WEBVTT - J. Edgar Hoover: Evil G-Man Pt. 1 0:00:01.520 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:13.880 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.479 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:19.479 should Know g Man edition. 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:23.520 Oh yeah, gee Man. 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:27.520 That's right. That's exactly what I meant. Gee Man, What 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:31.480 a rummy person Jay Garoover was. Yeah. 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:33.560 I got a couple of things to say at the beginning, 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:36.920 if I may, yes about j Edgar Hoover. 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:38.279 Yeah, let's hear it. 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:45.040 Firstly, if you want to feel old, just realize that 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:47.400 you were alive when j Edgar Hoover was still running 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:51.919 the FBI, like I am. Okay, I was like, oh 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:54.400 my god, nineteen seventy two, is that real? 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:56.960 Yeah? That's yeah. 0:00:57.240 --> 0:00:59.680 So it makes me feel old, but also a testament 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:00.800 to his staying power. 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:03.000 No, I think it's more just you being able. 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:07.360 Okay. Number two, just quickly want to point out that 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:09.679 Jay Edgar is not related to Herbert Hoover. 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:13.920 Okay, hadn't even crossed my mind. What about the Hoover 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:14.839 vacuum claim. 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:16.560 I don't know about that, but it crossed a lot 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:19.319 of people's minds about Herbert because he was Each of 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:22.279 them were constantly having to sort of deflect that answer 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:28.800 or whatever, say that answer is not a two wins. Yeah. 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:33.839 And Third, just like it's fascinating to study this guy 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:36.840 that I knew I feel like a little bit about 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:38.679 just from all the various things over the years, but 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:44.040 like what a enigma this guy was. Yeah, I think 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:49.480 because he operated in such secrecy, it's kind of impossible 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:54.440 to know a lot of stuff about him privately because 0:01:54.480 --> 0:01:58.880 he held such power and sway over people as far 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:01.920 as like fear of Blackmai and stuff like that. Yeah, 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.920 that it's really interesting to like, you know, you read 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:08.520 five different historians and they may have five different takes 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:11.600 on aspects of his of who he was in his 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:14.720 private life and stuff like that. Right, it's really interesting. 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:18.640 Right. And for those of us who were born into 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:21.040 a world where Jayogar Hoover wasn't running. 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:23.880 The FBI, lucky you. 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:28.400 We came along at a really different period in how 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:32.480 people looked at him, Like essentially from his death onward, Yeah, 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:36.400 he's been looked at as like an American villain before that, 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:39.760 basically all the way up to his death, from essentially 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:44.240 the day he started at the FBI, America looked at 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:47.880 him as basically as a hero, essentially as a competent, 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:52.880 nonpartisan above the boards, not in any way, shape or 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:56.799 form corrupt head of the FBI, a technocrat who believed 0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:00.359 in applying science and detection over things like hitting a 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:03.359 guy with a rubber hose to get answers out of him. Yeah, 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:07.440 he was a sea change and helped America fight off 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:10.880 the Red menace more than once. And like you said, 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:14.720 he was like it was really difficult to kind of 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:17.839 discern like who he was even at the time when 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:20.640 he was in the news all the time. He served 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:29.080 eight presidents, four Democrats, four Republicans, three Green Party, and 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:31.280 he was the head of the FBI for like forty 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:34.639 eight straight years. I also saw him described as the 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:38.320 most powerful civil servant America has ever. 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:42.880 Seen, oh easily, I think by a long shot. And 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:46.480 the reason he was able to serve those eight presidents 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:49.960 without getting fired, We'll talk a little bit about the 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:52.640 fact that part of that has to do with people 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:55.480 were legit sort of afraid of what this guy had 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:59.880 on them, as in everybody, including presidents, But a lot 0:03:59.880 --> 0:04:02.280 of it was because of that popularity. I mean, I've 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:04.960 seen most people say, oh, it's because he had dirt 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:08.040 on all the presidents, and that's part of it for sure. 