J. Edgar Hoover

Source

• Born: 1 January 1895
• Birthplace: Washington, D.C.
• Died: 2 May 1972
• Best Known As: Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1924-72

John Edgar Hoover was the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.). He began working in U.S. government service in 1913, first at the Library of Congress, then at the Justice Department. During World War I Hoover worked for the Bureau of Investigation, keeping statistical records of immigrants for the Alien Enemy Bureau. A vigorous anti-communist, Hoover quickly moved up the ranks in the postwar period, and by 1924 was appointed Director of the Bureau of Investigation (later called the Federal Bureau of Investigation). He held the post from 1924 to 1972, an administration that lasted from President Coolidge to President Nixon. Hoover had a reputation for hypervigilance in the face of crime and political subversion, and the F.B.I. grew to become known as incorruptible law officers who kept files on just about everybody, from gangsters and spies to pop culture figures including John Lennon, Martin Luther King, Jr., Marilyn Monroe and Eldridge Cleaver. Hoover has been a controversial figure since his death, and there has been much speculation about his personal life, family background and dictatorial rule over the Bureau; given his political power over five decades, he is a central figure in the history of scandal and U.S. politics.

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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.

For more information on John Edgar Hoover, visit Britannica.com.

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.

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."

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (August 2009)

John Edgar Hoover
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
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	Became FBI director
Born	January 1, 1895(1895-01-01) Washington, D.C.
Died	May 2, 1972 (aged 77) Washington, D.C.
Religion	Presbyterian
Signature

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. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modern innovations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories.

Late in life and after his death, Hoover became an increasingly controversial figure. Some critics asserted that he exceeded 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 use illegal methods to collect evidence.^[3] It is because of Hoover's long and controversial reign that FBI directors are now limited to 10-year terms.^[4]

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 Personal life 4.1 Sexuality 4.2 Possible African-American family connections 4.3 Eccentricities 5 Masonic Connections 6 Honors 7 Portrayals 8 See also 9 Writings 10 References 11 Sources 12 External links

Early life and education

Hoover was born on New Year's Day 1895 in Washington, D.C., to Anna Marie Scheitlin, who was descended from a line of Swiss mercenaries, and Dickerson Naylor Hoover, Sr., of English and German stock, and grew up in the Eastern Market. Annie's uncle had been the Swiss honorary consul general to the U.S. Hoover worked at the Library of Congress during college^[5] and also became a member of Kappa Alpha Order (Alpha Nu 1914). In 1917 Hoover obtained a law degree from The George Washington University. While a law student, Hoover became interested in the career of Anthony Comstock, the New York City U.S. Postal Inspector, who waged prolonged campaigns against fraud and vice (including pornography and information on birth control) a generation earlier.

FBI career

During World War I, Hoover found work with the Justice Department. He was soon promoted to head of the Enemy Aliens Registration Section. In 1919, he became head of the new General Intelligence Division of the Justice Department (see the Palmer Raids). From there, in 1921, he joined the Bureau of Investigation as deputy head, and in 1924, the Attorney General made him the acting director. On May 10, 1924, Hoover was appointed by President Calvin Coolidge to be 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 by singling out those whom he thought "looked stupid like truck drivers" or he considered to be "pinheads".^[6] 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.^[7]

Gangster wars

In the early 1930s, an epidemic of bank robberies in the Midwest was orchestrated by colorful criminal gangs who took advantage of superior firepower and fast getaway cars to bedevil local law enforcement agencies. To the chagrin and embarrassment of authorities, such robbers were often viewed as somewhat noble in their assaults upon the banking industry, which at the time was evicting many farmers and families from their homesteads.^{[citation needed]} That empathy reached the point that many of these desperadoes, particularly John Dillinger (who became famous for leaping over bank cages and his repeated escapes from jails and police traps), were de facto folk heroes whose exploits frequently made headlines. State officials began to implore Washington to aid them in containing this lawlessness.^{[citation needed]} The fact that the robbers frequently took stolen cars across state lines (a federal offense) gave Hoover and his men the authority to pursue them. Things did not go as planned, however, and there were some embarrassing foul-ups on the part of the FBI, particularly clashes with the Dillinger gang. A raid on a summer lodge named "Little Bohemia" in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, left an agent and a hapless civilian bystander dead, along with 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. Hoover was particularly fixated on eliminating Dillinger, whose misdeeds he considered to be insults aimed directly at him and "his" bureau.^{[citation needed]} In late July 1934, Melvin Purvis, the Director of Operations in the Chicago office, received a tip on Dillinger's whereabouts. That paid off when Dillinger was located and shot outside the Biograph Theater.

