Speaker 1: Guess what, mango, what's up? Well, so you remember that
Speaker 1: show Rowan and Martin's laughing, right, Yeah, of course, Like
Speaker 1: my sister and I were huge fans because my dad
Speaker 1: had taped some sort of anniversary special for us, so
Speaker 1: we used to watch all the time as kids. It
Speaker 1: had like Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin, Sammy Davis Jr.
Speaker 1: Was on it. It was it was great. It is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing to see some of those old clips. Well,
Speaker 1: in preparation for today's episode, I was reading this twenty
Speaker 1: one page report and this thing was filed by the
Speaker 1: FBI back in nineteen seventy one because apparently they were
Speaker 1: not happy that the show had been making fun of
Speaker 1: their untouchable director, you know, the j Edgar Hoover. And
Speaker 1: I'd actually never looked at this report before, but it's
Speaker 1: actually publicly available online now. And I remember we printed
Speaker 1: a story about this in Mental Flaws a while back.
Speaker 1: You remember this, So I don't remember the Mentalphi story,
Speaker 1: but I do know that the FBI was mad about
Speaker 1: the show's actors pretending that they were like talking to
Speaker 1: Hoover through this bugged potted plant. Yeah, that was one
Speaker 1: of them. And there were a few other sketches, but
Speaker 1: my favorite is how ticked off they got it? What
Speaker 1: now seems like the most harmless joke. In fact, it
Speaker 1: was actually a knock knock joke. Are you ready to
Speaker 1: hear this? I mean, you know I'm always ready for
Speaker 1: a knock knock joke? Great, all right, here goes then
Speaker 1: knock knock? Who's there? Hoover? Hoover? Who Hoover heard of
Speaker 1: a seventy six year old policeman? That's it? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that for some reason has really ticked them off. And
Speaker 1: in the report that's dumb joke, it's referred to as vicious.
Speaker 1: I mean, not only is it like a super mild joke,
Speaker 1: it barely feels like a joke, I know, but the
Speaker 1: fact that it spawned a twenty one page report is
Speaker 1: just baffling. And if there's one thing we know, it's
Speaker 1: that you didn't mess with j Edgar Hoover. So today
Speaker 1: we're going to take a look back at how Hoover
Speaker 1: rose to power, how we managed to expand that power
Speaker 1: over several decades, and what that's meant for our country's
Speaker 1: evolving relationship to the agency. So let's get started, ye AI.
Speaker 1: Their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Speaker 1: Mangesh Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof
Speaker 1: glass showing off his favorite vintage j Edgar Hoover buttons.
Speaker 1: That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Now, I do
Speaker 1: want to be clear these are anti Hoover buttons from
Speaker 1: the look of them. At least you've got what there's
Speaker 1: one that says replaced j Edgar Hoover. He's got another
Speaker 1: one that says j Edgar Hoover is listening to you.
Speaker 1: And I actually can't make out that what you're closer
Speaker 1: to a mango. What does that yellow one say? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it says j Edgar Hoover sleeps with a Nightlight to
Speaker 1: oh Burn, I know it's probably my favorite, but Tristan
Speaker 1: was actually telling me about these earlier, and apparently they're
Speaker 1: all from the Vietnam were era when Hoover's abuses of
Speaker 1: power were first coming to light Well. Sleeps with a
Speaker 1: Nightlight is definitely one of the tamer accusations leveled at
Speaker 1: who were over the years, and after looking into the
Speaker 1: history for today's show, it's easy to understand why he
Speaker 1: remains such a controversial figure even today, from playing fast
Speaker 1: and loose with civil liberties to collecting secret files on
Speaker 1: innocent people. There's no question that Hoover's five decade reign
Speaker 1: as FBI director came with some heavy costs for the
Speaker 1: nation as a whole. Yet at the same time, it's
Speaker 1: also clear that Hoover did a great deal of good
Speaker 1: for his country, particularly during the early years of his tenure,
Speaker 1: when he helped pioneer many new crime fighting measures. They're
Speaker 1: still being used today, and these are things like fingerprint
Speaker 1: files and investing in crime labs. So with that dichonomy
Speaker 1: in mind, we're going to take a closer look at
Speaker 1: the man behind the controversy and try to get a
Speaker 1: better sense of both the good and the bad of
Speaker 1: Hoover's lifelong reign. Yeah, and I think you hit the
Speaker 1: nail on the head when you said lifelong, because you know,
Speaker 1: he became director of the Bureau of Investigation way back
Speaker 1: in four when he was just twenty nine years old,
Speaker 1: and then when the Bureau reorganized and added federal to
Speaker 1: its title, this was a nine five. Hoover stayed on
Speaker 1: as director for an amazing forty eight more years. And
Speaker 1: you know, just to put that run in perspective, keep
Speaker 1: in mind that even with lifetime appointments, the longest serving
Speaker 1: Supreme Court justice only lasted thirty six years. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, when you think about it, that kind of
Speaker 1: career dedication, it did come at a steep price for him,
Speaker 1: because you know, by most historians accounts, the man really
Speaker 1: didn't have much of a private life. He never married
Speaker 1: or had children, didn't have any notable hobbies or pastimes,
Speaker 1: and there aren't many personal stories from his adult years
Speaker 1: to shed life on who he was outside of the office.
Speaker 1: And you know, usually it'd be easy to brush this off.