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:09.960 But I also saw that a lot of it was 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:13.520 because he was so popular that firing j. Edgar Hoover 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:16.040 would have been very bad for you politically, because people 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:16.839 loved him so much. 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.080 That was part of it. He also seemed to prove 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:24.480 to be too great a temptation for presidents to not 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:27.599 use and ultimately get into cahoots with him. 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:34.039 Yeah, even left leaning progressives. Yeah, even FDR, that's the 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:35.320 guy I was talking about. 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:42.719 Even LBJ, Yeah, even JFK. Yeah. So yeah, there's a 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:45.479 lot to talk about with this guy, and a lot 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:49.760 of it, like you said, is unsubstantiated because he did 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:52.480 the smart thing and had all of his personal records 0:04:52.520 --> 0:04:55.800 destroyed upon his death. He had a very dedicated secretary, 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:58.240 and so we'll just never know a lot of it. 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:02.720 But there is stuff that's so close to being confirmed 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:05.080 that it's like you can essentially say this is true. 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:07.440 Then there's other stuff it's like, what where are you 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:10.080 coming up with that? Yeah, it seems totally false. And 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:12.800 then in the middle there's the stuff where it's like, 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:17.599 really is it. It's entirely possible, it's true, but we 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:22.480 just don't know, and it's great for speculation either way. 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:24.960 The stuff we do know about turned him into a 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:26.400 reviled figure for sure. 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:29.919 Yeah. Absolutely, And as you'll see during a lot of this, 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:33.040 the guy was also sort of a walking conundrum in 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:36.719 a lot of ways by doing things on one hand 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:39.520 that would seemingly find the face of things he's doing 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:42.320 on the other hand. And that'll all kind of come 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:44.799 out as we go. But big shout out to Olivia, 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:47.680 who did a bang up job on this one. Yeah, agreed, 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:50.760 and also to a writer in this Olivia got some 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:54.960 information from this great book. A historian named Beverly Gage 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.400 from Yale University wrote a book in twenty twenty two 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:03.920 called g Man Colon Jay Edgar Hoover and the Making 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:05.880 of an American Century. 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:08.440 Yeah, pretty great stuff. 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:09.320 Yeah. 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:13.520 So yeah, Beverly Gage is essentially like the definitive source 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:15.360 of Jaigar Hoover information right now. 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:18.200 Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of Hoover bios and 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:21.240 they all some of them fly in the face of 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:24.000 each other with what they claim. It's pretty interesting, for sure. 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:26.159 So let's start at the beginning. Let's start when he 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:29.640 was born back in eighteen ninety five. That's right, it's 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:32.600 a long time ago. And one thing to know about 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:35.800 Jaegar Hoover is he was a DC boy, born and 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:38.320 bred his entire life. He was born in that city 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:39.560 and he died in that city. 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:43.320 Yeah, he was born Capitol Hill and Seward Square and 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:46.880 comes came from a long line of family that worked 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:51.159 for the government. His dad, in particular, one Dickerson Naylor 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:54.520 Hoover great name, worked for something called the United States 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:59.920 Coast and Geodetic Survey, which was a scientific organization. And 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:02.880 you know, he had siblings. He had a sister that 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:05.839 died when he was three. It seems like his father 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:10.560 suffered from some mental illness and depression, which would ultimately 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:12.560 be the cause of his death in nineteen twenty one. 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:15.440 And you know, we can get into some sort of 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:20.520 armchair speculation on Hoover's mental condition maybe at the end. 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:22.080 Sure, I can't wait. 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.400 But when he was a kid, he was pretty shy. 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:28.679 He was known as a mama's boy, had a very 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:33.680 sort of overbearing, doting mother. He had a stutter. Apparently 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:39.200 the stutter was so bad that he went about correcting 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:41.960 it by just talking really fast. And that kind of 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:44.440 ran through his life. I think there were court stenographer 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:47.560 or just stenographers period that couldn't keep up with him 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:49.560 on the job. He was so fast. 