J. Edgar Hoover

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J. Edgar Hoover (credit: AP)

(born Jan. 1, 1895, Washington, D.C., U.S.died May 2, 1972, Washington, D.C.) U.S. director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He entered the Department of Justice as a file reviewer in 1917; two years later, as special assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, he helped in the roundup and deportation of suspected Bolsheviks. In 1924 he was named director of the Bureau of Investigation, which he remade into a professional, merit-based organization. In the 1930s he successfully publicized the FBI's success in tracking down and capturing well-known criminals. During this time, both the FBI's size and its responsibilities grew steadily. In the late 1930s Hoover received authorization to investigate foreign espionage in the U.S. and the activities of communists and fascists alike. When the Cold War began in the late 1940s, the FBI undertook intensive surveillance of communists and other left-wing activists in the U.S. Hoover's animus toward radicals of every kind led him to investigate both the Ku Klux Klan and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as other African American activists in the 1960s. At the same time, he maintained a hands-off policy toward the Mafia, which was allowed to conduct its operations nationwide practically free of FBI scrutiny or interference. Hoover habitually used the FBI's enormous surveillance and information-gathering powers to collect damaging information on politicians throughout the country, and apparently he was able to intimidate even sitting presidents by threatening to leak damaging disclosures about them. He retained his post for 48 years, until his death.

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J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) was appointed assistant director of the Bureau of Investigation in 1921, and director in 1924; he was the popular (and then controversial) director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1935 until his death in 1972, at age 77.

J. Edgar Hoover was born into a Scottish Presbyterian family of civil servants in Washington, D.C. on New Year's Day, 1895; his mother called him Edgar from the day he was born. He was a leader of the student cadet corps in high school, and a champion debater. He taught Sunday school at Old First Presbyterian Church. His life-long guiding principles were formed early: he was convinced that middle-class Protestant morality was at the core of American values, and he harbored a deep distrust of alien ideas and movements that called those values into question.

Working days and attending school at nights, Hoover earned his Bachelor of Law degree with honors from George Washington University in 1916. He excelled in mock court proceedings. In 1917 he earned a Master of Law degree and got a job with the Alien Enemy Bureau in the Department of Justice, administering the regulations governing the hundreds of thousands of German and Austro-Hungarian aliens interned or supervised by the department. In response to a series of bombings in the spring of 1919, supposedly carried out by radicals, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer decided to concentrate on aliens, since they could be deported summarily and wholesale, without due process, and in 1920 he put the 24-year-old Hoover in charge of the operation. Within a short period of time, Hoover had written briefs arguing that alien members of the new American Communist and Communist Labor parties were subject to deportation under the immigration laws; planned a raid on the headquarters of the Union of Russian Workers; and put Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and 247 other "radicals" on a ship for the Soviet Union. A few days later, Hoover led a nationwide operation which arrested more than four thousand alien Communists.

While civil libertarians deplored the Justice Department's tactics and treatment of prisoners, Hoover had established his reputation as an organizational genius. In 1921, he was appointed assistant director of the Bureau of Investigation. Three years later, when the bureau had become known as "the most corrupt and incompetent agency in Washington, " Hoover was appointed Acting Director by a new Attorney General, Harlan Fiske Stone (later Associate Justice, then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court). Hoover took the job under the conditions that he would tolerate no political meddling and that he wanted sole control of merit promotions. Stone agreed. Almost immediately, the new director instituted new personnel policies; he fired agents he considered unqualified, abolished promotions based on seniority, introduced uniform performance appraisals, and laid out strict rules of conduct (including instructions that forbade the use of intoxicating beverages, on or off the job). He established new lines of authority (all regional officers were to report directly to Hoover) and did whatever he could to create power for his agency. At the time, for example, the Bureau had jurisdiction over little more than car-thefts. Agents were not allowed to carry firearms until 1934, and they did not have the power of arrest. Law enforcement was a state activity, not a federal one. Gradually, Hoover professionalized the organization and freed it from the taint of corruption. He was a pioneer in the areas of personnel training, the use of scientific laboratory techniques, accurate reporting, and filing large volumes of material. By 1926, state law enforcement agencies began contributing their fingerprint cards to the Bureau of Investigation. Early on, Hoover laid the foundation for a world-class crime fighting organization.

During this period, Hoover still maintained his card file of over 450, 000 names of "radicals" and worked on building the bureau "his way, " but the agency slumbered through the violence of the Roaring Twenties. It took the Lindbergh kidnapping in 1932 to convince Congress that there was a need for national legislation authorizing the Federal government to act against crimes of violence on other than government reservations; companion legislation between 1932 and 1934 augmented that authority, and the FBI (so named in 1935) was in business, chasing down the likes of Machine Gun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson, Ma Barker and her sons, and John Dillinger.

Hoover was famous for his successes in public relations, legend-building and image-making his Bureau into a Hollywood extravaganza, firmly entrenched as a mainstay of popular culture through films, comic strips, books, and carefully orchestrated publicity campaigns. The FBI and its director became dear to the hearts of the American people and Hoover himself became a hero of almost mythic proportions. But during most of the 1930s, Hoover was relatively obscure, merely the head of just one of several investigatory agencies. In the art of public relations, Hoover was the beneficiary of Franklin Roosevelt's Attorney General Homer Cummings, who between 1933 and 1937 developed a massive, multi-front public relations campaign to make law enforcement a national movement wholly dependant on public support for its success in dealing with the gangsters of the Depression era. When Cummings suffered political decline, Hoover now head of the nation's only national law enforcement agency adopted many of his methods, always looking for new public enemies to protect the nation against. In the coming years, these were to include Nazi spies, Communists, Black Panthers, the New Left, and Martin Luther King, Jr. As for law enforcement, Hoover mostly abandoned it altogether after 1936.

