Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
Speaker 2: should Know g Man edition.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, gee Man.
Speaker 2: That's right. That's exactly what I meant. Gee Man, What
Speaker 2: a rummy person Jay Garoover was. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got a couple of things to say at the beginning,
Speaker 1: if I may, yes about j Edgar Hoover.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's hear it.
Speaker 1: Firstly, if you want to feel old, just realize that
Speaker 1: you were alive when j Edgar Hoover was still running
Speaker 1: the FBI, like I am. Okay, I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, nineteen seventy two, is that real?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That's yeah.
Speaker 1: So it makes me feel old, but also a testament
Speaker 1: to his staying power.
Speaker 2: No, I think it's more just you being able.
Speaker 1: Okay. Number two, just quickly want to point out that
Speaker 1: Jay Edgar is not related to Herbert Hoover.
Speaker 2: Okay, hadn't even crossed my mind. What about the Hoover
Speaker 2: vacuum claim.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that, but it crossed a lot
Speaker 1: of people's minds about Herbert because he was Each of
Speaker 1: them were constantly having to sort of deflect that answer
Speaker 1: or whatever, say that answer is not a two wins. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Third, just like it's fascinating to study this guy
Speaker 1: that I knew I feel like a little bit about
Speaker 1: just from all the various things over the years, but
Speaker 1: like what a enigma this guy was. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: because he operated in such secrecy, it's kind of impossible
Speaker 1: to know a lot of stuff about him privately because
Speaker 1: he held such power and sway over people as far
Speaker 1: as like fear of Blackmai and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that it's really interesting to like, you know, you read
Speaker 1: five different historians and they may have five different takes
Speaker 1: on aspects of his of who he was in his
Speaker 1: private life and stuff like that. Right, it's really interesting.
Speaker 2: Right. And for those of us who were born into
Speaker 2: a world where Jayogar Hoover wasn't running.
Speaker 1: The FBI, lucky you.
Speaker 2: We came along at a really different period in how
Speaker 2: people looked at him, Like essentially from his death onward, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's been looked at as like an American villain before that,
Speaker 2: basically all the way up to his death, from essentially
Speaker 2: the day he started at the FBI, America looked at
Speaker 2: him as basically as a hero, essentially as a competent,
Speaker 2: nonpartisan above the boards, not in any way, shape or
Speaker 2: form corrupt head of the FBI, a technocrat who believed
Speaker 2: in applying science and detection over things like hitting a
Speaker 2: guy with a rubber hose to get answers out of him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was a sea change and helped America fight off
Speaker 2: the Red menace more than once. And like you said,
Speaker 2: he was like it was really difficult to kind of
Speaker 2: discern like who he was even at the time when
Speaker 2: he was in the news all the time. He served
Speaker 2: eight presidents, four Democrats, four Republicans, three Green Party, and
Speaker 2: he was the head of the FBI for like forty
Speaker 2: eight straight years. I also saw him described as the
Speaker 2: most powerful civil servant America has ever.
Speaker 1: Seen, oh easily, I think by a long shot. And
Speaker 1: the reason he was able to serve those eight presidents
Speaker 1: without getting fired, We'll talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: fact that part of that has to do with people
Speaker 1: were legit sort of afraid of what this guy had
Speaker 1: on them, as in everybody, including presidents, But a lot
Speaker 1: of it was because of that popularity. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: seen most people say, oh, it's because he had dirt
Speaker 1: on all the presidents, and that's part of it for sure.
Speaker 1: But I also saw that a lot of it was
Speaker 1: because he was so popular that firing j. Edgar Hoover
Speaker 1: would have been very bad for you politically, because people
Speaker 1: loved him so much.
Speaker 2: That was part of it. He also seemed to prove
Speaker 2: to be too great a temptation for presidents to not
Speaker 2: use and ultimately get into cahoots with him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even left leaning progressives. Yeah, even FDR, that's the
Speaker 1: guy I was talking about.
Speaker 2: Even LBJ, Yeah, even JFK. Yeah. So yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: lot to talk about with this guy, and a lot
Speaker 2: of it, like you said, is unsubstantiated because he did
Speaker 2: the smart thing and had all of his personal records
Speaker 2: destroyed upon his death. He had a very dedicated secretary,
Speaker 2: and so we'll just never know a lot of it.
Speaker 2: But there is stuff that's so close to being confirmed
Speaker 2: that it's like you can essentially say this is true.
Speaker 2: Then there's other stuff it's like, what where are you
Speaker 2: coming up with that? Yeah, it seems totally false. And
Speaker 2: then in the middle there's the stuff where it's like,
Speaker 2: really is it. It's entirely possible, it's true, but we
Speaker 2: just don't know, and it's great for speculation either way.
