J.+Edgar+Hoover


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= = = = =The life and times of J. Edgar Hoover=

When most people think of McCarthyism, the name that jumps to mind is obviously Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy, however, is more well known solely because of his flamboyant manner of accusing people of communist ties. He was known for making outrageous and controversial claims, but some of them were chillingly accurate. Seldom did people consider exactly where he had aqcuired his information. McCarthy may have led the charge against American Communists, but someone else was providing his ammunition. That person was the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.

J. Edgar Hoover was born on New Year's Day, 1895, in Washington, DC. Little is known about his early life, as he later did a Stalin-like purging of the records of his childhood and early career. In fact, almost nothing is known except that his parent's names were Anna Marie Scheitlin and Dickerson Naylor Hoover, Sr. He graduated in 1917 from George Washington University with a law degree. He worked at the Library of Congress. During World War I, Hoover worked with the Justice Department. He was soon promoted to head of the Enemy Aliens Registration Section. He then proceeded to move up the ranks until he was appointed by president Calvin Coolidge director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1924. He was in charge of 650 employees. After the highly publicized capture and trial of several famous outlaws, including the notorious Machine Gun Kelly, Hoover's powers were greatly increased.

Hoover had a sort of obsession with political subversives. Early on, he spied on tes of thousands of them, with little success. He was, however, highly successful with hunting down foreign espionage agents during World War II. President Truman praised him after he caught and prosecuted two groups of German sabateurs in Florida. One of his most famous early projects was the Venona Project, a joint British-American operation to hunt down Soviet Agents in the UK and the US. He was critisized after it was revealed that he kept the important results secret from President Truman, his Attorney General, and two Secretary of States. After being reigned in by the Supreme Court, he started another secret operation, COINTELPRO. This was widely refered to as the 'Dirty Tricks Campaign'. This project used many methods on the edge of the law, such as wiretaps, planting forged documents, and arranged murders. COINTELPRO was used against the American Communist Party, The Klu Klux Klan, the Black Panther Party, and Martin Luther King jr. He directed FBI resources against many civil rights leaders, and was widely critisized for it. He was attacked by many muckraking reporters over failing to investigate Mafia dealings and hate crimes, most famously the death of Emmitt Till. Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson considered firing Hoover, but each decided that the political consequences would be too big. Nixon later revealed that he had met with Hoover twice with the intent to fire him, but changed his mind when he met him.

Despite his crumbling support from the Oval Office, he was still very popular on Capitol Hill. He managed to get several bills passed that would expand his powers. The public, however, began to doubt him. Many newspaper articles began appearing ridiculing his actions and exposing embarrassing details about his personal life (his sexual orientation was questionable, and he is widely believed to have been a transvestite). He continually lost support until 1972, when he died. He died in office. After his death, it was revealed that he had kept secret, personal files on hundreds of politicians and political activists. He had collected in his personal vaults enough information to discredit the entire federal government.

Joseph McCarthy may have been most famous for investigationg communism, but it was J. Edgar Hoover who really did the dirty work. He was the most powerful man in Washington at the time, and he had the most free will over the constitution. If he had been an honest person, he could have done amazing things. He was not an honest person, needless to say. He established many of the questionable practices employed by the government today.

Bibliography: [|"Red Scare". Wikipedia. 2007. Wikipedia. April 29, 2007.] [|"Hoover, J. Edgar". Infoplease. 2007. April 29, 2007.]