Due to several highly-publicized captures or shootings of outlaws and bank robbers including Dillinger, Alvin Karpis, and Machine Gun Kelly, the Bureau's powers were broadened and it was re-named the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935. 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 ever.^[8][9] Hoover also helped to greatly expand the FBI's recruitment and create the FBI Laboratory, a division established in 1932 to examine evidence found by the FBI.^{[citation needed]}

Investigation of subversion and radicals

Hoover was concerned about subversion, and under his leadership, the FBI spied upon tens of thousands of suspected subversives and radicals. Hoover tended to exaggerate the dangers of these "subversives", and many times overstepped his bounds in his pursuit of eliminating that perceived threat.^[10]

The FBI had some successes against actual subversives and spies. However, in the Quirin affair during World War II, when 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 members of these teams were apprehended only after one of the would-be saboteurs contacted the FBI, confessed everything, and then betrayed the other seven men. ^[11] Nevertheless, 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".^[1]

Another example of Hoover's concern over subversion was his handling of the Venona Project. The FBI inherited 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.

According to documents declassified in 2007, Hoover maintained a list of 12,000 Americans suspected of disloyalty with the intention of detaining them and to do so by suspending the writ of habeas corpus. Hoover submitted his plan to Truman at the outbreak of the Korean War, but there is no evidence that Truman accepted the plan.^[12]

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.^[13]

This program remained in place until it was revealed to the public in 1971, and was the cause of some of the harshest criticism of Hoover and the FBI. COINTELPRO was first used to disrupt the Communist Party, and later organizations such as the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s SCLC, the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party and others. Its methods included infiltration, burglaries, illegal wiretaps, planting forged documents and spreading false rumors about key members of target organizations.^[14] Some authors have charged that COINTELPRO methods also included inciting violence and arranging murders.^[15] 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.^[16] 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. An extensive investigation of Hoover's files by David Garrow showed that Hoover and next-in-command William Sullivan, as well as the FBI itself as an agency, were responsible.^{[citation needed]}

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 not only wrote an open letter to the press singling out these statements as "irresponsible" but secretly enlisted the help of NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall in a campaign to discredit Howard.

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, after famed reporter Jack Anderson exposed the immense scope of the Mafia's organized crime network, a threat Hoover had long downplayed. Hoover's retaliation and continual harassment of Anderson lasted into the 1970s. 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 cited examples.^{[citation needed]}

Hoover personally directed the FBI investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The House Select Committee on Assassinations issued a report in 1979 critical of the performance by the FBI, the Warren Commission as well as 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.^[17]

Late career and death

Presidents Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson each considered dismissing Hoover as FBI Director, but all of them ultimately concluded that the political cost of doing so would be too great.^[18]

Hoover maintained strong support in Congress until his death in 1972 from the effects of high blood pressure.^[19] Operational command of the Bureau passed to Associate Director Clyde Tolson. Soon thereafter, President Richard Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray, a Justice Department official with no FBI experience, as Acting Director, with W. Mark Felt remaining as Associate Director. Being passed over to head the FBI is said to have contributed to Felt's decision to become the informant later referred to as "Deep Throat".

Legacy

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

In 1979, 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".^[20]

The FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. is named after Hoover. Because of the controversial nature of Hoover's legacy, there have been periodic proposals to rename it. 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.^[21] However, the Senate never adopted the amendment.

Personal life

Sexuality

Clyde Tolson (left) and Hoover relaxing on the beach in Los Angeles, 1939

Hoover was a lifelong bachelor and since at least the 1940s, unsubstantiated rumors circulated that he was homosexual.^[22] It has also been suggested that Clyde Tolson, an associate director of the FBI who was Hoover's heir, may also have been his lover.^[23]

Some authors have dismissed the rumors about Hoover's sexuality and his relationship with Tolson in particular as unlikely,^[24] while others have described them as probable or even "confirmed",^[25] and still others have reported the rumors without stating an opinion.^[26] 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.^[23] The exceedingly close relationship between the two is often cited as evidence that the two were lovers, though some FBI employees who knew them, such as Mark Felt, say that the relationship was merely "brotherly".