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:51.920 Yeah, No, he had that very quick delivery. If you've 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:54.400 ever seen like a newsreel or any news footage of 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:57.360 him speaking or reading speech or something. But yeah, he 0:07:57.440 --> 0:07:59.520 kind of took that on. He joined the debate team, 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:03.480 forced himself to do public speaking engagements, and he did 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:05.560 not like that kind of stuff, but he did it anyway, 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:08.200 because we'll see, he was a master of pr which 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:09.360 served him quite well. 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:09.880 Yeah. 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:12.000 One of the other things about him is that his 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:17.200 mother impressed upon him a moral uprightness that actually kind 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:23.280 of converted into a moral righteousness where there was a 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:26.520 there was a specific way to be an American in 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:31.040 Jaugar Hoover's mind, and anybody who ran a foul of 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:35.640 that thought otherwise was an enemy of America and should 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:39.640 be treated accordingly. And unfortunately there's plenty of people walking 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:42.360 around there. That's the that's the definition of a fascist. 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:44.439 So he was a total fascist, if you hadn't figured 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:49.079 that out by now, But he he had the power 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:53.280 to actually make enemies out of the people he considered 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:56.760 an American who were still Americans. They just didn't see 0:08:56.920 --> 0:08:59.640 America exactly the same way Jaegar Hoover did. 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:05.440 Yeah, exactly. His mom's name was Annie, and Judy Dinsch 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:09.520 played her in the Clint Eastwood movie that starred Leo DiCaprio. 0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:10.360 Did you see it? 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:13.280 I never saw it. It got pretty bad reviews, so 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.840 it just didn't draw me in. But yeah, Leo played Hoover, 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:22.160 Dinch played his mom, and as we'll see, Armie Hammer 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:26.720 played his Well, let's just save that one, I guess, okay, 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:29.760 even though it's no big secret, we'll just save it, okay, 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:32.319 his coworker, let's just say that, yeah. 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:33.319 His close associate. 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:34.040 Yeah. 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:37.600 So yeah, So he had this view of America that 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:39.880 he carried with him his whole way in what it 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:44.199 meant to be an upright American. He also was really 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:47.559 really good at organizing. So like the way you think 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:50.880 of like a government bureaucracy today, where there's tons of 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:55.720 files and all sorts of like people whose job it 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:58.040 is to access those files, and they do it to 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:01.280 varying degrees as success. Jigger Hoover actually kind of built 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:04.120 that what's called the administrative state. You can actually thank 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:06.559 him for that. He not only built the FBI, he 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:10.400 made the federal government this kind of administrative power like 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:10.800 it is. 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:16.040 Oh yeah, absolutely. He learned a lot of that at 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:18.040 one of his first jobs after high school, got a 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:20.800 job at the Library of Congress, and that's where he 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:25.439 really got into just sort of categorizing stuff, collecting information. 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:29.760 He got a Master of Law degree from GW from 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:35.439 George Washington University in nineteen seventeen. And the only reason 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:37.679 we mentioned this is because it sort of plays into 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:43.240 his massive amount of cronyism. He was a KA, joined 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:48.560 the KA fraternity there, which is a very southern you know, 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:51.880 it was like a they celebrate the Confederacy. It was 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.360 like a Roberty Leasing. I remember even at Georgia, the 0:10:54.400 --> 0:11:00.880 Ka's were, and I imagine still are, just very confederate. 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:03.840 Yeah, that's a great word for they. 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.560 Just like Confederate pride, that whole thing. Those are the Ka's. 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:09.920 And as we'll see, a lot of those Kas and 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:14.600 people that he knew ended up getting jobs from him directly. 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:17.360 So lots of cronyism happening. 