Speaker 2: The stuff we do know about turned him into a
Speaker 2: reviled figure for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And as you'll see during a lot of this,
Speaker 1: the guy was also sort of a walking conundrum in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways by doing things on one hand
Speaker 1: that would seemingly find the face of things he's doing
Speaker 1: on the other hand. And that'll all kind of come
Speaker 1: out as we go. But big shout out to Olivia,
Speaker 1: who did a bang up job on this one. Yeah, agreed,
Speaker 1: and also to a writer in this Olivia got some
Speaker 1: information from this great book. A historian named Beverly Gage
Speaker 1: from Yale University wrote a book in twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: called g Man Colon Jay Edgar Hoover and the Making
Speaker 1: of an American Century.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty great stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Beverly Gage is essentially like the definitive source
Speaker 2: of Jaigar Hoover information right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of Hoover bios and
Speaker 1: they all some of them fly in the face of
Speaker 1: each other with what they claim. It's pretty interesting, for sure.
Speaker 2: So let's start at the beginning. Let's start when he
Speaker 2: was born back in eighteen ninety five. That's right, it's
Speaker 2: a long time ago. And one thing to know about
Speaker 2: Jaegar Hoover is he was a DC boy, born and
Speaker 2: bred his entire life. He was born in that city
Speaker 2: and he died in that city.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was born Capitol Hill and Seward Square and
Speaker 1: comes came from a long line of family that worked
Speaker 1: for the government. His dad, in particular, one Dickerson Naylor
Speaker 1: Hoover great name, worked for something called the United States
Speaker 1: Coast and Geodetic Survey, which was a scientific organization. And
Speaker 1: you know, he had siblings. He had a sister that
Speaker 1: died when he was three. It seems like his father
Speaker 1: suffered from some mental illness and depression, which would ultimately
Speaker 1: be the cause of his death in nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 1: And you know, we can get into some sort of
Speaker 1: armchair speculation on Hoover's mental condition maybe at the end.
Speaker 2: Sure, I can't wait.
Speaker 1: But when he was a kid, he was pretty shy.
Speaker 1: He was known as a mama's boy, had a very
Speaker 1: sort of overbearing, doting mother. He had a stutter. Apparently
Speaker 1: the stutter was so bad that he went about correcting
Speaker 1: it by just talking really fast. And that kind of
Speaker 1: ran through his life. I think there were court stenographer
Speaker 1: or just stenographers period that couldn't keep up with him
Speaker 1: on the job. He was so fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, he had that very quick delivery. If you've
Speaker 2: ever seen like a newsreel or any news footage of
Speaker 2: him speaking or reading speech or something. But yeah, he
Speaker 2: kind of took that on. He joined the debate team,
Speaker 2: forced himself to do public speaking engagements, and he did
Speaker 2: not like that kind of stuff, but he did it anyway,
Speaker 2: because we'll see, he was a master of pr which
Speaker 2: served him quite well.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the other things about him is that his
Speaker 2: mother impressed upon him a moral uprightness that actually kind
Speaker 2: of converted into a moral righteousness where there was a
Speaker 2: there was a specific way to be an American in
Speaker 2: Jaugar Hoover's mind, and anybody who ran a foul of
Speaker 2: that thought otherwise was an enemy of America and should
Speaker 2: be treated accordingly. And unfortunately there's plenty of people walking
Speaker 2: around there. That's the that's the definition of a fascist.
Speaker 2: So he was a total fascist, if you hadn't figured
Speaker 2: that out by now, But he he had the power
Speaker 2: to actually make enemies out of the people he considered
Speaker 2: an American who were still Americans. They just didn't see
Speaker 2: America exactly the same way Jaegar Hoover did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. His mom's name was Annie, and Judy Dinsch
Speaker 1: played her in the Clint Eastwood movie that starred Leo DiCaprio.
Speaker 2: Did you see it?
Speaker 1: I never saw it. It got pretty bad reviews, so
Speaker 1: it just didn't draw me in. But yeah, Leo played Hoover,
Speaker 1: Dinch played his mom, and as we'll see, Armie Hammer
Speaker 1: played his Well, let's just save that one, I guess, okay,
Speaker 1: even though it's no big secret, we'll just save it, okay,
Speaker 1: his coworker, let's just say that, yeah.
Speaker 2: His close associate.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, So he had this view of America that
Speaker 2: he carried with him his whole way in what it
Speaker 2: meant to be an upright American. He also was really
Speaker 2: really good at organizing. So like the way you think
Speaker 2: of like a government bureaucracy today, where there's tons of
Speaker 2: files and all sorts of like people whose job it
Speaker 2: is to access those files, and they do it to
Speaker 2: varying degrees as success. Jigger Hoover actually kind of built
Speaker 2: that what's called the administrative state. You can actually thank
Speaker 2: him for that. He not only built the FBI, he
Speaker 2: made the federal government this kind of administrative power like
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. He learned a lot of that at
Speaker 1: one of his first jobs after high school, got a
Speaker 1: job at the Library of Congress, and that's where he
Speaker 1: really got into just sort of categorizing stuff, collecting information.