Tolson inherited Hoover's estate and moved into his home, having also accepted the American flag that draped Hoover's casket. Tolson is buried a few yards away from Hoover in the Congressional Cemetery. 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.^[18]

In his 1993 biography Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J Edgar Hoover, journalist Anthony Summers quoted a witness, "society divorcee" Susan Rosenstiel, (who later served time at Rikers Island for perjuring herself in a 1971 case) who claimed to have seen Hoover engaging in cross-dressing in the 1950s; she claimed that on two occasions she witnessed Hoover wearing a fluffy black dress with flounces and lace, stockings, high heels and a black curly wig, at homosexual orgies.^[27][28][29]

In 1958 the bisexual millionaire distiller and philanthropist Lewis Solon Rosenstiel asked Susan [Rosenstiel], his fourth wife, if—having been previously married to another bisexual man for nine years—she had ever seen "a homosexual orgy". Although she had once surprised her sixty-eight-year-old husband in bed with his attorney, Roy Cohn, Susan told Summers that she had never before been invited to view sex between men. With her consent the couple went one day not long after this odd question to Manhattan's Plaza Hotel. Cohn, a former aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy and a Republican power broker, met them at the door. As she and her husband entered the suite, "Susan said, she recognized a third man: J. Edgar Hoover", director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), whom she had met previously at her New York City Upper East Side townhouse. Hoover, Lewis had explained, gave him access to influential politicians; he returned these favors, in part, by paying the director's gambling debts.^[29][30]

Summers also said that the Mafia had blackmail material on Hoover, and that as a consequence, Hoover had been reluctant to aggressively pursue organized crime. Although never corroborated, the allegation of cross-dressing has been widely repeated, and "J. Edna Hoover" has become the subject of humor on television, in movies and elsewhere. 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."^[31] Most biographers consider the story of Mafia blackmail to be unlikely in light of the FBI's investigations of the Mafia.^[32] Along these lines Truman Capote, who helped spread the rumors, once remarked that he was more interested in making Hoover angry than determining whether the rumors were true.^[18]

Hoover hunted down and threatened anyone who made insinuations about his sexuality.^[33] He also spread destructive, unsubstantiated rumors that Adlai Stevenson was gay to damage the liberal governor's 1952 Presidential Campaign.^[33] His extensive secret files contained surveillance material on Eleanor Roosevelt's alleged lesbian lovers, speculated to be acquired for the purpose of blackmail.^[33]

The opening of Soviet archives revealed evidence that there was a Soviet campaign to discredit the United States which used allegations of homosexuality to discredit Hoover. Recent use of reports of Hoover's homosexual activities and relationship in order to discredit him has been described by one reference as homophobic.^{[citation needed]} Hoover's biographer Richard Hack, however, ^[34] reported 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'd had an affair with Hoover in the years between her two marriages.^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]}

A Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Washington Post revealed that Longtime Hollywood lobbyist Jack Valenti, a special assistant and confidant to President Lyndon Johnson was investigated by Hoover's FBI in 1964. The investigation, which was carried out despite Valenti's two-year marriage to Johnson's personal secretary, focused on rumors that he was having a gay relationship with a commercial photographer friend.^[35]

Possible African-American family connections

African American author Millie McGhee^[36] claims in her 2000 book Secrets Uncovered to be related to J. Edgar Hoover.^[37] McGhee's oral family history holds that a branch of her Mississippi family, also named Hoover, is related to the Washington, D.C. Hoovers, and that further, J. Edgar Hoover's father was not Dickerson Hoover as recorded, but rather Ivery Hoover of Mississippi. Genealogist George Ott investigated these claims and found some supporting circumstantial evidence, as well as unusual alterations of records pertaining to Hoover's officially recorded family in Washington, D.C., but found no conclusive proof. J. Edgar Hoover's birth certificate was not filed until 1938, when he was 43 years old.

Eccentricities

The book No Left Turns, by former agent Joseph L. Schott, portrays a rigid, paranoid old man who terrified everyone, and increasingly became a caricature of himself. Hoover liked to write on the margins of memos and, according to Schott, when one memo had too narrow margins he wrote, "watch the borders!" No one had the nerve to ask him why, but they sent inquiries to the Border Patrol about any strange activities on the Canadian and Mexican frontiers. It took a week before an HQ staffer realized the message related to the borders of the memo paper.^[38] Schott has also stated that the mistakenly increased border activity during this period resulted in the arrest of American Communist Party leader Gus Hall.

