John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first
Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a United States' federal law enforcement agency, and is responsible for its day-to-day operations. The FBI Director is appointed for a single ...
(FBI). He was appointed director of the
Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
– the FBI's predecessor – in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
in 1935, where he remained director for another 37 years until his death in 1972. Hoover built the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception and instituted a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized
fingerprint
A fingerprint is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. The recovery of partial fingerprints from a crime scene is an important method of forensic science. Moisture and grease on a finger result in fingerprints on surfac ...
file and
forensic
Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science to Criminal law, criminal and Civil law (legal system), civil laws, mainly—on the criminal side—during criminal investigation, as governed by the legal standard ...
laboratories. Hoover also established and expanded a national blacklist, referred to as the
FBI Index
The FBI Indexes, or Index List, was a system used to track American citizens and other people by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) before the adoption of computerized databases. The Index List was originally made of paper index cards, firs ...
or Index List.
Later in life and after his death, Hoover became a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive
abuses of power
Abuse is the improper usage or treatment of a thing, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, assault, violation, rape, unjust practices, crimes, or other t ...
began to surface. He was found to have routinely violated the very laws the FBI was charged with enforcing, to have used the FBI to harass
political dissident
A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20t ...
s, to amass secret files for
blackmail
Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to fa ...
ing high-level politicians, and to collect evidence using
vigilantism
Vigilantism () is the act of preventing, investigating and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without Right, legal authority.
A vigilante (from Spanish, Italian and Portuguese “vigilante”, which means "sentinel" or "watcher") is a pers ...
and many other illegal methods.
[
] Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten others.
[
]
Early life and education
![Hoovers_Father](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Hoovers_Father.jpg)
John Edgar Hoover was born on
New Year's Day
New Year's Day is a festival observed in most of the world on 1 January, the first day of the year in the modern Gregorian calendar. 1 January is also New Year's Day on the Julian calendar, but this is not the same day as the Gregorian one. Wh ...
1895 in
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
, to Anna Marie (''née'' Scheitlin; 1860–1938) and Dickerson Naylor Hoover (1856–1921), chief of the printing division of the
U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey
The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) is a United States federal agency that defines and manages a national coordinate system, providing the foundation for transportation and communication; mapping and charting; and a large number of applications ...
, formerly a plate maker for the same organization. Dickerson Hoover was of
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
and
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
ancestry. Hoover's maternal great-uncle, John Hitz, was a
Swiss
Swiss may refer to:
* the adjectival form of Switzerland
* Swiss people
Places
* Swiss, Missouri
* Swiss, North Carolina
*Swiss, West Virginia
* Swiss, Wisconsin
Other uses
*Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports
*Swiss Internation ...
honorary
consul general
A consul is an official representative of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, as well as to facilitate trade and friendship between the people ...
to the United States.
[Hoover had 7 Children
] Among his family, he was the closest to his mother, who was their moral guide and disciplinarian.
Hoover was born in a house on the present site of Capitol Hill United Methodist Church, located on
Seward Square
Seward Square is a square and park maintained by the National Park Service located at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and North Carolina Avenue in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Southeast Washington, D.C. The square is bounded by 4th St ...
near
Eastern Market in Washington's
Capitol Hill
Capitol Hill, in addition to being a metonym for the United States Congress, is the largest historic residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C., stretching easterly in front of the United States Capitol along wide avenues. It is one of the ...
neighborhood. A stained glass window in the church is dedicated to him. Hoover did not have a birth certificate filed upon his birth, although it was required in 1895 in Washington. Two of his siblings did have certificates, but Hoover's was not filed until 1938 when he was 43.
Hoover lived his entire life in Washington, D.C. He attended
Central High School, where he sang in the school choir, participated in the
Reserve Officers' Training Corps
The Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC ( or )) is a group of college- and university-based officer-training programs for training commissioned officers of the United States Armed Forces.
Overview
While ROTC graduate officers serve in all ...
program, and competed on the debate team.
During debates, he argued against women getting the right to vote and against the abolition of the death penalty. The school newspaper applauded his "cool, relentless logic."
[ Hoover ]stutter
Stuttering, also known as stammering, is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the ...
ed as a boy, which he later learned to manage by teaching himself to talk quickly—a style that he carried through his adult career. He eventually spoke with such ferocious speed that stenographers had a hard time following him.
Hoover was 18 years old when he accepted his first job, an entry-level position as messenger in the orders department at the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
. The library was a half mile from his house. The experience shaped both Hoover and the creation of the FBI profiles; as Hoover noted in a 1951 letter: "This job ... trained me in the value of collating material. It gave me an excellent foundation for my work in the FBI where it has been necessary to collate information and evidence."
Hoover obtained a Bachelor of Laws
Bachelor of Laws ( la, Legum Baccalaureus; LL.B.) is an undergraduate law degree in the United Kingdom and most common law jurisdictions. Bachelor of Laws is also the name of the law degree awarded by universities in the People's Republic of Chi ...
from the George Washington University Law School
The George Washington University Law School (GW Law) is the law school of George Washington University, in Washington, D.C. Established in 1865, GW Law is the oldest top law school in the national capital. GW Law offers the largest range of cou ...
in 1916, where he was a member of the Alpha Nu Chapter of the Kappa Alpha Order
Kappa Alpha Order (), commonly known as Kappa Alpha or simply KA, is a social Fraternities and sororities, fraternity and a fraternal order founded in 1865 at Washington and Lee University, Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) i ...
, and an LL.M. in 1917 from the same university. While a law student, Hoover became interested in the career of Anthony Comstock
Anthony Comstock (March 7, 1844 – September 21, 1915) was an anti-vice activist, United States Postal Inspector, and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), who was dedicated to upholding Christian morality. He op ...
, the New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
U.S. Postal Inspector, who waged prolonged campaigns against fraud
In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compens ...
, vice
A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character tra ...
, pornography
Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults, , and birth control
Birth control, also known as contraception, anticonception, and fertility control, is the use of methods or devices to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth contr ...
.[
]
Department of Justice
War Emergency Division
Immediately after getting his LL.M. degree, Hoover was hired by the Justice Department
A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...
to work in the War Emergency Division.[
] He accepted the clerkship on July 27, 1917, aged 22. The job paid $990 a year ($ in dollars) and was exempt from the draft.
