The F.B.I.'s J. Edgar Hoover

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, in 1924, J. Edgar Hoover took over the directorship of the previously corrupted F.B.I. and transformed the bureau from a small, corrupt, ineffective office to one of the world's most feared and powerful law enforcement agencies. The author points out that, if most Americans in the placid 1950s saw Hoover and the FBI as icons of efficiency and incorruptibility, the turbulent sixties nearly proved its undoing, beginning when possible F.B.I. failures surfaced in the wake of President John Kennedy's assassination and Hoover's responses to Martin Luther King Jr.'s criticism of the F.B.I.'s handling of civil rights matters. The paper states that, in Hoover's wake, directors are now limited to one ten-year term on the job, and the agency apparently has shied away from the political abuses of the past.

From the Paper:

"During the next six years, Hoover systematically continued to hone and refine the BI, conducting a variety of solid if publicity-challenged investigations. The killing of an agent by a suspected car thief in 1929 brought headlines but little real change. The unarmed agent was gunned down when he approached the gun-wielding suspect, but agents would remain unarmed and without the authority to make an arrest - they were investigators, not officers - for several more years.
Hoover's special status was greatly enhanced when he first gained direct access to the president during the administration of his namesake, Herbert Hoover, no relation, between 1929 and 1933."

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