J Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover (John Edgar Hoover), 1895-1972, American administrator, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), b. Washington, D.C. Shortly after he was admitted to the bar, he entered (1917) the Dept. of Justice and served (1919-21) as special assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer . In this capacity he directed the so-called Palmer Raids against allegedly radical aliens. Director of the Bureau of Investigation (renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935) after 1924, Hoover built a more efficient crime-fighting agency, establishing a centralized fingerprint file, a crime laboratory, and a training school for police. During the 1930s, to publicize the work of his agency in fighting organized crime, he participated directly in the arrest of several major gangsters. After World War II, Hoover focused on the perceived threat of Communist subversion. In office until his death, he became increasingly controversial. His many critics considered his anticommunism obsessive, and it has been verified that he orchestrated systematic harassment of political dissenters and activists, including Martin Luther King , Jr. Hoover accumulated enormous power, in part from amassing secret files on the activities and private lives of political leaders and their associates. After his death reforms designed to prevent these abuses were undertaken. His writings include Persons in Hiding (1938), Masters of Deceit (1958), and A Study of Communism (1962).

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

Hoover, J. Edgar (1895–1972), director, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).Born in Washington, D.C., Hoover earned a law degree from George Washington University night school in 1917 and obtained employment in the Justice Department's alien enemy registration section. His administrative abilities, strategic mind, and diligence quickly won him promotion in 1918 to head the General Intelligence Division, in 1921 to assistant director of the Bureau of Investigation (formally renamed the FBI in 1935), and in 1924 to bureau director, a post he held until his death. A lifelong bachelor, he devoted himself to the FBI.

Inheriting a scandal‐ridden operation, Hoover refurbished the bureau's image and turned it into a powerful and respected agency by instituting a series of administrative reforms and then by capitalizing on public concerns, first about organized crime during the 1930s and then about spies during World War II and the Cold War. Indeed, Cold War anticommunism became the catalyst of Hoover's unquestioned power and influence on national politics. Hoover also astutely cultivated presidents, members of Congress, and the media, and promoted a public‐relations campaign that successfully identified criticism of himself or the FBI with disloyalty. With Hoover's collaboration, the entertainment industry burnished the FBI's image, as in the radio program The FBI in Peace and War. The story of Herbert Philbrick, who infiltrated the Communist party for the FBI, was recounted in a movie, I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951); Philbrick's own I Led Three Lives (1952); and a 1950s television series. The FBI's Ten Most Wanted lists, posted in post offices across the nation, further enhanced Hoover's reputation as a crime fighter.

After the 1930s, FBI investigations were not confined to law enforcement. FBI agents also collected (in some cases, as FBI officials themselves conceded, through “clearly illegal” means such as break‐ins, mail opening, telephone wiretaps, and electronic bugs), and Hoover and senior FBI officials covertly disseminated derogatory personal and political information. Such material went to Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un‐American Activities, for example, either to influence public opinion or to “harass, disrupt, and discredit” targeted individuals and organizations. The subjects of FBI investigations ranged from Communist party activists to Eleanor Roosevelt, the actor Rock Hudson, the author Ernest Hemingway, the baseball star Mickey Mantle, the poet Allen Ginsberg, and the rock star John Lennon. Furthermore, Hoover authorized a series of programs that targeted civil rights and radical organizations for the explicit purpose of discrediting and neutralizing them. Hoover particularly sought to discredit Martin Luther King Jr., by circulating information about King's private life obtained through clandestine surveillance devices.

The scope and nature of these abuses first became known in the mid‐1970s when Hoover's wall of secrecy immunizing FBI activities was first breached. The resultant disclosures tarnished Hoover's posthumous reputation and led to tighter administrative rules governing FBI operations.

Bibliography

Athan Theoharis and and John Stuart Cox , The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition, 1988.
Curt Gentry , J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, 1991.

Athan G. Theoharis