American Bar Foundation

Review: Secrets of the Boss's Power: Two Views of J. Edgar Hoover Author(s): Michal R. Belknap Source: Law & Social Inquiry, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 823-838 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Bar Foundation Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/828541 . Accessed: 05/02/2011 20:21
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Secrets of the Boss's Power:

Two

Views

of

J.

Edgar

Hoover
Michal R. Belknap

ATHAN G. THEOHARIS ANDJOHNSTUARTCox, The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and

the Great AmericanInquisition. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988. Pp. xiv+489. $27.95.
RICHARD GID POWERS, Secrecyand Power: The Life of J. EdgarHoover. New

York: Free Press, 1987. Pp. x+624.

$27.95.

On May 4, 1972, the body of J. Edgar Hoover lay in state in the Rotunda of the Capitol on the catafalque originally built to hold Lincoln's casket. Only 22 Americans before him had been so honored, and Hoover was the first civil servant to lie in a spot normally reserved for presidents and generals. Representative Don Clauson of California eulogized the man who had headed the Federal Bureau of Investigation for nearly half a century in reverential terms. "As a boy he as my hero and as a man he remained my hero," Clauson said. "His name will linger forever in the hearts and minds of all Americans privileged to live in his time and under his protective shield of service" (quoted in Powers at 481). To Clauson, as to much of Middle America, J. Edgar Hoover was a demigod. Humorist Art Buchwald captured both the source and content of the public's feelings about him when he satirically suggested that Hoover was really "a mythical person first thought up by ReadersDigest."' Others viewed the man known to most Americans as "the Director," and to those who worked for him at the Bureau simply as "the Boss," far more negatively. The month before Hoover died, Clauson's colleague,
Michal R. Belknap is professor of law at California Western School of Law and visiting professor of history at the University of California, San Diego. B.A. 1965, University of California, Los Angeles; M.A. 1967, Ph.D. 1973, University of Wisconsin; J.D. 1981, University of Texas. 1. Quoted in Ovid Demaris, The Director: An Oral Biographyof J. Edgar Hoover viii (New York: Harpers Magazine Press, 1975) ("Demaris, The Director").

1989Michal R. Belknap

823

824 LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY Representative Hale Boggs of Louisiana, called for his removal from office and compared the tactics of his FBI to those of "the Soviet Union and Hitler's Gestapo" (quoted in Powers at 466). Tom Clark, one of a series of attorneys general who tried without much success to control the Director, complained: "The end justified the means for him."2 The unflattering recollection of William C. Sullivan, one of Hoover's top aides until the Boss forced him out of the FBI, was: "He was shrewd, crafty, and astute, but the problem was his ego."3 A man who could provoke such starkly contrasting reactions from contemporaries was not likely to be portrayed the same way by all biographers. Predictably, J. Edgar Hoover has not been. The portrait Richard Gid Powers paints of him in Secrecyand Power differs substantially from the one drawn by Athan G. Theoharis and John Stuart Cox in The Boss. Powers's approach is considerably more illuminating than that of Cox and Theoharis, and his explanation of Hoover's life and work somewhat more persuasive. Neither Secrecyand Power nor The Boss is definitive, however. Perhaps no biography of Hoover ever will be. For few subjects present the biographer with a greater challenge. As Ovid Demaris has pointed out, while "untold numbers of words have been written about Hoover, more perhaps than about anybody else in this century . . . the public record is ... replete with distortions, embellishments and outright lies."4 "Hoover," as Theoharis and Cox explain, "used the ample resources of his office to manufacture a public persona quite imposing enough to discourage inquiries into the labyrinthine evasions of his official conduct and the dreary details of his personal life" (at 16). Those bent on penetrating the self-created myth in search of the real J. Edgar Hoover face formidable obstacles. The Director was a recluse and a loner, who "kept no journal, maintained no personal correspondence to speak of, and had only one close . . . friend" (at 16). Although voluminous records document his career in the agency to which he devoted his entire adult life, as Powers notes in a nice bit of understatement, "Research in FBI files is inherently difficult."5 All of this makes "assessing the life of this enormously influential man problematical indeed" (Theoharis & Cox at 15). Demaris was prophetic when he predicted in 1975 that it would "be many years before anyone can produce anything approaching a definitive
2. Quoted in id. at 130. 3. Quoted in id. at 225. 4. Id. at vii. 5. Powers at ix. As he also points out, however, FBI employees, such as James K. Hall of the Records Management Division of the Freedom of Information Act-Privacy Act Section, and Susan Falb, the Bureau's in-house historian, are extremely helpful to scholars. The present-day FBI does not appear to be deliberately raising obstacles to research on the Hoover era. Powers at ix.