He soon became the head of the Division's Alien Enemy Bureau, authorized by President Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
at the beginning of World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
to arrest and jail allegedly disloyal foreigners without trial.[ He received additional authority from the 1917 Espionage Act. Out of a list of 1,400 suspicious Germans living in the U.S., the Bureau arrested 98 and designated 1,172 as arrestable.][
]
Bureau of Investigation
Head of the Radical Division
In August 1919, the 24-year-old Hoover became head of the Bureau of Investigation's new General Intelligence Division, also known as the Radical Division because its goal was to monitor and disrupt the work of domestic radicals.[
] America's First Red Scare
The First Red Scare was a period during History of the United States (1918–1945), the early 20th-century history of the United States marked by a widespread fear of Far-left politics, far-left movements, including Bolshevik, Bolshevism and ...
was beginning, and one of Hoover's first assignments was to carry out the Palmer Raids
The Palmer Raids were a series of raids conducted in November 1919 and January 1920 by the United States Department of Justice under the administration of President Woodrow Wilson to capture and arrest suspected socialists, especially anarchists ...
.[
]
Hoover and his chosen assistant, George Ruch, monitored a variety of U.S. radicals with the intent to punish, arrest, or deport those whose politics they decided were dangerous. Targets during this period included Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey Sr. (17 August 188710 June 1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African ...
;[
] Rose Pastor Stokes
Rose Harriet Pastor Stokes (née Wieslander; July 18, 1879 – June 20, 1933) was an American socialist activist, writer, birth control advocate, and feminist. She was a figure of some public notoriety after her 1905 marriage to Episcopalian mill ...
and Cyril Briggs
Cyril Valentine Briggs (May 28, 1888 – October 18, 1966) was an African-Caribbean American writer and communist political activist. Briggs is best remembered as founder and editor of ''The Crusader,'' a seminal New York magazine of the New Neg ...
;[
] Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was a Russian-born anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the ...
and Alexander Berkman
Alexander Berkman (November 21, 1870June 28, 1936) was a Russian-American anarchist and author. He was a leading member of the anarchist movement in the early 20th century, famous for both his political activism and his writing.
B ...
;[
] and future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was an Austrian-American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1939 until 1962, during which period he was a noted advocate of judicia ...
, who, Hoover maintained, was "the most dangerous man in the United States."[
]
In 1920 the 25 year-old Edgar Hoover was initiated as a Freemason
Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...
at D.C.'s Federal Lodge No. 1 in Washington D.C. He went on to join the Scottish Rite
The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction in the United States often omits the ''and'', while the English Constitution in the United Kingdom omits the ''Scottish''), commonly known as simply the Sco ...
in which he was made a 33rd Degree Inspector General Honorary in 1955.
Head of the Bureau of Investigation
In 1921, Hoover rose in the Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
to deputy head, and in 1924 the Attorney General made him the acting director. On May 10, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge (born John Calvin Coolidge Jr.; ; July 4, 1872January 5, 1933) was the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. Born in Vermont, Coolidge was a History of the Republican Party (United States), Republican lawyer ...
appointed Hoover as the fifth Director of the Bureau of Investigation, partly in response to allegations that the prior director, William J. Burns, was involved in the Teapot Dome scandal
The Teapot Dome scandal was a bribery scandal involving the administration of United States President Warren G. Harding from 1921 to 1923. Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyomin ...
. When Hoover took over the Bureau of Investigation, it had approximately 650 employees, including 441 Special Agents.
Hoover fired all female agents and banned the future hiring of them.
Early leadership
Hoover was sometimes unpredictable in his leadership. He frequently fired Bureau agents, singling out those he thought "looked stupid like truck drivers," or whom he considered "pinheads." He also relocated agents who had displeased him to career-ending assignments and locations. Melvin Purvis
Melvin Horace Purvis II (October 24, 1903 – February 29, 1960) was an American law enforcement official and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent. Given the nickname "Little Mel" because of his short, frame, Purvis became noted for leadi ...
was a prime example: Purvis was one of the most effective agents in capturing and breaking up 1930s gangs, and it is alleged that Hoover maneuvered him out of the Bureau because he was envious of the substantial public recognition Purvis received.
Hoover often praised local law-enforcement officers around the country, and built up a national network of supporters and admirers in the process. One whom he often commended for particular effectiveness was the conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
sheriff
A sheriff is a government official, with varying duties, existing in some countries with historical ties to England where the office originated. There is an analogous, although independently developed, office in Iceland that is commonly transla ...
of Caddo Parish, Louisiana
Caddo Parish (French language, French: ''Paroisse de Caddo'') is a Parish (administrative division), parish located in the northwest corner of the U.S. state of Louisiana. According to the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, the parish ...
, J. Howell Flournoy.
In December 1929, Hoover oversaw the protection detail for the Japanese Naval Delegation who were visiting Washington, D.C., on their way to attend negotiations for the 1930 London Naval Treaty (officially called Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament). The Japanese delegation was greeted at Washington Union (train) Station by U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson and the Japanese Ambassador Katsuji Debuchi. The Japanese delegation then visited the White House to meet with President Herbert Hoover.
Name change
In 1933, Hoover learned of a namesake, John Edgar Hoover, who had failed to pay a debt of $900 to a store in Washington. As Hoover was particular about paying his bills on time and so did not want to be associated with this disreputable behavior, he changed his name to "J. Edgar Hoover".
Depression-era gangsters
In the early 1930s, criminal gangs carried out large numbers of bank robberies
Bank robbery is the criminal act of stealing from a bank, specifically while bank employees and customers are subjected to force, violence, or a threat of violence. This refers to robbery of a bank branch or teller, as opposed to other bank- ...
in the Midwest
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four Census Bureau Region, census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of ...
. They used their superior firepower and fast getaway cars to elude local law enforcement agencies and avoid arrest. Many of these criminals frequently made newspaper headlines across the United States, particularly John Dillinger
John Herbert Dillinger (June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934) was an American gangster during the Great Depression. He led the Dillinger Gang, which was accused of robbing 24 banks and four police stations. Dillinger was imprisoned several times and ...
, who became famous for leaping over bank cages, and repeatedly escaping from jails
A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correcti ...
and police
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and t ...
traps. The gangsters enjoyed a level of sympathy in the Midwest, as banks and bankers were widely seen as oppressors of common people during the Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
.
The robbers operated across state lines, and Hoover pressed to have their crimes recognized as federal offenses so that he and his men would have the authority to pursue them and get the credit for capturing them. Initially, the Bureau suffered some embarrassing foul-ups, in particular with Dillinger and his conspirators. A raid on a summer lodge in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin
Manitowish Waters is a town in Vilas County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 566 in the 2010 census. The unincorporated community Manitowish Waters, is also located within the town.
History
In 1934, at the Little Bohemia Lodge on ...
