J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover KBE (
January 1,
1895 –
May 2,
1972) was the founder of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in its present form and its director from
May 10,
1924, until his death in
1972. Hoover was appointed acting director of the FBI by President
Calvin Coolidge to reform and clean up the bureau, which was considered a haven for corruption. During his tenure, Hoover attained extraordinary power and unusual discretionary authority, while also feuding with many adversaries. It is because of Hoover that, since his tenure, FBI directors have been limited to ten-year terms.
Hoover is credited with creating an effective law enforcement organization but has frequently been accused of exceeding and abusing his authority in
blackmailing notable public figures and engaging in unwarranted political persecution. Hoover's
COINTELPRO program allowed FBI agents to disrupt organizations such as the
Black Panther Party,
Martin Luther King Jr.'s
SCLC, and the
Ku Klux Klan using methods including infiltration, legal harassment, violence, and murder (
Fred Hampton,
Zayd Shakur, and
Mark Clark). Hoover habitually fired FBI agents, either randomly or by singling out those who "looked stupid like truck drivers" or had "pointy heads." He was also notorious for relocating agents who had displeased him, such as
Melvin Purvis, to career-ending jobs in cities with little need for an FBI presence. Despite this, Hoover was also known to be a supporter of civil rights and liberties on several occasions, most notably for his vocal opposition to the
mass internment of
Japanese-Americans that took place during
World War II.
Hoover was born in
Washington, D.C., but few details are known of his early years; his
birth certificate was not filed until 1938. What little is known about his upbringing generally can be traced back to a single 1937 profile by
journalist Jack Alexander. Hoover was educated at
George Washington University, graduating in 1917 with a law degree. During his time there, he became a member of
Kappa Alpha Order (Alpha Nu 1914). While a law student, Hoover became interested in the career of
Anthony Comstock, the
New York City based U.S. Postal Inspector who waged prolonged campaigns against fraud and vice (as well as pornography and information on birth control) a generation earlier. He is thought to have studied Comstock's methods and modeled his early career on Comstock's reputation for relentless pursuit and occasional shortcuts in crime fighting.
He was awarded an honorary
Sc. D by
Kalamazoo College in 1937.
Rather than enlisting for military service during
World War I, he found work with the
Justice Department. He soon proved himself capable and was 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. He became the permanent director of the Bureau in 1925.
When Hoover took over the Bureau of Investigation, it had approximately 650 employees, including 441 Special Agents. Because of several highly-publicized captures or shootings of outlaws and bank robbers like
John Dillinger,
Alvin Karpis and
Machine Gun Kelly the Bureau's powers were broadened and it was renamed 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 made. 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.
Hoover was noted for his concern about—some would say obsession with—
subversion. He attacked and spied upon scores of suspected subversives and
radicals throughout his career as FBI director. Hoover tended to exaggerate the dangers of subversives, and many believe he overstepped his bounds in his pursuit of eliminating this perceived threat. The one exception to this is perhaps during World War II, when German
U-boats would prowl the eastern seaboard of the United States, sinking merchant vessels and some even launching small groups of
Nazi agents ashore to cause acts of sabotage within the country. Numerous members of these teams were apprehended due to the increased vigilance and intelligence gathering efforts of the FBI. 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 the World War II". An example is his capture of the Nazi saboteurs in the
Quirin affair.
Another example of Hoover's power and obsession with subversion is his handling of the
Venona Project. The FBI inherited a pre-WWII joint project with the British to eavesdrop on Soviet spies in the UK and the U.S. Hoover kept the intercepts in a locked safe in his office, choosing not to inform Truman, his Attorney General McGraith or two Secretaries of State—Dean Acheson and General George Marshall—while they held office. He chose not to inform the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the Venona Project until 1952.
Hoover amassed significant power by collecting files containing large amounts of compromising and potentially embarrassing information on scores of powerful people, especially
politicians. According to
Laurence Silberman, appointed deputy
Attorney General in early 1974, 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, was responsible. These actions reflected the biases and prejudices of the country at large, especially in the attempts to prevent Martin Luther King, Jr., from conducting more extensive voter education drives, economic boycotts, and even potentially running for President.
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.
In the 1950s,
evidence of Hoover's apparently cozy relations with the
Mafia became grist for the
media and his many detractors, after famed
muckraker 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. Hoover has also been accused of trying to undermine the reputations of members of the civil rights movement and the Black Panther Party.