Speaker 1: It's just saying it's typical for a workaholic. And some
Speaker 1: historians suggest Hoover's lack of a private life was by design, though,
Speaker 1: And I mean, for a guy whose life mission involved
Speaker 1: collecting dirt on anyone and everyone, it does make sense
Speaker 1: that he would have wanted his own life to be
Speaker 1: as dirt free as possible. Right, But of course we
Speaker 1: know that didn't stop people from cooking up all kinds
Speaker 1: of scandals and conspiracy theories about him anyway. And well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll get to those later. For now, I
Speaker 1: do want to go back to Hoover's early years because
Speaker 1: that's really our best chance to get a sense of
Speaker 1: his personal life and who he was. Yeah, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: done with that, but you're probably gonna have to do
Speaker 1: the heavy lifting on this one, because I'm gonna share
Speaker 1: with you the two facts I learned about his early life.
Speaker 1: One he was born in Washington, D c. In eight
Speaker 1: and two he apparently had a bad stutter. That's all
Speaker 1: I got. I hope you've got more than that. It
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like you really tried there. It is a start.
Speaker 1: So Hoover actually grew up just a few blocks from
Speaker 1: Capitol Hill, and he did, to your point, have a
Speaker 1: stuttering problem. You know, he joins this long list of
Speaker 1: famous people who stuttered. His kids, Joe Biden's on this list,
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill, Moses was apparently a stutter. Um Marilyn Monroe
Speaker 1: apparently her her breathy way of talking was just a
Speaker 1: way to slow down her speech, so she didn't stutter.
Speaker 1: But Hoover actually did the opposite. He competentated by talking
Speaker 1: really quickly. Ain't taught himself to talk super fast, and
Speaker 1: in fact, he got so adept at talking that he
Speaker 1: joined the debate team in high school, where he was
Speaker 1: known for spreading and using his cool, relentless logic, which
Speaker 1: I guess sounds impressive until you realize he was arguing
Speaker 1: against stuff like giving women the right to vote. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm curious, though, what about Hoover's home life. Was he
Speaker 1: close with his family or was he always more or
Speaker 1: less aloof Yeah, so, Hoover did have two older siblings,
Speaker 1: He had a brother and a sister, but he was
Speaker 1: probably closest to his mother, and supposedly she was the
Speaker 1: family's moral center and also the main disciplinarian. And given
Speaker 1: those characteristics, I guess it makes sense that JEdgar Hoover
Speaker 1: would have gravitated most to her. I mean, the two
Speaker 1: of them stayed super close all through Hoover's life, and
Speaker 1: they even lived together right up until her death. She
Speaker 1: passed when Hoover was apparently forty three years old. And
Speaker 1: so what about his dad? Well, Hoover's dad was this
Speaker 1: low level government worker, which which is why they lived
Speaker 1: so close to Capitol Hill, And unfortunately, he began to
Speaker 1: suffer from a mental illness when Hoover was young, which
Speaker 1: put a lot of pressure on his son and also
Speaker 1: created something of a riff between them. And as one
Speaker 1: of Hoover's cousins put it, Hoover couldn't really tolerate that fact.
Speaker 1: He couldn't tolerate anything that was imperfect. It's not exactly
Speaker 1: the warmest way to deal with the loved one's illness.
Speaker 1: But all right, So that this, this makes Hoover the
Speaker 1: breadwinner of his family at this point. So does he
Speaker 1: go straight into law enforcement or what does he do next? Now,
Speaker 1: Hoover's first foray into public service was actually as a
Speaker 1: messenger at the Library of Congress. So he took the
Speaker 1: gig in nineteen thirteen when he started attending college as
Speaker 1: a law student. And you know, he's the successful upstart.
Speaker 1: He gradually rose through the ranks over there for the
Speaker 1: next four years. Then, once Hoover passed the bar examp,
Speaker 1: he actually quit the library job, and the very next
Speaker 1: day he took an entry level position as a clerk
Speaker 1: at the Justice Department. But his time working at the
Speaker 1: library deeply influenced Hoover, and, as he later wrote, the
Speaker 1: job trained me on the value of collating material. He
Speaker 1: gave me an excellent foundation for my work in the FBI,
Speaker 1: where it's been necessary to collate information and evidence. Huh.
Speaker 1: You know, I was actually reading about some of the
Speaker 1: innovations Hoover made at the FBI, and one of them
Speaker 1: was actually the addition of cross referencing to the agency's
Speaker 1: filing system, So you can kind of see where he
Speaker 1: got that idea exactly. But as formative as that first
Speaker 1: job was, Hoover really started to come into his own
Speaker 1: at the d o J. And in fact, just two
Speaker 1: years after being hired as a clerk, Hoover had impressed
Speaker 1: his superior so much that he was promoted to head
Speaker 1: of the Bureau of Investigations General Intelligence Division. And at
Speaker 1: this point, the US had entered World War One, so
Speaker 1: Hoover's job was largely to gather intelligence on radical groups
Speaker 1: within the country. All right, So this is the part
Speaker 1: that I feel like we learned about in history class,
Speaker 1: because this this is the red scare that we're talking
Speaker 1: about now, right, Yeah, And and specifically, there was this
Speaker 1: series of anarchist bombings in the US in nine and
Speaker 1: one of them damaged the home of the Attorney General
Speaker 1: at the time, this guy, Mitchell Palmer. So in retaliation,
Speaker 1: Palmer had the General Intelligence Division carry out these raids
Speaker 1: to arrest people suspected of being radicals, and over the
Speaker 1: course of the next two years, these Palmer rays resulted in,
Speaker 1: like the rest of I want to say, thousands of
Speaker 1: cused communists and anarchists, and several hundred of these people
Speaker 1: were actually deported. Now were these raids legal. It sounds
Speaker 1: like Hoover had authorization from his boss to conduct them.
