G-man: Hoover and the Making of the American Century - book club review

The Bonnie Lea Book Club met with a full house for Beverly Gage’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, G-man, the Story of J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century. The book was Doug‘s recommendation, so he led our discussion, organized around three topics: First, why did this book win the Pulitzer Prize? Second, let’s talk about the man, Edgar Hoover; and finally, what did the the chronology reveal, from Hoover’s formative years at the dawn of the 20th century, into the tumultuous ‘20s, the depression racked ‘30s, war-torn ‘40s, communist threats of the ‘50s, and massively socially changing ‘60s.

On the Pulitzer topic, it was hard to ignore the level of research and historical detail that Ms. Gage brought to her work. Viewing the 20th century through the life of Hoover created what many of us considered an extraordinary insight into the most important chapters of the century: politics, crime, race, sexuality, morality, communism, and other historical markers. Integrating social threads in a chronological accounting of 70+ years forced the readers to backtrack occasionally; tedious early on, it was an effective method to understand broad trends emerging from specific events, people, and ideas. Jeff felt that the writing was overly critical of the man, but most of us felt that her handling of Hoover’s deficiencies and limitations were well balanced, always thoroughly researched, and mostly evenly depicted. Many of us remembered the Church Commission report, the last official word on Hoover, posthumously but within our lifetimes, a more critical and politically influenced perspective as comparison.

In discussions of the man himself, we highlighted his relationship with his family early in the story. His father, another civil servant from the family, had become mentally unbalanced in his later years, a source of family embarrassment Hoover strived to overcome. His relationship with his mother was fuller, reflecting lifelong love and deep respect. His homosexual orientation was evident relatively early as a cadet at Central, as well as his highly focused, dogged pursuit of high personal standards. He excelled at debating and all academic pursuits. His deep ties to his fraternity, Kappa Alpha, prepared him, and influenced him, as an old school southern government technocrat – including an overtly racist and ‘family’ oriented morality - for most of his career.

His first job out of law school at the Library of Congress taught him the value of collecting, organizing, and learning from large and disparate amounts of information, long before computers did this for us. Hoover’s was the first – and probably the most consequential - foray into federal government controlled data collection in the name of national security. Such collection and coordination barely existed before his tenure, but was a central theme, to be covered further.

From his earliest days running the Bureau of Investigation, Hoover sought to project an image of professionalism, supported by science and statistics, staying above the fray of street level crime. Then Dillinger came along, and the FBI found itself on the streets in gunfights; the Bureau adapted with gun training and other police tactics. He used jurisdictional limitations – “That’s a local police or state police matter,” - to fend off demands on his bureau, ultimately to protect the Bureau’s image. Exceptions were made when political or social expediency demanded, Martin Luther King's murder one powerful example: 'Full force and power...'. Professionalism and adaptation were two central themes throughout the director’s life; these contributed mightily to his ability to stay on as Director through eight presidencies.

It was said that Hoover’s vast data collection skills allowed him to leverage the power inherent in such knowledge, softly but effectively: “Your secret is safe with me.” The federal government had not had any role in collecting crime statistics, but Hoover filled that void, creating a centralized fingerprint database and establishing authority across a suddenly more mobile American society with criminals able to run guns and booze across state lines. He was equally adept at networking with politicians and people from the society pages, and developed relations with select media friends to manage public relations for the Bureau. His influence was nation-bending, but always quiet and understated. Along this discussion line Doug posed the question, did Hoover use the FBI for his own personal influence, or did he suborn his ego to the benefit of the Institution he created? Most of us rejected the binary choice, preferring the idea that he and the institution were too intricately tied, effectively indistinguishable from one another.

The subject of Hoover’s homosexuality was described in a way reflective of the time. Despite certain vulnerabilities to blackmail or social rejection for most homosexuals in that place in history, high society, coworkers, indeed presidents recognized competence, reliability and influence. Most people accepted his relationship with Clyde Tolson without question: Nixon presented Tolson with Hoover’s casket flag at the funeral, a nod of respect for their long-term, committed relationship.

In the third section of the evening, chronological discussions, we covered the formative years, organized crime, the first Red Scare (plus anarchism, two closely tied national threats), and other challenges of the nascent Bureau of Investigation. The 1930s included centralized collection of crime statistics - with Hoover as the primary interpreter and disseminator of the conclusions. FDR blazed a political path not aligned with Hoover’s conservative southern preference, but Hoover remained important, even spying on FDR’s wife Eleanor for the President. The 1940s included cataloging German Americans in the first half of that war-torn decade and infiltrating communist sympathizers in the second half. Decades later his obsessive pursuit of Soviet infiltration of the Manhattan Project and other national secrets was validated under post Soviet glasnost, revealing 30+ agents active in that project. The ‘50’s brought new techniques on infiltration, sabotage, and information warfare to bear against the Communist threat. Distancing himself from the spotlight and Senator Joe McCarthy's approach to challenging communism, Hoover snuffed McCarthyism out with a single public denial.

The 60s were a decade some of us actually remember. One of Geoff’s favorite scenes involved Robert Kennedy, the young, elite northerner, brother to the President, who had installed a buzzer to beckon Hoover, and let his dog defecate in FBI headquarters. RFK’s attempt to end-run Hoover’s influence with a new, separate federal crime division was terminated following a private meeting with RFK‘s older brother, Jack. As the president himself was sleeping with Chicago’s mob boss Tony Giancana’s girlfriend, Hoover was concerned and well aware of Kennedy‘s vulnerabilities.

We discussed the lengthy surveillance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. which revealed a dark side of MLK - and the FBI - that most of us were unaware of. His presence at a rape and other unflattering sexual situations will be more fully revealed when tapes are released in 2027. The tactics learned in subterfuge and infiltration against communists in the '40's and ‘50’s had been honed further against the Ku Klux Klan, then subsequently employed against King. In the book Hoover appeared most concerned with King’s and his organization’s ties to communists, but the Kappa Alpha racial influence emerges between the lines. The so-called 'suicide letter' was a noteworthy example of the dark path good people can take in advancing an ideal. Dostoevsky warned us of humanity’s slippery journey down paths of righteousness in quests of utopian dreams, into ignoring, then justifying, and finally participating in acts of evil. Hoover may not have ventured so far down that path, but the direction was clear, and unsettling.

Hoover‘s personal friendship with LBJ began in their residential neighborhood, bolstered by their mutual benefit of respective power, but strong and enduring in spite of differences on social trends and political direction. This relationship led ultimately to illegal surveillance on LBJ‘s political opponents, a first for Hoover and for the FBI. 'Bureaucratic autonomy', writ large; and 'the ends justify the means', Hoover’s persona begins to lose its clean and shiny sheen. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche again.

In concluding, Doug asked what our overall feelings were about J Edgar Hoover. Author Beverly Gage concluded in her final paragraph of the book, "Hoover does not deserve the honor" {of having the new FBI building in DC named after him}. Here’s where we landed: Great public servant, canny regulator, influencer during a tumultuous century, a stalwart defender American interests. He kept us safer, better than anyone before or after, navigating legal and political guardrails effectively through eight presidencies. Geoff warned against today's popular adjectives ‘imperfect’ and ‘flawed’; reminding all that viewing historical events or people through contemporaneous lenses ignores so much of the rich context of history. 'Complicated', 'effective' and 'human' emerged clearly enough from this excellent biography.

We all found the book well worth its significant effort.