This is Democracy – Episode 224: FBI and J. Edgar Hoover

[00:00:00] Intro: This is Democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

[00:00:22] Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy.

[00:00:27] Jeremi Suri: Today we’re going to discuss the FBI and the role of the FBI in American democracy and the role of fbi, like organizations in democracies around the world. We’re joined by a scholar and friend who is written a fantastic. Big new book on the FBI and j Edgar Hoover in particular. Uh, this is Professor Beverly Gage.

[00:00:48] Jeremi Suri: Uh, she’s a professor at Yale University. Uh, she wrote a wonderful book, uh, a few years ago called The Day Wall Street. Exploded about, uh, terrorism actually in [00:01:00] 1920, uh, around Wall Street and around American politics. It connects to the story of anarchism, the story of financial change in the United States.

[00:01:07] Jeremi Suri: And now she’s written this, uh, wonderful big new book, g. Uh, Jay Edgar Hoover, and the making of the American Century, and I encourage everyone to read it. Uh, it’s filled with so many insights about American history in various periods over the course of the last century. Bev, thanks for

[00:01:24] Beverly Gage: joining us. It’s great to be here for, uh, what I am thinking of as this is not democracy.

[00:01:31] Jeremi Suri: Or this is the challenge to democracy, right? Uh, well, every week we try to deal with different challenges and see some optimistic historical lessons, and I’m sure you’ll have many for us. Before we turn to our discussion with Professor Gage, uh, we have of course, uh, Zachary series scene setting poem. What is your poem titled today, Zack?

[00:01:51] Jeremi Suri: The Secret to Believing? Let’s Hear.

[00:01:54] Zachary Suri: The truth is we are all more dogs than men, and we have all followed indiscretion [00:02:00] through the streets, wagging our tails, and dragging the refuse of belief with us like mud. So it should be no wonder to recognize the same ishness, the same puppy eyed guilt in the faces of all the famous men.

[00:02:16] Zachary Suri: In the portraits there, they have all been fixed. One must instead imagine each face in full, extending undeniably into the dimension of a soul. How then do we reckon with the man who read our mail and listened to you on the telephone as you spoke to me about dying for what you believe? Did he think you were speaking the truth and truly wish to see the world end one big firework, or did he know it was all bluffing and wish only to hear in your voice the kind of idealism that had in him already been shattered?

[00:02:54] Zachary Suri: The secret to believing

[00:02:55] Jeremi Suri: is listen. . Hmm. What is your poem about Zachary?

[00:02:59] Zachary Suri: My [00:03:00] poem is about trying to tackle the moral complexity of a figure like Jagar Hoover, but also of the, the strange nature of listening in on other people’s conversations, especially people who are so, who are so, who are, who are people of such conviction, uh, and, and so dedicated to what they’re doing.

[00:03:15] Zachary Suri: Um, and, and the contrast really between those two, uh, and also the contrast between what we believe and, and how we actually feel.

[00:03:24] Jeremi Suri: Is it strange to you that someone would spend a whole career doing this? It seems

[00:03:28] Zachary Suri: very strange, but then it’s also to, for me at least in some ways, very understandable how someone could be drawn to the, to, to the inner workings, uh, that, that, that no one

[00:03:38] Jeremi Suri: else gets to see.

[00:03:39] Jeremi Suri: Right, right. So, so Bev, what drew you to write a book about someone who does this?

[00:03:44] Beverly Gage: Well, in some way it’s what historians who end up writing about a man like this do as well. Uh, because a lot of what we’re working out of in these documents are, you know, things that the FBI gathered and listened in on. And, uh, it’s one of the [00:04:00] dilemmas of being a historian who, who uses intelligence files and police files is, you know, how much are, are, are you also, um, listening in and in what.

[00:04:09] Beverly Gage: Do you do that effectively, um, or responsibly? Um, which, uh, Jay Edgar Hoover wrestled with a little bit himself, but not in the same ways. What drew me to writing about Hoover were some of the same things that I think you heard reflected in. The poem, um, which is that he is a man of some real contradictions.

[00:04:32] Beverly Gage: And I saw that Hoover was a figure that in our own world, tends to be a kind of one dimensional villain. and in my reading of history, he was actually more complicated and more important than that. And so I thought both cuz there were a lot of great new files that opened up. Um, and because I wanted to tell a big sweeping story about the 20th century, he’d be a good subject, but he was interested.

[00:04:58] Beverly Gage: To me in his own right. And I [00:05:00] thought that he was also really ripe for reinterpretation. Why

[00:05:03] Jeremi Suri: did Young Hoover, and you start the book, of course, with, with Hoover at the beginning of his life and then his early meteor meteoric career rise, um, how did he see the F B I fitting into American democracy?

[00:05:16] Beverly Gage: Well, young Hoover, we really do mean young.