Speaker 1: But but did they have this big stack of search
Speaker 1: warrants or anything like that. No. I mean that the
Speaker 1: raids were definitely illegal, and there were other problems too.
Speaker 1: So for one thing, most of the accused turned out
Speaker 1: to be innocent, and many of the confessions that were
Speaker 1: given were actually highly questionable. They seemed coorced. But luckily
Speaker 1: for Hoover, all of that backlash over this abusive power
Speaker 1: fell on Palmer, who was eventually forced to resign, and
Speaker 1: Hoover meanwhile came away on scathes. But he did learn
Speaker 1: a lesson from this, like he realized from watching the
Speaker 1: fallout that you want to stay on the good side
Speaker 1: of the politically powerful. When it seems like he took
Speaker 1: that lesson to heart, actually read that even though Hoover
Speaker 1: had about six hundred files on U. S. Senators and
Speaker 1: congressmen by the time of his death. The FBI never
Speaker 1: formally investigated or charged a member of Congress while Hoover
Speaker 1: was in charge of it, rather than making enemies or
Speaker 1: drawing attention to himself, who were just quietly collected dirt
Speaker 1: on these guys in case he needed a favor from
Speaker 1: them down the line. But that's not to say that
Speaker 1: Hoover stayed off the public's radar completely. In fact, I'd
Speaker 1: say the other big takeaway he had from the Palmer
Speaker 1: raids was the importance of protecting your agency's image definitely.
Speaker 1: And after Palmer resigned, Whover was quickly promoted to assistant
Speaker 1: director of the Bureau of Investigation and then to director
Speaker 1: just a few years later. And you know, whoever had
Speaker 1: been gunning for this position for a while, and it
Speaker 1: just wasn't what it was cracked up to be at first.
Speaker 1: You know, the main problem was what you just mentioned.
Speaker 1: So the agency was this pr nightmare. It had been
Speaker 1: racked by scandal in recent years. The public didn't actually
Speaker 1: place that much trust in the people working there, and
Speaker 1: in fact, agents weren't even allowed to carry guns or
Speaker 1: make arrest until which really shows you how little trust
Speaker 1: the public had in them. Yeah, and from what I gather,
Speaker 1: Whover really cleaned house when he took over there, Like
Speaker 1: he fired everyone he considered to be political appointees or
Speaker 1: just unqualified for the job. He instituted the strict policy
Speaker 1: of background checks, interviews, physical tests for any new applicants,
Speaker 1: and this kind of rigor was applied to everything, not
Speaker 1: just hiring. There were some pretty weird rules he had
Speaker 1: around there, like, for instance, Hoover even forbade his agents
Speaker 1: from drinking coffee at work after eight fifteen in the morning.
Speaker 1: Wait why, I don't know exactly, but I imagine it
Speaker 1: was some sort of judgment on people needing these stimulants
Speaker 1: that late in the work day after eight fifteen is late.
Speaker 1: I guess weak agents, I guess so. At any rate,
Speaker 1: Hoover whipped the bureau and the shape and Congress began
Speaker 1: to take notice. They increased the agency's funding, which allowed
Speaker 1: Hoover to develop the first crime lab for gathering and
Speaker 1: analyzing evidence. And then, in nineteen thirty five, and pressed
Speaker 1: with what Hoover had accomplished and his time as director,
Speaker 1: Congress decided to make the Bureau of full fledged federal
Speaker 1: agency and keep Hoover as its director. And you know
Speaker 1: now that they're finally allowed to carry guns and make arrest.
Speaker 1: The FBI actually turned its attention from these radical communist
Speaker 1: groups to armed gangsters. So they're going after these folk heros,
Speaker 1: pretty Boy Floyd and baby Face Nelson and this obviously
Speaker 1: helped the agency's public perception when Hoover's cool, collected agents
Speaker 1: started taking down these thugs. Yeah, you know, and Hoover
Speaker 1: and his FBI agents were pretty much rock stars by
Speaker 1: this point. In fact, I saw this old pole from
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six. There were eleven thousand American schoolboys who
Speaker 1: were asked to vote on who they considered the most
Speaker 1: popular man in the country. And this is just mind
Speaker 1: boggling to me. So the president at the time was FDR.
Speaker 1: He managed to land and I think it was like
Speaker 1: seventh place, but the FBI director he came in second
Speaker 1: second place. I don't even know how many people in
Speaker 1: the US, how many school kids especially could name the
Speaker 1: FBI director at this point. It's just unbelievable. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: super weird, but it does make me wonder who's in
Speaker 1: that top spot. None other than Robert Ripley, you know,
Speaker 1: the creator of Ripley's Believe it or not, I mean
Speaker 1: that feels hard to believe. Well, times have definitely changed,
Speaker 1: but you know, I do want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the FBI's on pre sidented popularity and
Speaker 1: I think it really speaks to Hoover's skills as a
Speaker 1: PR man, which is ultimately what helped his agency weather
Speaker 1: the political storms in the next forty year or so years. Well,
Speaker 1: that sounds good to me, but first we should take
Speaker 1: a quick break. You're listening to part Time Genius and
Speaker 1: we're talking about the life and times of j Edgar Hoover.
Speaker 1: All right, mango, So I want to talk about Hoover's
Speaker 1: mastery of public relations because in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: he was really the first to bring Madison Avenue PR
Speaker 1: techniques to Washington. And to give you an idea of
Speaker 1: what I mean by this, I want to share this
Speaker 1: quote from Mark am Bender, who is the author of
Speaker 1: a book called Deep State Inside the Government Secrecy Industry.
Speaker 1: So am Bender writes, quote, one of Hoover's first orders
Speaker 1: of business after taking the helm at the newly meanted
Speaker 1: FBI was to build an impenetrable shield of public support.
