J. Edgar Hoover served in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for
over fifty years, mostly at the head of the organization as its director.
Hoover built the FBI from a small organization with a poor reputation
into a powerful, secretive, and controversial law enforcement bureau.
Early life
Hoover was born on January 1, 1895, in Washington, D.C. Raised in a
family of Scottish Presbyterians, Hoover spent his life believing that
middle-class Protestant morality was the core of American society and values. His mother, Anna Marie Scheitlin, was strict and religious. His father,
Dickerson Hoover, was a civil servant who suffered from poor health.
Hoover excelled in school as a child, eventually attending Central
High School, an all-white school from which he graduated at the top of
his class in 1913. During his youth, he also worked to help his family,
including delivering groceries for neighbors. Hoover received a full
scholarship to attend the University of Virginia, but his family could not
afford housing there. Hoover instead worked in the day and studied law
at night at George Washington University in the District of Columbia.
He received a bachelor’s degree in 1916 and a master’s degree in 1917.
Early career
During World War I (1914–18) Hoover got a job in the U.S.
Department of Justice. He began in the mail room but soon was transferred to the Emergency War Division of the Alien Enemy section. There
Hoover administered the federal regulations that applied to German and
Austro-Hungarian aliens (those who held citizenship in the land of their
birth but lived in the United States) being supervised by the federal government during the war.
In autumn 1918, the Bolshevik Revolution began in Russia. Strikes
in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle, Washington, raised fears of
a similar communist revolt in either Canada or the United States. Early
the next year, Hoover became a special assistant to U.S. attorney general
A. Mitchell Palmer (1872–1936), whose home was bombed that spring.
In the ensuing years, Palmer ordered and Hoover supervised a series of
“red raids” for arresting and deporting aliens who were members of communist organizations. In this work, Hoover spied on lawyers representing alien suspects.
The Bureau of Investigation
When a new attorney general became head of the Justice Department in
1921, Hoover became the assistant director of the Bureau of
Investigation (BI). At the time, the BI had very little law enforcement
authority under federal law. It was filled with employees who got their
jobs through political favoritism. It was in this environment that Hoover
was elevated to director of the BI in 1924, the position he would keep
until his death in 1972. Hoover accepted the job on the conditions that he have full control over hiring and that he report directly to the attorney general rather than to a lower-level official in the Department of
Justice.
Hoover worked hard to convert the BI into a respected law enforcement bureau. He fired incapable employees and hired young agents with
backgrounds in law and accountancy. He created a crime laboratory and
organized a fingerprint division for collecting fingerprints from across
the nation into a central location. He opened a national academy for
training BI agents. He also created a highly organized filing system for
handling the BI’s public and secret files. In 1935, the bureau was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Hoover never married. Prior to joining the bureau he had romanced
a woman who chose an army officer over Hoover. Hoover lived with his
mother until her death and then lived alone the rest of his life. Outside
of work, he enjoyed attending baseball games and horse races and collecting Asian art.
From gangsters to activists
In the 1930s, the FBI earned a reputation for fighting gangsters such as
Pretty Boy Floyd (1901–1934), Machine Gun Kelly (1895–1954), and
John Dillinger (1903–1934). In the 1940s, Hoover began to report directly to President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served
1933–45). At Roosevelt’s direction, Hoover built the FBI’s domestic surveillance system. The system was useful for investigating the domestic activities of communists, whom the federal government targeted during
another “red scare” of the 1950s.
During the late 1950s, Hoover and the FBI developed a counterintelligence program called COINTELPRO. Under the program, the FBI
spied on American citizens, often breaking laws against wiretapping and
microphone surveillance. Hoover used COINTELRO to investigate
communists, the Ku Klux Klan, black activist organizations such as the
Black Panther Party, and civil rights activists, including Martin Luther
King Jr. (1929–1968). Hoover viewed civil rights activists as part of the
communist threat to America.
In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served
1961–63) required Hoover to report to Attorney General Robert F.
Kennedy (1925–1968) rather than directly to the president. Hoover and the Kennedys did not get along well. End of life
Hoover died on May 2, 1972. During his life, he generally had a positive reputation with Americans, though political and civil rights activists
were concerned with his goals and methods. After enactment of the
Freedom of Information Act, Americans were able to view FBI records
that revealed some of the extent to which Hoover violated federal law to
investigate Americans. These revelations tarnished Hoover’s reputation
in the eyes of many. Other Americans, however, believe enforcement of
federal criminal laws is more important than protecting the civil rights
of citizens. This debate survives today under the question of the federal
government’s power to fight what it calls the war on terrorism.