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:23.240 Yes, for sure. So also he became a clerk at 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:26.760 World War One, which at the DOJ, and that kept 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:30.160 him out of the draft, but also was his true 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:35.040 first step into his government service. Library of Congress. Yeah, 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:38.400 that was essentially the beginning. But this was the true beginning, 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:46.240 because very quickly he was assigned pretty substantial duties, including 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:49.599 overseeing what was called the General Intelligence Division. This was 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:53.000 a part of the Department of Justice. If those three words, 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:56.360 the General Intelligence Division, don't run a chill down your spine. 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:57.920 You're not listening closely. 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:00.920 That's something out of Brazil, exactly right. 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:03.000 So he was the head of this and this guy 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:06.360 at the time, he was, let's see, twenty four years old, 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:09.160 and he's running the General Intelligence Division for the DOJ. 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:17.200 And the whole point of the GID was to investigate radicals, leftists, anarchists, communists. 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:20.320 There was a big red scare from nineteen nineteen to 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:24.640 nineteen twenty. And his whole jam was to apply his 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:28.080 everything he'd learned and developed at the Library of Congress 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:31.080 to everything he wanted to do in law enforcement. And 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:37.320 he created massive files on immigrants to America, and basically 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:39.920 it was like, this is an immigrant, they are loyal 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:44.040 or disloyal, They like communism or like capitalism, and just 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:46.400 amassed all of these files and they eventually turned them 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:48.839 into what were known as the Palmer Raids, where they 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:52.679 just went into these people's homes and said, Jaegar Hoover 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:55.840 and the GID thinks you're disloyal, come with us. We're 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:58.760 deporting you. Forget your civil liberties, Forget the fact that 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:01.559 you're a naturalized American citizen. Now doesn't matter. 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:05.000 Yeah, this was a big deal. Maybe we can do 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:08.560 something on the Palmer Raids in full at some point, 0:13:08.600 --> 0:13:12.760 but just kind of in a nutshell, the Attorney General, 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:17.320 A Mitchell Palmer, had his house was bombed. There was 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:21.920 a guy named an anarchist named Carlo Valdanocci who the 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:23.600 bomb went off early, so it kind of blew up 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:26.120 the front of his house along with the bomber himself. 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:31.280 There were other bombs mail to mayors and senators and 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:34.599 business leaders. So there was a real sort of anarchist 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:40.719 you know, mail bombing, cookbook thing happening. Yeah, cookbook going on. 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:44.360 But the response was the Palmer Raids, which was just 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:47.640 a nightmare of an operation. It was really kind of 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:51.840 an unconstitutional disaster where like you said, a lot of 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:56.680 these high profile deportations like straight to Russia when many 0:13:56.720 --> 0:13:58.400 of these people are just like, didn't even know what 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:00.320 they were talking about, Right, I. 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:03.079 Make bagels, leave me alone kind of thing, right. 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:05.640 Yeah, I mean I think his list was four hundred 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:10.080 and fifty thousand long, and like, how many real leftist 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:11.560 radicals were there? 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:14.600 Yeah, exactly right, And there were also tons of cases 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:18.800 of mistaken identity. Like it was a catastrophe. They the 0:14:18.960 --> 0:14:22.200 Palmer Raids so ran a foul of civil liberties. They 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:25.480 actually created things like the ACLU and other civil liberties 0:14:25.520 --> 0:14:28.360 groups to defend against stuff like that ever happening again. 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:31.240 But what's miraculous is that the head of all this, 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:33.760 the guy who was in charge of actually executing the 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:38.520 Palmer Raids, was Jagger Hoover, and he survived politically and 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:42.080 went on to actually step upward from that point on. 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:44.640 Some people are like, you need to keep that guy 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:47.800 away from the levers of power, yeah, because of what 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:49.400 he just did. And other people are like, I don't 0:14:49.480 --> 0:14:52.120 like the cut of that guy's jib. Yeah, I think, 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:53.920 And the people who liked the cut of his jib 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:55.040 they won out. 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:57.960 I did say, that's a good cliffhanger, But you made 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:01.440 it an even better cliffhanger with that last line. So 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:04.920 let's come back a and we'll talk about where the 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:07.400 FBI comes into play. Yeah. 