Speaker 1: He knew that such support would be essential to surviving
Speaker 1: the hostile political waters of Washington, but his efforts went
Speaker 1: far beyond a few press releases. He encouraged the creation
Speaker 1: of pulp magazines, bubblegum cards, and comics. Likewise, he worked
Speaker 1: with Hollywood to produce films about gmen like Public Enemies,
Speaker 1: Wife Show Them No Mercy, and the FBI story one film.
Speaker 1: Public Enemy Number One even put Hoover in its ad campaign.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's ridiculous when you think about Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the common image that we have today of FBI special agents,
Speaker 1: you know, you think the dark suits, the neck ties,
Speaker 1: all that actually comes from these efforts, and it's endured
Speaker 1: for you know, you think about it. Now, we're talking
Speaker 1: about eighty years or so, and so it's no wonder
Speaker 1: that all these school boys were looking up to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it is amazing to think what a pr
Speaker 1: genius he was. And I I did read up a
Speaker 1: bit on Hoover's Hollywood connections, and it's crazy to think
Speaker 1: how much sway the studios gave him. He even had
Speaker 1: final say on which actors could be cast. So for
Speaker 1: Public Enemy, whoever interviewed Jimmy Stewart beforehand and then had
Speaker 1: to give his approval before the studio could use them.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's especially funny because apparently Hoover considered the
Speaker 1: movie It's a Wonderful Life to be communist propaganda. I've
Speaker 1: read that before, but it's still just so weird. And
Speaker 1: that was right after the movie was released in ninety
Speaker 1: I mean, that's super strange. And you know, Whover clearly
Speaker 1: like Jimmy Stewart, but the main character in that movie
Speaker 1: is the selfless banker in a small town. It's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine being against it for being communist, right, Well,
Speaker 1: that's true, but the villain of the film, Mr Potter,
Speaker 1: he was also a banker. And apparently that was enough
Speaker 1: for the FBI to conclude that the movie quote deliberately
Speaker 1: maligned the upper class. And it's kind of funny to
Speaker 1: read these quotes at this point. And they must have
Speaker 1: taken this charge pretty seriously too, because in ninety seven,
Speaker 1: the House on American Activities Committee actually held a hearing
Speaker 1: about this and there was a film critic there. His
Speaker 1: name was John Charles Moffatt, and he was trying to
Speaker 1: defend the movie in court. And here's what he said.
Speaker 1: He said, I think Mr. Opper's picture, that it had
Speaker 1: a banker as a villain, could not be properly called
Speaker 1: a communist picture. It showed that the power of money
Speaker 1: can be used oppressively and it can be used benevolently. Now, sadly,
Speaker 1: Moffitt's defense fell on deaf ears because the FBI didn't
Speaker 1: remove the film from its list of suspected propaganda until
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six. I mean, it's crazy to think the
Speaker 1: FBI once blacklisted what's essentially the most wholesome holiday movie
Speaker 1: of all time. I guess that in a way, like
Speaker 1: who never really gave up on that work that he
Speaker 1: did with Palmer, Like he continued monitoring anyone or anything
Speaker 1: they saw his immoral or unpatriotic or suspect in any way,
Speaker 1: especially communist. Well that's true. And actually one high profile
Speaker 1: holdover from those Red Scare days was none other than
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin. Hoover had worried about the British actors rising popularity.
Speaker 1: He even tried to have him deported at one point,
Speaker 1: that he could never make it really stick. Then then
Speaker 1: some thirty odd years later, thirty years later, when Chaplin
Speaker 1: left the country to promote his latest movie. Hoover seized
Speaker 1: his chance and worked quickly with the I N S
Speaker 1: to bar the entertainer from returning to the States. I mean,
Speaker 1: think about that. He was holding this over him, really
Speaker 1: hold a garage clearly. Yeah, and the plan worked too.
Speaker 1: So Chaplin decided to stay in Europe and he didn't
Speaker 1: come back to the U S until it was time.
Speaker 1: I guess this was in I think nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: He came back to pick up an honorary oscar that
Speaker 1: he'd been awarded. I mean, that's just ridiculous. But you know,
Speaker 1: I still think whover strangest target with that old Louis
Speaker 1: Louis song that the King's been popularized in the early sixties,
Speaker 1: And once that song became a hit, all these rumors
Speaker 1: circulated that contained a secret message and had dirty words
Speaker 1: if you played it backwards or at a slower speed.
Speaker 1: And you know that there are tons of rumors like
Speaker 1: this at the time, I mean famously with the Beatles
Speaker 1: and and other bands, but uh, there never seemed to
Speaker 1: be much to them really. Of course, you could never
Speaker 1: convince the FBI of and especially after the entire state
Speaker 1: of Indiana Ben Louis Louis from the radio in nineteen four.
Speaker 1: That's when the FBI launched this massive investigation to determine
Speaker 1: whether or not they were really hidden obscenities buried in
Speaker 1: that song, because you know, if there had been, that
Speaker 1: would have violated this Federal Code against the distribution of
Speaker 1: obscene material toive minors. This is so strange, but I
Speaker 1: will admit I love the idea of Hoover and his
Speaker 1: g men just hunched over these record players like straining
Speaker 1: to find these secret messages, slowing down this stupid song.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm assuming they never found anything, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, of course they didn't, but you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't for lack of trying. Agents actually listened to the
Speaker 1: song at every speed imaginable, and they attended Kingsman shows
Speaker 1: and interviewed the band members and even studied the statements
Speaker 1: of teenagers who claimed to have cracked the song's codes.