Two Views of J. Edgar Hoover

825

biography."6 Not until 15 years after Hoover died did the first serious scholarly account of his life appear. During the 1970s and early 1980s, critics documented in great detail the sins committed by the FBI during his tenure.7 Historians also analyzed some facets and segments of the Director's career.8 But the only biographies that appeared were inadequately researched accounts, obviously intended for a popular audience. Several of these books, published soon after Hoover's death, seem to have been rushed into print in an effort to capitalize on interest in the Director, inspired by his passing and by revelations during the last years of his life of FBI abuses, such as illegal wiretapping and spying on college students.9 Two of these instant biographies, Robert Nash's Citizen Hoover: A Critical Study of the Lifeand Times of J. EdgarHoover,' and Hank Messick's JohnEdgarHoover,"I
6. Demaris, The Director at vii. 7. See, e.g., Pat Watters & Stephen Gillers, eds., Investigatingthe FBI (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1973); David J. Garrow, The FBI and Martin LutherKing, Jr.: From "Solo" to Memphis (New York: Penguin Books, 1983); Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveil-

lance: The Aimsand Methods Political System (New York: Alfred A. of America's Intelligence

Knopf, 1980) ("Donner, The Age of Surveillance");Sanford J. Ungar, FBI (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1976); Athan G. Theoharis, Spying on Americans: Political Surveillance from Hoover to the Huston Plan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978); id., "The FBI's Stretching of Presidential Directives, 1936-1953," 91 Pol. Sci. Q. 649 (1976-77); id., "The Truman Administration and the Decline of Civil Liberties: The FBI's Success in Securing Authorization for a Preventive Detention Program," 64 J. Am. Hist. 1010 (1978); id., "The Presidency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation: The Conflict of Intelligence and Legality," 2 Crim. Just. Hist. 131 (1980); id., "FBI Surveillance During the Cold War Years: A Constitutional Crisis," 3 Pub. Hist. 4 (1981); Kenneth O'Reilly, "The FBI and the Origins of McCarthyism," 45 Historian 372 (1983); David Williams, "The Bureau of Investigation and Its Critics, 1919-1921: The Origins of Federal Political Surveillance," 68 J. Am. Hist. 560 (1971); Michal R. Belknap, "Uncooperative Federalism: The Failure of the Bureau of Investigation's Intergovernmental Attack on Radicalism," 12 Publius 25 (1982); and the essays by Percival R. Bailey, Sigmund Diamond, Kenneth Waltzer, Athan G. Theoharis, and Kenneth O' Reilly in Athan G. Theoharis, ed., Beyond the Hiss Case: The FBI, Congressand the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982). For a review of all of the literature on the FBI that had appeared down to the time of its publication, see Michal R. Belknap, "Above the Law and Beyond Its Reach: O'Reilly and Theoharis on FBI Intelligence Operations," 1985 A.B.F. ResearchJ. 201 ("Belknap, Above the Law").

8. See, e.g., KennethO' Reilly,Hoover and the Un-Americans: The FBI,HUAC, and the
Red Menace (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983) ("O'Reilly, Hoover and the UnAmericans");id., "A New Deal for the FBI: The Roosevelt Administration, Crime Control and National Security," 69 J. Am. Hist. 638 (1982); John F. Bratzen & Leslie Rout, Jr., "Pearl Harbor Microdots and J. Edgar Hoover," 87 Am. Hist. Rev. 1346 (1982); Michal R. Belknap, "The Mechanics of Repression: J. Edgar Hoover, the Bureau of Investigation and the Radicals, 1917-1925," 7 Crime & Soc. Just. 49 (1977). 9. Many of these abuses were revealed by the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, which stole a thousand documents from a resident agency in Media, Pennsylvania, on March 8, 1971, and released them to the press. Others came from former agent Robert Wall. Also helping to focus attention on FBI abuses was a conference held at Princeton University on Oct. 29-30, 1971, in which scholars, writers, civil libertarians, and former Justice Department officials critical of the Bureau participated. See, O'Reilly, Hooverand the Un-Americans217-22, 225 (cited in note 8); Belknap, Above the Law at 202-3 (cited in note 7). 10. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1972.

826 LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY offer characterizations of the recently deceased builder of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that are quite unflattering. Messick, for example, blames Hoover for the growth of organized crime in the United States,'2 and claims: "Unlike God, John Edgar Hoover admits to no mistake."'3 Ralph de Toledano's J. EdgarHoover: The Man and His Times 4 goes to the opposite extreme. It begins with an attack on three books critical of the FBI under Hoover's leadership,'5 then proceeds to praise the Director as "a strong and unique man-and one whose entire life was devoted to making the Bureau great and defending it from its enemies."'6 Journalist de Toledano concludes, "Hoover loved America, he believed in America and he fought for America. For most Americans that was enough."17 While his opinion of the Director differs strikingly from those of Nash and Messick, their books all have one thing in common: none is an adequate biography of J. Edgar Hoover. Nor is Ovid Demaris's The Director: An Oral Biography of J. EdgarHoover.'8 This is the most useful book about its subject published during the 1970s, but the title is deceptive. It is not really a chronicle of Hoover's life. Demaris started out to do a full-length biography "but after a few months of unbelievable agony in the archives, . . . settled for something less ambitious."19 What he wound up doing was simply interviewing many people who had known the Director and then arranging their responses to his questions in such a way as to illuminate a number of important aspects of Hoover's public and private lives. He supplemented oral history only with material drawn from the published records of the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment investigation of Richard Nixon. By his own admission, Demaris made "no effort . . . to reconcile reminiscences and opinion with the written record."20 The Director is an extremely useful sourcebook-but it is not a biography of J. Edgar Hoover. Scholars who wanted a decent one of those had to wait until 1987. In that year, Richard Gid Powers, whose G-Men: Hoover's FBI in American PopularCulture21had already established him as an authority on both the Bureau and its late leader, published Secrecyand Power. Just one year later, The Boss appeared. One of its authors, John Stuart Cox, is a freelance writer with qualifications reminiscent of those possessed by the men re11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. New York: David McKay Co., 1972. Id. at iii, 1, 7, 254-55, and passim. Id. at 1. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1973. Id. at 5-14. Id. at 15-16. Id. at 377. Cited in note 1. Id. at vii. Id. at ix. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983.