, called " Little Bohemia," left a Bureau agent and a civilian bystander dead and others wounded; all the gangsters escaped.
Hoover realized that his job was then on the line, and he pulled out all stops to capture the culprits. In late July 1934, Special Agent Melvin Purvis, the Director of Operations in the Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
office, received a tip on Dillinger's whereabouts that paid off when Dillinger was located, ambushed, and killed by Bureau agents outside the Biograph Theater
The Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, was originally a movie theater but now presents live productions. It gained early notoriety as the location where bank robber John Dillinger was lea ...
.
Hoover was credited for overseeing several highly publicized captures or shootings of outlaws and bank robbers
Bank robbery is the criminal act of stealing from a bank, specifically while bank employees and customers are subjected to force, violence, or a threat of violence. This refers to robbery of a bank branch or teller, as opposed to other bank-o ...
. These included those of Machine Gun Kelly
George Kelly Barnes (July 18, 1895 – July 18, 1954), better known by his pseudonym "Machine Gun Kelly", was an American gangster from Memphis, Tennessee, active during the Prohibition era. His nickname came from his favorite weapon, a Thomps ...
in 1933, of Dillinger in 1934, and of Alvin Karpis
Alvin Francis Karpis (born Albin Francis Karpavičius; August 10, 1907 – August 26, 1979), a Depression-era gangster nicknamed "Creepy" for his sinister smile and called "Ray" by his gang members, was a Canadian-born (naturalized American) crim ...
in 1936, which led to the Bureau's powers being broadened.
In 1935, the ''Bureau of Investigation'' was renamed the ''Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
'' (FBI). It was not simply a name change. A lot of basic restructuring was done. In fact, Hoover visited the lab of Canadian forensic scientist Wilfrid Derome
Wilfrid Derome (19 April 1877 – 24 November 1931) was a Quebec forensic scientist known as the founder of the first forensic science laboratory in North America, founded in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The laboratory is now called the Laboratoi ...
twice - in 1929 and 1932 - in order to plan the foundation of his own FBI laboratory in the USA. It was the insight gained from these visits which helped him transform the BI into FBI in 1935.
In 1939, the FBI became pre-eminent in the field of domestic intelligence, thanks in large part to changes made by Hoover, such as expanding and combining fingerprint files in the Identification Division, to compile the largest collection of fingerprints to date, and Hoover's help to expand the FBI's recruitment and create the FBI Laboratory
The FBI Laboratory (also called the Laboratory Division) is a division within the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation that provides forensic analysis support services to the FBI, as well as to state and local law enforcement agencies ...
, a division established in 1932 to examine and analyze evidence
Evidence for a proposition is what supports this proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the supported proposition is true. What role evidence plays and how it is conceived varies from field to field.
In epistemology, evidenc ...
found by the FBI.
American Mafia
During the 1930s, Hoover persistently denied the existence of organized crime
Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally th ...
, despite numerous '' gangland'' shootings as Mafia
"Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of d ...
groups struggled for control of the lucrative profits deriving from illegal alcohol sales during Prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic ...
, and later for control of prostitution
Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in Sex work, sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, n ...
, illegal drugs
The prohibition of drugs through sumptuary legislation or religious law is a common means of attempting to prevent the recreational use of certain intoxicating substances.
While some drugs are illegal to possess, many governments regulate the ...
and other criminal enterprises.
Many writers believe Hoover's denial of the Mafia's existence and his failure to use the full force of the FBI to investigate it were due to Mafia gangsters Meyer Lansky
Meyer Lansky (born Maier Suchowljansky; July 4, 1902 – January 15, 1983), known as the "Mob's Accountant", was an American organized crime figure who, along with his associate Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was instrumental in the development of the ...
and Frank Costello
Frank Costello (; born Francesco Castiglia; ; January 26, 1891 – February 18, 1973) was an Italian-American crime boss of the Luciano crime family. In 1957, Costello survived an assassination attempt ordered by Vito Genovese and carried out by ...
's possession of embarrassing photographs of Hoover in the company of his ''protégé'', FBI Deputy Director Clyde Tolson
Clyde Anderson Tolson (May 22, 1900 – April 14, 1975) was the second-ranking official of the FBI from 1930 until 1972, from 1947 titled Associate Director, primarily responsible for personnel and discipline. He was the ''protégé'', long-tim ...
. Other writers believe Costello corrupted Hoover by providing him with horseracing tips, passed through a mutual friend, gossip columnist
A gossip columnist is someone who writes a gossip column in a newspaper or magazine, especially a gossip magazine. Gossip columns are material written in a light, informal style, which relates the gossip columnist's opinions about the personal li ...
Walter Winchell
Walter Winchell (April 7, 1897 – February 20, 1972) was a syndicated American newspaper gossip columnist and radio news commentator. Originally a vaudeville performer, Winchell began his newspaper career as a Broadway reporter, critic and co ...
.
[
] Hoover had a reputation as "an inveterate horseplayer", and was known to send Special Agents to place $100 bets for him.[Sifakis, p.127.] Hoover once said the Bureau had "much more important functions" than arresting bookmakers and gamblers.
Although Hoover built the reputation of the FBI arresting bank robbers in the 1930s, his main interest had always been Communist subversion, and during the Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
he was able to focus the FBI's attention on these investigations. From the mid-1940s through the mid-50s, he paid little attention to criminal vice
A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character tra ...
rackets such as illegal drugs
A drug is any chemical substance that causes a change in an organism's physiology or psychology when consumed. Drugs are typically distinguished from food and substances that provide nutritional support. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalat ...
, prostitution
Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in Sex work, sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, n ...
, and extortion
Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offence; the bulk of this article deals with such cases. Robbery is the simplest and most common form of extortion, ...
and flatly denied the existence of the Mafia in the United States. In the 1950s, evidence of the FBI's unwillingness to investigate the Mafia became a topic of public criticism.
After the Apalachin meeting of crime bosses in 1957, Hoover could no longer deny the existence of a nationwide crime syndicate. At that time Cosa Nostra
The Sicilian Mafia, also simply known as the Mafia and frequently referred to as Cosa nostra (, ; "our thing") by its members, is an Italian Mafia-terrorist-type organized crime syndicate and criminal society originating in the region of Sicily a ...
's control of the Syndicate's many branches operating criminal activities throughout North America was heavily reported in popular newspapers and magazines. Hoover created the "Top Hoodlum Program" and went after the syndicate's top bosses throughout the country.
Investigation of subversion and radicals
Hoover was concerned about what he claimed was subversion
Subversion () refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to transform the established social order and its structures of power, authority, hierarchy, and social norms. Sub ...
