John Edgar Hoover
J. 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, DC
Died	May 2, 1972(1972-05-02) (aged 77) Washington, DC
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. 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] It is because of Hoover's long and controversial tenure that FBI directors are now limited to 10-year terms.^[4]

[edit] Early life and education

J. Edgar Hoover was born on New Year's Day 1895 in Washington, DC, to Anna Marie (née Scheitlin; 1860'1938), who was descended from a line of Swiss mercenaries, and Dickerson Naylor Hoover, Sr. (1856'1921), of English and German ancestry. Annie's uncle had been the Swiss honorary consul general to the United States. Hoover grew up in the Eastern Market. He worked at the Library of Congress during college^[5] and, in 1917, obtained a law degree from George Washington University. While a law student, Hoover became interested in the career of Anthony Comstock, the New York City US Postal Inspector, who waged prolonged campaigns against fraud and vice (including pornography and information on birth control) a generation earlier.

[edit] FBI career

J. Edgar Hoover in 1924

During World War I, Hoover found work with 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^[6] (see the Palmer Raids). From there, 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, 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, singling out those whom he thought "looked stupid like truck drivers" or he considered to be "pinheads".^[7] 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.^[8]

[edit] 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 avoid arrest. Many of these desperadoes, particularly John Dillinger (who became famous for leaping over bank cages and his repeated escapes from jails and police traps), frequently made headlines. 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. In late July 1934, Purvis, the Director of Operations in the Chicago office, received a tip on Dillinger's whereabouts. The tip paid off when Dillinger was located and killed 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.^[9] Frank Costello helped encourage this view by feeding Hoover, "an inveterate horseplayer" known to send Special Agents to place $100 bets for him,^[10] tips on sure winners through their mutual friend, gossip columnist Walter Winchell.^[10] Hoover went on to say the Bureau had "much more important functions" than arresting bookmakers and gamblers.^[10]

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.^[11][12] 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.

[edit] 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.^[13]

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.^[14] 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.^[15] 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.

According to documents declassified in 2007, Hoover maintained a list of 12,000 Americans suspected of disloyalty with the intention of detaining them, and doing 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.^[16]

[edit] COINTELPRO years

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.^[17]

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 and flooding L.A. with drugs.^[18] Some authors have charged that COINTELPRO methods also included inciting violence and arranging murders.^[19] 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.^[20] 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."

[edit] 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^{[citation needed]} exposed the immense scope of the Mafia's organized crime network, a huge 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. In 1964, just days before Hoover testified in the earliest stages of the Warren Commission hearings, President Lyndon B. Johnson waived for Hoover 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 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.^[21]

[edit] 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.^[22]

Hoover maintained strong support in Congress until his death in 1972 from a heart attack (reported the day after as the effects of high blood pressure.)^[23] 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^{[citation needed]} to have contributed to Felt's decision to become the informant later referred to as "Deep Throat".

[edit] 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 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".^[24]

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. 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.^[25] However, the Senate never adopted the amendment.

[edit] Personal life

[edit] Sexuality

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

Since the 1940s, rumors have circulated that Hoover was homosexual.^[26] It has been suggested that Clyde Tolson, an associate director of the FBI who was Hoover's heir, may have been his lover.^[27]

Some authors have dismissed the rumors about Hoover's sexuality and his relationship with Tolson in particular as unlikely,^[28] while others have described them as probable or even "confirmed",^[29] and still others have reported the rumors without stating an opinion.^[30] 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.^[27] This closeness between the two men is often cited as evidence that they 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 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.^[22]

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.^[31][32][33]

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, soon 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.^[33]

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."^[34] Skeptics of the cross-dressing story point to Susan Rosenstiel's poor credibility 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.^[35] Along these lines, 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.^[22]

Hoover hunted down and threatened anyone who made insinuations about his sexuality.^[36] He also spread destructive, unsubstantiated rumors that Adlai Stevenson was gay to damage the liberal governor's 1952 Presidential Campaign.^[36] His extensive secret files contained surveillance material on Eleanor Roosevelt's alleged lesbian lovers, speculated to be acquired for the purpose of blackmail.^[36]

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. Hoover's biographer Richard Hack 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 had had an affair with Hoover in the years between her two marriages.^[37] 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.^[37]

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.^[38]

Promiscuous OSS agent Mary Bancroft, mistress of both Allen Dulles and Henry Luce and daughter of a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal may have made an unsuccessful pass at J. Edgar for she calls him "... that Virgin Mary in pants."^[39]

[edit] Masonic connections

Hoover was a "devoted" Freemason, being raised a Master Mason on November 9, 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 Honour, in 1965.^[40] Today a J. Edgar Hoover room exists within the House of the Temple. The room contains many of Hoover's personal papers and records.

[edit] Honors

• In 1938, Hoover received an honorary doctorate from Oklahoma Baptist University during the commencement exercises at which he was the speaker.^[41][42]
• In 1950, Britain's King George VI 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 not a British citizen).
• In 1955, Hoover received the National Security Medal from President Eisenhower.^[43]
• 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.
• 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.^[23]
• 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.

[edit] Portrayals

J. Edgar Hoover has been portrayed many times in the media. Some notable portrayals include:

• In the 1971 Woody Allen movie Bananas, J. Edgar Hoover was portrayed by African-American actress, Dorothi Fox.^[44]
• 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 Pat Hingle in the TV-movie Citizen Cohn (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 actor Bob Hoskins in the Oliver Stone drama Nixon (1995).
• Hoover was portrayed by Canadian actor David Fredericks in two episodes of The X-Files, as well as on its sister show Millennium.
• Hoover was originally portrayed by Eric Jordan Young in the musical Dillinger, Public Enemey Number One.
• Hoover was portrayed by actor Billy Crudup in the Michael Mann film Public Enemies (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.
• Hoover serves as a major antagonist in James Ellroy's Underworld USA Trilogy.
• The character "J. Eager Believer" appears in the Firesign Theatre parody, J-Men Forever.
• Hoover serves as a major antagonist in John Birmingham's Axis of Time Trilogy.

[edit] Film

A biopic of Hoover's life is being made for release in 2012. The screenplay was written by Dustin Lance Black and it is being directed by Clint Eastwood.^[45] Leonardo DiCaprio is expected to play Hoover.^[46]

[edit] See also

	Government of the United States portal
	Biography portal

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

[edit] 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,^[47] Hoover received the credit and royalties.

[edit] References

49."Frontline ; The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover (#11.4) 1993

[edit] 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. 

[edit] External links

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

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: J. Edgar Hoover

• J. Edgar Hoover at Find a Grave
• StraightDope.com ' 'The Straight Dope: Was J. Edgar Hoover a crossdresser?'
• "American Gangster: J. Edgar Hoover & COINTELPRO" by Alan Kurtz (Blogcritics)
• 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. 

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