Shrewd Little Sleuth

＂Leckie is one of our most outstanding agents. It is men like he that have made the organization what it is today＂.

--J. Edgar Hoover (1939)

＂ ... mince no words with Leckie. Let him have it.＂

--J. Edgar Hoover (1940)

Something went terribly wrong. In just one year, Hoover’s praise turned to condemnation. What triggered the FBI director’s sudden shift, from close ally to alleged adversary? Despite his controversial ousting in 1939, A.B. Leckie remained in contact with Hoover for over two decades. Why? And why was Leckie found dead with Marilyn Monroe’s unlisted number in his pocket-reported to have died in four different ways, five if you count murder?

He died just two days before Marilyn, in the same upscale LA neighborhood, after weeks of spying for-or on-her. He worked for Lockheed Aircraft Corporation alongside Robert Mitchum and Norma Jean before she became Marilyn. Did their connection endure? What secrets did he carry from his FBI years, his wartime stint in Pearl Harbor, and his role in securing the founding meeting of the UN in 1945? How did he track down Howard Hughes in hiding, not once, but twice? What about the Hollywood careers ruined by his anti-communist surveillance for McCarthy’s House Committee on Un-American Activities?

Leckie knew too much. Did he die because of it?

As his grandson, and a progressive human rights lawyer, I’m left grappling with the legacy of a man who may have helped dismantle the very freedoms I fight to protect. Was he secretly gay, crushed by the era’s homophobia? Or did other demons drive him to the bottle? What do you do when your family history is entangled in the machinery of repression? How do you reconcile a legacy built on silence and control when it’s etched into your own family line?

You do the only thing that makes sense: you write it all down, and hope the truth finds its way through.