Two Views of J. EdgarHoover 827 sponsible for the early and quite forgettable Hoover biographies. But the other, historian Athan G. Theoharis, enjoys a reputation as perhaps the
leading academic critic of the FBI.22

Theoharis and Cox are more hostile toward their subject than is Powers. They acknowledge "the success of [Hoover's] unparalleled lengthy career" and endorse the assessment of one of his assistant directors, who once observed that where the FBIwas concerned, the Boss "'was the engine that pulled the train' " (at 17). They see as more significant, however, the fact that the Director managed, without being detected, to have FBI agents monitor radical activities, using illegal investigative techniques. This "left a heritage of fear and distrust." As they see it, Hoover's legacy was a "chilled atmosphere that . . . served to silence dissent, to inhibit democratic discussion, and move American politics toward an unresponsive authoritarian right." (Theoharis and Cox at 15). In their opinion, "Hoover had more to do with undermining American constitutional guarantees than any political leader before or since" (at 17). Powers agrees that the Director's "covert attacks on personal and public enemies violated principles of constitutional limitations on government power." He also acknowledges that Hoover defended values supportive of racial and other kinds of injustice. Yet, at the same time, Powers credits him with having created "one of the great institutions in American government," the modern FBI (Powers at 492). He also defends Hoover against charges leveled at him by William C. Sullivan, a disaffected former subordinate, who was once one of the Director's top aides and his heir apparent.23 Powers is not really an apologist for his subject, though. Unlike Theoharis and Cox, he views "Hoover's historic legacy [as] profoundly ambiguous" (at 492). He also characterizes the Director's power more modestly than do the authors of The Boss. Theoharis and Cox often create the impression that Hoover dominated the American political scene for decades, directing the course of events through behind-the-scenes machinations. They picture him as an evil puppeteer, controlling and manipulating the more visible actors in the American political drama. According to these authors, for example, the Director was "materially responsible for [Senator Joseph R.] McCarthy's rise to prominence" and "as responsible for McCarthy's demise" (at 299). Likewise, they assert, the infamous House Committee on Un-American Activities, the terror of radicals and liberals during the late
22. Theoharis served as a consultant to the Senate's Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (better known as the Church Committee). In that capacity, he helped to assemble the massive documentary record of FBI abuses which that committee published. For a list of his own more important publications criticizing the Bureau, see note 7 supra. 23. At 375-83, 467-72. Perceiving that Sullivan was trying to undermine his authority, Hoover forced him into early retirement.

828 LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY 1940s and the 1950s "owed its influence less to its own efforts than to covert assistance rendered by Hoover's FBI" (at 215). Theoharis and Cox also credit the Director with bringing about the Justice Department's "prosecution of the leadership of the Communist Party in 1948-1949" (at
248).24

Powers, on the other hand, portrays Hoover as an astute bureaucrat who generally acted in response to what he perceived to be the desires of presidents and the public. There was great personal rapport between the Director and both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson (a former neighbor), Powers reports, and Hoover loyally and enthusiastically served both chief executives. He also got along well with Dwight D. Eisenhower, who often solicited his opinions and advice; when "Hoover had to make a choice between McCarthy and Eisenhower [he] threw his support to the president" (at 312-16, 321-22). On the other hand, he was offended by John F. Kennedy's youth and womanizing, and he hated Kennedy's brother Robert, to whom he was forced to report because the President made "Bobby" the attorney general. Yet, when Hoover became convinced that Robert Kennedy had a political mandate for an attack on organized crime, he overcame his past reluctance to deal with that problem and joined in the assault (at 365-66). According to Powers, the Director compiled a poor record on civil rights enforcement during the Kennedy administration because he perceived that John F. Kennedy lacked the attack on the South's racial caste political strength to support an all-out FBI system. "[O]nly a commitment of prestige by a politically powerful President would make Hoover endanger his conservative and Southern constituency" by taking action in this field (at 369). Johnson provided that, and when he did, Hoover went after the Ku Klux Klan. Although the Director openly opposed Harry S. Truman, he did so only after the 1946 congressional elections convinced him (along with most of the rest of the country) that the Republicans were going to capture the presidency in 1948. "Political expediency dictated that he move over to the winning side" (at 287). Likewise, when Hoover resisted some of the more sensitive and dangerous operations urged on him by the Nixon administration, it was, according to Powers, because "he was not willing to move unless he could count on the
24. Their explanation of the Justice Department's decision to seek the indictments in this case (which was known as Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 [1951], when it reached the Supreme Court), differs significantly from that presented by this reviewer, who attributed it in a 1977 book to the sensitivity of the Democratic Truman administration to Republican charges that it was soft on Communism. Michal R. Belknap, Cold War Political Justice: The Smith Act, the Communist Party and American Civil Liberties44-53 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977). That account, however, was written without access to FBI files. Cox and Theoharis rely instead on Peter L. Steinberg, The Great Red Menace: The United States Prosecutionof American Communists 1947-1952, at 95-111 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984), which does utilize such material (Theoharis & Cox at 460 n.44). While Steinberg provides support for their version of how and why the prosecutions were initiated, their version represents a fairly expansive interpretation of his evidence.