, and under his leadership, the FBI investigated tens of thousands of suspected subversives and radicals. According to critics, Hoover tended to exaggerate the dangers of these alleged subversives and many times overstepped his bounds in his pursuit of eliminating that perceived threat. William G. Hundley, a Justice Department prosecutor, joked that Hoover's investigations had actually helped the American communist movement survive, as Hoover's "informants were nearly the only ones that paid the party dues." Due to the FBI's aggressive targeting, by 1957 CPUSA membership had dwindled to less than 10,000, of whom some 1,500 were informants for the FBI.
Florida and Long Island U-boat landings
The FBI investigated rings of German saboteurs and spies starting in the late 1930s, and had primary responsibility for counter-espionage. The first arrests of German agents were made in 1938 and continued throughout World War II. In the Quirin affair, during World War II, German U-boat
U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare role ...
s set two small groups of Nazi agents ashore in Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
and on Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...
to cause acts of sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''saboteur''. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identitie ...
within the country. The two teams were apprehended after one of the agents contacted the FBI and told them everything – he was also charged, and convicted.
Illegal wire-tapping
During this time period President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
, out of concern over Nazi agents in the United States, gave "qualified permission" to wiretap
Telephone tapping (also wire tapping or wiretapping in American English) is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitorin ...
persons "suspected ... fsubversive activities". He went on to add, in 1941, that the United States Attorney General
The United States attorney general (AG) is the head of the United States Department of Justice, and is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government of the United States. The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the p ...
had to be informed of its use in each case.
The Attorney General Robert H. Jackson
Robert Houghwout Jackson (February 13, 1892 – October 9, 1954) was an American lawyer, jurist, and politician who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the Unit ...
left it to Hoover to decide how and when to use wiretaps, as he found the "whole business" distasteful. Jackson's successor at the post of Attorney General, Francis Biddle
Francis Beverley Biddle (May 9, 1886 – October 4, 1968) was an American lawyer and judge who was the United States Attorney General during World War II. He also served as the primary American judge during the postwar Nuremberg Trials as well a ...
, did turn down Hoover's requests on occasion.
Concealed espionage discoveries
In the late 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
gave Hoover the task to investigate both foreign espionage in the United States and the activities of domestic communists and fascists. When the Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
began in the late 1940s, the FBI under Hoover undertook the intensive surveillance of communists and other left-wing activists in the United States.
The FBI also participated in the Venona project
The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service (later absorbed by the National Security Agency), which ran from February 1, 1943, until Octob ...
, a pre-World War II joint project with the British to eavesdrop on Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
spies in the UK and the United States. They did not initially realize that espionage
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangibl ...
was being committed, but the Soviets' multiple use of one-time pad
In cryptography, the one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption technique that cannot be cracked, but requires the use of a single-use pre-shared key that is not smaller than the message being sent. In this technique, a plaintext is paired with a ran ...
ciphers (which with single use are unbreakable) created redundancies that allowed some intercepts to be decoded. These established that espionage was being carried out.
Hoover kept the intercepts – America's greatest counterintelligence
Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or ot ...
secret – in a locked safe in his office. He chose not to inform President Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
, Attorney General J. Howard McGrath
James Howard McGrath (November 28, 1903September 2, 1966) was an American politician and attorney from Rhode Island. McGrath, a Democrat, served as U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island before becoming governor, U.S. Solicitor General, U.S. Sen ...
, or Secretaries of State Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson (pronounced ; April 11, 1893October 12, 1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman ...
and General George Marshall
George Catlett Marshall Jr. (December 31, 1880 – October 16, 1959) was an American army officer and statesman. He rose through the United States Army to become Chief of Staff of the US Army under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry ...
while they held office. He informed the Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
(CIA) of the Venona Project in 1952.
Plans for expanding the FBI to do global intelligence
After World War II, Hoover advanced plans to create a "World-Wide Intelligence Service". These plans were shot down by the Truman administration. Truman objected to the plan, emerging bureaucratic competitors opposed the centralization of power inherent in the plans, and there was a considerable aversion to creating an American version of the "Gestapo."
Plans for suspending ''habeas corpus''
In 1946, Attorney General Tom C. Clark
Thomas Campbell Clark (September 23, 1899June 13, 1977) was an American lawyer who served as the 59th United States Attorney General from 1945 to 1949 and as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1949 to 1967.
Clark ...
authorized Hoover to compile a list of potentially disloyal Americans who might be detained during a wartime national emergency. In 1950, at the outbreak of the Korean War
, date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
, Hoover submitted a plan to President Truman to suspend the writ of ''habeas corpus
''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...
'' and detain 12,000 Americans suspected of disloyalty. Truman did not act on the plan.
COINTELPRO and the 1950s
In 1956, Hoover was becoming increasingly frustrated by U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
decisions that limited the Justice Department's ability to prosecute people for their political opinions, most notably communists. Some of his aides reported that he purposely exaggerated the threat of communism to "ensure financial and public support for the FBI." At this time he formalized a covert "dirty tricks" program under the name COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO ( syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrati ...
. COINTELPRO was first used to disrupt the Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
, where Hoover ordered observation and pursuit of targets that ranged from suspected citizen spies to larger celebrity figures, such as Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is consider ...
, whom he saw as spreading Communist Party propaganda.
COINTELPRO's methods included infiltration, burglaries, setting up illegal wiretaps, planting forged documents, and spreading false rumors about key members of target organizations. Some authors have charged that COINTELPRO methods also included inciting violence and arranging murders.
This program remained in place until it was exposed to the public in 1971, after the burglary by a group of eight activists of many internal documents from an office in Media, Pennsylvania
Media is a borough in and the county seat of Delaware County, Pennsylvania. It is located about west of Philadelphia, the sixth most populous city in the nation with 1.6 million residents as 2020. It is part of the Delaware Valley metropolita ...
, whereupon COINTELPRO became the cause of some of the harshest criticism of Hoover and the FBI. COINTELPRO's activities were investigated in 1975 by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, called the "Church Committee
The Church Committee (formally the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) was a US Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence ...
" after its chairman, Senator Frank Church
Frank Forrester Church III (July 25, 1924 – April 7, 1984) was an Americans, American politician and lawyer. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served as a United States Senate, United States senator from Idah ...
( D-Idaho
Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyom ...
); the committee declared COINTELPRO's activities were illegal and contrary to the Constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of Legal entity, entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed.
When ...
.