Speaker 1: He got a Master of Law degree from GW from
Speaker 1: George Washington University in nineteen seventeen. And the only reason
Speaker 1: we mentioned this is because it sort of plays into
Speaker 1: his massive amount of cronyism. He was a KA, joined
Speaker 1: the KA fraternity there, which is a very southern you know,
Speaker 1: it was like a they celebrate the Confederacy. It was
Speaker 1: like a Roberty Leasing. I remember even at Georgia, the
Speaker 1: Ka's were, and I imagine still are, just very confederate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great word for they.
Speaker 1: Just like Confederate pride, that whole thing. Those are the Ka's.
Speaker 1: And as we'll see, a lot of those Kas and
Speaker 1: people that he knew ended up getting jobs from him directly.
Speaker 1: So lots of cronyism happening.
Speaker 2: Yes, for sure. So also he became a clerk at
Speaker 2: World War One, which at the DOJ, and that kept
Speaker 2: him out of the draft, but also was his true
Speaker 2: first step into his government service. Library of Congress. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was essentially the beginning. But this was the true beginning,
Speaker 2: because very quickly he was assigned pretty substantial duties, including
Speaker 2: overseeing what was called the General Intelligence Division. This was
Speaker 2: a part of the Department of Justice. If those three words,
Speaker 2: the General Intelligence Division, don't run a chill down your spine.
Speaker 2: You're not listening closely.
Speaker 1: That's something out of Brazil, exactly right.
Speaker 2: So he was the head of this and this guy
Speaker 2: at the time, he was, let's see, twenty four years old,
Speaker 2: and he's running the General Intelligence Division for the DOJ.
Speaker 2: And the whole point of the GID was to investigate radicals, leftists, anarchists, communists.
Speaker 2: There was a big red scare from nineteen nineteen to
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty. And his whole jam was to apply his
Speaker 2: everything he'd learned and developed at the Library of Congress
Speaker 2: to everything he wanted to do in law enforcement. And
Speaker 2: he created massive files on immigrants to America, and basically
Speaker 2: it was like, this is an immigrant, they are loyal
Speaker 2: or disloyal, They like communism or like capitalism, and just
Speaker 2: amassed all of these files and they eventually turned them
Speaker 2: into what were known as the Palmer Raids, where they
Speaker 2: just went into these people's homes and said, Jaegar Hoover
Speaker 2: and the GID thinks you're disloyal, come with us. We're
Speaker 2: deporting you. Forget your civil liberties, Forget the fact that
Speaker 2: you're a naturalized American citizen. Now doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was a big deal. Maybe we can do
Speaker 1: something on the Palmer Raids in full at some point,
Speaker 1: but just kind of in a nutshell, the Attorney General,
Speaker 1: A Mitchell Palmer, had his house was bombed. There was
Speaker 1: a guy named an anarchist named Carlo Valdanocci who the
Speaker 1: bomb went off early, so it kind of blew up
Speaker 1: the front of his house along with the bomber himself.
Speaker 1: There were other bombs mail to mayors and senators and
Speaker 1: business leaders. So there was a real sort of anarchist
Speaker 1: you know, mail bombing, cookbook thing happening. Yeah, cookbook going on.
Speaker 1: But the response was the Palmer Raids, which was just
Speaker 1: a nightmare of an operation. It was really kind of
Speaker 1: an unconstitutional disaster where like you said, a lot of
Speaker 1: these high profile deportations like straight to Russia when many
Speaker 1: of these people are just like, didn't even know what
Speaker 1: they were talking about, Right, I.
Speaker 2: Make bagels, leave me alone kind of thing, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think his list was four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand long, and like, how many real leftist
Speaker 1: radicals were there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly right, And there were also tons of cases
Speaker 2: of mistaken identity. Like it was a catastrophe. They the
Speaker 2: Palmer Raids so ran a foul of civil liberties. They
Speaker 2: actually created things like the ACLU and other civil liberties
Speaker 2: groups to defend against stuff like that ever happening again.
Speaker 2: But what's miraculous is that the head of all this,
Speaker 2: the guy who was in charge of actually executing the
Speaker 2: Palmer Raids, was Jagger Hoover, and he survived politically and
Speaker 2: went on to actually step upward from that point on.
Speaker 2: Some people are like, you need to keep that guy
Speaker 2: away from the levers of power, yeah, because of what
Speaker 2: he just did. And other people are like, I don't
Speaker 2: like the cut of that guy's jib. Yeah, I think,
Speaker 2: And the people who liked the cut of his jib
Speaker 2: they won out.