Two Views of J. EdgarHoover 829 massive, overwhelming support of the American people" (at 463). Ironically, Powers's title, Secrecyand Power, suits Theoharis and Cox's portrayal of the Director far better than it does his own. While viewing Hoover as less omnipotent than they do, Powers agrees with them to some extent about how the Boss achieved his extraordinary success. Both biographies make it clear that the Director's achievements were due at least in part to his talent as an administrator. Powers characterizes Hoover as "a tirelessly innovative bureaucrat committed to solving organizational problems of efficiency and control," who in his early years at the Bureau "identified himself as one of the new breed of progressive managers who were applying the methods of science to the old problems of government" (at 148, 145). Theoharis and Cox take a somewhat more critical view of Hoover's administrative style, faulting him for trying to control everything the FBI did from his office in Washington and compelling agents to comply with his own puritanical standards of personal conduct. As they see it, "Hoover's stringent rules . . . tended to instill fear and discourage initiative" (at 104).25 Yet, they agree with Powers that as early as the Harding administration the Director managed to project himself as the indispensable scientific administrator (at 73). Both Secrecyand Power and The Boss support former Attorney General Ramsey Clark's contention that Hoover's power was due in considerable part to the fact that "he was very efficient."26 Both books also emphasize the Director's skill at press agentry and public relations. In the words of Theoharis and Cox, "Hoover had an innate feel for publicity amounting to genius" (at 100). That talent plus publication during the 1930s of reporter Courtney Ripley Cooper's series of articles on the FBI in American Magazine enabled an administrator with no field experience in police work to manufacture a public persona as a tough "G-Man," who both led and symbolized a national war on crime. Hoover developed the Bureau's Crime Records Division into a well-oiled propaganda machine that sought to influence public opinion on everything from criminals to communism by, among other things, ghost writing innumerable speeches, articles, and even books for the Director.27 Powers does contend that the Director was drawn into the limelight by Roosevelt's first attorney general, Homer Cumings, and that although his later efforts at publicizing the FBI were highly successful, his early ones were largely
25. Powers expresses similar views, at least with respect to the situation at the end of Hoover's career. By then, he says, "Hoover's iron discipline had turned the Bureau into an echo chamber.... The assistants on whom he depended for information about the world fed him reports designed to anticipate and reinforce his increasingly rigid fixations and obsessions." Powers at 380. 26. Quoted in Demaris, The Director 133 (cited in note 1). 27. For a particularly good discussion of the role of the Crime Records Division as a propaganda and publicity agency, see O'Reilly, Hoover and the Un-Americans76-82 (cited in note 8).