[00:05:19] Beverly Gage: Hoover , right? He was born, uh, in the late 19th century in Washington, DC and he went to work at the Justice Department straight out of law school and then never left, right? Um, so he became head of the Bureau by the time he was 29, and the bureau at that point was not a hugely uh, significant institution, but it had been through some pretty big scandals, surveillance scandal.

[00:05:45] Beverly Gage: During the First World War, um, some even bigger civil liberties scandals during the First Red Scare in 1919 and 1920. And then a series of, you know, kind of classic Harding administration, scandals, poker, [00:06:00] whiskey, , bribery, the whole run of Empo, uh, during exactly, uh, during the, uh, the early twenties. Um, so when he came in, Director at this very young age.

[00:06:12] Beverly Gage: Um, he came in as a reformer, which is not something we really think about with, uh, j Edgar Hoover. And in many ways, as a kind of progressive reformer, as someone who believed in this new vision of. , uh, the democratic state, the liberal state that was going to need a whole new generation and a whole new wing of people who were experts, people who were nonpartisan servants to kind of compliment, uh, the work of democracy, right?

[00:06:42] Beverly Gage: These were some of the big ideas of the progressive era, and, uh, in lots of ways he was kind of a, a true believer in. And, and

[00:06:49] Zachary Suri: in what ways do you think that his career, uh, or, or, or at least, uh, his, his success, if you could call it as, as head of the Bureau, uh, reflects the importance? I [00:07:00] think one in importance that we’ve forgotten or that’s easy to forget in these discussions of institutional knowledge of, of someone who’d been there for so many decades.

[00:07:07] Beverly Gage: That was certainly the big source of his power. Um, for, uh, listeners who are not absolutely familiar with j Edgar Hoover, uh, we mentioned this moment in 1924 that he becomes the head of the Bureau of Investigation and then he just stays in that job for 48 more years, until he dies there in 1972. And so one of the big things that I wanted to figure out was how.

[00:07:37] Beverly Gage: Built that power, um, how he had such longevity. And I think the easy answer, the sort of like popular Hollywood answer, which is that he, you know, strong armed and intimidated everyone, kept files on them. Um, there’s some truth to that, especially in the later years. Uh, but he had this vast array of tools to use everything from, [00:08:00] uh, who he hired at the bureau.

[00:08:02] Beverly Gage: A lot like him who are very loyal to him, to how he constructed the bureaucracy, to how he built a popular constituency, how he ran public relations, how he managed, uh, his relationships with Congress and with the president. I mean, there’s a whole ray of other things that were really, uh, critical to his ability to, to stay that long and to build this massive and powerful institution essentially.

[00:08:27] Beverly Gage: You know, in his own image. I think

[00:08:28] Jeremi Suri: that’s a real contribution in the book because the stereotype is yes, that he had secrets on powerful people and he blackmailed them. And there was some of that. But you show in a lot of detail, uh, how he mastered the institution and he developed a cadre of loyal followers.

[00:08:45] Jeremi Suri: And in a sense, they were experts, right? They were experts on policing. Just as we develop expertise in. And medicine and in the academic world, he was in essence doing that. You call him a progressive in this sense, right?

[00:08:57] Beverly Gage: Yeah. I think he was a, a progressive in [00:09:00] that sense. He believed in federal power. He believed in things like efficiency and expertise and professionalism and all of these sort of buzzwords of the progressive era and of what we end up really describing as the liberal state, and of course, The, the kind of conundrum of j Edgar Hoover is that he’s this devout conservative at the same time, so on things like race and anti-communism and law and order and religion, he’s this incredibly powerful, outspoken cultural figure.

[00:09:31] Beverly Gage: Uh, he is a hero to American conservatives and he’s kind of building the bureau. In that conservative vision. So sort of the trick of the book is that he’s using the tools of the liberal state to kind of build a, a conservative state while he’s there. Um, and when you say, you know, what was his vision of democracy, on the one hand we have, uh, this expertise administrative state story, and then we of course have a story that’s about.

[00:09:56] Beverly Gage: Democracy being constantly under threat, right? And [00:10:00] j Edgar Hoover being the only one who can save it, uh, from revolutionaries and others, and in fact, uh, violating many, many basic tenets of democracy, um, in order to do it, which is

[00:10:10] Jeremi Suri: a dilemma we’ve talked about over many of our episodes, which is the, the effort to protect democracy.

[00:10:16] Jeremi Suri: But often the mechanisms used undermine the very goal you’re trying to protect. Um, it strikes me that this conservative state building is an important topic for us to spend a little time on. It is a, a discourse, it is a way of talking about things that we don’t expect today. We expect conservatives to be anti-state, but then again, if one thinks about it, if one thinks about Theodore Roosevelt and the other Hoover, Herbert Hoover, and even Robert Taft, and then after World War ii, someone like Robert, Taf, Senator Robert Taf from Ohio, who could have been President of Eisenhower, hadn’t run.

