George Hunter White (June 22, 1908 – October 23, 1975) was an American federal agent. He was a Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) investigator, undercover Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative, World War II veteran, and one of the men responsible for the capture of Lucky Luciano. He remained an FBN special agent throughout his federal service – while he was in the Army, at OSS, and the CIA, he was still operating as an FBN agent, sending regular reports on the worldwide narcotics trade to Anslinger.
While working for the Commissioner of the FBN, Harry J. Anslinger, White travelled around the world in pursuit of narcotics dealers and crime lords. During World War II, he trained undercover Allied operatives for the Office of Strategic Services on the fundamentals of counterespionage before they were deployed on missions in Europe, Asia, and Africa. He was also a federal observer for the controversial narcotics experiments by the Central Intelligence Agency as part of MK-ULTRA and Midnight Climax. During the "scientific experiment" known as Midnight Climax, White was responsible for dosing gangsters, pimps, prostitutes, and other American citizens with a variety of narcotics and drugs without their knowledge, and reporting their behaviors to Dr. Sidney Gottlieb.
Historians today openly acknowledge the problematic nature of White's status as the FBN's only-ever "Supervisor at Large," being granted extreme autonomy by Commissioner Anslinger to travel around the world and pursue narcotics dealers, considering the fact that he is well-known and well-documented to have consumed – at least once – most of the narcotics he was arresting others for possession, and stories told about him through the years by the agents who worked for him, such as Charlie Siragusa and Ira C. Feldman, add complexity. The historian John C. McWilliams, while giving a presentation at the DEA museum, remarked:"If ever there was a rogue elephant in the FBN, it was White. He was the FBN's most unorthodox agent. He was a loner who did not want to be responsible for a partner. His personality and performance both awed and perplexed Anslinger, who saw White as ubiquitous and always ready to shake hands with trouble... A maverick agent whom even Anslinger sometimes could not control, White was a man of extreme contradictions with an extraordinary propensity to attract controversy."Notably, White also kept a picture of a Japanese soldier that he had choked to death in a frame, hanging on the wall of his apartment, where he could stare at it from anywhere in the room. However, he would tell friends who visited his apartment that the soldier was watching over him, staring at him from beyond the grave. Some historians suggest this indicates traits of undiagnosed psychopathy. The journalist Johann Hari wrote: "The personality test given to all applicants on Anslinger’s orders found that [White] was a sadist."
Stephen Kinzer said:"George Hunter White, as you say, was a narcotics agent in New York, but he was the kind of narcotics agent who not only lived at the edge of the law. He crossed over a lot. He used all the substances that he confiscated from people. His use of alcohol and narcotics was legendary, but he was also a cop who did pursue jazz figures, including Billie Holiday."In later life, he served as the chief of the Stinson Beach Fire Department.
Early life and career as a crime journalist White was born in 1908 in Los Angeles, California. White grew up in Alhambra, California, attending grammar and high schools there from 1912 to 1924. His father, Lafayette Dancy White, was at some point employed as a manager at Bank of America in an official capacity. Then, Lafayette was the City Manager of Alhambra for some time. At some point, Lafayette also served as Secretary of the Chamber, and also the elected Treasurer and Tax Collector for Alhambra. After this, the senior White was elected Mayor of Alhambra, serving as a member of the "Reformists." Lafayette White had a reputation for fighting corruption and crime. George White's mother was Hermina Brunner.
As a child, White had an affinity for the water, for fishing, and especially swimming. When he was a teenager on vacations to visit his relatives in Stinson Beach, California, White would often swim into the waters of the San Francisco Bay – despite the fact that he was constantly warned by his parents that the waters were shark infested. White also did not mind the cold temperature of the bay, evidenced by the fact that he would often swim for several miles at a time. While in school, White won many medals at competitive events for freestyle swimming. Swimming was a habit that stayed with him throughout his life, and by his early twenties, he had developed a swimmer's physique.
From 1924 to 1926, White attended Oregon State College and studied courses in business and sociology, but he dropped from the program in 1926 to join the American Red Cross in Los Angeles, serving as that location's director of First Aid and Life Saving.
In 1928, White moved to San Francisco, where from 1928 to 1929, White worked as a police reporter for the San Francisco Bulletin and the Call-Bulletin.
After moving back to Los Angeles in 1930, White continued as a police reporter until 1932 at the City News Service of Los Angeles. He covered several narcotics trials there. One of the criminal trials that White covered for the paper was that of the notorious mobster Jack Dragna. While working on this assignment, White met a man named John Roselli (whose real name was Filippo Sacco), and formed relationship with him that was both professional and friendly. Roselli had recently arrived from Boston. White used Roselli as a source for several stories, just at the time when Roselli was abandoning his Italian accent and entering into the socialite classes of Hollywood.