Speaker 1: I did say, that's a good cliffhanger, But you made
Speaker 1: it an even better cliffhanger with that last line. So
Speaker 1: let's come back a and we'll talk about where the
Speaker 1: FBI comes into play. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I can add some more lines if you want me
Speaker 2: to make it even better.
Speaker 1: No, I think you made it just perfect. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: So we promised talk of the FBI. Initially, and we've
Speaker 1: said this on other episodes, it was called the Bureau
Speaker 1: Investigations at first. It was formed in nineteen eight basically
Speaker 1: to say, hey, US Attorney General, you need some teeth,
Speaker 1: here's your own law enforcement organization. Became the FBI in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five, and early on was kind of interested
Speaker 1: in corporate criminals, radicalism and a real kind of from
Speaker 1: the beginning, a real crackdown and obsession with sex work.
Speaker 1: Yeah the man act, right, Yeah, big deal. And it
Speaker 1: was also very corrupt and didn't have the best reputation
Speaker 1: until Coolidge came along in nineteen twenty four and hired
Speaker 1: a guy named Harlan fisk Stone to reform the DOJ
Speaker 1: and kind of just clean house and get the FBI
Speaker 1: in good standing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is amazing that they're like, Hoover, why don't
Speaker 2: you take over? But that's exactly what they did. They
Speaker 2: made him acting director of the Bureau of Investigation starting
Speaker 2: in I think the same year Harlan Stone came in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty four.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, and they got rid of that GID by the.
Speaker 2: Way they did, but it just went away essentially in name,
Speaker 2: not spirit by any measure. And again, just like at
Speaker 2: the GID, Jaeger Hoover said about applying the principles of bureaucracy,
Speaker 2: of organization and of science too. He was a true
Speaker 2: believer in science to this nascent Bureau of Investigation. And
Speaker 2: one of the stunning statistics I ran across that really
Speaker 2: gets across his just how much of an impact he
Speaker 2: had on the FBI when he took it over. Over
Speaker 2: the course of ten years, I think up to nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty six, they amassed a huge collection of fingerprints, like
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand fingerprints, and they had people whose entire
Speaker 2: job it was to go look up the fingerprints and
Speaker 2: bring them for analysis. Right ten years later, in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty six, they had one hundred million sets of fingerprints
Speaker 2: and there was only one hundred and forty million people
Speaker 2: who lived in America at the time.
Speaker 1: That's crazy, man.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow. He also created like a forensic lab. He created
Speaker 1: the FBI Academy, Like he really not only kind of
Speaker 1: brought their reputation back, but like you said, he organized
Speaker 1: them in a way that where they operated like a
Speaker 1: like a like a humming machine.
Speaker 2: Right, and people respected that, they admired it like it
Speaker 2: was you know, it really fit in with FDR's New
Speaker 2: Deal thing of like, hey, your government is big and
Speaker 2: for a reason, like we can do all sorts of
Speaker 2: amazing competent, capable stuff to make the life of the
Speaker 2: average person greater.
Speaker 1: Look at all these fingerprints exactly.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it necessarily fit in with the
Speaker 2: New Deal. But one of the other things that Jaeger
Speaker 2: Hoover did was he instituted this these policies that when
Speaker 2: you put them all together, basically made it required every
Speaker 2: FBI agent to be ned Flanders essentially. And he did
Speaker 2: that because he wanted he wanted his people to seem
Speaker 2: above reproach. Because at the time, the idea of like
Speaker 2: law enforcement was that if they weren't incompetent, then they
Speaker 2: were crooked, or maybe they were both. Like there was
Speaker 2: not like a lot of public regard for law enforcement.
Speaker 2: So he wanted to make sure that his particular agency
Speaker 2: separated itself from that, like put itself head and shoulders,
Speaker 2: you know, like the way that in any movie the
Speaker 2: FBI agents come in and just completely take control of
Speaker 2: like the investigation or the crime scene or whatever. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: that was essentially that came from Hoover, like he created
Speaker 2: this image of the FBI agents is so uber competent
Speaker 2: that no one would would challenge them if they did
Speaker 2: walk into a crime scene and take over.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And if you remember seeing a lot of movies
Speaker 1: that had FBI agents portrayed as like a tall, handsome
Speaker 1: white guys, is because FBI agents were largely almost roundly
Speaker 1: tall handsome white guys. He hired a lot of his
Speaker 1: again with the cronyism, a lot of his alums from GW,
Speaker 1: a lot of Ka's. He kept the FBI from bringing
Speaker 1: a class of civil service, so he didn't have you know,
Speaker 1: he could basically flo out any rules that would have
Speaker 1: forced him to have like a to look at any
Speaker 1: kind of diverse applicant. So he wanted white men that
Speaker 1: were good looking. Again as a pr move, it was,
Speaker 1: it was a popular thing at the time. Ironically, in
Speaker 1: the forties, Ebony magazine did a feature on like black
Speaker 1: employees of the FBI, and Hoover even helped them with
Speaker 1: this because it was a pr thing. But they were
Speaker 1: all valets. None of them were agents because there were
Speaker 1: no black agents, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like you said, the way he got around
Speaker 2: that was to accept the FBI from civil service. And
Speaker 2: I was like, how did he do that? And how
Speaker 2: did he get away with that? And there's something called
Speaker 2: accepted service, and it's where you don't you're not that
Speaker 2: agency is not subject to the same laws and requirements
Speaker 2: as a civil service agency is. But the reason he
Speaker 2: was doing is he was saying, like, some of these
Speaker 2: laws are letting people in government who are just really
Speaker 2: slack keep their jobs, and I can't have that in
Speaker 2: the FBI. I have to have top notch, crack people
Speaker 2: who I'm able to fire if they don't meet our standards.