Speaker 1: But alas, after an exhaustive thirty months thirty months they
Speaker 1: spent on this for an investigation, the FBI was forced
Speaker 1: to concede it had been a waste of time, and
Speaker 1: that was like a great you some money and records,
Speaker 1: but all they had to show for all their efforts
Speaker 1: was some wildly off based transcriptions, and lucky for you
Speaker 1: and me, those are now declassified documents that anyone can read.
Speaker 1: So really, Yeah, so these are some of the actual
Speaker 1: lyrics from Louis Louis that I'm going to read to you.
Speaker 1: On the ship, I dreamed, she there, I smell the
Speaker 1: rose in her hair. And after thirty months, this is
Speaker 1: what Hoover's agents thought that line was. And on that
Speaker 1: chair I lay her there, I felt my boner in
Speaker 1: her hair. She just made that. Yeah, that's what it
Speaker 1: actually says, is that terrible declassified government documents. I feel
Speaker 1: like it needs to be classified again, I think so.
Speaker 1: I mean I like that they were wildly grasping to
Speaker 1: figure out what this was. That I do guess that
Speaker 1: after listening to the same track for what did you say,
Speaker 1: thirty months? I can imagine that you'd start hearing things
Speaker 1: after that. Yeah. And while we've mostly talked about the
Speaker 1: sillier side of Hoover's paranoia and these surveillance tactics, I
Speaker 1: do want to make sure we talked about the serious
Speaker 1: consequences of these power abuses, because you don't want those
Speaker 1: loss in the shuffle. You know, throughout the fifties and
Speaker 1: the sixties, Hoover's lists of terrorists and spies and communist
Speaker 1: sympathizers was expanded to include anyone who's like an anti
Speaker 1: war protester or civil rights leader or civil rights activist.
Speaker 1: I mean, Hoover saw all these people as subversives, and
Speaker 1: he saw them as a threat to the stability of
Speaker 1: the American government, which is why he resorted to break
Speaker 1: ins and wire taps and legal bugs. It was all
Speaker 1: a means to cripple their influence. Yeah, and Hoover's treatment
Speaker 1: of Martin Luther King Jr. Was especially chilling to me,
Speaker 1: and I actually kind of hate reading about this. But
Speaker 1: Whover suspected him of communist leaning, so he ordered King's
Speaker 1: bedroom bugged, and then he even sent a copy of
Speaker 1: the recordings to King and his wife. But probably the
Speaker 1: worst part of that was the tape was accompanied by
Speaker 1: this anonymous letter that actually encouraged King to bits suicide.
Speaker 1: It says, King, look into your heart. The American people
Speaker 1: would know you for what you are, an evil, abnormal beast.
Speaker 1: There is only one way out for you. You better
Speaker 1: take it before you're filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared
Speaker 1: to the nation. I mean, I don't even know how
Speaker 1: you come up with those kinds of words. It's just
Speaker 1: it's it's terrible. But you know, you figure anonymous or not,
Speaker 1: the King's had to know these tapes were from the FBI,
Speaker 1: and because by this point where it had gotten out
Speaker 1: about Hoover's practices, and I just would think it would
Speaker 1: be fairly easy to guess on this one. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it is funny. You watched like talk shows like The
Speaker 1: View or other things, and and people have such polarized
Speaker 1: opinions of Hoover. You know, some people almost regard him
Speaker 1: as like an ethical and and saint like character. And
Speaker 1: and on the other hand, you hear about these abuses
Speaker 1: to someone like Martin Luther King, and and it's just
Speaker 1: hard to picture this person as anything but gray. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, when you put yourself in Martin Luther King's
Speaker 1: shoes too, it's hard to imagine what it would have
Speaker 1: felt like to have your own country, like your own government,
Speaker 1: gunning for you like that, and you know there's absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing you can do about it, right, It's terrifying. I've
Speaker 1: actually heard that theory that Hoover was worried King might
Speaker 1: go communist. But but there's this biographer, um, this writer
Speaker 1: named Richard Hack who actually subscribed to a totally different theory,
Speaker 1: and he thinks that Hoover felt insulted because King had
Speaker 1: ignored a call from him during the early days of
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights movement. And you know, as we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, UM, Hoover could obviously hold a grudge. But
Speaker 1: according to Hack, quote from that one unanswered phone call,
Speaker 1: for the rest of King's life, he did not have
Speaker 1: a free moment from the specter of j Edgar Hoover. Ever,
Speaker 1: he tapped him, he followed him. In some sense, Hoover
Speaker 1: was jealous of MLK. He had a wife, he had
Speaker 1: a family, he had authority, he had respect, he had everything,
Speaker 1: and Hoover was jealous. I mean, it's an interesting take,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't heard that before. But you know, since
Speaker 1: we're starting to theorize a bit about Hoover's mo motives,
Speaker 1: I feel like we got to keep the ball rolling
Speaker 1: and look at some of the other theories surrounding his
Speaker 1: life and his work. Definitely, and of course there are
Speaker 1: a ton of juicy rumors out there about someone as
Speaker 1: controversial as Hoover, and I bet some folks will be
Speaker 1: shocked to learn just how a few of them really
Speaker 1: hold water. But before we played detective ourselves, we should
Speaker 1: take another quick break, okay, Mango. So earlier we talked
Speaker 1: about how Hoover was able to sort of shape the
Speaker 1: image of the FBI using pop culture and also just
Speaker 1: by virtue of the bureau's more patriotic operations. You think
Speaker 1: about rooting out Communist spies and Nazi saboteurs, for instance,
Speaker 1: But I got the sense while researching that Hoover was
Speaker 1: also a master craftsman of his own image. Did you
Speaker 1: get that feeling too, Yeah, I mean it kind of
Speaker 1: goes back to that idea of who were not having
Speaker 1: a private life, and that was all by design, Like
Speaker 1: he was able to foster this air of mystery for
Speaker 1: himself that really kept people guessing about his true intentions
Speaker 1: and what he might be up to. And this was
Speaker 1: true of both in the office and at home. And
Speaker 1: while that certainly gave him a leg up in this
Speaker 1: political arena where no one was ever truly sure of
Speaker 1: what Hoover might have on them, it also made him
Speaker 1: the target of plenty of samary campaigns and conspiracy theories right,
Speaker 1: and probably the most famous of those is that Jagger
Speaker 1: Hoover was gay, that he liked to dress in women's clothes.