[00:10:47] Jeremi Suri: And for that matter, even Dwight Eisenhower, uh, these are men of very conservative sensibility, it seems to me, but yet they were state builders. They believed in state institutions. Is it fair to put Jay, Edgar Hoover in that category, in that [00:11:00] collection of

[00:11:00] Beverly Gage: individuals? I do think it’s fair. And of course, what distinguishes Hoover from many of those people, uh, is the fact that he wasn’t an elected figure.

[00:11:10] Beverly Gage: Right. So many in, you’ve talked about a, a, a variety of figures there, but I think, you know, what’s really fascinating about Hoover is that he was an appointed official. Um, he built all of this power. Uh, sort of in the administrative wing of the state and that there’s this enormous continuity, um, in what he’s able to do there.

[00:11:31] Beverly Gage: And that, you know, isn’t, uh, as if there are no parallels, there’re figures like, uh, Robert Moses maybe, um Sure. Or Henry Kissinger even. Right. Right, who managed, who managed to do that. But Hoover’s kind of extraordinary for the, uh, the amount of time and, and the amount of power that he amassed in that time.

[00:11:49] Beverly Gage: The argument

[00:11:50] Jeremi Suri: that I think is often made for a Bob Moses or a Henry Kissinger, and it’s a hard argument to make, but the argument that’s often made is that someone needed to do this. Someone needed to create a national [00:12:00] security structure. And you can say that with a heavy German accent or not, right?

[00:12:03] Jeremi Suri: someone needed do it, do it . I’ll avoid it now. I’ll never stop. Then. Uh, someone needed to create a highway. Connected the boroughs in New York. Right. Uh, was Hoover right that we needed a federal police force? Because it strikes me, uh, that one of the challenges the United States faced after the Civil War, something I’ve written a bit about, was that there were very, very few mechanisms by which the federal government could enforce the law.

[00:12:26] Jeremi Suri: And so in a sense, was Hoover addressing that issue? Was he. Well,

[00:12:31] Beverly Gage: the original vision for the Bureau was not exactly law enforcement, it was what it says in the title, which was investigation. Um, and so the idea was that the federal government was getting all sorts of new duties. The Justice Department was getting all sorts of new duties.

[00:12:50] Beverly Gage: It got tired of borrowing people from other departments like the Treasury Department and said, we want our own investigators. Um, and that’s where the Bureau came [00:13:00] from, uh, in the years before Hoover was there. But even in the twenties when he came along, you know, I think he had a very particular vision of a pretty small white collar investigative bureau.

[00:13:12] Beverly Gage: And so, Self was a little surprised by, uh, both the expansion of the bureau and then the particular duties that they, uh, that they came to adopt. And in that sense, right, uh, necessity and crisis became a lot of what, uh, gave him his power. And he’s a funny figure. He had lots of ideas that were. Totally consistent throughout his career, but then he had these moments where he’s able to respond mm-hmm.

[00:13:40] Beverly Gage: and pivot and remake his, uh, bureaucracy starting in, in the thirties in these critical moments. And where does the

[00:13:46] Zachary Suri: villainous image of j Edgar Hoover come from? Where does that sort of looming sense about the fbi? Uh, but also j gr Hoover as an individual. So

[00:13:55] Beverly Gage: there were always some Hoover haters. Uh, they were.

[00:13:58] Beverly Gage: On the [00:14:00] left, uh, because he also hated the left, and particularly people in the orbit of the Communist Party. Um, but one of the amazing things about, uh, doing this research for me was the discovery of just how popular and just how widely supported he was for most of his career. Uh, so in the 1950s, he’s incredibly popular.

[00:14:22] Beverly Gage: Even at the peak of the red scare where I think we might, uh, be much more critical of him, uh, you know, he’s getting these popularity ratings in the seventies and eighties and 90 percentiles, right? I mean, he’s a hugely popular figure all across the political spectrum and so, That really begins to change in the sixties and then into the early seventies, up to the moment of his death.

[00:14:45] Beverly Gage: Um, and again, it’s in the sixties, it’s leftists and liberals who turn on him, uh, largely because of the things that he’s doing to the civil rights movement, his criticisms of the anti-war movement. Um, some knowledge that begins to come out about the. The [00:15:00] details of that. Um, then he died in 72, and in 75 and 76 you get this thing called the church committee, um, which investigated the whole intelligence establishment, including the fbi, exposed many, many misdeeds.

[00:15:14] Beverly Gage: Um, and I think it’s really that moment, uh, that Hoover’s image becomes solidified this moment actually. After he dies, uh, is when he becomes this much more universal villain that we still know today. ,

[00:15:26] Jeremi Suri: one of, one of the points that really came through clearly to me in the book was the way in which the fbi, as we think of it today, is a new deal institution.