Speaker 2: I think that's how he was able to get the
Speaker 2: FBI out of civil service classification.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you mentioned ned Flanders. He wanted them to be,
Speaker 1: like you said, sort of beyond reproach and morally upright.
Speaker 1: So he insisted that they not drink alcohol at least
Speaker 1: sort of on the job, like you know, have the
Speaker 1: Martinis at lunch kind of thing. Apparently he was a
Speaker 1: big Martini guy, but as the story goes, only after work,
Speaker 1: only two martinis. And then later in life when he
Speaker 1: was in you know, sort of older and not in
Speaker 1: the best of health, his doctor said he can't drink
Speaker 1: Martini's more. And he was like, well, that's not going
Speaker 1: to happen, and he said, all right, cut down to
Speaker 1: one martini then, and he said sure, And as as
Speaker 1: legend has it, he had his staff by larger Martini
Speaker 1: glasses and then dropped it down to one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was something I saw. There was a Frontline
Speaker 2: episode from years and years ago called the File on
Speaker 2: Jay Edgar Hoover, and a lot of it seems totally
Speaker 2: off the rails and unbelievable for good reason. But some
Speaker 2: of the stuff that he had the FBI staff do
Speaker 2: for him was so above and beyond what any agency
Speaker 2: staff should be doing for the director. Like they replaced
Speaker 2: his grass once because he didn't like the color green,
Speaker 2: sod all, just stuff like that. So I totally believe
Speaker 2: that he had his FBI staff buy bigger Martini glasses
Speaker 2: for his home. That was totally in line with what
Speaker 2: how he treated the Bureau. It was his own kingdom,
Speaker 2: and little by little he made it. So it's not
Speaker 2: like he came into it and somebody handed him the
Speaker 2: keys and said, good luck, go make this agency that's
Speaker 2: so powerful it is essentially a fourth branch of government.
Speaker 2: He built it little by little, bit by bit, dirt
Speaker 2: by dirt, favor by favor, and it became the It
Speaker 2: got to the point fairly quickly where he could do
Speaker 2: stuff like that and no one would say anything about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, all right. So let's go to the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: This was, as Livia called that we love our golden ages,
Speaker 1: and this may have been the golden age of the FBI.
Speaker 1: This is when, through pr and as we'll see through
Speaker 1: movies and television and through sort of him helping to
Speaker 1: control the news machine, the FBI were heroes. They had
Speaker 1: fans like people love these g men. And we'll get
Speaker 1: to that. Well, you might as well say, I think
Speaker 1: g men was supposedly coined by machine gun Kelly, the
Speaker 1: good One, who in nineteen is either one of them
Speaker 1: good all right? In nineteen thirty three, yell, don't shoot
Speaker 1: g men like government men. But he sort of formed
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties, this image that actually, like you know,
Speaker 1: there were little little boys and maybe some girls, but
Speaker 1: definitely little boys running around the schoolyard like playing g men.
Speaker 1: They wanted to be g men. They were sort of
Speaker 1: superstars because they would bust high profile bank robbers. And
Speaker 1: he just you know, he jumped in on the Lindberg
Speaker 1: baby kidnapping, which you know, horrified a nation. He apparently
Speaker 1: didn't have any legal jurisdiction. But like you said, Jay
Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover walks onto the scene, is like, we're taking
Speaker 1: over now, and no one's going to stand in his way.
Speaker 2: No, not at all. But and in doing those kind
Speaker 2: of things, he just built the reputation for the FBI
Speaker 2: by leaps and bounds. One of the things that he
Speaker 2: did that was so masterful in taking on the gangsters
Speaker 2: was to not try to dissuade the public from glorifying them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so the gangsters were just amazing folk heroes, but the
Speaker 2: FBI was even greater because they're the ones taking down
Speaker 2: these amazing folk cares. Like that the gangsters are here,
Speaker 2: but man that your average FBI agent is head and
Speaker 2: shoulders above them, because he's gonna get them sooner. Or
Speaker 2: later and probably kill him in a shootout in front
Speaker 2: of a house or a theater or something like that.