830 LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY unsuccessful. He also represents Hoover's G-man image as more the creation of Hollywood than of Hoover himself (at 184-205). Yet, like The Boss, Powers's book leaves no doubt that J. Edgar Hoover owed much of his prestige and power to effective public relations. Both biographies also credit the Director with considerable shrewdness. Powers, for example, depicts Hoover skillfully defending the Bureau from criticism for what he had quickly recognized was an utterly inadequate pre-assassination investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald. By fixing all blame for the death of President Kennedy on Oswald alone, he saved the FBI from having to explain its failure to check out Oswald's connections and associations (at 385-89). Theoharis and Cox present a similar picture of a shrewd bureaucrat, detailing, for example, how the Director cleverly foiled Richard Nixon's efforts to force him out of office in late 1971 by declining to retire quietly on his 70th birthday and leaving the president with no way to get rid of him other than openly to demand his resignation, a move for which Nixon would have paid a high political price (at 423-29). Despite some areas of agreement, these two biographies offer fundamentally different explanations of how the Boss came to exercise such tremendous influence and of why he used his power the way he did. Based on broader research and better argued than The Boss, Secrecyand Power makes a more convincing case for its interpretation. In contrast to Powers, Theoharis and Cox contend that first among the "sources of Hoover's power were [the FBI'S] files" (at 308). These contained information that could embarrass countless prominent and powerful people. Possession of them enabled Hoover to manipulate and control members of Congress and even presidents. Although Demaris considers ludicrous the notion that Hoover blackmailed chief executives,28 Theoharis and Cox have no doubt he did so. They report, for example, that possession of records showing Richard Nixon had initiated wiretaps on employees of the National Security Council and other persons gave Hoover "leverage vis-a-vis the White House" (at 415). In discussing how the Director got the Truman administration to defend the FBI'S conduct in the Amerasia case,29 they even use the word "blackmail" (at 243).
28. Demaris, The Director 330 (cited in note 1). 29. In 1945 hundreds of classified Navy, State Department, and Office of Strategic Services (OSS) documents were discovered in the New York offices of Amerasia, a periodical specializing in Far Eastern affairs. Six suspects, including the editor of Amerasia, Philip Jaffe, and Foreign Service Officer John Stewart Service, were arrested on espionage charges. The government could not develop sufficient evidence to obtain indictments for that offense, but a federal grand jury did charge Jaffee and two other men with unauthorized possession of government documents. The Justice Department dropped the case against one of these individuals, and entered into plea bargains under which the other two paid modest fines after one suspect learned that the FBI had broken into his apartment. The Bureau had also illegally broken into the apartment of another suspect, tapped the phones of two more, and broken into, bugged, and tapped the offices of Amerasia itself. Theoharis and Cox at 239-42.

Two Views of J. Edgar Hoover

831

In explaining why Hoover became so powerful, these authors assign almost as much importance to "his ability to avert critical scrutiny and independent knowledge of his administration of the FBI" as they do to his files (at 308). According to Theoharis and Cox, the Director got his job by successfully deceiving Attorney General Harlan Stone about the extent of his responsibility for the dubious actions in which the Bureau of Investigation had engaged while he was its second in command (at 77-84). They report that Hoover repeatedly violated orders of his superiors, getting away with it because of his skill at hiding from them what he was doing. Rather than complying with Stone's directive to stop collecting political intelligence, the Director devised ingenious methods to circumvent it (at 93). Similarly, when instructed by a later attorney general, Francis Biddle, to cease developing a Custodial Detention Index of allegedly disloyal persons pre-selected to be rounded up in the event of an emergency, he continued what he was doing, but "technically complied," by "changing the name of the program." (Theoharis and Cox at 173.) In addition, Hoover deceived numerous Justice Department superiors and even presidents about the nature and extent of the authorization he had previously received to do such things as investigate subversive activities and engage in electronic surveillance. While mentioning other factors (such as his cozy relations with reporters and the favors he did for vips) (at 308), Theoharis and Cox make it clear that in their opinion, the Director owed his power primarily to his success in deceiving others about what he was doing and the authority he had for doing it, and to his ability to intimidate with secret reports anyone who might challenge his authority. Believing that the Boss owed his power to secrecy, deception, and the dirt in his files, Theoharis and Cox generally confine themselves to combing FBI documents for evidence of blackmail, trickery, and illegal conduct. As far as they are concerned, the files explain almost everything. The secret ones Hoover kept in his office, for example, are the reason he was able to survive the Kennedy administration (at 328). Sometimes Theoharis and Cox make the Boss seem less like a politician and public figure than a devious file clerk. For Hoover, they write, the Judith Coplon case (an espionage prosecution of a Justice Department employee, which foundered when it was revealed in court that the FBI had tapped the defendant's telephone, destroyed records of this illegal electronic surveillance, and falsely denied knowing anything about it) was a learning experience; it taught the Director the need to institute "new procedures to govern the preparation and filing of FBI reports" (at 25). files than a biogSometimes, The Boss becomes more a book about FBI raphy of J. Edgar Hoover. The authors interrupt a chapter on the Director's conflicts with the Kennedy administration for a five-page digression