Masonic Connections

Hoover was a "devoted" Freemason and was coronated a 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Freemason in the Southern Masonic Jurisdiction. He was raised a Master Mason on November 9, 1920, in Federal Lodge No. 1, Washington, D.C., just two months before his 26th birthday. During his 52 years with the Craft, he received innumerable medals, awards and decorations. Eventually In 1955, he was coroneted a Thirty-third Degree Inspector General Honorary and awarded the Scottish Rite's highest recognition, the Grand Cross of Honour in 1965 by the Southern Masonic Jurisdiction.^[39]

Honors

• In 1938, Hoover received an honorary doctorate from Oklahoma Baptist University during the commencement exercises in which he was the speaker ^[40][41]
• In 1950, King George VI of the United Kingdom awarded Hoover an honorary knighthood in the Order of the British Empire. This entitled him to the postnominal letters KBE, but not to the use of the title "Sir" (because he was a U.S. citizen).
• In 1955, Hoover received the National Security Medal from President Eisenhower. ^[42]

• In 1955 Hoover coronated Thirty-third Degree Inspector General Honorary and in 1965 awarded the Scottish Rite’s highest recognition the Grand Cross of Honour by Masons. ^[39]

• In 1966, he received the Distinguished Service Award from President Lyndon B. Johnson for his service as director of the FBI.
• The FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, is named the J. Edgar Hoover Building after him.
• On Hoover's death, Congress voted its permission for his body to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda, an honor that, at the time, had been accorded to twenty-one other Americans.^[19]
• Congress also voted that a memorial book be published to honor Hoover's memory. J. Edgar Hoover: Memorial Tributes in the Congress of the United States and Various Articles and Editorials Relating to His Life and Work was published in 1974.

Portrayals

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

• In the 1971 Woody Allen movie Bananas, J. Edgar Hoover was portrayed by a large-framed African-American actress, Dorothi Fox. ^[43]
• 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 Dolph Sweet in the TV Miniseries King (1978).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Ernest Borgnine in the TV-movie Blood Feud (1983).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Vincent Gardenia in the TV-movie Kennedy (1983).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Treat Williams in the TV-movie J. Edgar Hoover (1987).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Kevin Dunn in the movie Chaplin (1992).
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Richard Dysart, both in the TV-movie Marilyn & Bobby: Her Final Affair (1993) and in Mario Van Peebles' 1995 film Panther.
• Hoover was portrayed by British actor Bob Hoskins in the Oliver Stone drama Nixon (1995).
• In the Michael Mann film Public Enemies, Hoover is portrayed by actor Billy Crudup (2009).
• In an Animaniacs short parodying World War II propaganda, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot are collecting silk stockings for the effort and Hoover comes to eagerly collect them personally.
• In the video game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Hoover leads the raid on the Innsmouth gold refinery.
• Canadian actor David Fredericks portrayed Hoover in two episodes of The X-Files, as well as on its sister show Millennium.

See also

• Anti-communism
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• G-Man (slang)
• McCarthyism

Writings

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,^[44] Hoover received the credit and royalties.

• Hoover, J. Edgar (1938). Persons In Hiding. Gaunt Publishing. ISBN 1-56169-340-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=zSEiAAAAMAAJ&q. 
• Hoover, J. Edgar (1958). Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 1-4254-8258-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=U503AAAAIAAJ&q.  ^[45]
• Hoover, J. Edgar (1962). A Study of Communism. Holt Rinehart & Winston. ISBN 0-03-031190-X. http://books.google.com/books?id=8Jk3AAAAIAAJ&q. 