Speaker 2: And so he was able to play off of the
Speaker 2: public's fascination with gangsters and use that kind of parlay
Speaker 2: the FBI's reputation above it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is kind of called the public enemy era
Speaker 1: as well, because he would use that term for people
Speaker 1: like John Dillinger. I mean, this guy Dillinger was robbing banks.
Speaker 1: He was a bank robber, but to call someone a
Speaker 1: public enemy like it almost elevated them in his own way,
Speaker 1: to folk hero status, but also like folk villain status,
Speaker 1: I guess is a better way to say it.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, for sure, Like is.
Speaker 1: A bank robber really a public enemy? I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not a great thing to do well.
Speaker 2: Supposedly in nineteen thirty three thirty four, there was a
Speaker 2: massive crime wave and there were a lot of murders
Speaker 2: going on. People were like gangsters were shooting each other
Speaker 2: in the streets over turf like it was yeh shots. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so yeah there, I mean, yeah, just a straight up
Speaker 2: bank robber, probably not. But these guys were doing any
Speaker 2: and all crime. They were like criminals of all trades.
Speaker 2: From what I could tell.
Speaker 1: Okay, public enemies in other.
Speaker 2: Words, so yeah, but at the same time, yes, it
Speaker 2: was a huge publicity thing too, this public enemy number one.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, number one was Dillinger, right.
Speaker 2: But there were other public enemies number one, but he
Speaker 2: was the first public enemy number one, I think.
Speaker 1: Oh, so there was number A two. He just kept
Speaker 1: moving the number one mantle around.
Speaker 2: Well, he'd just kill off the numbers. Whoever was below
Speaker 2: them would come up and become number one.
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess that makes sense.
Speaker 2: So one of the ways that he shaped public opinion
Speaker 2: too was directly by working with journalists, by working with
Speaker 2: film and TV producers and writers, and he actually created
Speaker 2: a branch in the FBI called the Crime Records Division,
Speaker 2: which sounds very innocuous, but it turns out that they
Speaker 2: were the ones who were in charge of generating pro
Speaker 2: FBI propaganda and making sure it got out there in
Speaker 2: the media.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean this, this is where it gets truly
Speaker 1: sort of nuts. He had, at one point sort of
Speaker 1: de facto final cut on movies that were being produced.
Speaker 1: He had approval or denial of casting choices, like literally
Speaker 1: he approved Jimmy Stewart, you know, as I can't remember
Speaker 1: what movie it was, even in a movie as like
Speaker 1: the lead in the movie. After like interviewing him, he
Speaker 1: interviewed Jimmy Stewart gave him the job or you know
Speaker 1: him the stamp of approval. It apparently didn't like that
Speaker 1: Jimmy Cagney was portraying gangsters, so he said, you can
Speaker 1: do it as long as you quote get killed in
Speaker 1: the end and make sure that you're dead, because no
Speaker 1: gangsters were supposed to live in any of the movies
Speaker 1: or TV shows. And he even has three writer credits
Speaker 1: and one one acting credit. I think the writing credits
Speaker 1: were generally stuff based on cases that he was involved in,
Speaker 1: so they gave him. He may have insisted on a credit.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but he does have one actor credit.
Speaker 1: He was a narrator on a film called The Next
Speaker 1: of Kin.
Speaker 2: Wow. So was he was deep in yeah, Oh, he
Speaker 2: was deep into everything in anything that was going on
Speaker 2: in American life above or below the boards.
Speaker 1: From what I can tell, yeah, or the line.
Speaker 2: So the gangster Eric kind of went away in the
Speaker 2: mid to late thirties. I mean, there are plenty of
Speaker 2: gangsters still, but there was a there was a changeover.
Speaker 2: It went from like bank robbing, cow murdering bandits like
Speaker 2: John Dillinger, and started to become organized crime, the mafia,
Speaker 2: the mob. And at that point, as it started to
Speaker 2: kind of branch out and become well as lem as
Speaker 2: legitimized as the mafia can be and organized, Jagger Hoover
Speaker 2: stopped paying attention to the gangsters and instead turned his
Speaker 2: attention to political surveillance again instead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think his whole deal. I did a little
Speaker 1: more research into the mafia thing. The mafia was a problem,
Speaker 1: but he didn't see the mafia as a threat to
Speaker 1: the American way of life as he defined it. Communism
Speaker 1: for sure, rabble rousing civil rights leaders for sure, as
Speaker 1: we'll see the gay and lesbian community for sure. All
Speaker 1: of that threatened this sort of idyllic, old fashioned way
Speaker 1: of American life as he saw it. The mafia didn't, necessarily,
Speaker 1: so he was never as concerned with him as he
Speaker 1: probably should have been. He was like, let the cops handle.