Hoover amassed significant power by collecting files containing large amounts of compromising and potentially embarrassing information on many powerful people, especially politicians. According to Laurence Silberman
Laurence Hirsch Silberman (October 12, 1935 – October 2, 2022) was an American lawyer, diplomat, jurist, and government official who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia C ...
, appointed Deputy Attorney General
The Deputy Attorney General (DAG) is the second-highest-ranking official in a department of justice or of law, in various governments of the world. In those governments, the deputy attorney general oversees the day-to-day operation of the departme ...
in early 1974, FBI Director Clarence M. Kelley thought such files either did not exist or had been destroyed. After ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' broke a story in January 1975, Kelley searched and found them in his outer office. The House Judiciary Committee
The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, also called the House Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. It is charged with overseeing the administration of justice within the federal courts, a ...
then demanded that Silberman testify about them.
Reaction to civil rights groups
In 1956, several years before he targeted Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
, Hoover had a public showdown with T. R. M. Howard
Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard (March 4, 1908 – May 1, 1976) was an American civil rights leader, fraternal organization leader, entrepreneur and surgeon. He was a mentor to activists such as Medgar Evers, Charles Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, ...
, a civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of ...
leader from Mound Bayou, Mississippi
Mound Bayou is a city in Bolivar County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 1,533 at the 2010 census, down from 2,102 in 2000. It was founded as an independent black community in 1887 by former slaves led by Isaiah Montgomery.
Mound ...
. During a national speaking tour, Howard had criticized the FBI's failure to investigate thoroughly the racially motivated murders of George W. Lee
George Wesley Lee (December 25, 1903 – May 7, 1955) was an African-American civil rights leader, minister, and entrepreneur. He was a vice president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership and head of the Belzoni, Mississippi, branch of ...
, Lamar Smith
Lamar Seeligson Smith (born November 19, 1947) is an American politician and lobbyist who served in the United States House of Representatives for for 16 terms, a district including most of the wealthier sections of San Antonio and Austin, as w ...
, and Emmett Till
Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery ...
. Hoover wrote an open letter
An open letter is a Letter (message), letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally.
Open letters usually take the form of a letter (mess ...
to the press singling out these statements as "irresponsible."
In the 1960s, Hoover's FBI monitored John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...
, Malcolm X
Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Is ...
, and Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali (; born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.; January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016) was an American professional boxer and activist. Nicknamed "The Greatest", he is regarded as one of the most significant sports figures of the 20th century, a ...
. The COINTELPRO tactics were later extended to organizations such as the Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930.
A black nationalist organization, the NOI focuses its attention on the African diaspora, especially on African ...
, the Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Califo ...
, King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civi ...
and others. Hoover's moves against people who maintained contacts with subversive elements, some of whom were members of the civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
, also led to accusations of trying to undermine their reputations.
The treatment of Martin Luther King Jr. and actress Jean Seberg
Jean Dorothy Seberg (; ; November 13, 1938August 30, 1979) was an American actress who lived half of her life in France. Her performance in Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 film ''Breathless'' immortalized her as an icon of French New Wave cinema.
Seb ...
are two examples: Jacqueline Kennedy
Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis ( ; July 28, 1929 – May 19, 1994) was an American socialite, writer, photographer, and book editor who served as first lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963, as the wife of President John F. Kennedy. A po ...
recalled that Hoover told President John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...
that King had tried to arrange a sex party while in the capital for the March on Washington
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, also known as simply the March on Washington or The Great March on Washington, was held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic righ ...
and that Hoover told Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925June 6, 1968), also known by his initials RFK and by the nickname Bobby, was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, ...
that King had made derogatory comments during the President's funeral. Under Hoover's leadership, the FBI sent an anonymous blackmail letter to King in 1964, urging him to commit suicide.
King's aide Andrew Young
Andrew Jackson Young Jr. (born March 12, 1932) is an American politician, diplomat, and activist. Beginning his career as a pastor, Young was an early leader in the civil rights movement, serving as executive director of the Southern Christian L ...
claimed in a 2013 interview with the Academy of Achievement
The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet o ...
that the main source of tension between the SCLC and FBI was the government agency's lack of black agents, and that both parties were willing to co-operate with each other by the time the Selma to Montgomery marches
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the ...
had taken place.
In one 1965 incident, white civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo
Viola Fauver Liuzzo (née Gregg; April 11, 1925 – March 25, 1965) was an American civil rights activist. In March 1965, Liuzzo heeded the call of Martin Luther King Jr. and traveled from Detroit, Michigan, to Selma, Alabama, in the wake of the ...
was murdered by Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
smen, who had given chase and fired shots into her car after noticing that her passenger was a young black man; one of the Klansmen was Gary Thomas Rowe
Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. (August 13, 1933 – May 25, 1998), known in Witness Protection as Thomas Neil Moore, was a paid informant and agent provocateur for the FBI. As an informant, he infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, as part of the FBI's COINTELPRO pr ...
, an acknowledged FBI informant.[Gary May, The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Luzzo, Yale University Press, 2005.] The FBI spread rumors that Liuzzo was a member of the Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
and had abandoned her children to have sexual relationships with African Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
involved in the civil rights movement. FBI records show that Hoover personally communicated these insinuations to President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
.
Hoover also personally ended the Federal inquiry into the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing by members of the Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
that killed four girls. By May 1965, local investigators and the FBI had identified suspects in the bombing and witnesses, and this information was relayed to Hoover. No prosecutions of the four suspects ensued, however, even though the evidence was reportedly "so strong that even a white Alabama jury would convict". There had been a history of mistrust between local and Federal government of the United States, federal investigators. Hoover wrote in a memo that the chances of a conviction were remote and told his agents not to share their results with federal or state prosecutors. In 1968, the FBI formally closed their investigation into the bombing without filing charges against any of their named suspects. The files were Record sealing, sealed by order of Hoover.
Hoover in 1970 personally authorized Black bag operation, "black-bag" jobs against the Weather Underground per testimony from William C. Sullivan.
Late career and death
One of his biographers, Kenneth Ackerman, wrote that the allegation that Hoover's secret files kept presidents from firing him "is a myth."[
] However, Richard Nixon was recorded in 1971 as stating that one of the reasons he would not fire Hoover was that he was afraid of Hoover's reprisals against him. Similarly, Presidents Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy considered dismissing Hoover as FBI Director, but ultimately concluded that the political cost of doing so would be too great.
In 1964, Hoover's FBI investigated Jack Valenti, a special assistant and confidant of President Lyndon Johnson. Despite Valenti's two-year marriage to Johnson's personal secretary, the investigation focused on rumors that he was having a gay relationship with a commercial photographer friend.