After World War II Hoover took from the growing tension between the United States and the Soviet Union a mandate to prepare for domestic sabotage and subversion, and to round up Communists, siding with such anti-Communists as Richard M. Nixon and Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. He pursued the investigation of Alger Hiss that discredited the domestic security policies of the Truman Administration; he uncovered the alleged atom spy conspiracy of Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (who were subsequently executed as traitors); and his Bureau provided the evidence for the Smith Act convictions of the top leadership of the American Communist Party (later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court).

During the late 1950s, Hoover developed a counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) to covertly harass the remnants of the American Communist Party. In the 1960s he extended the program to harass and disrupt the Ku Klux Klan, the black militant movement and the antiwar movements, particularly targeting the Black Panthers and the Students for a Democratic Society. Now into his 70s, Hoover extended his defense of "Americanism" with public attacks on Martin Luther King, Jr., and two attorneys general Robert Kennedy and Ramsey Clark. His tactic in all cases included illegal wiretapping and microphone surveillance.

During all these years, Hoover managed to overlook organized crime. Robert Kennedy became a thorn in Hoover's side when he demonstrated otherwise as assistant counsel on the Kefauver committee's investigations into organized crime. Hoover ignored political corruption and white collar crime. Most of his work was political, in two senses of the word. First, he target individuals, groups, and movements which offended his moral sense. Second, he collected compromising information provided by his agents on all sorts of public officials. The fact that he had such information in his personal files or was merely thought to have such information was enough to sway congressional votes in favor of FBI appropriations requests and to keep presidents from removing him from office, even long after mandatory retirement age. The perception of "such information" worked both ways, however. It was long thought that Hoover denied the existence of organized crime because certain Mafia figures had photographs and other documentation of Hoover's alleged and widely-believed homosexuality. However, nothing could be proved, as after his death, Hoover's secretary obeyed instructions that all his personal files be burned.

J. Edgar Hoover died in May, 1972, still the Director of the FBI, and became the only civil servant to be honored with a state funeral. Post-Watergate investigations of the FBI's abuses of civil liberties under Hoover and recent releases of FBI files under the Freedom of Information Act (including files his secretary missed) have destroyed Hoover's reputation. Recent scholarly works have asserted that Anthony Summers book (1993), exposing Hoover's homosexuality, was based on slender and dubious evidence. Other works have also shown the FBI's ineffectiveness in pursuing organized-crime figures had little to do with Hoover's vulnerability, but rather from his lack of accountability, his use of illegal investigative techniques, and his obsessive focus on his own political agenda. J. Edgar Hoover's methods contributed substantially to a culture of lawlessness in the FBI itself. Within a few years of his death, public opinion about Hoover had shifted to the point that his name by itself conjured up the image of a government at war with the rights and liberties of its citizens.

Further Reading

Hoover's own writings Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How To Fight It (1958) and J. Edgar Hoover on Communism (1969) were written for him by FBI publicists. The book that purports to expose Hoover's private life, Anthony Summers' Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1993), was not highly regarded even by Hoover's critics. Richard Gid Powers G-Men: Hoover's FBI in American Popular Culture (1983); Athan G. Theoharis and John Stuart Cox The Boss J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition (1988); and Ronald Kessler The FBI: Inside the World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency (1993) are useful works, as is the older "oral biography" by Ovid Demaris The Director: An Oral Biography of J. Edgar Hoover. Scholars will want to see three microfilm collections of documents edited by Athan Theoharis, The J. Edgar Hoover Official and Confidential File (1996); FBI Wiretaps, Bugs, and Break-Ins: The National Security Electronic Surveillance Card File and the Surreptitious Entries File (1996); and The Louis Nichols Official and Confidential File and the Clyde Tolson Personal File (1996). See also Alan Theoharis J. Edgar Hoover, Sex, and Crime: An Historical Antidote (1995); Alan Theoharis From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1993); Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1993); Mark North, Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy (1992); Curt Gentry J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and His Secrets (1992); Nelson Blackstock, COINTELPRO: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom (1988); Ward Churchill and James Vander Wall's two books, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States (1990); and Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret War Against the American Indian Movement and the Black Panther Party (1990).

(1895-1972), director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Born in Washington, D.C., the son of a low-level federal bureaucrat, Hoover earned a bachelor of laws (1916) and a master of laws (1917) from George Washington University. He was an assistant in the alien registration section of the Department of Justice during World War I, where he monitored alien radicals in what became a lifetime antiradical crusade.

Appointed head of the General Intelligence Division in 1919, Hoover continued to monitor radical activities, culminating in the series of deportation raids subsequently dubbed the red scare of 1919-1920. Because Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer purposefully exploited these raids to promote his unsuccessful candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hoover was untarnished by the public's subsequent reaction to revelations of the bureau's abuses of power, which focused on Palmer. Following Warren Harding's election, Hoover's administrative skills and diligence won him promotion to assistant director of the Bureau of Investigation (renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935), a post he held until appointed director by Attorney General Harlan Stone in 1924. Hoover held that post until his death in 1972.

A lifetime bachelor with few nonprofessional interests, Hoover devoted his considerable talents to furthering the power of the fbi. Having inherited an agency beset by scandal, Hoover moved quickly to restore public confidence by improving the quality of bureau employees and by ostensibly working within the limits of a powerful states' rights tradition. A more professional organization evolved and, responding to the seeming crime wave of the 1930s, the public came to accept the need for a federal law enforcement role. But while publicly opposing the creation of a national police force and emphasizing the limits to the bureau's responsibilities, Hoover remained committed to monitoring what he considered immoral and dissident activities. Because this was risky and contradicted his public posturing, the director proceeded cautiously and secretively.

Hoover's keen sense of public relations and careful cultivation of reporters, members of Congress, civic leaders, and conservative organizations won him a powerful constituency. An administrative genius, he devised sophisticated records procedures to preclude the discovery either of his authorization of illegal investigative techniques (break-ins, wiretaps, bugs) or the accumulation of derogatory personal information. Finally, Hoover willingly serviced the political and policy interests of presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard Nixon to obtain their issuance of secret executive directives expanding fbi authority. As a result, the bureau not only increased in size (from 890 agents in 1940 to 7,002 in 1952, and 10,000 in 1970) but became an autonomous agency operating independently of executive, congressional, or judicial oversight.