Speaker 1: And at first I thought these rumors caught on only
Speaker 1: after his death, but you can actually see little hints
Speaker 1: of them forming back in the nineteen thirties. For instance,
Speaker 1: there was a magazine article back then that referred to
Speaker 1: Hoover's mincing gait and how it diplomated. A party had
Speaker 1: commented on Hoover's quote conspicuous perfume, and then decades later
Speaker 1: story started to surface about how someone had seen a
Speaker 1: photo of Hoover and an evening gown, or they've been
Speaker 1: invited to a secret party throne and everyone there was
Speaker 1: cross dressing. But none of these claims were ever substantiated,
Speaker 1: and and really a few have even been debunked entirely. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: the most compelling evidence I've seen of Hoover being gay
Speaker 1: was his relationship with Clyde Toulson, who was the second
Speaker 1: in command of the FBI for over forty years, and
Speaker 1: during that time, the pair definitely gave people a lot
Speaker 1: to talk about, like they were both lifelong bachelors. They
Speaker 1: wrote to work and dined together daily, they vacation together.
Speaker 1: They sometimes wore matching suits to the office. Plus when uh,
Speaker 1: when Hoover died, he left most of his estate to Tulson,
Speaker 1: and at his funeral too, it was actually Toulson who
Speaker 1: collected the folded American flag that gets handed out by
Speaker 1: the government. But really that closeness is all there is
Speaker 1: to go on. Like, Hoover and Tolson were the epitome
Speaker 1: of professionalism by all accounts, so if there was anything
Speaker 1: romantic between them, they kept it to themselves. And of
Speaker 1: course there are plenty of historians that point out that
Speaker 1: if the men were actually anything beyond just colleagues, they
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have allowed themselves to be constantly seen together
Speaker 1: in public. Like Hoover was just way too discreet and
Speaker 1: cautious for something like that. You know, it kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of the case you hear about political science
Speaker 1: called non falsifiable hypothesis, which is basically when something is
Speaker 1: impossible to disprove because there isn't any proof for it
Speaker 1: one way or the other, so you just kind of
Speaker 1: went up stuck forever in this state of uncertainty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but more than that, none of it should really matter anyway, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, times have changed so much since Hoover's heyday,
Speaker 1: so you know, of course being gay or or wearing
Speaker 1: women's clothing isn't as scandalous as it might have been
Speaker 1: back then. But even without the moral stigma attached talking
Speaker 1: about whether Hoover was or wasn't these things really just
Speaker 1: distracts from what we know about him for certain, which
Speaker 1: is his work. Like there's so much to talk about
Speaker 1: their well, definitely, and it does seem ironic that so
Speaker 1: many of us are still wrapped up in a guessing
Speaker 1: game about the sexuality of a guy who made his
Speaker 1: name by spreading these unsubstantiated rumors about people. I mean,
Speaker 1: we really can't take him to task for that if
Speaker 1: we wind up doing the same kind of thing to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess that's a good point. I am
Speaker 1: curious that how did Hoover's abuses of hour come out
Speaker 1: in the end, because obviously it wasn't any rumors or
Speaker 1: personal scandals that brought him down, so what was it? Well?
Speaker 1: I was curious about this too, because I've known for
Speaker 1: a while that it was mostly after Hoover's death, that
Speaker 1: a lot of these misdeeds came to light. But what
Speaker 1: I didn't know was that it was actually a group
Speaker 1: of burglars who got the ball rolling on that. And
Speaker 1: that was back in March of nineteen seventy one. This
Speaker 1: was just a little over a year before Hoover actually died. Now,
Speaker 1: these burglars were were a group of peace demonstrators and
Speaker 1: they were hoping to spark a conversation about the FBI's
Speaker 1: un checked surveillance power. And so to do this, they
Speaker 1: decided to break into a small FBI office just outside Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: and they decided to steal as many of Jagger Hoover's
Speaker 1: secrets as they possibly could. I mean, this sounds remarkable, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's stunning that this happened. But how did these people
Speaker 1: pull it off? Well, part of it was that they
Speaker 1: picked the perfect night to pull this heist, because this
Speaker 1: was on March eighth, nineteen seventy one, and this was
Speaker 1: the night of the landmark fight of the century, you know,
Speaker 1: this was between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frasier. So while
Speaker 1: the burglars were busy prying open the door of the
Speaker 1: FBI office and snatching these files inside you had millions
Speaker 1: of Americans just glued to their TV set kind of
Speaker 1: watching these updates on that fifteen round boxing match. That's
Speaker 1: really amazing. And this plan worked, Apparently they did. The
Speaker 1: burglars got away and more than enough evidence with them
Speaker 1: to prove that Hoover had been using the FBI to
Speaker 1: illegally spy on everyone from peace activists to civil rights leaders,
Speaker 1: movie stars, senators, and on and on. But you know,
Speaker 1: not long after the break in, the thieves sent this
Speaker 1: anonymous package to a Washington Post reporter named Betsy Medsker.