Speaker 2: That, so okay, And that totally makes sense, and because
Speaker 2: it's the simplest explanation, it's probably correct. But there is
Speaker 2: such a thread of thought that Jaegar Hoover was either
Speaker 2: compromised and the mafia had him in a compromising position,
Speaker 2: and or he was friends with, if not actual mobsters,
Speaker 2: friends of mobsters, he was in their world him personally.
Speaker 2: Publicly he was the head of the FBI, and he
Speaker 2: carried out all of the crime fighting and leftist rousting
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. But privately, if these even half
Speaker 2: of these stories are to be believed, he was a crook,
Speaker 2: a total crook with a gambling problem, and who was
Speaker 2: in the pocket of the because they had dirt on him.
Speaker 2: I saw another explanation that said, yes, he actually purposely
Speaker 2: ignored the mafia, not because they had like compromising pictures
Speaker 2: of him, but because they were in cahoots with a
Speaker 2: lot of elected officials, and he didn't want to lose
Speaker 2: his position going after the mafia and having them get
Speaker 2: all of their elected official friends turning on him, because
Speaker 2: he didn't know if he could survive that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: That was another explanation I saw. But whatever, whatever the
Speaker 2: interpretation is, historically speaking, he ignored the mafia and actually
Speaker 2: denied for a decade after it was clear there was
Speaker 2: such a thing as a national syndicate of mafioso mafio ci. Yeah, mafios.
Speaker 2: He kept denying it, like actively denying it, and apparently
Speaker 2: moved to kind of thwart some of the federal and
Speaker 2: congressional investigations into the distance of the mafia, like he
Speaker 2: personally was trying to not at least not help, if
Speaker 2: not actively disrupt that. So there's something weird going on.
Speaker 2: Exactly what was behind it, though, well we'll probably never know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's interesting is that when I was reading through
Speaker 1: interviews with different biographers, and you would see too that
Speaker 1: were just so diametrically opposed in what they thought, like, oh,
Speaker 1: and they're all very convinced that they're right. But it
Speaker 1: almost seems like some of these biographies are either written
Speaker 1: by literal fans of his still or then, or people
Speaker 1: that hated him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like if you start looking into like some of
Speaker 2: the more salacious charges about him and like why the
Speaker 2: mafia was allowed to just operate, you mostly have to
Speaker 2: take the word of old mafia guys right, who were
Speaker 2: like there for sure, Like this guy really was the
Speaker 2: right hand man to Mayor Lansky, But can you believe
Speaker 2: him when he sits for an interview talking about how
Speaker 2: Mayor Lansky had pictures that he used to show as
Speaker 2: friends for fun of Jaeger Hoover, you know, having sex
Speaker 2: with his partner, you know, like it's you really kind
Speaker 2: of have to stop and say, where's this, where's this
Speaker 2: source coming from? And what all what acts they have
Speaker 2: to grind?
Speaker 1: So here's what I say, this is, this is going
Speaker 1: so good and it's going long. So why don't we
Speaker 1: take another break, come back and do a little more.
Speaker 1: But let's let's make this a two partner what you
Speaker 1: should should we?
Speaker 2: You just totally sprung this on me out of the blue.
Speaker 2: Let me think about it.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll think about it over the break and we'll
Speaker 1: be right back.
Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, I've decided that is a fine idea.
Speaker 1: So should we chat a little bit. I think you
Speaker 1: sort of teased and then I got us off topic
Speaker 1: about the mafia. You tease a little bit about going
Speaker 1: into sort of the beginnings of the surveillance and working
Speaker 1: tightly with presidents, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I said something like that, but like
Speaker 2: there was at the end of the gangster era. He
Speaker 2: kind of swapped over to from like continuing on with gangsters,
Speaker 2: which would make total sense for the FBI to do
Speaker 2: this to instead turning his attention back to political stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: to disrupting any kind of political thought that goes against
Speaker 2: the American way as envisioned by jaygar Hoover.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And one of the ways he did this was
Speaker 1: by allying himself closely with the presidents. You know, you
Speaker 1: said at the beginning, work for eight different presidents, and
Speaker 1: I think, as it's generally thought that he was super
Speaker 1: tight and kind of close to two of them. Two
Speaker 1: of them didn't like him, and four just sort of
Speaker 1: played ball because they felt like they had to.
Speaker 2: So I can guess Kennedy definitely didn't like him, and
Speaker 2: that was reciprocal. Who was the other one who didn't
Speaker 2: like him?
Speaker 1: I think it was Kennedy and Johnson.