Hoover successfully neutralized demands for independent investigations of the bureau's conduct and his administration during his forty-eight-year tenure as fbi director. His power, however, moved Congress in 1968 to enact legislation requiring Senate confirmation of future fbi directors and limiting their tenure to ten years. Because Hoover's death coincided with the furor created by the Watergate affair, it marked the end of an era. Thereafter, Congress and the media became more vigilant in monitoring the powerful agency Hoover had helped forge and legitimize.

Bibliography:

Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1987); Athan Theoharis and John Stuart Cox, The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition (1988).

Author:

Athan G. Theoharis

See also Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Bibliography

See biographies by T. G. Powers (1987), A. G. Theoharis (1988), and C. Gentry (1991); D. J. Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1981); K. O'Reilly, Hoover and the Un-Americans (1983); A. G. Theoharis and J. S. Cox, The Boss (1988); B. Burrough, Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 (2004).

A law enforcement official of the twentieth century. Hoover became the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1924 and stayed in the position until his death in 1972. His time as director was marked by vigorous investigation and prosecution of gangsters, kidnapers, and foreign spies.

John Edgar Hoover served from 1924 to 1972 as the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). During his long tenure, Hoover built the FBI into a formidable law enforcement organization, establishing standards for the collection and evaluation of information that made the FBI an effective crime fighting agency. However, Hoover's reputation was tarnished by his collection of damaging information on prominent politicians and public figures for his personal use, and by his aggressive investigation of civil rights leaders and left-wing radicals.

Hoover was born January 1, 1895, in Washington, D.C. Following graduation from high school, he turned down a scholarship from the University of Virginia, electing to stay home and study law at night at George Washington University. In 1916 he received a bachelor of laws degree. In 1917 he added a master of laws degree. Upon graduation from college, Hoover joined the U.S. Department of Justice.

Hoover started in a minor position, but his intelligence, energy, and mastery of detail were quickly noticed by his superiors. By 1919 he had risen to the rank of special assistant attorney general. During these early years, Hoover first became involved with the suppression of political radicals, assisting Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in the arrest and deportation of left-wing aliens. In 1919 he was appointed chief of the department's General Intelligence Division (GID), a unit designated by Palmer to hunt down radicals. Within three months Hoover collected the names of 150,000 alleged subversives. Armed with this information, federal agents conducted nationwide dragnets, arresting over ten thousand people. Critics argued that these Palmer Raids violated civil liberties. Nevertheless, thousands of persons were deported. By 1921 the GID had nearly half a million names of persons suspected of subversive activities.

In 1924 Hoover was appointed acting director of the Bureau of Investigation (BI), the forerunner of the FBI. The BI was a weak agency, hampered by limited investigatory powers, the inability of its agents to carry weapons, and the swelling of its rank with political appointments. After several scandals revealed the extent of the BI's problems, Attorney General Harlan F. Stone appointed Hoover to clean up the agency.

Though only twenty-nine, Hoover met the challenge head-on. He began a thorough reorganization of the bureau, imposing strict discipline on his employees. Hoover's goal was to establish a professional law enforcement agency of unquestioned integrity. Between 1924 and 1935, he introduced a series of innovations that changed national law enforcement. Hoover established a national fingerprint collection, the first systematic database that federal, state, and local agencies could use to match fingerprints at crime scenes with those on file at the bureau. He also created a crime laboratory, which developed scientific procedures for obtaining forensic evidence. Finally, Hoover made a point of changing the character of his agents. He established a training academy for new agents, who were selected on the basis of their qualifications, not on their political connections. Agents were required to be college educated and to maintain the highest standard of personal and professional ethics.

As the agency became more professional, its jurisdiction increased. In 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed crime bills giving agents the authority to carry guns and make arrests, and in the same year, the bureau officially became the FBI. During the 1930s Hoover moved from internal reorganization to external promotion of himself and his agency. The gangster era, from 1920 to 1935, ended in the arrest or killing of well-publicized hoodlums such as John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Bonnie and Clyde. Hoover and his G-men were celebrated for these exploits in newspapers, radio, newsreels, and Hollywood movies, establishing Hoover as the nation's leading crime fighter.

Hoover's focus shifted to political subversion and foreign espionage during World War II. Again, the FBI was celebrated in the news media and popular culture, this time for tracking down Nazi saboteurs and spies. With the end of World War II and the beginning of the cold war with the Soviet Union, Hoover directed his efforts at rooting out Communist subversives. Harkening back to his early work with Palmer, Hoover's zealousness for this task led him to make alliances with the House Un-American Activities Committee; anti-Communist politicians such as Representative Richard M. Nixon, of California, and Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, of Wisconsin; and members of the news media who were eager to print Hoover's inside information.

During the 1950s Hoover concentrated on anti-Communist initiatives, ignoring calls to investigate the growth of organized crime. He published Masters of Deceit (1958), a book that articulated his views on what he perceived to be the Communist conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. He established the FBI's Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) to disrupt the U.S. Communist party and to discredit its members through informants, disinformation, and anonymous letters and telephone calls. He also enlisted the cooperation of the Internal Revenue Service to conduct selective tax audits of people he suspected of being Communists. Critics of Hoover argued—and continue to argue—that he went beyond law enforcement in these efforts, using so-called dirty tricks to undermine the reputation of persons he believed to be subversive.

Despite these charges Hoover remained a powerful federal official. His use of wiretaps on phones, and of other forms of electronic surveillance, provided him with a wealth of information on the private affairs of many prominent political figures. Hoover shared some of this information with his political allies, but much of it remained in his private files. Over time many politicians came to fear Hoover, who they believed might have incriminating information about them that could destroy their political careers. Armed with these files, Hoover enjoyed immense power in the 1950s and 1960s.