Speaker 1: Now inside was a packet of incriminating secret documents, which
Speaker 1: naturally Betty wrote about and published in short order. But
Speaker 1: the best part was that the FBI never managed to
Speaker 1: catch these burglars. Despite Hoover putting more than two hundred
Speaker 1: agents on the case, no arrest were ever made, and
Speaker 1: the case was officially closed in nineteen seventy six, And
Speaker 1: just two years later, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,
Speaker 1: and it made it so that a warrant is needed
Speaker 1: to monitor any private citizen. Well, I am glad that
Speaker 1: something good came from all of this, And still it's
Speaker 1: crazy to me that it took so long for someone
Speaker 1: to finally spill the beans on what who have been
Speaker 1: doing for like fifty years at that point, I mean,
Speaker 1: and all that time, you think that someone would have
Speaker 1: tried to find dirt on him sooner rather than just
Speaker 1: like gossiping that you know, he may or may not
Speaker 1: be gay. Actually, the FBI had been spying on its
Speaker 1: own director for years by that point. There were special
Speaker 1: agents from the Washington Field office of the FBI that
Speaker 1: were regularly assigned to watch Hoover around in secret and
Speaker 1: and even monitor his house at night. And the operation
Speaker 1: had the name who watched which who was appropriate? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it proved less than effective because of course, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this is jed Or Hoover. He caught on
Speaker 1: quickly to the fact that he was being watched. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this just seem that coming right. I don't
Speaker 1: think you can out snoop a professional snooper. But I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's the old thing. That is the old saying.
Speaker 1: We all know that one. But but I am curious,
Speaker 1: when it's all said and done, how do you think
Speaker 1: we should look back on whover? I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty obvious that school kids aren't going to rank him
Speaker 1: as highly as they did in the nineteen thirties, But
Speaker 1: writing off his entire career doesn't seem right either. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean whover his name still adorns the building at
Speaker 1: the FBI headquarters, and I actually think that's a pretty
Speaker 1: apt metaphor for how to approach his legacy in general. Like,
Speaker 1: at one point the name was there as a sign
Speaker 1: of respect and a show of honor, but now people
Speaker 1: actually say it feels more like a warning of what
Speaker 1: not to do. So, even though some members of Congress
Speaker 1: have pushed for the name to be removed, and you know,
Speaker 1: you can definitely understand why that is, there's this case
Speaker 1: for keeping it there as a reminder of both parts
Speaker 1: of his legacy. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: In fact, I read this article by a Hoover biographer
Speaker 1: named Kenneth Ackerman, and he had a similar take to
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here. So here's what he wrote.
Speaker 1: Who relieves a bipolar legacy? For better or worse? He
Speaker 1: built the FBI into a modern national organization, stressing professionalism
Speaker 1: and scientific crime fighting. For most of his life, Americans
Speaker 1: considered him ma hero. He made the g Man brand
Speaker 1: so popular that at its height, it was harder to
Speaker 1: become an FBI agent than to be accepted to an
Speaker 1: Ivy League college. But he also stands as a reminder
Speaker 1: that forty eight years of power concentrated in one person
Speaker 1: is a recipe for abuse. Alright, well, before we close
Speaker 1: the book on the cautionary tail that is j Edgar Hoover,
Speaker 1: I do think we should dish a little more dirt
Speaker 1: on him in today's fact off, although I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that either of us are going to be able to
Speaker 1: top Tristan's bombshell about Hoover's sleeping with a night light.
Speaker 1: But but, but let's give it a shot. So you
Speaker 1: started the show by talking about the FBI's irritation with
Speaker 1: laugh In and how Hoover really didn't seem to have
Speaker 1: a sense of humor. And there's another good story along
Speaker 1: those lines, and it's about Mad Magazine, a magazine both
Speaker 1: of us loved his kids. So apparently there was an
Speaker 1: issue from the mid fifties that are at the Bureau
Speaker 1: because it include the silly game about draft dodging, and
Speaker 1: the idea was that if you did well in the game,
Speaker 1: you were then invited to write a letter directly to
Speaker 1: Hoover requesting a membership card that would classify you as
Speaker 1: a full fledged draft dodger, and agents actually visited the
Speaker 1: Mad offices after this came out in New York City,
Speaker 1: and uh and William Gaines, the publisher and the legendary editor.
Speaker 1: He ended up writing his own letter to the director,
Speaker 1: apologizing and promising never to make fun of Hoover again.
Speaker 1: And you know, of course he couldn't help himself, like
Speaker 1: he broke that promise a few years later when he
Speaker 1: started referring to Hoover as a vacuum cleaner, calling him
Speaker 1: the Honorable j Edgar Electrolux. That's good, all right, well,
Speaker 1: speaking of comedy, of the many, many things Betty White
Speaker 1: has done in her incredible career, one of them was
Speaker 1: playing the role of some of the FBI's most wanted
Speaker 1: in a show that was called This Is Your FBI.
Speaker 1: The show was actually endorsed by Hoover himself, and it
Speaker 1: was really just dramatizations of the actual FBI cases. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if this is on Netflix, but we need
Speaker 1: to look up the role she played back nine. The
Speaker 1: episode was called The Larcenous Bride. I've got to see this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds great. So we've all seen this iconic photo
Speaker 1: of Elvis and Nixon together and Elvis's White House visit,
Speaker 1: But what many people might not remember is that Elvis
Speaker 1: was actually there to petition to become an undercover agent.