While he was working on a story for the City News Service about the owners of Hollywood studios practicing illegal gambling, White started to realize that he didn't want to just write about crime, he wanted to fight crime. White immediately applied to virtually every agency he could find. The first institution he applied for was the world-famous Los Angeles Narcotics Squad of the Los Angeles Police Department. During his interview with the squad's Captain, Edward "Eddie" Chitwood, White said: "Newspapering is all right, but it makes a bystander out of you. I want to get out on the field, where the game is going on."
In 1931, the City News Service was bought out by the Hearst Company, and White officially quit journalism.
White became a private detective and investigator, working for several employers over the next several years simultaneously. From 1932 to 1933, White was enrolled as private investigator for the managing editor of the Los Angeles Evening and Herald Express. His job for them involved investigating libel suits that had been filed against the newspaper.
Around the same time, from 1932 to 1934, White was contracted by the former Justice Department agent Harold Hayden Dolley, and worked multiple cases for Dolley. Dolley served in an official capacity in the California state law enforcement community but also owned his own private detective agency. Dolley was formerly the chief Bureau of Prohibition agent for the state of California, and had formerly been the chief Prohibition agent of Los Angeles and Southern California. During his tenure as a Dry Chief in California, Dolley had once been accused of framing an Italian steamship agent named Morris Orsatti, but was subsequently cleared of charges.Bakersfield Morning Echo, November 1, 1923 Page 5 Later in his career, Dolley was accused of illegal wire tapping,Bakersfield Morning Echo, March 7, 1924 Page 5 but on the day he was to be suspended from federal service, the Dry Commissioner David H. Blair sent a telegram to Prohibition Director Samuel F. Rutter, demanding his suspension to be lifted.Oakland Tribune, March 21, 1924 Page 1 After his retirement from the Bureau, and entry into private detective work, Dolley was then accused of witness tampering in the trial of Alexander Pages.Washington Evening Star, November 13, 1929, Page 3 When White went to work for him, Dolley decided to hire the professional swindler, West Coast rope Iris Ford to privately tutor White about crime.
On Jan 6, 1935, Dolley died suddenly in San Diego.
On November 12, 1933, while working as a private detective, White married his first wife, Mildred Genevieve Conover. The wedding was held in Los Angeles. They separated only after one year. In 1936, White was officially divorced from Mildred, with the charge brought against him, as indicated in his FBI file being "desertion and mental cruelty."
Federal agent
Border Patrol (1934–1936) On August 30, 1934, White joined the United States Border Patrol along the US-Mexico border, his first assignment as a federal officer of the law. White described the Border Patrol as: "a herding, harassing and alien-ejecting police force whose well-meaning but often short-tempered officers found it difficult to remember that their border-jumping subjects were human beings whose defections were not exactly heinous or vicious in nature."
White was employed at the Border Patrol as a frontier patrol agent, checking in on ranches near the border, tracking down fence-hoppers and chasing down people trying to dodge the roadblocks set up at border crossings. He would also check out freight trains for illicit goods and undocumented migrants, as well as homeless encampments in the towns on the US side of the border. There were many of these homeless encampments in the United States and Mexico at that time, being the height of the Great Depression.
However, after seven months on the border, White was assigned to the Border Patrol's Intelligence Unit, located in Calexico, California. White had by then a mastery of the Spanish language, and he was at this time given his first assignments as an undercover agent. As an undercover agent, White worked for eighteen months on an assignment in several border towns. While working on this assignment, White met several agents from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). One of these agents was Spencer Stafford, who greatly encouraged White to join the FBN as a dopebuster.
Early career at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1936) In late 1935, White took the entrance exam for the FBN. This entrance exam was not promising, as on his official entrance paperwork, White was noted by his interviewers as having displayed all of the hallmarks of a sadist. The Commissioner of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger, was extremely reluctant to hire him. Anslinger was also aware by this point that White had also failed his application, twice, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) once before applying to the FBN, and the second time in 1936. According to the official FBI account of White's application process, White's "personality, approach, and appearance were not up to Bureau standards." Anslinger had formed a similar opinion regarding White and the FBN. However, the former Secretary of the Treasury, U.S. Senator William Gibbs McAdoo was a close family friend, and interceded on White's behalf above Anslinger in the chain of command at the Treasury Department. White was hired by the FBN in 1936.