Hoover personally directed the FBI investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1964, just days before Hoover testified in the earliest stages of the Warren Commission hearings, President Lyndon B. Johnson waived the then-mandatory U.S. Government Service Retirement Age of 70, allowing Hoover to remain the FBI Director "for an indefinite period of time". The House Select Committee on Assassinations issued a report in 1979 critical of the performance by the FBI, the Warren Commission, and other agencies. The report criticized the FBI's (Hoover's) reluctance to investigate thoroughly the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President.
When Richard Nixon took office in January 1969, Hoover had just turned 74. There was a growing sentiment in Washington, D.C., that the aging FBI chief should retire, but Hoover's power and friends in Congress remained too strong for him to be forced to do so.
Hoover remained director of the FBI until he died of a heart attack in his Washington home, on May 2, 1972,[
] whereupon operational command of the Bureau was passed onto Associate Director Clyde Tolson
Clyde Anderson Tolson (May 22, 1900 – April 14, 1975) was the second-ranking official of the FBI from 1930 until 1972, from 1947 titled Associate Director, primarily responsible for personnel and discipline. He was the ''protégé'', long-tim ...
. On May 3, 1972, Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray – a Justice Department official with no FBI experience – as Acting Director of the FBI, with W. Mark Felt becoming associate director.
Hoover's body Lying in state#United States, lay in state in the United States Capitol rotunda, Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, where Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Warren Burger eulogized him. Up to that time, Hoover was the only civil servant to have lain in state, according to New York Daily News, ''The New York Daily News''. At the time, ''The New York Times'' observed that this was "an honor accorded to only 21 persons before, of whom eight were Presidents or former Presidents." (The Architect of the Capitol website provides a list of all those so honored, including Capitol Police killed in the line of duty in 1998 and 2021.) President Nixon delivered another eulogy at the funeral service in the National Presbyterian Church, and called Hoover "one of the Giants, [whose] long life brimmed over with magnificent achievement and dedicated service to this country which he loved so well". Hoover was buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., next to the graves of his parents and a sister who had died in infancy.
Legacy
Biographer Kenneth D. Ackerman summarizes Hoover's legacy thus:
For better or worse, he built the FBI into a modern, national organization stressing professionalism and scientific crime-fighting. For most of his life, Americans considered him a hero. He made the G-Man (slang), G-Man brand so popular that, at its height, it was harder to become an FBI agent than to be accepted into an Ivy League college.
Hoover worked to groom the image of the FBI in American media; he was a consultant to Warner Brothers for a theatrical film about the FBI, ''The FBI Story'' (1959), and in 1965 on Warner's long-running spin-off television series, ''The F.B.I. (TV series), The F.B.I.'' Hoover personally made sure Warner Brothers portrayed the FBI more favorably than other crime dramas of the times.
U.S. President Harry S Truman said that Hoover transformed the FBI into his private secret police force:
... we want no Gestapo or secret police. The FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail. J. Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him.
Because Hoover's actions came to be seen as abuses of power
Abuse is the improper usage or treatment of a thing, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, assault, violation, rape, unjust practices, crimes, or other t ...
, FBI directors are now limited to one 10-year term, subject to extension by the United States Senate.
Jacob Heilbrunn, journalist and senior editor at The National Interest, ''The'' ''National Interest'' gives a mixed assessment of Hoover's legacy:
The FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. is named the J. Edgar Hoover Building, after Hoover. Because of the controversial nature of Hoover's legacy, both Republicans and Democrats have periodically introduced legislation in the House and Senate to rename it. The first such proposal came just two months after the building's inauguration. On December 12, 1979, Gilbert Gude – a Republican congressman from Maryland – introduced H.R. 11137, which would have changed the name of the edifice from the "J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. Building" to simply the "F.B.I. Building." However, that bill never made it out of committee, nor did two subsequent attempts by Gude. Another notable attempt came in 1993 when Democratic Senator Howard Metzenbaum pushed for a name change following a new report about Hoover's ordered "loyalty investigation" of future Senator Quentin Burdick. In 1998, Democratic Senator Harry Reid sponsored an amendment to strip Hoover's name from the building, stating that "J. Edgar Hoover's name on the FBI building is a stain on the building." The Senate did not adopt the amendment. The building is "aging" and "deteriorating"[O'Keefe, Ed. "FBI J. Edgar Hoover Building 'Deteriorating,' Report Says." ''Washington Post.'' November 9, 2011.](_blank)
Accessed September 29, 2012. and its naming might eventually be made moot by the FBI moving its headquarters to a new suburban site.
Hoover's practice of violating civil liberties for the stated sake of national security has been questioned in reference to recent national surveillance programs. An example is a lecture titled ''Civil Liberties and National Security: Did Hoover Get it Right?'', given at The Institute of World Politics on April 21, 2015.
Private life
Pets
Hoover received his first dog from his parents when he was a child, after which he was never without one. He owned many throughout his lifetime and became an aficionado especially knowledgeable in breeding of pedigrees, particularly Cairn Terriers and Beagles. He gave many dogs to notable people, such as Presidents Herbert Hoover (no relation) and Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
, and buried seven canine pets, including a Cairn Terrier named Spee De Bozo, at Aspen Hill Memorial Park, in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Sexuality
From the 1940s, rumors circulated that Hoover, who was still living with his mother in his early 40s, was Homosexuality, homosexual. The historians John Stuart Cox and Athan G. Theoharis speculated that Clyde Tolson, who became an assistant director to Hoover in his mid 40s and became his primary heir, was a lover to Hoover until his death.[
] Hoover reportedly hunted down and threatened anyone who made insinuations about his sexual orientation, sexuality.[
] Truman Capote, who enjoyed repeating Wiktionary:salacious#English, salacious rumors about Hoover, once remarked that he was more interested in making Hoover angry than determining whether the rumors were true. On May 2, 1969, ''Screw (magazine), Screw'' published the first reference in print to J. Edgar Hoover's sexuality, titled "Is J. Edgar Hoover a Faggot (slang), Fag?"
Some associates and scholars dismiss rumors about Hoover's sexuality, and rumors about his relationship with Tolson in particular, as unlikely,[
] while others have described them as probable or even "confirmed".[
] Still other scholars have reported the rumors without expressing an opinion.