Speaker 1: So it all letter to Nixon, Elvis wrote, quote, I've
Speaker 1: done an in depth study of drug abuse and communist
Speaker 1: brainwashing techniques, and I'm right in the middle of the
Speaker 1: whole thing where I can and will do the most good.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just such an outrageous statement. But it's
Speaker 1: also crazy to think that Elvis showed up for this
Speaker 1: like unannounced visit to the White House to see the President,
Speaker 1: and he was carrying two guns at the time, like
Speaker 1: one was for his own protection, the other was this gift,
Speaker 1: I guess for Nixon, And for some reason, the FBI
Speaker 1: was impressed enough that they gave him permits to carry
Speaker 1: a gun in every state. It's even more surprising when
Speaker 1: you consider that the FBI had this file on Elvis
Speaker 1: of several hundred pages. But the incident actually helped to
Speaker 1: fuel the conspiracy theory that Elvis isn't dead, he's just
Speaker 1: gone undercover. Yeah, clearly, I mean, I get it, that's
Speaker 1: probably what happened. Well, six hundred pages does seem like
Speaker 1: a big file, but it's actually only a third as
Speaker 1: long as the eighteen hundred page file the FBI had
Speaker 1: on Einstein. I guess his German heritage was always concerning
Speaker 1: to the FBI, and they suspect that he might be
Speaker 1: a German spy. And so when Einstein got involved in
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project, and FBI reports stated in view of
Speaker 1: his radical background, the office would not recommend the employment
Speaker 1: of Dr Einstein on matters of secret nature without a
Speaker 1: very careful investigation, as it seems unlikely that amand of
Speaker 1: his background in such short time became a loyal American citizen.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. I mean, it is entertaining to read through
Speaker 1: the publicly available files and celebrities. And another one was
Speaker 1: the Grateful Dead, which the FBI originally referred to by
Speaker 1: saying it would appear this is a rock group of
Speaker 1: some sort, which I agree with, and later that, uh,
Speaker 1: the LSD originates from Sam Francisco through a renowned rock
Speaker 1: group known as Grateful Dead. But apparently there's no real
Speaker 1: investigation that ever seemed to be carried out. Wow, so
Speaker 1: it all came out of the Grateful Dead all of
Speaker 1: the beginning. Well, one person the FBI probably liked a
Speaker 1: lot was Colonel Sanders. He was a big fan of
Speaker 1: Hoover and even invited him to his birthday party one time. This,
Speaker 1: of course, you can find in Sanders FBI file. But
Speaker 1: unfortunately for the colonel, Hoover declined the invitation. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love to go to that party. Ain't no party
Speaker 1: like a Colonel Sanders party, I feel like I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But there were some artists who were bold enough to
Speaker 1: stand up to Hoover, like John Steinbeck was one. He
Speaker 1: wasn't a fan of being spied on, and in one
Speaker 1: letter to the Attorney General he wrote, do you suppose
Speaker 1: you could ask Edgar's boys to stop stepping on my heels?
Speaker 1: They think I am an enemy alien. It is getting tiresome.
Speaker 1: And you know, Hoover actually responded to this. He he wrote,
Speaker 1: I wish to advise that Steinbeck is not being and
Speaker 1: has never been investigated by the Bureau. And of course
Speaker 1: this didn't stop the FBI from continue to track Steinbeck's
Speaker 1: actions for another fifteen years or so. Wow. You know,
Speaker 1: since Hoover's passing Congress has a ten year limit on
Speaker 1: being FBI director. Now, of course, Hoover served eight different
Speaker 1: presidents and had an insanely long tenure. But even then,
Speaker 1: he shouldn't have been allowed to keep the position for
Speaker 1: so long because the government used to have this mandatory
Speaker 1: retirement age of seventy But then LBJ lifted the restriction,
Speaker 1: you know, just for his pal Hoover. Well, speaking of that,
Speaker 1: did you know Nixon once tried to fire Hoover. This
Speaker 1: was in nineteen seventy one, but he lost his nerve
Speaker 1: during the conversation and he accidentally increased Hoover's powers to
Speaker 1: expand the FBI's powers abroad. Instead. It sounds like a
Speaker 1: failed breakup or thenner or something. But well, here's you
Speaker 1: get engaged. Yes, whoops, all right, well here's what I love.
Speaker 1: Apparently Jagger Hoover made lots of notes in the margins
Speaker 1: of memos. I guess it was kind of his thing.
Speaker 1: And once he was handed a memo with a really
Speaker 1: narrow margin, and he wrote, watched the borders in the side,
Speaker 1: but the age it's who got it totally misunderstood that
Speaker 1: he was talking about the page layout and instead started
Speaker 1: hounding Border Patrol for suspicious activities. That's really funny. I
Speaker 1: love that. And uh, while I normally would say you
Speaker 1: deserve the honor, I'd instead like to give it to
Speaker 1: Undercover Elvis, who's been working so hard on all our
Speaker 1: behalf for so many years now. That just feels appropriate.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Undercover Elvis, and thank you guys for listening.
Speaker 1: If we've forgotten any great facts about Jack or whoever,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. Part Time Genius and
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works dot com. You can always call our
Speaker 1: fact hot line seven Fact Hotline that's one eight four
Speaker 1: four pt Genius, or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: But thanks so much for listening, Thanks again for listening.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do
Speaker 1: the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan
Speaker 1: McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme
Speaker 1: song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland
Speaker 1: does the exact producer thing. Gave Louesier is our lead researcher,
Speaker 1: with support from the research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Speaker 1: Brown and Lucas Adams and Eves. Jeff Cook gets the
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Speaker 1: Jason who