References

1. ^ "J. Edgar Hoover", Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia, Microsoft Corporation, 2008, archived from the original on 2009-10-31, http://www.webcitation.org/5kwrg7R6c 
2. ^ "Hoover, J. Edgar", The Columbia Encyclopedia (Sixth ed.), Columbia University Press, 2007, http://www.bartleby.com/65/ho/Hoover-J.html 
3. ^ Documented in Cox, John Stuart and Theoharis, Athan G. (1988). The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition. Temple University Press. ISBN 0-87722-532-X.  and elsewhere.
4. ^ U.S. Code Title 28, part 2, chapter 33. sec. 533, Confirmation and Compensation of Director; Term of Service (b)
5. ^ Federal Bureau of Investigation - Directors
6. ^ Schott, Joseph L (1975). No Left Turns: The FBI in Peace & War. Praeger. ISBN 0-275-33630-1. 
7. ^ Purvis, Alston; and Tresinowski, Alex (2005). The Vendetta: FBI Hero Melvin Purvis's War Against Crime and J. Edgar Hoover's War Against Him. Public Affairs. pp. 183+. ISBN 1-58648-301-3. 
8. ^ "More Fingerprints Called Necessary... Hoover Urges Criminologists At Rochester To File Records In The Capital Bureau". New York Times. July 23, 1931. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0612FD385F11738DDDAA0A94DF405B818FF1D3&scp=14&sq=%22J.+Edgar+Hoover%22&st=p. Retrieved 2008-04-17. 
9. ^ "Washington Develops a World Clearing House For Identifying Criminals by Fingerprints.". New York Times. August 10, 1932. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70617F8355A13738DDDA90994D0405B828FF1D3&scp=33&sq=%22J.+Edgar+Hoover%22&st=p. Retrieved 2008-04-17. "Through the medium of the fingerprint, the Department of Justice is developing an international clearing house for the identification of criminals." 
10. ^ See, for example, Cox, John Stuart and Theoharis, Athan G. (1988). The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition. Temple University Press. ISBN 0-87722-532-X. 
11. ^ Ardman, Harvey (February, 1997), "German Saboteurs Invade America in 1942", World War II magazine (HistoryNet.com), http://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-german-saboteurs-invade-america-in-1942.htm 
12. ^ "Hoover Planned Mass Jailing in 1950.". New York Times. December 23, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/washington/23habeas.html. Retrieved 2008-04-15. 
13. ^ Cox, John Stuart and Theoharis, Athan G. (1988). The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition. Temple University Press. pp. pg. 312. ISBN 0-87722-532-X. 
14. ^ Kessler, Ronald (2002). The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI. St. Martin's Paperbacks. pp. 107, 174, 184, 215. ISBN 0-312-98977-6. 
15. ^ See for example James, Joy (2000). States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. pg. 335. ISBN 0-312-21777-3. , Williams, Kristian (2004). Our Enemies In Blue: Police And Power In America. Soft Skull Press. pp. pg. 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. .
16. ^ "Intelligence Activities And The Rights Of Americans". 1976. http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIa.htm. Retrieved 2006-10-25. 
17. ^ "Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives". The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. 1979. http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/. Retrieved 2006-10-25. 
18. ^ ^{a b c} Hack, 2007
19. ^ ^{a b} "J. Edgar Hoover, 77, Dies". New York Times. May 3, 1972, Wednesday. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0910FC3F5F117B93C1A9178ED85F468785F9&scp. Retrieved 2008-03-11. 
20. ^ HCSA Conclusions, 1979.
21. ^ "No thanks to Hoover", The Washington Post, May 5, 2001, http://www.polkonline.com/stories/050701/opi_hoover.shtml 
22. ^ Terry, Jennifer (1999). An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society. University of Chicago Press. pp. pg. 350. ISBN 0-226-79366-4. 
23. ^ ^{a b} Cox, John Stuart and Theoharis, Athan G. (1988). The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition. Temple University Press. pp. pg. 108. ISBN 0-87722-532-X. 
24. ^ For example,
    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. pp. pg. 167. ISBN 1-58648-377-3. ,
    Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri (2003). Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence. Yale University Press. pp. pg. 93. ISBN 0-300-10159-7. ,
    Cox, John Stuart and Theoharis, Athan G. (1988). The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition. Temple University Press. pp. pg. 108. ISBN 0-87722-532-X.  "The strange likelihood is that Hoover never knew sexual desire at all."
25. ^ For example,
    Percy, William A. and Johansson , Warren (1994). Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. Haworth Press. pp. 85+. ISBN 1-56024-419-4. ,
    Summers, Anthony (1993). Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J Edgar Hoover. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-88087-X. 
26. ^ For example,
    Edited by Theoharis, Athan G. (1998). The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide. Oryx Press. pp. 291, 301, 397. ISBN 0-89774-991-X. ,