Hoover personally directed the investigation into the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy. His
testimony before the
Warren Commission has been unsealed and published. 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. Some of the criticism arose out of the destruction of a letter that the assassin,
Lee Harvey Oswald, left for an FBI agent in
Dallas, Texas shortly before the assassination. The report also criticized what it characterized as the FBI's reluctance to thoroughly investigate the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the president. [
1]
Presidents Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and
Lyndon Johnson each considered firing Hoover but concluded that the political cost of doing so would be too great.
Richard Nixon twice called in Hoover with the intent of firing him, but both times he changed his mind when meeting with Hoover.
Hoover maintained strong support in
Congress until his death, whereupon operational command of the Bureau passed to Associate Director
Mark Felt. Soon thereafter Nixon appointed
L. Patrick Gray, a Justice Department official with no FBI experience, as Acting Director with Felt remaining as Associate Director. As a historical note, Felt was revealed in 2005 to have been the legendary "
Deep Throat" during the
Watergate scandal. Some of the people whom Deep Throat's revelations helped put in prison—such as Nixon's chief counsel
Chuck Colson and
G. Gordon Liddy—contend that this was, at least in part, because Felt was passed over by Nixon as head of the FBI after Hoover's death in 1972.
In the latter part of his career and life, Hoover was a consultant to
Warner Bros. 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 Warner Bros. would portray the FBI more accurately than other crime dramas of the times.
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.
|
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Associate FBI Director Clyde Tolson. |
For decades, there has been speculation and rumors that Hoover was a
homosexual, but no concrete evidence of these claims has ever been presented. Such rumors have circulated since at least the early 1940's: an FBI memorandum dated
June 11,
1943, reports on a woman spreading gossip of Hoover being "
queer" and keeping "a large group of young boys around him." The memo reports the woman said she had overheard conversation at an adjoining restaurant in
Baltimore, Maryland, in 1941.[
2]
Even within Hoover's own lifetime, journalists and other observers made observations that hinted at a hidden personal life.
Walter Winchell, the famed gossip columnist, once wrote a column that superficially extolled Hoover, while at the same time included many of the aforementioned peculiarities. A journalist (in an article cited by Winchell) who managed to talk her way into an interview with Hoover wrote an article drily entitled, "Hoover: He Always Gets his Man, But he Never Found a Woman."
Hoover's right-hand man,
Clyde Tolson, was a constant companion for more than 40 years, with the pair often vacationing together. Both were lifelong
bachelors, with Hoover living with his mother until her death in 1938. Raised a devout
Presbyterian, Hoover had considered the
ministry as a career, with some critics saying that he used this to try to render his personal conduct (sexual or otherwise) above reproach during his long FBI tenure.
When Hoover died Tolson inherited his estate of approximately $551,000 and moved into his home, having also accepted the flag that draped Hoover's casket. Tolson is buried a few yards away from Hoover in the
Congressional Cemetery.
An additional allegation that Hoover was also a
crossdresser is generally considered to be an
urban legend, though rumors still exist that the
New Orleans and
Chicago Mafia had blackmailed Hoover with photos of him in drag and performing homosexual acts. These rumors (that were detailed by journalist
Anthony Summers) are used to explain why he allegedly never went after the mob, but according to sources in the Mafia, no such photos existed.[
3] Other sources claim that Hoover pursued them zealously after being ordered to go after the Mafia. However,
Peter Maas, a notable journalist, has criticized accusations that Hoover had deep ties with the
Kennedy family, and these allegations in turn were heavily criticized in Anthony Summers's book on
Marilyn Monroe.
Black author
Millie McGhee claims to be related to J. Edgar Hoover in her book
Secrets Uncovered. She was told stories by her grandfather, father and mother throughout her childhood that Hoover was related to their
Mississippi family. In 1998, McGhee contacted a professional genealogist, George Ott of
Salt Lake City, Utah, to confirm these stories. One was that Hoover was not the son of Dickerson Naylor Hoover Sr. of Washington as officially reported, but was actually the son of one Ivy (Ivery) Hoover, was born in the South, probably New Orleans, and was then taken to Washington, D.C. at a very young age and raised by the Hoovers in Washington. Since publication of the first edition of McGhee's book, Ott found Mississippi census records that confirm the McGhee family's oral history as well as disquieting erasures and alterations of records pertaining to the Hoovers of Washington, D.C. Ott and McGhee were not, however, able to prove without doubt that Ivy (or Ivery) Hoover was indeed J. Edgar's father. But the journalist Edward Spannaus received a copy of J. Edgar Hoover's birth certificate. He found that it was not filed until 1938, when the FBI director was 43 years old, while his other siblings had their certificates filed days after their births. The Naylor and Hoover families were also unaccountably living in areas of Washington where blacks and whites were not as segregated.