With the birth of the modern civil rights movement, Hoover discovered what he considered another subversive group. He became convinced that Martin Luther King, Jr., was a pawn of the Communist conspiracy. He had agents follow King and record sexual encounters in various hotel rooms. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference offices were wiretapped and burglarized by the FBI many times, all in the hope of finding information that would discredit King. Though Hoover's efforts proved futile, they demonstrated his ability to use the FBI as his personal tool.

During the 1960s Hoover also had the FBI investigate the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. The same techniques used against King and other alleged subversives were also employed against right-wing radicals who threatened physical violence. And with the growth of opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Hoover targeted war protesters.

Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon allowed Hoover to serve past the mandatory retirement age. During his last years, Hoover was criticized for his authoritarian administration of the FBI. Agents who displeased him could be banished to an obscure FBI field office or discharged. Perhaps most troubling was his refusal to investigate organized crime with the same resources expended on politically subversive organizations.

Hoover died May 2, 1972, in Washington, D.C.

Quotes:

"Justice is incidental to law and order."

"John Hoover" redirects here. For other uses, see John Hoover (disambiguation).

J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover in 1959
1st Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
In office March 22, 1935 – May 2, 1972
President	Franklin D. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson Richard Nixon
Deputy	Clyde Tolson
Preceded by	Office created (was BOI director)
Succeeded by	L. Patrick Gray
6th Director of the Bureau of Investigation
In office May 10, 1924 – March 22, 1935
President	Calvin Coolidge Herbert Hoover Franklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded by	William J. Burns
Succeeded by	Himself (as FBI Director)
Personal details
Born	John Edgar Hoover (1895-01-01)January 1, 1895 Washington, D.C. United States
Died	May 2, 1972(1972-05-02) (aged 77) Washington, D.C. United States
Religion	Presbyterian
Signature

J. Edgar Hoover in 1924

John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972 aged 77. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories.

Late in life and after his death Hoover became a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive actions became public. His critics have accused him of exceeding the jurisdiction of the FBI.^[1] He used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders,^[2] and to collect evidence using illegal methods.^[3] FBI directors are now limited to one 10-year term,^[4] subject to extension by the United States Senate,^[5] because of his long and controversial tenure.

Contents 1 Early life and education 2 FBI career 2.1 Gangster wars 2.2 Investigation of subversion and radicals 2.3 COINTELPRO years 2.4 Response to Mafia and civil rights groups 2.5 Late career and death 3 Legacy 4 Sexuality 5 Freemasonry 6 Honors 7 Portrayals 8 See also 9 Writings 10 References 11 Sources 12 External links

Early life and education

J. Edgar Hoover was born on New Year's Day 1895 in Washington, D.C., to Anna Marie (née Scheitlin; 1860–1938), who was of German Swiss descent, and Dick Naylor Hoover, Sr. (1856–1921), of English and German ancestry. The uncle of Hoover's mother was a Swiss honorary consul general to the United States. Hoover grew up near the Eastern Market in Washington's Capitol Hill neighborhood. At Central High, he sang in the school choir, participated in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, and competed on the debate team,^[6] where he argued against women getting the vote and against abolition of the death penalty.^[7] He obtained a law degree from George Washington University Law School in 1916, and an LL.M., a Master of Laws degree, in 1917 from the same university.^[8][9] While a law student, Hoover became interested in the career of Anthony Comstock, the New York City United States Postal Inspector, who waged prolonged campaigns against fraud and vice, and also was against pornography and birth control.

FBI career

During World War I, immediately after getting his LLM, Hoover was hired by the Justice Department. He was soon promoted to head of the Enemy Aliens Registration Section. In August 1919, he became head of the new General Intelligence Division of the Bureau of Investigation within the Justice Department^[10] (see the Palmer Raids).

Hoover joined the Bureau as America's first great Communist scare was getting under way, and handpicked as his assistant a man named George Ruch. One of two key associates to name their own sons J Edgar, Ruch expressed astonishment that left-wingers should even "be allowed to speak and write as they like".^[11] Hoover and Ruch favoured deporting people merely for being members of radical organisations, and used the Bureau to spy on lawyers representing those arrested in the Red Raids of 1920. One of them, on whom Hoover was to keep tabs for half a century and deem "the most dangerous man in the United States", was future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter.^[12]

In 1921, he rose in the Bureau of Investigation to deputy head, and in 1924, the Attorney General made him the acting director. On May 10, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Hoover as the sixth director of the Bureau of Investigation, following President Warren Harding's death and in response to allegations that the prior director, William J. Burns, was involved in the Teapot Dome scandal. When Hoover took over the Bureau of Investigation, it had approximately 650 employees, including 441 Special Agents.

Hoover was noted as sometimes being capricious in his leadership; he frequently fired FBI agents, singling out those who he thought "looked stupid like truck drivers" or he considered to be "pinheads".^{[13][page needed]} He also relocated agents who had displeased him to career-ending assignments and locations. Melvin Purvis was a prime example; he was one of the most effective agents in capturing and breaking up 1930s gangs and received substantial public recognition, but a jealous Hoover maneuvered him out of the FBI.^[14]

Hoover often hailed local law-enforcement officers around the country and built up a national network of supporters and admirers in the process. One that he often commended was the conservative sheriff of Caddo Parish, Louisiana, J. Howell Flournoy, for particular effectiveness.^[15]

Gangster wars

Famous Depression Era gangsters, including Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, and more (1920s).