[00:15:35] Jeremi Suri: The progressive element is sort of where you start the book, but it seemed to me that the new deal is really the hinge point before the sixties hinge point that you just talked about. Tell us more about, .

[00:15:44] Beverly Gage: Well, that’s absolutely right. Um, the F B I, which had been the Bureau of Investigation, but in 1935 gets this flashy new name is essentially what?

[00:15:55] Beverly Gage: F B I Sounds like It’s a new deal. Alphabet agency. Mm-hmm. . Right. You’ve got all those agencies [00:16:00] with their three letters. The w p A, well, that’s the f. B I, um, and it was a little bit of a surprise to me to see that it really was the kind of great liberal presidents of the 20th century who made Hoover and who made the F B I and the first of them was Franklin Roosevelt.

[00:16:18] Beverly Gage: He. Brought the F B I into federal crime fighting in this dramatic new way. You know, this is when F B I agents start to carry guns in a serious way. Engage in the kind of violent federal law enforcement, you know, go after people like John Dillinger. Um, F d r urges them to then sell their work to the American public.

[00:16:41] Beverly Gage: Uh, and this is when Hoover launches, his PR apparatus becomes a big national celebrity. And at the same time, Franklin Roosevelt is quietly going to j Edgar Hoover and saying, I know that uh, when we went through those reforms a decade ago, we said we shouldn’t do any more political [00:17:00] surveillance. But you know what?

[00:17:01] Beverly Gage: I’m pretty concerned about fascist groups, communist groups in this country, and Edgar, could you quietly go out and start doing all of this surveillance for me? And that’s early on. He’s doing it quietly. Their conversations are really interesting cuz they both agree. Congress doesn’t need to know about this.

[00:17:19] Beverly Gage: The public doesn’t need to know too many of the details. Um, and then of course, the war comes along and, and that does become much more public and much, uh, uh, bigger scale. So

[00:17:30] Jeremi Suri: what do we make of the fact that, as you say, liberal presidents are supporting this, and particularly fdr? I mean, in the sense he’s the inspiration for our podcast, right?

[00:17:40] Jeremi Suri: Our podcast is about how every generation writes a new chapter in our democracy. Building on the prior chapters on the history. So in a sense, we sometimes, and we’ve had some criticism from some listeners for being too pro fdr, . So how do we reconcile the positive side of FDR with what you’re just describing

[00:17:57] Beverly Gage: now?

[00:17:57] Beverly Gage: Well, I don’t think FDR himself [00:18:00] saw any contradiction between these, uh, various uses of power. You know, he was, uh, a, a believer. State power. He was a believer in federal power. Um, he thought he was engaged in a righteous cause. Um, he was not much of a civil libertarian, as it turns out, at least behind the scenes.

[00:18:23] Beverly Gage: Um, but in particular, you know, to the degree that that security is kind of the watchword and the buzzword of, uh, of the new deal, you know, FDR is engaged. Uh, trying to bring social Security to the nation. He ultimately, you know, uh, is engaged in trying to bring national security, right? That becomes a really important term.

[00:18:47] Beverly Gage: And he’s also engaged in the use of the federal government to give people security from crime and from concerns about violence in their own communities. And so there’s no. [00:19:00] To me, uh, that FDR saw these as contradictory, and I think that we ourselves, as historians probably want to think more about the intersections between the social welfare state and, and the security state, which are being built together by the same people.

[00:19:15] Beverly Gage: at the same time. We’ve seen people talking about that with race and policing in the Johnson administration, but we’ve seen a little bit less of that

[00:19:23] Jeremi Suri: agree conversation. I agree. I agree. It’s a really important point and in some ways it, you know, it reinforces that for fdr, the fourth of the four freedoms, freedom from fear might have been the one he emphasized most.

[00:19:34] Jeremi Suri: If you think about the Manhattan Project, if you think about the fbi, the oss, which was our overseas predecessor to the cia, um, does this change the way you think about the new.

[00:19:45] Beverly Gage: I think it does in the sense that, uh, it brings these security questions sort of front and center and not just when the war comes along, right?

[00:19:55] Beverly Gage: So you weren’t gonna fight the second World War without a domestic intelligence [00:20:00] service and without a global intelligence service, you just weren’t going to do that. Um, but uh, but the process starts a lot earlier. One of the most fascinating moments for me is actually. Um, the period between 1939 and, uh, Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941, uh, which is of course a period when the second World War is raging in Europe.

[00:20:24] Beverly Gage: Uh, but when the United States is not formally in the war, but you can see a. All of this institution building going on. In fact, it’s when the F B I does its own big ramp up, um, is during that period. And it’s when Hoover really expands his surveillance of the Communist Party, uh, in these years. That then of course extends into the post-war years.