In 1950, Hoover was appointed an
honorary Knight of the
Order of the British Empire. This entitled him to the use of the postnominal letters KBE, but not to the appellation "Sir". The United States' Constitution prohibits its citizens from being knighted (or recieving similar honors) by foreign royalty, although accepting honorary titles is allowed.
In 1966, he received the Distinguished Service Award from President Lyndon B. Johnson for his service as Director of the FBI.
J. Edgar Hoover has appeared or has been the basis of characters in numerous works of fiction. His notable appearances in
Western culture include:
* The
Adult Swim television series
The Boondocks, where Huey and Riley Freeman attend the "J. Edgar Hoover Elementary School".
* Some renditions of
The Mother by
Bertolt Brecht, in which a man delivering a thundering introduction of himself as J. Edgar Hoover yells loudly and authoritatively against
communism while wearing a
ball gown or similar attire. He is brought back into the play sporadically as
comic relief thereafter, exhibiting clearly
homoerotic behavior.
* In
Aldous Huxley's
Brave New World, one of the characters is named Benito Hoover, after
Benito Mussolini and J. Edgar Hoover.
* The character of
J. Gander Hooter in
Disney's
animated television series
Darkwing Duck is inspired by Hoover.
* Hoover is featured in the television series
Red Dwarf as in an alternate timeline, assuming the office of
President of the United States when the heroes of the show accidentally kill Lee Harvey Oswald before he can assassinate President John F. Kennedy. In the end, the previous timeline is restored, and history reverted to its previous state.
* Hoover once surprised President John F. Kennedy when Hoover gave Kennedy an ashtray imprinted with JFK's full set of fingerprints.
* In the Paramount Pictures movie Clue, J. Edgar Hoover places a call to Wadsworth, the butler of the Boddy Mansion during the investigation.
* Hoover is depicted as having taken the presidency of the United States after martial law was declared, in one of the parallel worlds visited in the television series
Sliders. In this world, police officers habitually wore skirts, leading to an initial theory that the regular characters had discovered a world where a Scotland-dominated British Empire had been the colonial rulers of North America, rather than the real world's English-dominated empire; or consequently, a world where cross-dressing is widely encouraged, and the Constitution had been suppressed by Hoover since the declaration of martial law.
* Hoover is a prominent character in
James Ellroy's novels
American Tabloid and
The Cold Six Thousand.
* Hoover is depicted in
The X-files series in episodes:
Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man and
Travelers.
* J. Edgar Hoover is the arch-villain in The Doorbell Rang, a 1965 novel by Rex Stout featuring detective Nero Wolfe. Wolfe takes on the FBI for pestering a client and succeeds in blackmailing Hoover into acquiescence.
* In the 1971 movie
Bananas by
Woody Allen, Hoover was played by an African American woman.
* In the 1997 novel
Underworld by
Don Delillo, insight into Tolson and Hoover's personal life is featured.
* In the 1997 film
Gattaca, FBI agents are referred to as Hoovers and J. Edgars. Hoover also references the vacuum cleaners they use to find traces of
DNA.
* In the 2005 video game
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Hoover is depicted as a ruthless agent, leader of the raid on the fictional port city of Innsmouth, personally leading agents and the player into the Marsh Gold Refinery. The game is based off of the stories written by
H. P. Lovecraft.
* In the musical
Annie he is referenced throughout. "You won't be an orphan for long"
* Hoover is mentioned in the film
The Rock starring
Nicolas Cage and
Sean Connery. In this film, Mason (Connery) is a British agent imprisoned after stealing microfilm which contained information from Hoover's files.
* Hoover appears as a major character in the second book,
Designated Targets, of
John Birmingham's alternate history series
Axis of Time. His rumoured homosexuality and mafia links are emphasised.
*In the 1992 film
Chaplin, Hoover is shown hounding Chaplin continuously as a result of his false belief that the actor is a member of the Communist Party.
*In the 2002 film
Chicago Velma says to Roxie, "Even J. Edgar Hoover couldn't find your name in the papers".
