J. Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) was the aggressive director of the FBI for 48 years until his death. Hoover was a staunch opponent of Communism, and organized crime. He founded the FBI's 'public enemies' program, under which such criminals as John Dillinger, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were successfully caught. Lionized by conservatives for his use of modern scientific methods to stop crime and train local police departments, he was demonized by liberals who falsely charged he was a cross-dresser.

Career

John Edgar Hoover was born in Washington to well-education minor government officials. He graduated from public schools, and, skipping college, earned law degrees at night from George Washington University in 1916 and 1917. In 1917 he went to work for the Department of Justice (DOJ), which expressed the prevailing Progressive Era emphasis on scientific efficiency and professionalism. Hoover promoted this philosophy throughout his career, As an administrator of alien enemy matters, he dealt with detention or parole for citizens of Germans and Austria who violated the World War I Alien Enemy Act. After the war, he moved up to assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and effective head of the General Intelligence Division, where he collected publicly available information on radicals. Reading radical literature convinced him that Communists posed as much danger to the United States as they had to Russia in 1917. He never deviated from this opinion.

Politics

Hoover worked closely with all presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt and after, keeping track of political enemies of the presidents as well as threats to national security. He was especially worried about the ties of Martin Luther King to Communist leaders.