William C. Sullivan

In 1975, he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, "Never once did I hear anybody, including myself raise the question, is this course of action which we have agreed upon lawful, is it legal, is it ethical or moral?"

After Hoover's death in May 1972, U.S. Attorney General Richard Kleindienst appointed Sullivan director of the newly created Office of National Narcotics Intelligence under the Department of Justice in June 1972. Sullivan had hoped to replace Hoover as the director of the FBI, but was passed over by President Richard Nixon in favor of loyalist L. Patrick Gray.

Sullivan claimed Hoover's concerns about the American Communist Party were overemphasized when compared to violations of federal civil rights laws in the segregated South. This friction worsened as Sullivan made his opinions public. Many FBI insiders considered Sullivan the logical successor to Hoover. However, on October 1, 1971, Hoover abruptly had the locks changed on Sullivan's door and removed his nameplate. Under the circumstances, Sullivan was forced to retire.

Sullivan was depicted as a realist by journalist Bill Brown, who collaborated with Sullivan in writing his posthumously published memoir, declaring at the time of their first meeting in 1968 that "only a tiny handful" of anti–Vietnam War protesters had ever had contact with foreign communist parties and that the American Communist Party was "no longer important". Calling Sullivan "a short, neat man who spoke logically and clearly," Brown likened Sullivan's demeanor to that of tough guy actor James Cagney, "with a New England accent thrown in."

Sullivan described the frameup of party leader William Albertson in a June 30, 1964, internal document filed by him and fellow FBI agent Fred J. Baumgardner:

Sullivan was instrumental in arranging for the mailing of a tape recording in 1964 to Coretta Scott King which contained secretly taped recordings of her husband Martin Luther King Jr. having relations with other women. In a memorandum, Sullivan called King "a fraud, demagogue and scoundrel". He also gave orders to track down fugitive members of the Weather Underground in the early 1970s.

Sullivan received a letter from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover offering him a position as special agent with the bureau on July 3, 1941. Anticipating war in Europe, the young Sullivan had been working for the IRS prior to taking the FBI examination. He reported to the Department of Justice on August 4 of that year for training as an FBI agent.

Sullivan successfully completed his training and on September 26, 1941 was assigned to the FBI's field office in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In accordance with the bureau's policy at that time, Sullivan was moved from field office to field office during his first year on the job, being transferred to El Paso, Texas in January 1942, where he was mentored by Charles B. Winstead, the FBI special agent who had killed bank robber John Dillinger.

William Cornelius Sullivan (May 12, 1912 – November 9, 1977) was a Federal Bureau of Investigation official who directed the agency's domestic intelligence operations from 1961 to 1971. Sullivan was forced out of the FBI at the end of September 1971 due to disagreements with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The following year, Sullivan was appointed as the head of the Justice Department's new Office of National Narcotics Intelligence, which he led from June 1972 to July 1973. Sullivan died in a hunting accident in 1977. His memoir of his thirty-year career in the FBI, written with journalist Bill Brown, was published posthumously by commercial publisher W. W. Norton & Company in 1979.

William Cornelius Sullivan was born on May 12, 1912, in the small town of Bolton, Massachusetts. His parents were farmers in the area who worked a family farm there for fifty years.