Speaker 2: I thought Johnson loved the guy.
Speaker 1: Well, I know Nixon did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was personally friends with Nixon.
Speaker 1: And I know FDR. I don't know how much he
Speaker 1: liked him. But the fact that they ended up, you know,
Speaker 1: working closely with one another is maybe one of the
Speaker 1: bigger surprises of the episode, because they were pretty diametrically
Speaker 1: opposed as humans go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this is kind of like touching on what
Speaker 2: I was saying before that there were presidents who saw
Speaker 2: him and what he could do as too useful to
Speaker 2: resist exactly. And FDR was like, he had this vision
Speaker 2: for America too, and it was much more inclusive, and
Speaker 2: it cared much more about the average person who didn't
Speaker 2: necessarily think exactly the same way as everybody else. But
Speaker 2: he also didn't want it disrupted by communists or at
Speaker 2: the time Nazis either. Yeah, so he saw it as
Speaker 2: a useful thing to do, like to kind of keep
Speaker 2: tabs on it. And I guess from this idea of
Speaker 2: Jaegar Hoover and presidents working in coots, it seems like
Speaker 2: FDR is the first one that this really begins with.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think in nineteen thirty six, in August that year,
Speaker 1: they met together at the White House and they ginned
Speaker 1: up a plan for surveillance, kind of the first big
Speaker 1: surveillance launch of like you said, people who they thought
Speaker 1: might be communists, people who they thought might be fascist.
Speaker 1: A few years later, Roosevelt was like, Hey, it turns
Speaker 1: out you're pretty good at this surveillance thing and keeping
Speaker 1: secret files, So why don't you why don't we resurrect
Speaker 1: that General Intelligence Intelligence division that was scuttled, And Hoover
Speaker 1: probably laughed and was like, you know, we've still been
Speaker 1: doing it this whole time. We just didn't have a
Speaker 1: formal name.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know if I'll be able to get
Speaker 2: the gang back to.
Speaker 1: But they secretly reformalized at least the gid and Hoover said,
Speaker 1: all right, I appreciate that, and you know what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do for you. I'll just not even at your direction.
Speaker 1: I'll just keep an eye on your political enemies and
Speaker 1: just if I need to let you know anything, I'll
Speaker 1: let you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So supposedly that is one of the ways that
Speaker 2: he kept power. He never blackmailed anybody, but if one
Speaker 2: of his agents came across some juicy tidbit, he would
Speaker 2: he would send them to, you know, say the Senator's
Speaker 2: office and be like, Senator, we were investigate this other thing,
Speaker 2: and this tidbit about you came up, and we really
Speaker 2: thought it was the kind of thing you'd want to know.
Speaker 2: We're keeping a lid on it. Don't worry about it
Speaker 2: what we thought you'd want to know. And now the
Speaker 2: Senator's like, oh my god, this guy knows these The
Speaker 2: FBI knows that I have this. I'm on this committee
Speaker 2: that funds them. I should probably give them whatever they
Speaker 2: want whenever they ask for it. That's apparently how we operate.
Speaker 1: It's very passive, aggressive, strong arming. Yeah, he did have
Speaker 1: a we should mention though since fronam my FDR. He
Speaker 1: had a very famously had a file on Eleanor Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: which a thick one supposedly had nude pictures of Eleanor
Speaker 1: Roosevelt that were given to j Edgar Hoover by W. C. Fields.
Speaker 1: What that's He had a tremendous collection of pornography, right,
Speaker 1: was well known for it, and to j Edgar Hoover
Speaker 1: he would say, well, I've got I got to know
Speaker 1: what's out there in order to fight this stuff everyone
Speaker 1: else Okay, sure, whatever. Yeah, but he supposedly had a
Speaker 1: very large collection of nudes of famous people, Marilyn Monroe's
Speaker 1: among them. But apparently Eleanor Roosevelt was one and old W. C.
Speaker 1: Fields gave it to him. Wow, I don't know how
Speaker 1: he got it.
Speaker 2: I don't either, So okay, Chuck, do you want to
Speaker 2: do you want to put part two here and come
Speaker 2: back and pick up at the beginning of the Cold War,
Speaker 2: because now Jagar Hoover's fighting, you know, communists, but more
Speaker 2: often Nazis. America is entering World War two, and America's
Speaker 2: really cool with the idea of the FBI rooting out Nazis.
Speaker 2: But World War Two came to an end, believe it
Speaker 2: or not, the Nazis went away. Now they needed a
Speaker 2: new enemy to investigate.
Speaker 1: That's right, the Commi's and that seems like a great
Speaker 1: place to stop.
Speaker 2: Yes, so yeah, we'll see you guys in part two.
Speaker 2: And if you want to send us an email in
Speaker 2: the meantime, send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
Speaker 2: dot com.
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