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:09.120 I can add some more lines if you want me 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:10.040 to make it even better. 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:47.320 No, I think you made it just perfect. Okay, all right, 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:50.880 So we promised talk of the FBI. Initially, and we've 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:53.160 said this on other episodes, it was called the Bureau 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:57.760 Investigations at first. It was formed in nineteen eight basically 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:00.840 to say, hey, US Attorney General, you need some teeth, 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:05.440 here's your own law enforcement organization. Became the FBI in 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:09.760 nineteen thirty five, and early on was kind of interested 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:14.760 in corporate criminals, radicalism and a real kind of from 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:19.320 the beginning, a real crackdown and obsession with sex work. 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:24.360 Yeah the man act, right, Yeah, big deal. And it 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:27.600 was also very corrupt and didn't have the best reputation 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:32.200 until Coolidge came along in nineteen twenty four and hired 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:36.480 a guy named Harlan fisk Stone to reform the DOJ 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:40.560 and kind of just clean house and get the FBI 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:41.400 in good standing. 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:44.520 Yeah, which is amazing that they're like, Hoover, why don't 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:47.520 you take over? But that's exactly what they did. They 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:51.800 made him acting director of the Bureau of Investigation starting 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:54.720 in I think the same year Harlan Stone came in 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:55.960 nineteen twenty four. 0:16:56.000 --> 0:16:59.200 Right, yeah, and they got rid of that GID by the. 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:03.400 Way they did, but it just went away essentially in name, 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:08.720 not spirit by any measure. And again, just like at 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:14.120 the GID, Jaeger Hoover said about applying the principles of bureaucracy, 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:18.920 of organization and of science too. He was a true 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:25.080 believer in science to this nascent Bureau of Investigation. And 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:29.359 one of the stunning statistics I ran across that really 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:35.359 gets across his just how much of an impact he 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:38.880 had on the FBI when he took it over. Over 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:41.600 the course of ten years, I think up to nineteen 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:45.720 thirty six, they amassed a huge collection of fingerprints, like 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:48.600 one hundred thousand fingerprints, and they had people whose entire 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:50.520 job it was to go look up the fingerprints and 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:54.120 bring them for analysis. Right ten years later, in nineteen 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:59.359 forty six, they had one hundred million sets of fingerprints 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:02.000 and there was only one hundred and forty million people 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:03.600 who lived in America at the time. 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:05.400 That's crazy, man. 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:06.720 Yeah. 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:10.639 Wow. He also created like a forensic lab. He created 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:15.320 the FBI Academy, Like he really not only kind of 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:18.880 brought their reputation back, but like you said, he organized 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:21.080 them in a way that where they operated like a 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:23.480 like a like a humming machine. 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:27.120 Right, and people respected that, they admired it like it 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:31.720 was you know, it really fit in with FDR's New 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:34.880 Deal thing of like, hey, your government is big and 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:37.359 for a reason, like we can do all sorts of 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:40.639 amazing competent, capable stuff to make the life of the 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:42.280 average person greater. 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:44.680 Look at all these fingerprints exactly. 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:47.800 I don't know if it necessarily fit in with the 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:50.639 New Deal. But one of the other things that Jaeger 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:55.480 Hoover did was he instituted this these policies that when 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:59.919 you put them all together, basically made it required every 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:05.080 FBI agent to be ned Flanders essentially. And he did 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:08.480 that because he wanted he wanted his people to seem 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:11.960 above reproach. Because at the time, the idea of like 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:16.000 law enforcement was that if they weren't incompetent, then they 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:18.280 were crooked, or maybe they were both. Like there was 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:21.320 not like a lot of public regard for law enforcement. 