Cox and Theoharis concluded that "the strange likelihood is that Hoover Asexuality, never knew sexual desire at all."[ Anthony Summers, who wrote ''Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover'' (1993), stated that there was no ambiguity about the FBI director's sexual proclivities and described him as "bisexual with failed heterosexuality."][
]
Hoover and Tolson
Hoover described Tolson as his alter ego: the men worked closely together during the day and, both single, frequently took meals, went to night clubs, and vacationed together. This closeness between the two men is often cited as evidence that they were lovers. Some FBI employees who knew them, such as Mark Felt, say the relationship was "brotherly"; however, former FBI executive assistant director Mike Mason suggested that some of Hoover's colleagues denied that he had a sexual relationship with Tolson in an effort to protect Hoover's image.
The novelist William Styron told Summers that he once saw Hoover and Tolson in a California beach house, where the director was painting his friend's toenails. Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights organizations, said Hoover and Tolson sat in boxes owned by and used exclusively by gay men at the Del Mar racetrack in California.
Hoover Bequest, bequeathed his estate to Tolson, who moved into Hoover's house after Hoover died. Tolson accepted the American flag that draped Hoover's casket. Tolson is buried a few yards away from Hoover in the Congressional Cemetery.
Other romantic allegations
One of Hoover's biographers, Richard Hack, does not believe the director was gay. Hack notes that Hoover was romantically linked to actress Dorothy Lamour in the late 1930s and early 1940s and that after Hoover's death, Lamour did not deny rumors that she had had an affair with him.
Hack further reported that, during the 1940s and 1950s, Hoover attended social events with Lela E. Rogers, Lela Rogers, the divorced mother of dancer and actress Ginger Rogers, so often that many of their mutual friends assumed the pair would eventually marry.
Pornography for blackmail
Hoover kept a large collection of pornographic material, possibly the world's largest, of films, photographs, and written materials, with particular emphasis on nude photos of celebrities. He reportedly used these for his own titillation and held them for blackmail
Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to fa ...
purposes.
Cross-dressing story
Lewis Rosenstiel, founder of Schenley Industries, was a close friend of Hoover's and the primary contributor to the J. Edgar Hoover Foundation. In his biography ''Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover'' (1993), journalist Anthony Summers quoted Rosenstiel's fourth wife, Susan, as claiming to have seen Hoover engaging in cross-dressing in the 1950s at all-male parties at the Plaza Hotel with her husband, attorney Roy Cohn, and young male prostitutes.[
]
Another Hoover biographer, Burton Hersh, later corroborated this story.
Summers alleged the Mafia had blackmail
Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to fa ...
material on Hoover, which made Hoover reluctant to pursue organized crime aggressively. According to Summers, organized crime figures Meyer Lansky
Meyer Lansky (born Maier Suchowljansky; July 4, 1902 – January 15, 1983), known as the "Mob's Accountant", was an American organized crime figure who, along with his associate Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was instrumental in the development of the ...
and Frank Costello
Frank Costello (; born Francesco Castiglia; ; January 26, 1891 – February 18, 1973) was an Italian-American crime boss of the Luciano crime family. In 1957, Costello survived an assassination attempt ordered by Vito Genovese and carried out by ...
obtained photos of Hoover's alleged homosexual activity with Tolson and used them to ensure that the FBI did not target their illegal activities.[
] Additionally, Summers claimed that Hoover was friends with Billy Byars Jr., an alleged child pornographer and producer of the film ''The Genesis Children''.[
]
Another Hoover biographer who heard the rumors of homosexuality and blackmail, however, said he was unable to corroborate them,[ though it has been acknowledged that Lansky and other organized crime figures had frequently been allowed to visit the Hotel del Charro, Del Charro Hotel in La Jolla, California, which was owned by Hoover's friend, and staunch Lyndon Johnson supporter, Clint Murchison Sr.][
] Hoover and Tolson also frequently visited the Del Charro Hotel.[ Summers quoted a source named Charles Krebs as saying, "on three occasions that I knew about, maybe four, boys were driven down to La Jolla at Hoover's request."]
Skeptics of the cross-dressing story point to Susan Rosenstiel's lack of credibility (she pleaded guilty to attempted perjury in a 1971 case and later served time in a New York City jail). Recklessly indiscreet behavior by Hoover would have been totally out of character, whatever his sexuality. Most biographers consider the story of Mafia blackmail unlikely in light of the FBI's continuing investigations of the Mafia.
Although never corroborated, the allegation of cross-dressing has been widely repeated. In the words of author Thomas Doherty, "For American popular culture, the image of the zaftig FBI director as a Christine Jorgensen wanna-be was too delicious not to savor." Biographer Kenneth Ackerman says that Summers' accusations have been "widely debunked by historians".
The journalist Liz Smith wrote that Cohn told her about Hoover's rumored transvestism "long before it became common gossip."
Lavender Scare
The attorney Roy Cohn served as general counsel on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations during Senator Joseph McCarthy's tenure as chairman and assisted Hoover during the McCarthyism, 1950s investigations of Communists[
] and was generally known to be a closeted homosexual.[ According to Richard Hack, Cohn's opinion was that Hoover was too frightened of his own sexuality to have anything approaching a normal sexual or romantic relationship.] Gossip columnist Liz Smith (journalist), Liz Smith claimed that Roy Cohn "was the source of all those delicious tales about Hoover in smart frocks. He told these tales while Hoover was alive and after he died in 1972, during the fall of Richard Nixon."
Some of Cohn's former clients, including Bill Bonanno, son of crime boss Joseph Bonanno, also cite photographs of Hoover in drag allegedly possessed by Cohn.
During the Lavender scare, Cohn and McCarthy further enhanced anti-Communist fervor by suggesting that Communists overseas had convinced several closeted homosexuals within the U.S. government to leak important government information in exchange for the assurance that their sexual identity would remain a secret.[ A federal investigation that followed convinced President Dwight D. Eisenhower to sign Executive Order 10450 on April 29, 1953, that barred homosexuals from obtaining jobs at the federal level.
In his 2004 study of the event, historian David K. Johnson attacked the speculations about Hoover's homosexuality as relying on "the kind of tactics Hoover and the security program he oversaw perfected: guilt by association, rumor, and unverified gossip." He views Rosenstiel as a liar who was paid for her story, whose "description of Hoover in drag engaging in sex with young blond boys in leather while desecrating the Bible is clearly a homophobia, homophobic fantasy." He believes only those who have forgotten the virulence of the decades-long campaign against homosexuals in government can believe reports that Hoover appeared in compromising situations.