[00:20:47] Beverly Gage: So we’ve talked

[00:20:48] Zachary Suri: about, uh, the FBI and, and j Edgar Hoover, if we can call him an institution, uh, as a New Deal institution, as a World War II institution, but it strikes me that it’s also very much a Cold War [00:21:00] institution as, as you mentioned. To what extent then does the FBI become shaped or, or stuck in this mold of anti-communism?

[00:21:07] Beverly Gage: Well, the book is divided into four different parts. The first part is, you know, Hoover coming of age in Washington. The second part is this whole set of institution building decades, the twenties, thirties and forties. Um, and then as the war comes to an end, uh, we get this period where Hoovers. Built his institution, he’s built a lot of his power and now he can kind of do with it what he wants.

[00:21:32] Beverly Gage: And the thing that he wants to do is go after the communists. So again, that’s not a very unusual idea, in the forties and fifties. Um, but Hoover is really out on the cutting edge in, in a couple of ways, and I think is by far one of, uh, the most important figures of the era in thinking. Particularly Cold War domestic politics.

[00:21:56] Beverly Gage: Um, he’s important cause he’s actually [00:22:00] building a very powerful institution around this anti-communist agenda. He’s very powerfully making the case that it’s not just about Soviet espionage or about the Communist Party itself, though he’s very engaged in those things, but that it is this massive sort of existential struggle that is going to penetra.

[00:22:22] Beverly Gage: Every part of American Life. So he is going around, you know, giving speeches about sending your kids to Sunday school, uh, giving speeches about, you know, why various forms of. , uh, kind of, uh, liberal and left organizing that are not communist in any way, but are in the orbit. And he thinks, you know, liberals and progressives are often the dupes of the communist.

[00:22:47] Beverly Gage: And actually sometimes he was right about that. But, uh, he has this very expansive vision, um, and he’s there before a. Joe McCarthy. He’s there during a figure like Joe McCarthy and he’s there for [00:23:00] many years after McCarthy. And so I think it’s really the forties and fifties, the red scare where he is running his own agenda, uh, where he’s really at the peak of his power and at the peak of his, uh, Popularity Bev,

[00:23:13] as

[00:23:13] Jeremi Suri: you know so well.

[00:23:14] Jeremi Suri: Uh, much of the scholarship in recent years has focused on the ways in which, uh, the Cold War period that you just described so brilliantly, the ways in which it narrowed the range of possible or acceptable behaviors in American society around questions of race. We see a hardening of Jim Crow in many respects in the 1940s and fifties around economic.

[00:23:37] Jeremi Suri: Alternatives. We see a hardening against social democracy in many circles, and of course around sexuality as well. Yet. Uh, Jay Edgar Hoover had a certainly non-traditional relationship with his lifelong partner. Could you tell us more about that? And also how did he manage to promote social traditionalism and yet at the same time act in such a [00:24:00] different.

[00:24:00] Beverly Gage: Well, non-traditional is a good word and I will embrace that. Um, of course, Hoover’s life partner was also his number two man at the F B I. Um, and that is, uh, a man named Clyde Tolson. And their relationship was really fascinating for me to explore as a historian because on the one hand they have a very, very public and open not only professional partnership.

[00:24:30] Beverly Gage: Social partnership. I mean, they travel together. They have all their meals together. It’s widely accepted everywhere that they are, um, in government, in Washington, in New York, in California, right. Their favorite places to go, uh, that you’re going to have them together. In fact, when Lyndon Johnson gets j Edgar Hoover, uh, to come to Austin in 1959, uh, it’s not just ho.

[00:24:55] Beverly Gage: It is Hoover and Tolson coming together. And of course that’s how you [00:25:00] would invite Hoover because that’s how he traveled. Um, so they really performed this social partnership for each other. Um, and it was a very intimate partnership. It’s very well documented, it’s very open. And so from newspaper, From, um, all sorts of events.

[00:25:17] Beverly Gage: I was able to reconstruct that in some detail. But of course the challenge is, uh, how did they really feel about each other and were they engaged in, in a sexual relationship? And that’s a little harder to get at. I think we’ll never know the sexual details of their relationship. Just as most biographers don’t know the sexual details, that’s probably good.

[00:25:36] Beverly Gage: But their subjects, yeah, I don’t know. Far down we would want to go on that road anyway. Um, there are, uh, some sources that give us a sense of their intimacy, particularly Hoover’s, uh, private photo albums. Mm-hmm. , and I’ve reproduced in the book a lot of those photos, which they’re wonderful photos in the book.

[00:25:54] Beverly Gage: They really are. Um, you know, it’s the two of them on the beach together, kind of gazing into the camera together and you [00:26:00] can feel a real intimacy there. Um, so that’s, that’s kind of what we can know. But of course, as you say, Then that produces all sorts of other contradictions, which is that Hoover is constantly going around lecturing the mothers and fathers of America about how to raise their children, uh, as a childless, quote unquote bachelor, um, as the language of the day, uh, would have framed him.