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:25.159 So he wanted to make sure that his particular agency 0:19:26.320 --> 0:19:29.440 separated itself from that, like put itself head and shoulders, 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:31.480 you know, like the way that in any movie the 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:34.080 FBI agents come in and just completely take control of 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:37.320 like the investigation or the crime scene or whatever. Oh yeah, 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:42.800 that was essentially that came from Hoover, like he created 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:45.600 this image of the FBI agents is so uber competent 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:48.280 that no one would would challenge them if they did 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:49.880 walk into a crime scene and take over. 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:53.280 Yeah. And if you remember seeing a lot of movies 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:57.199 that had FBI agents portrayed as like a tall, handsome 0:19:57.200 --> 0:20:02.320 white guys, is because FBI agents were largely almost roundly 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:06.000 tall handsome white guys. He hired a lot of his 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:09.320 again with the cronyism, a lot of his alums from GW, 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:14.080 a lot of Ka's. He kept the FBI from bringing 0:20:14.480 --> 0:20:17.720 a class of civil service, so he didn't have you know, 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:19.800 he could basically flo out any rules that would have 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:22.640 forced him to have like a to look at any 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:27.000 kind of diverse applicant. So he wanted white men that 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:31.879 were good looking. Again as a pr move, it was, 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:36.320 it was a popular thing at the time. Ironically, in 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:40.080 the forties, Ebony magazine did a feature on like black 0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:43.520 employees of the FBI, and Hoover even helped them with 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:46.000 this because it was a pr thing. But they were 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:48.400 all valets. None of them were agents because there were 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:50.120 no black agents, right. 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:52.800 Yeah, And like you said, the way he got around 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:56.439 that was to accept the FBI from civil service. And 0:20:56.480 --> 0:20:58.360 I was like, how did he do that? And how 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:00.000 did he get away with that? And there's something called 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:03.040 accepted service, and it's where you don't you're not that 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:05.879 agency is not subject to the same laws and requirements 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:08.959 as a civil service agency is. But the reason he 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:11.160 was doing is he was saying, like, some of these 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:14.080 laws are letting people in government who are just really 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:18.119 slack keep their jobs, and I can't have that in 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:20.879 the FBI. I have to have top notch, crack people 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:23.399 who I'm able to fire if they don't meet our standards. 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:25.600 I think that's how he was able to get the 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.160 FBI out of civil service classification. 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:32.080 Yeah, and you mentioned ned Flanders. He wanted them to be, 0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:36.520 like you said, sort of beyond reproach and morally upright. 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:41.760 So he insisted that they not drink alcohol at least 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:44.119 sort of on the job, like you know, have the 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:47.000 Martinis at lunch kind of thing. Apparently he was a 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:51.399 big Martini guy, but as the story goes, only after work, 0:21:51.840 --> 0:21:54.960 only two martinis. And then later in life when he 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:57.080 was in you know, sort of older and not in 0:21:57.119 --> 0:21:59.400 the best of health, his doctor said he can't drink 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:01.760 Martini's more. And he was like, well, that's not going 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:04.280 to happen, and he said, all right, cut down to 0:22:04.320 --> 0:22:08.320 one martini then, and he said sure, And as as 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:11.280 legend has it, he had his staff by larger Martini 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:14.520 glasses and then dropped it down to one. 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:18.120 Yeah, that was something I saw. There was a Frontline 0:22:19.240 --> 0:22:22.719 episode from years and years ago called the File on 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:27.040 Jay Edgar Hoover, and a lot of it seems totally 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:32.160 off the rails and unbelievable for good reason. But some 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:34.879 of the stuff that he had the FBI staff do 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:38.480 for him was so above and beyond what any agency 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:44.280 staff should be doing for the director. Like they replaced 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:46.680 his grass once because he didn't like the color green, 0:22:47.440 --> 0:22:52.240 sod all, just stuff like that. So I totally believe 0:22:52.320 --> 0:22:57.520 that he had his FBI staff buy bigger Martini glasses 0:22:57.520 --> 0:23:00.240 for his home. That was totally in line with what 0:23:00.280 --> 0:23:02.640 how he treated the Bureau. It was his own kingdom, 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:05.959 and little by little he made it. So it's not 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:07.879 like he came into it and somebody handed him the 0:23:07.960 --> 0:23:10.520 keys and said, good luck, go make this agency that's 0:23:10.560 --> 0:23:14.240 so powerful it is essentially a fourth branch of government. 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:19.520