In the early 1930s, criminal gangs carried out large numbers of bank robberies in the Midwest. They used their superior firepower and fast getaway cars to elude local law enforcement agencies and avoid arrest. Many of these criminals, particularly John Dillinger, who became famous for leaping over bank cages and repeatedly escaping from jails and police traps, frequently made newspaper headlines across the United States. Since the robbers operated across state lines, their crimes became federal offenses, giving Hoover and his men the authority to pursue them. Initially, the FBI suffered some embarrassing foul-ups, in particular with Dillinger and his conspirators. A raid on a summer lodge named "Little Bohemia" in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, left an FBI agent and a civilian bystander dead, and others wounded. All the gangsters escaped. Hoover realized that his job was now 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 office, received a tip on Dillinger's whereabouts which paid off when Dillinger was located, ambushed and killed by FBI agents outside the Biograph Theater.

In the same period, there were numerous Mafia shootings as a result of Prohibition, while Hoover continued to deny the very existence of organized crime.^[16] Frank Costello helped encourage this view by feeding Hoover, "an inveterate horseplayer" known to send Special Agents to place $100 bets for him,^[17] tips on sure winners through their mutual friend, gossip columnist Walter Winchell.^[17] Hoover said the Bureau had "much more important functions" than arresting bookmakers and gamblers.^[17]

Even though he was not there, Hoover was credited with several highly publicized captures or shootings of outlaws and bank robbers. These included that of Dillinger, Alvin Karpis, and Machine Gun Kelly, which led to the Bureau's powers being broadened and it was given its new name in 1935: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1939, the FBI became pre-eminent in the field of domestic intelligence. Hoover made changes, such as expanding and combining fingerprint files in the Identification Division to compile the largest collection of fingerprints to date.^[18][19] Hoover also helped to expand the FBI's recruitment and create the FBI Laboratory, a division established in 1932 to examine evidence found by the FBI.

Investigation of subversion and radicals

Hoover, perhaps at the behest of Richard Nixon, investigated ex-Beatle John Lennon by putting the singer under surveillance, and Hoover wrote this letter to the Attorney General in 1972. A 25-year battle by historian Jon Wiener under the Freedom of Information Act eventually resulted in the release of documents like this one.

The same Hoover letter, with fewer redactions.

Hoover was concerned about subversion, and under his leadership, the FBI spied upon 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.^[20]

The FBI investigated rings of German saboteurs and spies starting in the late 1930s, and had primary responsibility for counterespionage. The first arrests of German agents were made in 1938, and continued throughout World War II.^[21] In the Quirin affair during World War II, German U-boats set two small groups of Nazi agents ashore in Florida and Long Island to cause acts of sabotage within the country. The two teams were apprehended after one of the men contacted the FBI, and told them everything. He was also charged and convicted.^[22] President Harry Truman wrote in his memoirs: "The country had reason to be proud of and have confidence in our security agencies. They had kept us almost totally free of sabotage and espionage during World War II".^{[citation needed]}

The FBI participated in the Venona Project, a pre–World War II joint project with the British to eavesdrop on Soviet spies in the UK and the United States. It was not initially realized that espionage was being committed, but due to multiple wartime Soviet use of one-time pad ciphers, which are normally unbreakable, redundancies were created, enabling some intercepts to be decoded, which established the espionage. Hoover kept the intercepts—America's greatest counterintelligence secret—in a locked safe in his office, choosing not to inform President Truman, Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, or two Secretaries of State—Dean Acheson and General George Marshall—while they held office. He informed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the Venona Project in 1952.

In 1946, U.S. Attorney General Tom C. 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, Hoover submitted to President Truman a plan to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and detain 12,000 Americans suspected of disloyalty. Truman did not act on the plan.^[23]

COINTELPRO years

Main article: COINTELPRO

In 1956, Hoover was becoming increasingly frustrated by Supreme Court decisions that limited the Justice Department's ability to prosecute people for their political opinions, most notably communists. At this time he formalized a covert "dirty tricks" program under the name COINTELPRO.^[24]

This program remained in place until it was revealed to the public in 1971, after the theft of many internal documents stolen from an office in Media, Pennsylvania, and was the cause of some of the harshest criticism of Hoover and the FBI. COINTELPRO was first used to disrupt the Communist Party, where Hoover went after targets that ranged from suspected everyday spies to larger celebrity figures such as Charlie Chaplin who were seen as spreading Communist Party propaganda,^[25] and later organizations such as the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and others. Its methods included infiltration, burglaries, illegal wiretaps, planting forged documents and spreading false rumors about key members of target organizations.^[26] Some authors have charged that COINTELPRO methods also included inciting violence and arranging murders.^[27] In 1975, the activities of COINTELPRO were investigated by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, called the Church Committee after its chairman, Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), and these activities were declared illegal and contrary to the Constitution.^[28] 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, appointed Deputy Attorney General in early 1974, FBI Director Clarence M. Kelley thought such files either did not exist or had been destroyed. After The Washington Post broke a story in January 1975, Kelley searched and found them in his outer office. The House Judiciary Committee then demanded that Silberman testify about them.

In 1956, several years before he targeted King, Hoover had a public showdown with T.R.M. Howard, a civil rights leader from Mound Bayou, Mississippi. During a national speaking tour, Howard had criticized the FBI's failure to thoroughly investigate the racially motivated murders of George W. Lee, Lamar Smith, and Emmett Till. Hoover wrote an open letter to the press singling out these statements as "irresponsible."

Response to Mafia and civil rights groups

In the 1950s, evidence of Hoover's unwillingness to focus FBI resources on the Mafia became grist for the media and his many detractors. His moves against people who maintained contacts with subversive elements, some of whom were members of the civil rights movement, also led to accusations of trying to undermine their reputations. The treatment of Martin Luther King, Jr. and actress Jean Seberg are two examples. Jacqueline Kennedy recalled that Hoover told President John F. Kennedy that King tried to arrange a sex party while in the capital for the March on Washington and told Robert Kennedy that King made derogatory comments during the President's funeral.^[29]

Hoover personally directed the FBI investigation into 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 seventy, allowing Hoover to remain the FBI Director "for life." 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 also criticized what it characterized as the FBI's reluctance to thoroughly investigate the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President.^[30]

Late career and death

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, photographed in 1961.

FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC

Presidents Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy each considered dismissing Hoover as FBI Director, but ultimately concluded that the political cost of doing so would be too great.^[31]

Hoover's FBI investigated Hollywood lobbyist Jack Valenti, a special assistant and confidant to President Lyndon Johnson, in 1964. 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.^[32]

Hoover maintained strong support in Congress until his death at his Washington, D.C., home on May 2, 1972, from a heart attack attributed to cardio-vascular disease.^[33] His body lay in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, where Chief Justice Warren Burger eulogized him.^[34] President Nixon delivered another eulogy at the funeral service in the National Presbyterian Church. In public, Nixon said "One of the giants ... a national symbol of courage, patriotism and granite-like honesty and integrity." In private, Nixon's reaction was "That old cocksucker".^[35] Hoover was buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., next to the graves of his parents and a sister who died in infancy.^[36]

Operational command of the Bureau passed to Associate Director Clyde Tolson. On May 3, Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray, a Justice Department official with no FBI experience, as Acting Director, with W. Mark Felt remaining as Associate Director.^[37]

Legacy

Hoover was a consultant to Warner Bros. for a 1959 theatrical film about the FBI, The FBI Story, and in 1965 on Warner Bros.' long-running spin-off television series, The F.B.I. Hoover personally made sure that Warner Bros. would portray the FBI more favorably than other crime dramas of the times.

In 1979, there was a large increase in conflict in the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) under Senator Richard Schweiker, which had re-opened the investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy, reported that Hoover's FBI "failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President". The HSCA further reported that Hoover's FBI "was deficient in its sharing of information with other agencies and departments".^[38]

The FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC is named after Hoover. Because of the controversial nature of Hoover's legacy, there have been periodic proposals to rename it by legislation proposed by both Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate. In 2001, Senator Harry Reid sponsored an amendment to strip Hoover's name from the building. "J. Edgar Hoover's name on the FBI building is a stain on the building", Reid said.^[39] However, the Senate never adopted the amendment.

Sexuality

Hoover and his assistant Clyde Tolson sitting in beach lounge chairs, c. 1939

President Lyndon B. Johnson at the signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. White House East Room. People watching include Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Senator Hubert Humphrey, First Lady "Lady Bird Johnson", Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover, Speaker of the House John McCormack. Television cameras are broadcasting the ceremony.

Hoover with Bebe Rebozo (left) and Richard Nixon. The three men relax before dinner, Key Biscayne, Florida, December 1971.

Since the 1940s, rumors have circulated that Hoover was gay.^[40] There are speculations that Clyde Tolson, an associate director of the FBI and Hoover's primary heir, may have been his lover.^[41]

Hoover hunted down and threatened anyone who made insinuations about his sexuality.^[42] He also spread unsubstantiated rumors that Adlai Stevenson was gay to damage the liberal governor's 1952 presidential campaign.^[42] His extensive secret files contained surveillance material on Eleanor Roosevelt's alleged lesbian lovers, speculated to be acquired for the purpose of blackmail.^[42]

Some authors have dismissed the rumors about Hoover's sexuality and his relationship with Tolson in particular as unlikely,^[43][44][45] while others have described them as probable or even "confirmed",^{[46][47][page needed]} and still others have reported the rumors without stating an opinion.^[48][49] Hoover described Tolson as his alter ego: the men not only worked closely together during the day but also took meals, went to night clubs and vacationed together.^[41] This closeness between the two men is often cited as evidence that they were lovers, though some FBI employees who knew them, such as W. Mark Felt, say that the relationship was merely "brotherly." However, former FBI official Mike Mason suggested that some of Hoover's colleagues were denying he had a sexual relationship with Tolson in an effort to protect his image.^[50]

Upon Hoover's death, Tolson inherited Hoover's estate and moved into his home, having accepted the American flag that draped Hoover's casket. Tolson is buried a few yards away from Hoover in the Congressional Cemetery.

Among those skeptical of claims that Hoover was homosexual is Hoover's biographer Richard Hack. 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 Hoover in the years between her two marriages.^[51] Hack additionally reports that during the 1940s and 1950s, Hoover so often attended social events with Lela Rogers, the divorced mother of dancer and actress Ginger Rogers, that many of their mutual friends assumed the pair would eventually marry.^[51]

In his 1993 biography Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, journalist Anthony Summers quoted "society divorcee" Susan Rosenstiel as claiming to have seen Hoover engaging in cross-dressing in the 1950s. She stated that on two occasions she witnessed Hoover wearing a fluffy pink dress with flounces and lace, stockings, high heels and a black curly wig, at homosexual orgies:^{[47][page needed][52][53]}

Summers also said that the Mafia had blackmail material on Hoover, which made Hoover reluctant to aggressively pursue organized crime. 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."^[54] Skeptics of the cross-dressing story point to Susan Rosenstiel's poor credibility (she plead guilty for attempted perjury in a 1971 case and later served time in a New York City jail)^[55][56] and say recklessly indiscreet behavior by Hoover would have been totally out of character, whatever his sexuality. Most biographers consider the story of Mafia blackmail to be unlikely in light of the FBI's investigations of the Mafia.^[57][58] Truman Capote, who helped spread salacious rumors about Hoover, once remarked that he was more interested in making Hoover angry than determining whether the rumors were true.^[31]

Attorney Roy Cohn, an associate of Hoover during the 1950s investigations of Communists and himself a closeted homosexual, opined that Hoover was too frightened of his own sexuality to have anything approaching a normal sexual or romantic relationship.^[31]

In his 2004 study of the Lavender Scare, historian David K. Johnson attacked the notion of Hoover's homosexuality for 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 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 would allow himself to be seen in compromising situations.^[59]

