotel" in La Jolla, and the younger Byars accompanied him. One of the hotel's charms was that it was next door to a racetrack.

At Byars's home in Los Angeles friends saw at least one Christmas card from Hoover. "A fifteen-year-old at the house talked openly of having met Edgar at the Del Charro. 'Hoover bawled me out' he complained, 'for having long hair, but I told the old faggot where to go. No way was I getting a haircut.'"

Summers quotes his source, Charles Krebs: "On three occasions that I knew about, maybe four, boys were driven down to La Jolla at Hoover's request. I think the arrangements were made by one of Billy's friends, an older man." Hoover was met at a restaurant called Rudi's Hearthside House. Taken to meet Hoover were "the boys, the fifteen-year-old and another youngster." The group went in two limos to a tryst by a reservoir in the San Diego hills. Summers claims to have verified the existence of the restaurant and the reservoir. A "Rudy's Hearthside" was located at 5530 La Jolla Blvd., about four miles from the Del Charro. There are a number of reservoirs around San Diego, the closest a 30-minute drive from Rudy's Hearthside. Summers says Detective Don Smith of the LAPD interviewed juvenile witnesses in the 1973 Lyric scandal. Smith was also cited in the L.A. Times article reporting the arrests. Smith told Summers that the boys referred to many men by nicknames, such as "Uncle Mike" or "Mother Jones", but "The kids brought up several famous names, including Hoover and his sidekick." Smith says of the men mentioned by the juveniles, "These were upstanding community leaders, but that was their quirk."(Summers, p. 378)

In footnotes, Summers says "In 1988 Billy Byars Jr. remembered the adolescents named by Krebs and agreed one had visited the Del Charro. He said he knew nothing of the alleged sexual activity."(Summers, p. 431)

What are the names Summers knows but isn't telling? The late Guy Strait is an obvious candidate for the "older man". A more titillating question is which of the Lyric boys told the FBI director "where to go". That the notoriously conservative FBI director thought the boy's hair long in 1969 merely lets us exclude anyone with a crew cut.