    Doherty, Thomas (2003). Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture. Columbia University Press. pp. 254, 255. ISBN 0-231-12952-1. 
27. ^ Summers, Anthony (1993). Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J Edgar Hoover. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-88087-X. 
28. ^ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (February 15, 1993). "Books of The Times; Catalogue of Accusations Against J. Edgar Hoover.". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE1DE173BF936A25751C0A965958260&scp=1&sq=j.+Edgar+hoover+confidential&st=nyt. Retrieved 2008-04-16. 
29. ^ ^{a b} Claire Bond Potter, Wesleyan University (July 2006). "Queer Hoover: Sex, Lies, and Political History". Journal of the History of Sexuality (Texas: University of Texas Press) 15 (3): 355–381. doi:10.1353/sex.2007.0021. http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_sexuality/v015/15.3potter.html. Retrieved 2009. "Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Queer Hoover: Sex, Lies, and Political History Claire Bond Potter Wesleyan University What does the history of sex look like without evidence of sexual identities or proof that sex acts occurred? And how might an analysis of gossip, rumors, and perhaps even lies about sex help us to write political history?". 
30. ^ "Queer Hoover: sex, lies, and political history.(J. Edgar Hoover)". http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-32769608_ITM. 
31. ^ Doherty, Thomas (2003). Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture. Columbia University Press. pp. pg. 255. ISBN 0-231-12952-1. 
32. ^ See for example Kessler, Ronald (2002). The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI. St. Martin's Paperbacks. pp. 120+. ISBN 0-312-98977-6. 
33. ^ ^{a b c} "J. Edgar Hoover: Gay marriage role model?". Salon. http://www.salon.com/health/sex/urge/world/2000/01/05/hoover/. Retrieved 2008-11-14. 
34. ^ Hack, Richard Puppetmaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. (2007). Phoenix Books. ISBN1597775126
35. ^ 'Gay' Probe of LBJ Aide by Washington Associated Press at NY Post newspaper February 20, 2009
36. ^ Millie McGhee biography
37. ^ McGhee, Millie L. (2000). Secrets Uncovered: J. Edgar Hoover--Passing for White?. Inland Empire Services. ISBN 0-9701822-2-8. 
38. ^ Schott, Joseph L (1975). No Left Turns: The FBI in Peace & War. Praeger. ISBN 0-275-33630-1. 
39. ^ ^{a b} J. Edgar Hoover, 33, Grand Cross-Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity Cartha D. “Deke” DeLoach, Chairman, Hoover Foundation at Scottish Rite Journal of Freemasonry Magazine
40. ^ http://www.okbu.edu/alumni/honordocs.html
41. ^ https://www.okbu.edu/news/2004-12-15/how-the-angells-changed-obu
42. ^ "Citation and Remarks at Presentation of the National Security Medal to J. Edgar Hoover". http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=10244. 
43. ^ Full cast and crew for Bananas (1971) at imdb
44. ^ See, for example:
    Anderson, Jack (1999). Peace, War, and Politics: An Eyewitness Account. Forge Books. pp. pg. 174. ISBN 0-312-87497-9. ,
    Powers, Richard Gid (2004). Broken: the troubled past and uncertain future of the FBI. Free Press. pp. pg. 238. ISBN 0-684-83371-9. ,
    Theoharis, Athan G. (editor) (1998). The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide. Oryx Press. pp. pg. 264. ISBN 0-89774-991-X. 
45. ^ "Conspirators Against the American Way.". New York Times. March 9, 1958. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0611FE3B5D1A7B93CBA91788D85F4C8585F9&scp=15&sq=J.+Edgar+Hoover&st=p. Retrieved 2008-04-17. 

Sources

• Ackerman, Kenneth D. (2007). Young J. Edgar: Hoover, the Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil Liberties. Carroll & Graf. ISBN 978-0-78671-775-0. 
• 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 978-0312342692. 
• 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 978-0814210611. 
• 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 0837157552. 
• Powers, Richard Gid (1986). Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover. Free Press. ISBN 0029250609. 
• 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. 

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?'
• J. Edgar Hoover at Find a Grave
• 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'
• Yardley, Jonathan (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. 

Government offices
Preceded by William J. Burns as Director of the Bureau of Investigation	Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation 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 – May 4, 1972	Succeeded by Lyndon B. Johnson

v • d • e Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Finch • Bielaski • Allen* • Flynn • Burns • Hoover • Gray* • Ruckelshaus* • Kelley • Adams* • Webster • Otto* • Sessions • Clarke* • Freeh • Pickard* • Mueller * denotes acting

Persondata
NAME	Hoover, J. Edgar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Hoover, John Edgar
SHORT DESCRIPTION	FBI director
DATE OF BIRTH	January 1, 1895(1895-01-01)
PLACE OF BIRTH	Washington, D.C., USA
DATE OF DEATH	May 2, 1977
PLACE OF DEATH	Washington, D.C., USA

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