Some people affiliated with Hoover, however, defended the claims that he had homosexual tendencies.^[60] Singer Ethel Merman, who was a friend of Hoover since 1938, stated in a 1978 interview: "Some of my best friends are homosexual. Everybody knew about J. Edgar Hoover, but he was the best chief the FBI ever had."^[61] Another FBI agent who had gone on fishing trips with Hoover and Tolson revealed that the director liked to "sunbathe all day in the nude."^[61] Hoover often frequented New York City's Stork Club and one observer – soap model Luisa Stuart, who was 18 or 19 at the time – told Summers she saw Hoover holding hands with Tolson as they all rode in a limo uptown to the Cotton Club in 1936.^[61]

Novelist William Styron told Summers that he once spotted Hoover and Tolson in a California beach house and the director was painting his friend's toenails.^[61] Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights organizations, confirmed that Hoover and Tolson sat in boxes owned by and used exclusively by gay men at their racing haunt Del Mar in California.^[61] One medical expert told Summers that Hoover was of "strongly predominant homosexual orientation", while another medical expert categorized him as a "bisexual with failed heterosexuality."^[60]

Freemasonry

Hoover was a devoted Freemason, being raised a Master Mason on 9 November 1920, in Federal Lodge No. 1, Washington, DC, just two months before his 26th birthday. During his 52 years with the Masons, he received many medals, awards and decorations. Eventually in 1955, he was coroneted a Thirty-Third Degree Inspector General Honorary in the Southern Scottish Rite Jurisdiction. He was also awarded the Scottish Rite's highest recognition, the Grand Cross of Honor, in 1965.^[62] Today a J. Edgar Hoover room exists within the House of the Temple. The room contains many of Hoover's personal papers and records.

Honors

• In 1938, Oklahoma Baptist University awarded Hoover an honorary doctorate during commencement exercises at which he spoke.^[63][64]
• In 1939, the National Academy of Sciences awarded Hoover its Public Welfare Medal.^[65]
• In 1950, King George VI of the United Kingdom awarded Hoover an honorary knighthood in the Order of the British Empire.^[66]
• In 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower gave Hoover the National Security Medal.^[67]
• In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson bestowed the State Department's Distinguished Service Award on Hoover for his service as director of the FBI.
• The FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., is named the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
• Congress voted to honour 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 appeared in 1974.
• In Schaumburg, Illinois, a grade school was named after Hoover. In 1994, after personal information about Hoover was released, the school's name was changed to reflect Herbert Hoover instead of J. Edgar Hoover.^[68]

Portrayals

J. Edgar Hoover has been portrayed many times in film and on stage. Some notable portrayals include:

• Broderick Crawford and James Wainwright portrayed Hoover in the Larry Cohen film The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Ernest Borgnine in both the television film Blood Feud (1983) and Hoover (2000).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Vincent Gardenia in the television film Kennedy (1983).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Jack Warden in the television film Hoover vs. The Kennedys (1987).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Treat Williams in the television film J. Edgar Hoover (1987).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Kevin Dunn in the film Chaplin (1992).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Pat Hingle in the television film Citizen Cohn (1992).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Richard Dysart, both in the television film Marilyn & Bobby: Her Final Affair (1993) and in the 1995 film Panther.
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Bob Hoskins in the Oliver Stone drama Nixon (1995).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor David Fredericks in two episodes of The X-Files, as well as on the show Millennium.
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Kelsey Grammer with John Goodman as his lover, in the Harry Shearer comic musical J. Edgar! on L.A. Theatre Works' The Play's the Thing (2001).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Larry Drake in the Robert Dyke film Timequest (2002).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Billy Crudup in the Michael Mann film Public Enemies (2009).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Enrico Colantoni in the television miniseries The Kennedys (2011).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Leonardo DiCaprio in the Clint Eastwood biopic J. Edgar (2011).
• Hoover will be portrayed by actor William Harrison-Wallace in the first Dollar Baby screen adaptation of Stephen King's The Death of Jack Hamilton (2012). ^[69].

See also

	Government of the United States portal
	Biography portal

• Anti-communism
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• G-Man (slang)
• Helen Gandy
• McCarthyism
• German American

Writings

Wikisource has original text related to this article: J. Edgar Hoover

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,^[70][71][72] Hoover received the credit and royalties.

• Hoover, J. Edgar (1938). Persons In Hiding. Gaunt Publishing. ISBN 1-56169-340-5. http://books.google.com/?id=zSEiAAAAMAAJ&q. 
• Hoover, J. Edgar (1958). Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It. Holt Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 1-4254-8258-9. http://books.google.com/?id=U503AAAAIAAJ&q. ^[73]
• Hoover, J. Edgar (1962). A Study of Communism. Holt Rinehart & Winston. ISBN 0-03-031190-X. http://books.google.com/?id=8Jk3AAAAIAAJ&q. 
• Hoover, J. Edgar; Paterson, T. G. (February 1947). "Red Fascism in the United States Today". American Magazine 75 (4): 1046–64. JSTOR 1852269. 

