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.32A week after Dillinger died, the Chicago Tribune’s piecemeal gripes against the feds became a full-fledged critique.Although Dillinger’sdemise was a public benefaction, the government’s lack of accountabil-ity was disturbing and, an editorial implied, part of a larger problemof growing federal arrogance.The Tribune accused the feds of treating a local police matter like “princely politics in medieval Italy” and Melvin Purvis of retiring to his ducal castle and refusing to answerquestions.These “new ideas of autocratic government” all flowed outof the New Deal’s arrogation of power and the denigration of localautonomy.The Tribune wanted an explanation of why federal agents were joined by officers from another city, indeed from another state,while the Chicago police were deliberately kept away.The feds hadbungled Little Bohemia, and without the East Chicago cops they wouldhave bungled the Biograph too.A casual observer might assume thatthe FBI’s reticence was designed to cover incompetence, enhance fed-eral prestige, and “justify invasion of the states by United States policemen.” Hoover, Purvis, and the rest owed Americans a full accountingof the case; without it, “Dillinger dies as he lived, in a cloud of mystery and to the great hazard of other people.” 33Hoover, ever vigilant of his agency’s reputation, was incensed.Inan act of damage control he sent the Tribune editorial to the attorney general’s office with a memo declaring the newspaper to be openlyhostile, accusing the editors of meddling in government business, and162 | Dillinger’sWildRideintimating that they had underworld ties and needed to be watched.With characteristic petulance, the Director refused to meet withTribune reporters or respond to their written questions, and he urged the attorney general’s office to do the same.Hoover’s anger went backto that paper’s harsh coverage of Little Bohemia.Now the Tribunewas asking difficult questions about the FBI’s relationship to MartinZarkovich and Anna Sage.Matt Leach, no doubt resentful that thefeds had kept the Indiana State Police out of the action, leaked thestory to the Tribune that Zarkovich and Sage conspired to set up Dillinger, take whatever was left of the money he stole, and claim thegovernment bounty.Hoover warned Attorney General Cummings’soffice not to comment on Leach’s allegations on the grounds that cor-ruption in northeast Indiana was a local, not a federal matter.34Most notable was Hoover’s self-righteous tone.Both the ChicagoPolice Department and the Indiana State Police had been involvedin the Dillinger hunt from the beginning; of course they wanted toshare the credit for bringing him down.Hoover was utterly indifferentto them.His goal, pure and simple, was to keep the glory and deflectbad publicity from the Division of Investigation, He was equallyuninterested in pursuing charges that Zarkovich and Sage had visitedDillinger several times in the Crown Point jail, that they and othersin East Chicago helped bribe local officials to aid his escape, and that they took money to keep him hidden.Quite the contrary, quashinginformation about those two was necessary to building the legend ofthe FBI.Yet for all of Hoover’s efforts to showcase Dillinger’s deathas the fruits of clean, modern police work, it was in fact a dirty oldstory: the fugitive knew too much, he was worth more dead thanalive, paid informers brought him down.35Hoover succeeded in protecting the Bureau’s image to theextent that many Americans accepted the story of good triumphingover evil, a predator run to earth, justice served.For many, however, it was not so simple.The sheer size of the crowds following Dillinger’sdeath reveal the story’s power.By midnight on July 22 hundreds,perhaps thousands were out on Lincoln Avenue, posing for newsreelcameras and holding up newspaper headlines [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]