[00:26:24] Beverly Gage: Um, he’s engaged very actively in the policing. Other people’s sexual lives, and particularly gay people. It was federal policy in the forties, fifties, sixties, that you could not be employed by the federal government if you were gay. Uh, and the f b I engaged in the so-called lavender scale, um, in a very serious way.

[00:26:46] Beverly Gage: And then he’s also sending F B I agents out to, uh, to kind of tamp down rumors of his own homosexuality. And so he’s using the F B I very aggressively in that way. So how do you put all of [00:27:00] those pieces together? Well, I think sometimes you just have to let contradictions, uh, sit where they are. I mean, it’s clear to me that he though he engaged in the lavender scare.

[00:27:10] Beverly Gage: Um, and the F B I, uh, was responsible for, uh, driving many, many people out of government work. Um, he wasn’t, in fact going around making big public speeches on that question in the way that he was, uh, on communism, on crime. Um, and uh, and you can imagine why that would be .

[00:27:28] Jeremi Suri: I, I guess it does raise the question, and this bleeds us into the 1960s also.

[00:27:33] Jeremi Suri: Right? To what extent is this apparatus, when it’s created, does it create its own, uh, imperatives for the person running it where he has to go beyond his own beliefs? I read your chapters, which are very good chapters on the sixties, and the FBI’s efforts, first to call the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-war movement Communist.

[00:27:53] Jeremi Suri: And then to flip on a dime in a sense, when there’s no evidence of the Communist connection to then say it’s some other [00:28:00] kind of conspiracy to undermine government and society. It seems to me they’re looking for a reason to undermine this movement. Just as one might argue that Hoover is looking in other moments for a reason to encourage conservative behaviors, not that he’s necessarily a true believer in that.

[00:28:18] Jeremi Suri: I don’t know if that distinction makes sense to you and how you, how you react to. Well,

[00:28:22] Beverly Gage: I do think of him as a true believer, um, in the things that he believed in. And so, um, there’s certainly moments where he’s using power cynically. Um, he’s a very self-interested person. He doesn’t like criticism. He’s very self-protective, uh, both about his own.

[00:28:40] Beverly Gage: Personal image and about the kind of institutional autonomy of the fbi. And so all of those things are true, but I think Hoover believed his own ideas. Uh, we could describe it in a slightly different way, but I don’t know if you are allowed to use those words on, uh, [00:29:00] podcast . Um, but I, I think that he really, you know, believed in his own righteousness and in some ways that was kind of his.

[00:29:08] Beverly Gage: Uh, his fatal flaw was that he believed so powerfully in his own righteousness, and he had almost total control over this vast, uh, police apparatus that allowed him, uh, to then, uh, carry out his, his own ideas and agenda and

[00:29:26] Jeremi Suri: enforce them. I guess my question to some extent in response to your very thoughtful answer is, you know, to what extent does an organization like this, even if run by someone d.

[00:29:37] Jeremi Suri: Still do a lot of the same.

[00:29:39] Beverly Gage: I think there are certain organizational imperatives, right? So there wasn’t going to be, uh, a second world war without a domestic intelligence agency. And that domestic intelligence agency was gonna be looking at fascist movements. It was gonna be looking at foreign citizens in the united.

[00:29:57] Beverly Gage: States, and it was gonna be looking at the [00:30:00] communists, not least because, you know, the Communist Party in fact had a pretty deep relationship with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had signed a pact, uh, with the Nazis and right. So you’re gonna actually look at these organizations, um, and the same thing with the Red Scare and with, with a lot of later things.

[00:30:18] Beverly Gage: But I do think that Hoover, you know, put his stamp on, uh, on the politics. Um, and I think the fact. Date for so long really, really makes a difference. So if you look at the cia, the CIA is up to all sorts of nonsense during these years. Um, but you don’t have it kind of concentrated in the power of one man.

[00:30:38] Beverly Gage: You just get a bunch of different CIA directors. There’s some institutional continuity, there’s some changes along the way. So it’s, it’s. You know, Hoover’s doing some things that anyone else would’ve done, but he’s doing them in a very particular

[00:30:51] Jeremi Suri: way. , it’s such a, it’s such a revealing contrast because when President Kennedy fires Alan Dus, who had basically directed the [00:31:00] CIA for a decade, one of his concerns is that Alan Du has been there too long, which I think is probably why Kennedy, if he could have removed Hoover if he had lived longer.

[00:31:09] Jeremi Suri: Do you agree?