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15. ^ "Sheriff 26 Years – J. H. Flournoy Dies," Shreveport Journal, December 14, 1966, p. 1
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27. ^ See for example James, Joy (2000). States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 335. ISBN 0-312-21777-3. , Williams, Kristian (2004). Our Enemies In Blue: Police And Power In America. Soft Skull Press. p. 183. ISBN 1-887128-85-9.  and Churchill, Ward and Wall, Jim Vander (2001). Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. South End Press. pp. 53+. ISBN 0-89608-646-1. 
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29. ^ Klein, Rick (2011). "Jacqueline Kennedy on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr". ABCNews. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Jacqueline_Kennedy/jacqueline-kennedys-feelings-martin-luther-king-jr-revealed/story?id=14478321. Retrieved September 9, 2011. 
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31. ^ ^{a b c} Hack, 2007
32. ^ 'Gay' Probe of LBJ Aide by Washington Associated Press at NY Post newspaper February 20, 2009
33. ^ Graham, Fred P. (May 3, 1972). "J. Edgar Hoover, 77, Dies". New York Times. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0910FC3F5F117B93C1A9178ED85F468785F9&. Retrieved March 15, 2011. 
34. ^ New York Times: Nan Robertson, "Hoover Lies in State in Capitol," May 4, 1972, accessed February 15, 2011
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36. ^ New York Times: Nan Robertson, "President Lauds Hoover," May 5, 1972, accessed February 15, 0211
37. ^ New York Times: "Nixon Names Aide as Chief of FBI until Elections," May 4, 1972, accessed February 15, 2011
38. ^ "HCSA Conclusions, 1979". Archives.gov. http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/summary.html. Retrieved January 1, 2012. 
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40. ^ Terry, Jennifer (1999). An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society. University of Chicago Press. p. 350. ISBN 0-226-79366-4. 
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43. ^ Felt, W. Mark and O'Connor, John D (2006). A G-man's Life: The FBI, Being 'Deep Throat,' And the Struggle for Honor in Washington. Public Affairs. p. 167. ISBN 1-58648-377-3. .
44. ^ Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri (2003). Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence. Yale University Press. p. 93. ISBN 0-300-10159-7. .
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61. ^ ^{a b c d e} "J. Edgar Hoover: Gay or Just a Man Who Has Sex With Men?". ABCnews.go.com. p. 2. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/edgar-hoover-sex-men-homosexual/story?id=14948447&page=2#.TwJU6IGRlJE. 
62. ^ J. Edgar Hoover, 33, Grand Cross-Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity Cartha DeLoach, Chairman, Hoover Foundation at Scottish Rite Journal of Freemasonry Magazine
63. ^ "Honorary Doctorates". Oklahoma Baptist University. http://www.okbu.edu/alumni/honordocs.html. Retrieved September 20, 2010. 
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Sources

• Ackerman, Kenneth D. (2007). Young J. Edgar: Hoover, the Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil Liberties. Carroll & Graf. ISBN 978-0-7867-1775-0. 
• Beverly, William (2003). On the Lam; Narratives of Flight in J. Edgar Hoover's America. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1-57806-537-2. 
• Carter, David (2003). Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked The Gay Revolution. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 978-0-312-34269-2. 
• Charles, Douglas (2007). J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-interventionists: FBI Political Surveillance and the Rise of the Domestic Security State, 1939–1945. Ohio State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8142-1061-1. 
• Garrow, David J. (1981). The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr., From 'Solo' to Memphis. W.W.Norton. ISBN 0-393-01509-2. 
• Gentry, Curt (1991). J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. Plume. ISBN 0-452-26904-0. 
• Lowenthal, Max (1950). The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8371-5755-2. 
• Porter, Darwin (2012). J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson: Investigating the Sexual Secrets of America's Most Famous Men and Women. Blood Moon Productions. ISBN 1-936003-25-2. 
• Powers, Richard Gid (1986). Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover. Free Press. ISBN 0-02-925060-9. 
• Schott, Joseph L. (1975). No Left Turns: The FBI in Peace & War. Praeger. ISBN 0-275-33630-1. 
• Stove, Robert J. (2003). The Unsleeping Eye: Secret Police and Their Victims. Encounter Books. ISBN 1-893554-66-X. 
• Summers, Anthony (2003). Official and Confidential:The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. Putnam Publishing Group. ISBN 0-399-13800-5. 
• Swearingen, M. Wesley. FBI Secrets An Agent's Expose. 
• Theoharis, Athan (1993). From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover. Ivan R. Dee. ISBN 1-56663-017-7. 
• Frontline ; The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover (#11.4) 1993

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: J. Edgar Hoover

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: J. Edgar Hoover

• StraightDope.com – 'The Straight Dope: Was J. Edgar Hoover a crossdresser?'
• FBI file on J. Edgar Hoover
• J. Edgar Hoover Appointment and Phone Logs
• Time.com – 'The Truth about Hoover', December 22, 1975
• Wall Street Journal – 'Hoover's Institution', Laurence H. Silberman, July 20, 2005
• Assassination Records Review Board – Final Report: 1998
• Zpub.com – 'J. Edgar Hoover Biography'
• J. Edgar Hoover's Watching You – slideshow by Life magazine
• Yardley, Jonathan (June 26, 2004). "'No Left Turns': The G-Man's Tour de Force". A review of the book "No Left Turns" (Washington Post). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7055-2004Jun25.html. Retrieved May 5, 2010. 

Government offices
Preceded by William J. Burns as Director of the Bureau of Investigation	Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Bureau of Investigation until 1935) 1924–1972	Succeeded by L. Patrick Gray
Honorary titles
Preceded by Everett Dirksen	Persons who have lain in state or honor in the United States Capitol rotunda May 3–4, 1972	Succeeded by Lyndon B. Johnson

v t e Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Hoover • Gray* • Ruckelshaus* • Kelley • Adams* • Webster • Otto* • Sessions • Clarke* • Freeh • Pickard* • Mueller denotes acting

v t e Alcohol prohibition By country Canada Finland Iceland Iran Russia/Soviet Union United States By topic 18th Amendment (U.S. Constitution) 21st Amendment (U.S. Constitution) Anti-Saloon League American Mafia Dry county Islam Jazz Age Moonshine Prohibition Party Roaring Twenties Rum-running Rum row Rum Patrol Speakeasy Temperance movement Teetotalism Volstead Act Woman's Christian Temperance Union Associated people Al Capone Mickey Duffy The Purple Gang Waxey Gordon Frank Hamer J. Edgar Hoover Bumpy Johnson Enoch L. Johnson Meyer Lansky Lucky Luciano Sam Maceo Owney Madden Bugs Moran William McCoy Eliot Ness Arnold Rothstein Nicholas II of Russia Dutch Schultz

Persondata
Name	Hoover, J. Edgar
Alternative names	Hoover, John Edgar
Short description	FBI director
Date of birth	1895-01-01
Place of birth	Washington, D.C., United States
Date of death	1972-05-02
Place of death	Washington, D.C., United States

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