832 LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY

on the secret files he kept in his office. That the destructionof Hoover's "PersonalFile" "limitsour understandingof how he operated,the scope and nature of the information he personallycollected, and the uses he made of the FBI'S vast resources"(at 330) is no doubt true, but this observation does not add much to the reader'sunderstanding of Hoover'srelawith the Because and Cox Theoharis believe that the tionship Kennedys. sourceof the Director'spowerwas the dirt on other politicianssecretedin his files, they feel compelledto explain in the text that "[w]hatprecisely Hoover had on [then Vice PresidentLyndonJohnson]is still unknown,as the FBI withheld some of these reports and heavily censored those that were released"(at 315). Powersconfines this sort of commentary on sourcesto a bibliographical essay. The reason is that he has very differentideas about the reasons for Hoover's influence. "The common assumptionthat secrecywas the sole basis of Hoover's power cannot survive an objectiveappraisalof his career," Powers contends. "[T]he critical achievementsof Hoover's career, those that made him indispensable,were not secret at all . . . the largerpart of Hoover's activitieswere conducted in full view of the entire nation" (at 488). Accordingto Powers,the publicnot only knew what the Directorwas up to but applaudedhis activities. "Hoover's crusade against criminals and Communists during the thirties and forties made him a national hero," he writes (at 2). The Director "gainedpower because he instinctively knew that in times of panic the public'scall for action must be answered, and he was able to discover creative and convincing ways to demonstratethat the government had the situation in hand" (at 491). "Hoover'simposingpresencegave much of the countrya sense of stability and safetyas he gatheredto himself the strandsof permanencethat connected Americansto their past: religion, patriotism,a belief in progress, and a rational moral order. To attack him was," Secrecy and Powerconvalue cludes, "to attackAmericaitself" (at 2). That fact, not the blackmail of secret files, was what enabled the Directorto get what he wanted from presidentsand Congress. Accordingto Powers,"Hoover'sprestigewithin the governmentwas nourishedby his standingwith the public, popularity so greatthat an attackon him was treatedas an attackon valuesvenerated by much of the nation" (at 489). A determinationto defend those valueswas what animatedthe DirecPowers tor, argues. On this issue as well, he takes a position strikingly differentfrom that of Theoharisand Cox. Both books agreethat Hoover was totally committedto the FBI and that the purpose of many of his actions was simplyto preserveand protectthe Bureau. TheBossinsists,however, that the Director was a right-wing ideologue. According to Theoharis and Cox, it was "his philosophical and emotional antipathy

Two Views of J. Edgar Hoover

833

towardradicaldissent [that]providedthe main impetusto FBI surveillance practices"(at 8). Although WilliamSullivaninsists Hoover did not really believe the Communist Party was a threat,30they claim he considered 'Communism'the greatestevil in the history of the world" (at 61). The reasonsfor his antipathytowardit were psychological, they contend. Indeed,as far as Theoharisand Cox are concerned,the explanation for most of the Director's attitudes and actions is a twisted psyche. the greatestsingleassistancewe receivedin understanding "[U]ndoubtedly Hoover'scharacter was given by MichaelSheard,professorof psychiatry at Yale UniversityMedical School," they report (at x). Drawingon the insights Dr. Sheard furnishedthem, Theoharisand Cox arguethat because the Directorwasthe "son of an ineffectualfatherwho was institutionalized for depressionand then forcedout of a minor governmentclerkshipwithout a pension and of a domineeringmotherwho seethedwith ambitionfor her son, he exhibited an obsession with power throughout his life." Because he was "[d]eeply, probably totally repressed-he never seriously courted any woman so far as is known-he identifiedpolitical radicalism with filth and licentiousness,neither of which ever failedto arousein him almost hystericalloathing" (at 17). "Everythinghe did," say Theoharis and Cox, "he did in pursuitof [his mother's]approbation"(at 40). They characterize Hoover as a "defendedperson,"who managedhis suppressed strivingsby bonding "to his mother, and to a set of largelynegativebelief systems, systemsbased not on clear philosophicalor theoreticalfoundations but on hostility to supposed alien traditions,defined as 'un-Ameriand 'communistic'"(at 47). can,' 'subversive,' Because Theoharis and Cox emphasize the psychologicalroots of Hoover'sactions, they devote considerablymore attention to his personal relationshipsthan does Powers. Both books probe the Director's close friendshipwith his longtime second in command, fellow bachelor Clyde Tolson, and come to similarconclusions: althoughit is possiblethat there was a homosexualrelationshipbetweenthem, there is no proof that Hoover and Tolson were lovers (Powers at 170-73; Theoharis and Cox at 108-9). But Theoharisand Cox have a good deal more to say about Hoover's relations with and feelings toward his parents (particularlyhis mother) than does Powers. While Theoharis and Cox rely on psychologyto explain the Director's behavior, Powers sees the Boss's actions as culturallymotivated. Hoover grewup on SewardSquarein the Capitol Hill section of Washington, D.C. There, accordingto Powers,he absorbeda sense that he was
30. When Ovid Demaris asked him if Hoover was sincere about the threat posed by the Communist Party, Sullivan replied: "No, of course he wasn't sincere. He knew the Party didn't amount to a damn. But he used the Party as an instrument to get appropriations from Congress." The Director at 167 (cited in note 1).