[00:31:10] Beverly Gage: I think Kennedy didn’t like Hoover for sure. Hoover didn’t like Kennedy. Um, and there was even greater animosity between Robert Kennedy and Hoover. Uh, going both ways, uh, for sure. But you know, it’s not clear that Kennedy ever thought he. Could fire Hoover , right. For a variety of reasons. I mean, this is one case where Hoover knew an awful lot about what John Kennedy was up to in the bedroom.

[00:31:34] Beverly Gage: Um, and so, you know, that is one case where you can see that, uh, that probably was weighing pretty heavily. Uh, but Kennedy also says things like, you know what, Jan Hoover’s just too popular and in particular the Southern Democrats and the conservatives in the Democratic party liked Hoover too much and Kennedy wasn’t gonna, uh, take that.

[00:31:55] Beverly Gage: Um, and the Kennedys actually collaborated with Hoover about a lot of stuff, including, [00:32:00] uh, surveillance of Martin Luther King right. At a time

[00:32:03] Zachary Suri: such as ours when, when the ghost of Jagar Hoover, the ghost of, or, or this fear of institutional power yielded. So personally, and I’m thinking in particular of congressional Republicans today has come out, uh, in such force.

[00:32:15] Zachary Suri: Uh, what are the lessons you draw from, from studying this man so closely and, and the institution? Well,

[00:32:21] Beverly Gage: I think today’s F b I still bears the stamp of Jed Grover in all sorts of ways. I mean, both going back to the thirties, the moment that it’s, it’s essential duties are put in place, right? Law enforcement and intelligence, those are still the two things that it does.

[00:32:36] Beverly Gage: And they sometimes go together really well, sometimes they don’t. Um, and the internal culture, B i On the one hand, I think a real pride and a certain kind of professionalism, expertise, elite status, you know, the stars of law enforcement and on the other hand, a pretty deeply conservative internal culture.

[00:32:55] Beverly Gage: Right. Again, those are, those are, are pretty much what was there in [00:33:00] Hoover’s day, but we have this really interesting reversal. Right, right. Certainly from the end of Hoover’s life. Where Republicans and conservatives have turned on the fbi, and then you have all these like leftists and liberals who are thinking, you know, the FBI is going to save the republic from, uh, the specter of Donald Trump.

[00:33:17] Beverly Gage: So that’s been fascinating to watch. The Republican House has now promised that they are launching a mass. Investigation into the FBI for the first time in, in half a decade. Uh, so what do we learn? Uh, first we learn, don’t make one person head of the FBI for 48 years. Um, I think, you know, Hoover’s career really highlights some of the political dilemmas that the FBI faces now, which is that people expect, uh, these kind of objective, nonpartisan just the facts in the law, ma’am.

[00:33:50] Beverly Gage: Investigations. But in the midst of like all of these political pressures, , right? And just being drawn into the most politicized [00:34:00] investigations you can imagine. And I think there’s no good way, uh, to get around that in some ways actually Hoovers insulated power, um, in the amount of power he had amassed allowed him, uh, to negotiate some of that pretty well in a way that I think, you know, the weaker f FBI.

[00:34:18] Beverly Gage: Formally weaker, um, have some more challenges. Um, and I would say that the last lesson, and maybe the most important one for, for a podcast about democracy is that you can see, uh, the ways in Hoover’s career that certain techniques and methods and ideas that start, you know, aimed at, say, fascists, in the thirties.

[00:34:40] Beverly Gage: And we might all think, yeah, you know, go fbi, do that. Actually then, uh, once you have those methods and those abilities, uh, you end up applying them a a lot more widely. So I think there’s a kind of basic, you know, revisiting of, of civil liberties questions that is always worth returning

[00:34:58] Jeremi Suri: to. So well said.

[00:34:59] Jeremi Suri: Uh, we [00:35:00] always like to close Bev on a question looking forward, and for many of our listeners, we’re hoping that, uh, the historical adventures we go on each week, provide them some optimistic and. , uh, hope going forward. What would you say to our young listeners in particular who are interested in the fbi, interested in, uh, having a democracy with true rule of law, not law and order as it’s often misused, but true rule of law applied equally to all.

[00:35:30] Jeremi Suri: Uh, what, what would you give them as lessons and things they can do to be a part of this story going.

[00:35:35] Beverly Gage: one, I would say defend the Freedom of Information Act. Um, I think one of the big differences between, uh, you know, Hoover’s lifetime and where we are now is this tool that came along in the sixties and seventies that actually allows ordinary citizens.

[00:35:52] Beverly Gage: To access information about what the government is doing. You know, during Hoover’s lifetime, he [00:36:00] assumed that, uh, he could maintain total control over the FBI’s files, that they would never be made public. Um, and of course, once they were made public, It, it created an explosion in his reputation and such.

