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Previously confidential files show that Harvey, who died last February at 90, enjoyed a 20-year friendship with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, often submitting advance copies of his radio script for comment and approval. Harvey wrote Hoover and his deputies regularly. Hoover, in turn, helped Harvey with research, suggested changes in scripts and showered the broadcaster with effusive praise.
The news is contained in nearly 1,400 pages of FBI files, released to The Washington Post in response to a one-year-old Freedom of Information Act request. The trove supplies new details about how America's No. 1 broadcaster came to befriend America's No. 1 G-man.
The records underscore that the men shared deeply conservative convictions and a hatred of communism. And Harvey's vast audience was of intense interest to the image-obsessed Hoover.
Harvey tried to be of service beyond the FBI as well, writing in 1956 to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who had made a name for himself by hunting down alleged Communists in the federal bureaucracy, with tips about "known Reds" at a Texas Air Force base. A senior FBI official added a handwritten notation to ensure that Harvey's letter not be distributed outside the bureau's top brass: "No dissemination since identity of Harvey cannot be revealed."
An unlikely start
The Cold War beginning of the Harvey-Hoover bond was an incident from 1951, when Harvey was 32. The son of a cop from Tulsa, Okla., Harvey had already made a name for himself as a radio and TV commentator in Chicago, specializing in human-interest stories and strong opinions delivered in shirtsleeve English. He routinely hammered officials for being lax on security, in particular those in charge of the Argonne National Laboratory, which conducted nuclear testing 20 miles west of Chicago.
After wrapping up his television broadcast on the evening of Feb. 5, 1951, Harvey set out to prove his case — and make some career-enhancing headlines for himself.
Breaking the law in an act of participatory journalism, Harvey planned to scratch his signature on "objects that could not possibly have been brought to the site by someone else," according to a statement later given by an off-duty guard who accompanied him. The signature would stand as proof that Harvey had easily defeated the lab's security.
But seconds after Harvey hit the ground, security officers spotted him, documents show. Harvey ran until, caught in a Jeep's headlights, he tripped and fell. As guards approached, Harvey sprang to his feet and waved.
Guards asked whether Harvey realized he was in a restricted area. "Harvey replied no, that he thought he might be at the airport because of the red lights," one report says. Harvey told the authorities he had been headed to a neighboring town to give a speech when his car died.
On the drive to the lab's security office, an FBI memo says, "every once in a while, Harvey would remark that his car was stalled out there and he would like to have a push."
Under questioning, Harvey eventually dropped his cover story but refused to elaborate, saying he wanted to tell his tale before a congressional committee.
Guards searched his Cadillac and found a nickel-plated .380-caliber Colt automatic. It belonged to a Naval Intelligence officer whom Harvey had brought along as a witness.
Making headlines
The search also revealed a four-page, typewritten script for an upcoming broadcast. Harvey, it turned out, had planned from the outset to feed the nation a bogus account of his escapade: "I hereby affirm the following is a true and accurate account," the script began. "My friend and I were driving a once-familiar road, when the car stalled. . . . We started to walk. . . . We made no effort to conceal our presence. . . .
"Suddenly I realized where I was. That I had entered, unchallenged, one of the United States' vital atomic research installations. . . . Quite by accident, understand, I had found myself inside the 'hot' area. . . . We could have carried a bomb in, or classified documents out."
Word of the stunt soon made headlines. The U.S. attorney for Illinois empaneled a grand jury to consider an espionage indictment. The Atomic Energy Commission suggested privately that Harvey might avoid prosecution if he praised the commission's professionalism on the air, reports show. A member of Congress worked to kill the investigation, and Harvey went on the air to suggest he was being set up.
An FBI official noted in one memo that "this looks like a publicity stunt and I don't think we should carry the ball if we can avoid it." Agents conducted interviews, kept tabs on developments and sent updates to Hoover and his deputies in Washington. But the bureau avoiding taking sides, apparently waiting to see whom public opinion would favor.
Two months after the incident, a federal grand jury officially declined to indict Harvey.
Nothing in Harvey's file suggests Hoover did anything to help. But Harvey appears to have been grateful for something.
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