]
Supportive friends
Some people associated with Hoover have supported the rumors about his homosexuality.[
] According to Anthony Summers, Hoover often frequented New York City's Stork Club. Luisa Stuart, a model who was 18 or 19 at the time, told Summers that she had seen Hoover holding hands with Tolson as they all rode in a limo uptown to the Cotton Club in 1936.[
Actress and singer Ethel Merman was a friend of Hoover's since 1938, and familiar with all parties during his alleged romance of Lela Rogers. In a 1978 interview and in response to Anita Bryant, Annita Bryant's anti-gay campaign, she said: "Some of my best friends are homosexual: Everybody knew about J. Edgar Hoover, but he was the best chief the FBI ever had."][
]
Written works
J. Edgar Hoover was the nominal author of a number of books and articles, although it is widely believed that all of these were ghostwritten by FBI employees. Hoover received the credit and royalties.
*
*
*
*
Honors
*1938: Oklahoma Baptist University awarded Hoover an honorary doctorate during commencement exercises, at which he spoke.
*1939: the National Academy of Sciences awarded Hoover its Public Welfare Medal.[
]
*1950: George VI, King George VI of the United Kingdom appoints Hoover Order of the British Empire, Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
*1955: President Dwight D. Eisenhower awarded Hoover the National Security Medal.
*1966: President Lyndon B. Johnson bestowed the State Department's Awards of the United States Department of State#Secretary's Distinguished Service Award, Distinguished Service Award on Hoover for his service as director of the FBI.
*1973: The newly built FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., was named the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
*1974: Congress voted to honor Hoover's memory by publishing a memorial book, ''J. Edgar Hoover: Memorial Tributes in the Congress of the United States and Various Articles and Editorials Relating to His Life and Work''.
*1974: In Schaumburg, Illinois, a grade school was named after J. Edgar Hoover. However, in 1994, after information about Hoover's illegal activities was released, the school's name was changed to commemorate Herbert Hoover instead.
Theater and media portrayals
J. Edgar Hoover has been portrayed by numerous actors in films and stage productions featuring him as FBI Director. The first known portrayal was by Kent Rogers in the 1941 Looney Tunes short "Hollywood Steps Out". Some notable portrayals (listed chronologically) include:
* Hoover portrayed himself (filmed from behind) in a cameo, addressing FBI agents in the 1959 film ''The FBI Story''.
* Dorothi Fox "portrayed" Hoover in disguise in the 1971 film ''Bananas (film), Bananas''.
* Broderick Crawford and James Wainwright in the Larry Cohen film ''The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover'' (1977).
* Dolph Sweet in the television miniseries ''King (miniseries), King'' (1978).
* Sheldon Leonard in the William Friedkin film ''The Brink's Job'' (1978).
* Ernest Borgnine in the television film ''Blood Feud (1983 film), Blood Feud'' (1983).
* Vincent Gardenia in the television miniseries ''Kennedy (TV miniseries), Kennedy'' (1983).
* Jack Warden in the television film ''Hoover vs. The Kennedys'' (1987).
* Treat Williams in the television film ''J. Edgar Hoover (film), J. Edgar Hoover'' (1987).
* Kevin Dunn in the film ''Chaplin (film), Chaplin'' (1992).
* Pat Hingle in the television film ''Citizen Cohn'' (1992).
* Richard Dysart in the television film ''Marilyn & Bobby: Her Final Affair'' (1993)
* Kelsey Grammer portrayed Hoover, with John Goodman as Tolson, in the Harry Shearer comic musical ''J. Edgar!'' at The Guest Quarters Suite Hotel in Santa Monica (1994).
* Richard Dysart in the theatrical film ''Panther (film), Panther'' (1995).
* Bob Hoskins in the Oliver Stone drama ''Nixon (film), Nixon'' (1995).
* Wayne Tippit in two episodes of ''Dark Skies'' (1996) and (1997).
* David Fredericks in the episodes "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" (1996) and "Travelers (The X-Files), Travelers" (1998) of ''The X-Files''.
* David Fredericks in the episode "Millennium (season 3), Matryoshka" (1999) of ''Millennium (television series), Millennium''.
* Ernest Borgnine in the theatrical film ''Hoover (film), Hoover'' (2000).
* Larry Drake in the Robert Dyke film ''Timequest (film), Timequest'' (2002).
* Ryan Drummond voiced him in the Bethesda Softworks game ''Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth'' (2005).
* Billy Crudup in the Michael Mann (director), Michael Mann film ''Public Enemies (2009 film), Public Enemies'' (2009).
* Enrico Colantoni in the television miniseries ''The Kennedys (TV miniseries), The Kennedys'' (2011).
* Leonardo DiCaprio in the Clint Eastwood biopic ''J. Edgar'' (2011).
* William Harrison-Wallace in the Dollar Baby 2012 screen adaptation of Stephen King's short story, "The Death of Jack Hamilton" (2001).
* Rob Riggle in the "Atlanta" (2013) episode of Comedy Central's ''Drunk History''.
* Eric Ladin in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (season 4), ''Boardwalk Empire'', season 4 (2013).
* Michael McKean in Robert Schenkkan's play ''All the Way (play), All the Way'' at the American Repertory Theater (2013).
* Sean McNall in the movie ''No God, No Master'' (2014).[
]
* Dylan Baker in Ava DuVernay's Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
biopic ''Selma (film), Selma'' (2014).
* Stephen Root in the HBO television film ''All the Way (film), All the Way'' (2016).
* T. R. Knight in the National Geographic (U.S. TV channel), National Geographic television series ''Genius (2017 TV series), Genius'' (2017).
* William Forsythe (actor), William Forsythe in the Amazon Studios, Amazon television series ''The Man in the High Castle (TV series), The Man in the High Castle'' (2018).
* Stephen Stanton in the film ''Bad Times at the El Royale'' (2018)
* Martin Sheen in the film ''Judas and the Black Messiah'' (2021).
* Giacomo Baessato in the The CW, CW television series ''Legends of Tomorrow'' (2021).
See also
*Deep state in the United States
*G-man, G-Man
*Harry J. Anslinger
*Helen Gandy
*McCarthyism
References
Citations
General and cited references
– Total pages: 848
"The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover". ''Frontline'' episode #11.4 (1993).
Further reading
*
* Caballero, Raymond. ''McCarthyism vs. Clinton Jencks''. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019.
* Cecil, Matthew (2016). ''Branding Hoover's FBI: How the Boss's PR Men Sold the Bureau to America''. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2016.
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
, -
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoover, J. Edgar
1895 births
1972 deaths
People from Capitol Hill, DC
Lawyers from Washington, D.C.
Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
American anti-communists
American Freemasons
American librarians
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
American people of Swiss-German descent
American Presbyterians
Anti-crime activists
Washington, D.C., Republicans
Freemasonry-related controversies
Burials at the Congressional Cemetery
George Washington University Law School alumni
George Washington University trustees
Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Articles containing video clips