834 LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY part of an elite because he was middle class, white, and Protestant. In the neighborhood where he was raised, the Director acquired "a set of personal values and convictions rooted in the outlook of a tightly knit, homogenous community convinced of its own superiority and 'civilizing mission' " (at 32-33). Powers believes, "[T]he values of the old Seward Square itself, those of Southern, white, Christian small town, turn-of-the century Washington [stayed] with him the rest of his life" (at 6). They inspired Hoover to attack radicalism, which he viewed as threatening everything Seward Square represented (at 89-90). They made him fearful of foreigners and their un-American ideas, which he viewed as comparable to an infectious disease (at 34). His Seward Square upbringing also explains why the civil rights movement aroused anxiety in Hoover: he saw it as a challenge to established authority (at 323). That alarmed him because he was passionately committed to preserving things as they were or, rather, as he remembered them. "He was certain that the personal ambitions, patriotism, and Christian beliefs venerated by Seward Square were the permanent core of Americanism. He had no doubt," Powers writes, "that any action in accord with his instincts would be in the best interests of the Bureau and the nation" (at 489-90). Although Hoover's deeds harmed the country and its Constitution, most Americans shared the Director's anxieties, and hence applauded the measures he took in defense of all that Seward Square represented. "As twentieth-century standards of mass society swept over traditional America, subverting old values, disrupting old customs, and dislodging old leaders, Americans who were frightened by the loss of their community saw in Hoover a man who understood their concerns and shared their anger, a powerful defender who would guard their America of memory against a world of alien forces, strange people and dangerous ideas" (at 3-4). His motivation was the same as theirs and his power derived from his success in articulating and acting upon their desires. That, of course, is not at all what Theoharis and Cox believe. They disagree with Powers about the sources and extent of Hoover's power as well as about his reasons for using it as he did. Consequently, although biographies of the same man, The Boss and Secrecyand Power are very different books. Because Theoharis and Cox believe Hoover controlled everything, their focus is much narrower than that of Powers. They concern themselves almost exclusively with what the Director himself did, seldom delving into developments outside FBI headquarters. Thus, The Boss barely mentions the civil rights movement, and what purports to be a chapter on World War II deals almost exclusively with an increase in the FBI'S surveillance activities, the initiation of its American Legion contact program, Hoover's efforts to counter a "smear" campaign against his beloved Bu-

Two Views of J. EdgarHoover 835 reau, and his squabbling with other intelligence agencies over bureaucratic turf. Secrecyand Power, on the other hand, devotes much of its chapter on World War 11to topics such as the evacuation of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast (an operation in which the Director declined to become did to protect the country from both espionage involved) and what the FBI and the sort of home-front hysteria that had undermined civil liberties during World War I. The reason for the difference in coverage is that, unlike Theoharis and Cox, Powers views Hoover's stature during World War II as a product of the "country's self-protective need to believe in the power and intelligence of its wartime leaders" (at 257). Because he thinks the desires of presidents and the public generally determined what Hoover did, Powers devotes far more attention to broad political movements, such as Progressivism and the New Deal, than do Theoharis and Cox. The authors of The Boss are careful to point out the need not only for "an examination of the secret activities of Hoover himself, requiring a minute analysis of FBI files, but also a simultaneous consideration of the historical context" (at 6). Unlike Powers, however, they seldom heed their own advice. Consequently, The Boss provides readers little beyond a detailed analysis of FBI files. Because Powers thinks Hoover's stature and influence derived from his ability to satisfy the wants and psychic needs of the American people, he has to explore public opinion as well as the actions of the Director himself and to establish the relationship between the two. In addition, Secrecyand Power devotes far more attention to popular culture than does The Boss. The research that underlies these two books differs as significantly as their contents. No one can match Athan Theoharis at exploiting FBI files.31 He and Cox obtained scores of these, both by using the Freedom of Information Act and by borrowing them from other scholars and the targets of investigations. Yet, while their research in Bureau documents is better than that done by Powers and their oral history work is superior, too,32 in other respects their research is disappointing. They appear not to have used several relevant secondary sources and cite no evidence at all for one sensational charge against the Director.33 Also disturbing is their fail31. Among the "invaluable guides to the files" noted by Powers in his essay on sources are "the brilliant investigations of Athan Theoharis [and his student] Kenneth O'Reilly." Powers at 592. 32. Powers interviewed many of the same people to whom the authors of The Boss talked, but he interviewed a substantial number of them only by telephone. 33. This allegation concerns the ABC television series, "The FBI," which went on the air in 1965. Without citing any source for this information, Theoharis and Cox report, "Hoover closely monitored the development of the series, vetoing the rumored consideration of Hollywood star Rock Hudson to play an agent because of reports of Hudson's homosexuality" (at 208).