[00:36:14] Beverly Gage: But, you know, FOIA is, uh, is constantly under threat. Um, it’s really important not just for knowing, uh, about the fbi, but knowing about other things. Um, and the other would be, you know, uh, that a lot of what this book is about is, is a kind of social movement story. Um, it’s about the ways that. B I disrupted social movements, but strangely enough, uh, I think that their, uh, strategies for disruption are also pretty useful for people who are interested in social movements and social change.

[00:36:45] Beverly Gage: So, a, be aware that, uh, some of that might, disruption might still be going on. Uh, but b, you know, look at they said, Things like send in informants and make the meetings really long and boring and make them factionalized [00:37:00] and make them all spread rumors and turn on each other and all the, so there are a bunch of counter lessons in, uh, like how not to destroy your movement, um, that you can find out soon.

[00:37:09] Beverly Gage: That’s so interesting

[00:37:10] Jeremi Suri: in, in Hoover’s story. So be prepared. Right. Be prepared. Understand. Zachary, we’re gonna give you the last word as, as always. Uh, what, what do you think, I mean, does this story of Jay Edgar Hoover a much more complex, a much richer story, and we should say also that Bev’s book draws on Freedom of Information Act requests.

[00:37:29] Jeremi Suri: Thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, right? A few. A

[00:37:32] Beverly Gage: few that I made myself and then. Made by, by many researchers and many government servants over a long period of

[00:37:38] Jeremi Suri: time. So how does this richer history, um, h how does it change the way you think about these issues? And is it useful for you or, or, or how do you think about the F B I Now?

[00:37:48] Jeremi Suri: Can I add one

[00:37:49] Beverly Gage: more? Yes, please. Generationally. Did j Edgar Hoover matter to you? Does he have resonance? Um, so I, I know that you may soon be my student at Yale University, and if you’re [00:38:00] in my classes, I’m constantly haranging my students about j Edgar Hoover. That may reduce a little bit, uh, but I just wonder, you know, yeah.

[00:38:07] Beverly Gage: What, what, whether this is a name that your great question your generation knows and cares about at all.

[00:38:12] Zachary Suri: I think it’s, it’s fascinating the, the, the, the way that your book focuses on, on the personal elements in addition to the policy and, and, and the institutional elements. Because I think, at least for, for someone like me who grew up watching films about this era not experiencing it myself, I, and I, I think that there’s this way in which we approach all of these issues, even these complicated figures that seem so villainous, uh, from a personal perspective, from their personal experiences.

[00:38:38] Zachary Suri: And I think there’s a power in reexamining that institutional. Through a personal lens, particularly as young people who are gonna go out into the workforce and be a, be, be institution builders, uh, or institution records. Uh, and I think that there’s a real lesson from this, uh, in, in, in how you can leverage your own power, but also how, how you can be more aware of your own personal impact on the [00:39:00] institutions, your.

[00:39:00] Zachary Suri: Involved in, but does

[00:39:01] Jeremi Suri: Jay, Edgar Hoover resonate with you, is in your generation? Do you know who he is? Do people of your generation? I don’t think so.

[00:39:07] Zachary Suri: No. if I’m perfectly honest. I mean, he, his story is very much a 20th century story. Um, but I think there’s value in the story, no doubt. Um, and, and I hope more of my peers are aware of who he, of who he is and what he did.

[00:39:22] Jeremi Suri: Ostensibly, most of your peers know about the fbi. They know something about the fbi,

[00:39:26] Zachary Suri: right? Right. Do think that there is this, there is this, uh, sense of the role of the FBI in our political life, uh, particularly, uh, as a generation that came, came of age politically during a, a time when the FBI played a major role in national politics.

[00:39:42] Zachary Suri: Um, and there is this sense that, that the FBI serves both as, as policeman in, in both senses of the term and that he, he, and that the FBI can often. Overstep its bounds and enforce the law to the whims of, of the governor, where, and at the same time, it can [00:40:00] police the, the people who, who, who are at highest risk of

[00:40:03] Jeremi Suri: abusing their power.

[00:40:03] Jeremi Suri: Right, right. Well, and I think one of our recurring themes on the podcast is that institutions have a history Yeah. Just as individuals. And what’s really wonderful about Bev’s book that I recommend to all our listeners is that it does both. It really uses a, a face. Personality, a unique personality, an eccentric personality, to really bring out some of the elements of the institutional growth of the FBI and federal power and the American state as such topics that would otherwise maybe be a little dry become a lot more interesting here.

[00:40:36] Jeremi Suri: So I encourage our listeners to pick up the book. It’s Gman j Edgar Hoover, and the Making of the American Century. Thank you Bev for joining us. Thanks for having me in Austin. Thank you, Zachary, for your poem and thank you most of all to our loyal listeners for joining us for this episode of This Is Democracy.[00:41:00]

[00:41:01] Outro: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts I t s development studio. And the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris Tini. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find this is Democracy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. See you next time.