*In the premiere episode of the sixth season of
The Sopranos Uncle Junior, suffering from dementia, believes "Little Pussy" Malangaâ€"a character who has been dead for six yearsâ€"is continuously calling him on the phone and hanging up. Tony Soprano sarcastically replies, "We'll Get J. Edgar Hoover right on it."
* Hoover plays an important role in the movie
Nixon.
* Hoover is a 33° Grand Cross
Freemason * The plot in
The Chancellor Manuscript by Robert Ludlum revolves around Hoover and his secret files.
* Hoover is mentioned in the short story "Welcome to the Monkey House" by
Kurt Vonnegut as J. Edgar Nation.
* Dale Cooper meets Hoover in the Twin Peaks book "Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes".
* In the TV show,
The Simpsons, FBI Agents Mulder and Scully have a picture of Hoover in a dress.
* In television series
Futurama, President Nixon's head says to the Planet Express team "I'm sweating like J Edgar Hoover trying to squeeze into a new girdle".
* In 1995 episode of
Seinfeld The Doorman, Estelle catches Frank wearing a bra, to which she later responds (to Kramer) "I lived with him for forty years, I never saw him trying on my underwear. As soon as he leaves the house, he turns into J. Edgar Hoover!"
* In the movie
Ghostbusters, when the Ghostbusters face their final adversary, Gozer, the spirit tells them to choose a physical form for Gozer to take in order so that it may destroy them.
Peter Venkman explains that to his fellow Ghostbusters by saying, "If we think of J. Edgar Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover will appear and destroy us." The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man is eventually chosen.
*Hoover is a prominent character in
Dan Simmons'
The Crook Factory, a speculative novel based on a true-life account of
Ernest Hemingway's attempt during
World War II to operate an amateur spy ring out of his home in Cuba.
*In
Metal Gear Solid, J. Edgar Hoover is mentioned as employing Naomi Hunter's father as a special detective in the FBI, which is later proven to be a lie due to the fact that her father was Japanese and Hoover was a well-known racist.
* One of the
Naked Gun movies depicts a wall of honor with souvenirs from famous crime-fighters, Hoover's display is framed women's clothes.
* In an episode of
Married...With Children,
Al Bundy and Jefferson D'Arcy discover a mysterious crate behind a wall in Bundy's shoe store. Bundy remarks that it might be
Al Capone's treasure. When Jefferson asks why Capone would hide his treasure in a woman's shore store, Bundy replies, "maybe he was dating J. Edgar Hoover."
* Beverly, William, On the Lam: Narratives of Flight in J. Edgar Hoover's America, University Press of Mississippi,
2003 [
4]
*
French -
Marc Dugain,
La malédiction d'Edgar - (non official translation : Edgar's Curse) a Novel (French editor Gallimard
2005, ISBN 2-07-077379-5). Dugain is the writer of
The Officer's Ward* Garrow, David J, "The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr., From 'Solo' to Memphis", W.W.Norton, New York, 1981, ISBN 0-393-01509-2, p. 166.
* Gentry, Curt,
J. Edgar Hoover: The man and the secrets, Plume, 1991, ISBN 0-452-26904-0, LoC HV7911.H6G46
1992* J. Edgar Hoover,
Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It, Pocket Books,
1958 (one of Hoover's many ghost-written books)
*Johansson, Warren & Percy, William A.
Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. Harrington Park Press, 1994, pp. 85-88, 105, 227.
* McGhee, Millie L.
Secrets Uncovered: J. Edgar Hoover--Passing for White?, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., Allen-Morris, 2000.
* Stove, R. J.
The Unsleeping Eye: Secret Police and Their Victims, Encounter Books, 2003, ISBN 189355466X. The last chapter of this book is devoted to Hoover.
* Summers, Anthony,
Official and Confidential:The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, Putnam Pub Group, 1993, ISBN 0-399-13800-5, Details many negative claims concerning Hoover, but the evidence behind many of these claims has been disputed.
*
Spub.com - 'J. Edgar Hoover [1895-1972]: Director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1924 until his death in 1972'
*
TheNewAmerican.com - '"Assassinating" J. Edgar Hoover'
*
StraightDope.com - 'The Straight Dope: Was J. Edgar Hoover a crossdresser?'
*
Wall Street Journal - 'Hoover's Institution', Laurence H. Silberman, July 20, 2005
*
American Almanac - 'The Mysterious Origins of J. Edgar Hoover' by Edward Spannaus, August 2000
*
Ask Yahoo! - Was J. Edgar Hoover really a transvestite?, April 6, 2006
*
Assassination Records Review Board - Final Report: 1998