836 LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY ure to exploit, as Powers has done, the wealth of relevant documents available at presidential libraries devoted to the careers of Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Baines Johnson. Theoharis and Cox have also overlooked an important University Publications of American microfilm collection used by Powers, "Surveillance of Radicals in the United States 1917-1941," three reels of which contain Hoover's General Intelligence Bulletins from 1920-1921. The failure of The Boss to cite those documents is reflective of the generally inadequate research that characterizes the chapters dealing with the early part of the Director's life and career. It is so thin that one suspects these chapters were done by freelance writer Cox without much help from historian Theoharis. Yet, Secrecyand Power bests The Boss less because of the quality of the research on which it is based than because it does a better job of explaining some striking changes in direction that highlighted Hoover's long career. One of the most notable of these was his 1964 conversion from a foot-dragging impediment to federal action against anti-civil rights violence in the South into a hard-charging nemesis of the Ku Klux Klan.34 Because of Powers's pictures of the Director as a man who generally acted in response to the wishes of presidents and the public, he has a good explanation for this transformation. Hoover had investigated the Klan in the South as early as the 1920s, but he found that investigations of white terror generally proved futile, and that when it conducted them, the FBI was often abandoned by its superiors in Washington. In 1963, though, Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency. He had both the will and the political strength to make a total commitment to civil rights enforcement (at 144, 369, 408). "[S]hielded by the President's aggressive stance, [Hoover] was willing to enter this treacherous and controversial area" (at 408). Because they portray the Director as an all-powerful figure who controlled even presidents, Theoharis and Cox have no way to explain his transformation on civil rights enforcement. Hence, they simply ignore it. Powers is also far more successful than the authors of The Boss in explaining why Hoover eventually abandoned old allies Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. He shared with them an animus toward the Left, and if anticommunism was his primary motivation, his breaks with these rightwing allies make no sense. Theoharis and Cox try to explain what is for
34. As Powers explains, after his conversion, "Hoover directed massive investigations of racial violence in the South and forestalled more violence by disrupting and eventually destroying the South's network of murderous Klans" (at 407). For two explanations of the Director's transformation, see Kenneth O'Reilly, "Racial Matters": The FBI's Secret File on Black America 160-76 (New York: Free Press, 1989), and Michal R. Belknap, Federal Law (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987). For further information on the FBI and civil rights, see Kenneth O'Reilly, "The FBI and the Civil Rights Movement During the Kennedy Years," 54 J. So. Hist. 201 (1988).

cnd Southern Order:RacialViolence and Constitutional in thePost-Brown South152-58 Conflict

Two Views of J. EdgarHoover 837 them really an inexplicable falling out with McCarthy by attributing it to fear that the Wisconsin demagogue would reveal his "covert link" with the Bureau and to agitation over the fact that he had appointed a current FBI employee to a committee staff position (at 293-96). Powers's explanation is much more persuasive, because it flows logically from his characterizations of Hoover's power and motivation. The Director broke with McCarthy, he argues, because the Wisconsin senator was attacking President Eisenhower. "Eisenhower had made the Presidency the legitimate symbol of national authority once again, and as such Hoover would not support any attacks on it, even in the name of anti-communism" (at 321-22). Equally logical in light of his basic argument is Powers's explanation of why the Director refused to go along with the Nixon administration's plans for a covert assault on the anti-Vietnam war movement. Although Hoover shared the President's dislike for the dissidents, Powers explains, "his professional judgment ... told him that massive counterintelligence operations conducted against a movement supported by so many Americans, using techniques no longer tolerated by the courts or much of the public, would be a disaster" (at 449-50). "He was not willing to move unless he could count on the massive overwhelming support of the American people" (at 463). Powers's analysis of the extent and sources of Hoover's power also enables him to explain, much more readily than can Theoharis and Cox, why the Director ordered a halt to FBIbreak-ins, bugging, and mail covers in 1965 and 1966.35 In addition, his explanation of the Director's motivation makes understandable two things that the theories of Theoharis and Cox do not. One is the fact that during the Vietnam war, other federal agencies (such as the Army's Military Intelligence branch and the CIA) and even local police departments undertook domestic intelligence operations comparable to those of Hoover's FBI.36 The other is that abuses of civil liberties by the Bureau continued after the Director's death.37 Even Theoharis and Cox acknowledge, "The potential for abuse did not die with Hoover in 1972" (at 435). Yet, if what inspired the Director's misdeeds was his peculiar psychological makeup, the abuses should have stopped then. That practices which he initiated had become so firmly entrenched that they survived Hoover himself suggests his assaults on constitutional rights advanced the institutional needs of the FBI at least as much as they served the psychological needs of the Director himself. Likewise, that other agencies
35. Compare Powers at 402-3 with Theoharis & Cox at 367-95. 36. Richard E. Morgan, Domestic Intelligence:MonitoringDissent in America 6-7 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980); Donner, The Age of Surveillance,241-352 (cited in note 7). 37. See Anthony Marro, "FBI Break-in Policy," in Athan G. Theoharis, ed., Beyondthe Hiss Case 78 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982); Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression:The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black PantherPartyand the American Indian Movement 181-349 (Boston: South End Press, 1988).

838 LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY committed sins similar to those of the FBI while he was alive indicates the reasons for Hoover's actions must be sought outside the man himself. Perhaps the explanation lies in the peculiar nature of intelligence gathering. What the behavior of other agencies and the persistence of certain kinds of FBI misconduct suggest most strongly, however, is that the Director was a product of his culture who acted in response to cultural forces that could and did inspire others to behave in a similar manner. That is to say, they suggest that Powers's picture of J. Edgar Hoover is more nearly accurate than the one Theoharis and Cox have drawn. That is not to say he has fully explained J. Edgar Hoover, or that Secrecyand Power is definitive. Powers's biography goes further toward explaining the enigma with the bulldog visage who ruled the Federal Bureau of Investigation for nearly half a century than does The Boss. But the Director was as closed, complex, and convoluted as the FBI headquarters building in Washington that now bears his name. "Of all Hoover's secrets," Powers has observed, "the most tightly guarded was his own" (at 2). Despite the best efforts of Powers and of Theoharis and Cox, he has managed to remain something of a mystery. He probably always will.