J. EDGAR HOOVER
(John Edgar Hoover)
Remark to J. Edgar Hoover who masterminded the forced deportation of Emma Goldman, a leading anarchist of the day. Hoover had not given Goldman or her attorney any notice of the time of her deportation so they were unable to obtain legal stays. Hoover maintained to Goldman that he had given her a "square deal."
Leary was a strong advocate of the use of illicit drugs and stimulants. Yet he ignored all the side effects and negative health consequences of the processes and while he thought he was assisting people to enlarge their mental horizons, he irresponsibly and criminally damaged many permanently. His government “persecutors” themselves were also all disgraced by the extremes to which they went to prevent the counter-culture characterized by Leary and others. They became paramoid that the drug culture would morph into a protest culture against the administration. The tended to exxagerate the negative consequences of illicit drugs--especially marijuana. These exaggerations caused many people to believe Leary and others who went to the other extreme and underated the negative consequences of illicit drugs. It became a culture war when it should have been a medical problem.
The FBI was accused of tapping congressional phones and infiltrating college campuses:
Referring to FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover: Precursor to CIA
During the Nixon administration FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was requested by White House operatives to cooperate with "the Houston Plan" of illegal surveillance of many Americans. Hoover refused arguing that it was too risky.
When he assumed the presidency, Lyndon Johnson considered not renewing the appointment of FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover, but finally decided to keep him: The quotation has its origin in a joke of the British Arabists about having a camel inside or outside of the tent. A similar phrase was used earlier by Winston Churchill to King George VI when the King asked him to form a government but advised him not to include Lord Beaverbrook.
The Senator was introducing a bill to remove Hoover's name from the FBI building that had been named after him.
The “bad old days” reference was to the time under J. Edgar Hoover when the FBI would target, investigate, spy on, and maintain a file on individuals who had committed no crimes but were critical of the FBI or other government agencies or policies. The FBI was a major force in supporting segregation in the South by not investigating most KKK members and others guilty of crimes and instead spying on the civil rights advocates. “Targets” of the FBI were Martin Luther King, Frank Sinatra, Adam Clayton Powell and many others.
This quotation was obtained via an FBI wiretap on Dr. King’s telephone. What makes it historically important is that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI steadfastly maintained that King and his movement were philosophically communist in their reports to the President and others. For example, a CIA memo of the time reported that “According to the FBI, Dr. King is regarded in Communist circles as a genuine Marxist-Leninist who is following the Marxist-Leninist Line.” However, Hoover had this and other evidence of King’s antipathy to communism but suppressed this leading the administration and others to believe that the Civil Rights Movement, to which Hoover was unalterably opposed, was Communist influenced. See {603873}, {603891}, {603872}, and {603889} showing Hoover’s view of King and Blacks.
The FBI director had become so powerful and unchecked by Congress or the President he used the FBI to assemble files on those whom he wanted including political figures. On many occasions he used these for various forms of blackmail, never for money, but to solicit compliance or support or obtain silence or cessation of opposition to positions he favored—especially the prerogatives of the FBI.
Kennedy was not being literal, but was sarcastically joking about the overemphasis that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI leadership was placing on investigating civil rights leaders and communists instead of investigating the hundreds of Southern murders and assaults on civil rights workers and organized crime. The FBI leadership was itself quite racist at the time, and Hoover never wanted to take on organized crime. He did not regard organized crime as an existential threat to the United States (the way he did about civil rights demonstrations) and he feared that with the big money available to organized crime, many of his agents would be corrupted.
Hoover and the FBI were supposed to be enforcing Federal law. However, they could not find any criminal activity on the part of Martin Luther King Jr. They regarded the Civil Rights Movement as a revolutionary threat to the nation. See {620621} and {74219} . So the FBI in an incredible abuse of power, had a meeting of its top officials to plan a strategy for destroying King as a Negro leader in America. We look back on this era where officials who were never elected by anyone, and having no authority from an elected official, took it upon themselves to decide who leaders in America would be.
Hoover’s testimony not withstanding, communism in America never did spread like an epidemic.
This incredible quotation exposed the illegal COINTELPRO program whereby FBI Director Hoover not only ordered the FBI to illegally spy on African American organizations, but actually interfere with their operations and by leaking personal sexual information and trying to ruin the reputations of numerous Black leaders including Rev. Martin Luther King. This memo actually specifically named and targeted the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congress of Racial Equality, and the Nation of Islam. Hoover ordered that the program be kept secret {584582}. However, in what is a humorous historical twist, a civil rights organization organized a “black bag” burglary—the same kind of illegal break in that the FBI had been practicing against Black groups and others—broke into an FBI field office and stole this and other documents which they then made public. Otherwise the contents of this program might never have come to light.
This instruction referred to the illegal COINTELPRO program whereby FBI Director Hoover not only ordered the FBI to illegally spy on African American organizations, but actually interfere with their operations and by leaking personal sexual information and trying to ruin the reputations of numerous Black leaders including Rev. Martin Luther King. See {584581}. This illegal program actually specifically named and targeted the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congress of Racial Equality, and the Nation of Islam. Hoover ordered that the program be kept secret. However, in what is a humorous historical twist, a civil rights organization organized a “black bag” burglary—the same kind of illegal break in that the FBI had been practicing against Black groups and others—broke into an FBI field office and stole this and other documents which they then made public. Otherwise the contents of this program might never have come to light.
Three civil rights workers were kidnapped in Mississippi by members of the Ku Klu Klan in 1964 (Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney) and after a few days the FBI found the car in which they had been driving. He reported to the President that they had been probably been killed. The President asked Hoover why they could not have been kidnapped and taken to somewhere else and held there. This was his answer. He turned out to be right. They were brutally murdered. An all white jury acquitted the murderers, but in 2005 the leader was again tried for murder. The Southern-dominated Senate for years would not pass any anti-lynching legislation and thousands of blacks and some sympathetic whites were brutally tortured and killed. In 2005, the Senate passed a resolution 98-0 apologizing for the inaction over the years on lynching. The two missing senators who did not vote for the resolution were from Mississippi.
The Christian Front was one of the network of Fascist organizations established and controlled by “radio priest” Charles E. Coughlin. In 1940 investigative reporter Lawrence Spivak did an expose of the Christian Front and The FBI raided its offices and confiscated many weapons intended for the assassination of people including a dozen members of Congress. See {588484} for a description of the Christian Front.
Referring to Martin Luther King: Hoover tried to prejudice his staff against King when King had not committed any crimes other than being arrested for demonstrating in the South. Hoover ordered a wire tap on King and while no crime was discovered, they learned that King was engaged in some extra marital sexual liaisons. Hoover at the time was in a clandestine, secret, monogamous relationship with another male official of the FBI. Yet he was offended by King's promiscuity. Hoover honestly believed that segregation was the American way, and King's civil rights and equality advocacy in his view was an important part of the Communist program.
Hoover’s testimony not withstanding, communism in America never did spread like an epidemic.
Commenting on student demonstrations protesting the House Un-American Activities Committee:
The director received a memorandum that some Frenchmen had formed a committee to investigate the JFK assassination and that Jean-Paul Sartre was involved:
Referring to the Washington Post:. The official newspaper of the American Communist party.
- Born: January 1, 1895
- Died: May 2, 1972
- Nationality: American
- Profession: Public Servant
John Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation – the FBI's predecessor – in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director for another 37 years until his death in 1972 at the age of 77. Hoover has been credited with building the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. Hoover is also credited with establishing and expanding a national blacklist, referred to as the FBI Index or Index List, renamed in 2001 as the Terrorist Screening Database which the FBI still compiles and manages.
