Ron Peters's Reviews > G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century

One chapter title sums up Hoover by calling him the Patron Saint of the Far Right. I’ve never liked J. Edgar so I questioned why I should read 800+ pages to confirm how much I dislike the man. The book is interesting, though, from several angles.

First it shows which organizations and social circles Hoover affiliated himself with, providing a sociology of the evolution of far-right political views during the half century that Hoover was active, from the 1920s to the 1970s. And a nice, tight circle of friends they were and are.

Second it demonstrates what a powerful influence Hoover was able to exert on many important occasions on the outcome of political decisions (and even some election outcomes) in this time.

Third, whatever you think of him, it also shows how masterful he was at playing power politics and in constructing a powerful and nearly unassailable bureaucracy in the FBI. Being such a staunch anti-communist, the funny thing is what a formidable Politburo member he would have made.

Gage works hard to paint a balanced portrait of Hoover. He was and is venerated in some circles, but it is impossible for me to like him. He was paranoid, power hungry, pettily vindictive, a two-faced liar, repulsively self-righteous, and a ruthless authoritarian. When he appeared to do the right thing, such as hire token black FBI agents, it was only strategically and, if possible, temporarily, because he was forced to by overwhelming public and political pressure.

The book gives good coverage of Hoover’s career, from his early days in the Kappa Alpha fraternity at George Washington University, which was for many decades home to staunch racists, KKK supporters, and advocates of Southern state rights and segregation.

In 1919 he joined the Radical Division of the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, dedicating himself to fighting the early Great Red Scare, rooting out and deporting anarchists such as Emma Goldman, and harassing left-leaning labor organizers.

He was deeply involved with enforcing Prohibition and fighting gangsters – he kept John Dillinger’s death mask on display outside his office.

Then he helped create the FBI, hiring and promoting his lifelong companion and probable lover, Jon Tolson, who rose rapidly through the ranks to become Assistant to the Director. When he died, Hoover bequeathed his estate to Tolson, who received the US flag that draped Hoover’s casket, moved into Hoover’s house, and was eventually buried a few yards from Hoover in the Congressional Cemetery.

In the late 1930s he became lightly involved in fighting American Nazis, though he never showed the same zeal against the far-right that he did against the far-left (“We don’t want to turn this into a witch hunt”).

Likewise, he was sporadically involved in anti-vice work and the “Lavender Scare” of the early 1950s, but just enough to satisfy appearances that he wasn’t ‘soft’ on gays, as he lived in his racially segregated neighborhood in his home adorned with many statues of naked men and boys. He vigorously tracked down and obliterated rumors about his own sexuality.

He was deeply involved with anti-spy work and counterespionage during World War II and tried, but failed, to become the organization responsible for global espionage, being political outmanoeuvered for once by “Wild Bill” Donovan of the OSS, then the CIA.

He was also very active in intelligence gathering for the House Un-American Activities Committee, but he had a rocky relationship with Senator Joseph McCarthy. Hoover liked McCarthy’s way of thinking, but resented competitors who might intrude on FBI territory.

He became somewhat involved in the fight against the Mafia, mainly at Robert Kennedy’s insistence. Like the Kennedys, who Hoover despised, he stayed as far away from actively protecting the rights of Civil Rights workers as he could for as long as he could. He blamed the Freedom Fighters for being provocateurs who instigated their own problems.

In his later years he became historically infamous for two main projects: his active witch hunt against Martin Luther King, Jr., and COINTELPRO, the Counterintelligence Program against US citizens. This “program of disruption” involved infiltration, burglaries, illegal wiretaps, the planting of forged documents, and the spreading of false rumors that rival and surpass the later productions of Hoover’s close pal, Tricky Dick Nixon. The chapters on the Kennedy assassination and the Warren Commission are good and interesting.

In the end he became, in the words of the New York Times, “The Man Who Stayed Too Long,” living to become a dinosaur that even his agents wanted to get rid of.