J. EDGAR HOOVER ELICITED OUTRAGE FROM ALMOST EVERYBODY.

HERE’S HOW HE WAS REVIEWED BY SOME OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES:

“He was a master con man, one of the greatest con men the country has ever produced, and that takes intelligence of a certain kind, an astuteness, a shrewdness.”

—Hoover aide William Sullivan

“You don’t fire God.”

—Assistant FBI Director Charles Brennan

“I used to hear how certain senators and congressmen would get caught in cathouses over in Virginia. When the report came in, Hoover would put it in his personal safe. If there was any problem with that senator, Hoover would say, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got those papers right in my safe. You don’t have a thing to worry about.’”

—CIA Director Richard Helms

“If there had been a Mr. Hoover in the first half of the First Century A.D., can you imagine what he would have put into his files about a certain trouble-maker from Nazareth, his moral attitudes, and the people he consorted with?”

—The New York Times, 1970

“J. Edgar Hoover, head of our thought police—a martinet, a preposterous figure, but not funny.”

—Poet Theodore Roethke

“The man who projected himself to the public as a stern moral figure, full of integrity, was a walking myth. It was so carefully crafted that he perhaps came to believe much of it himself, but it was a myth nonetheless.”

—Anthony Summers

“J. Edgar Hoover was one twisted sister.”

—Foreign Policy Advisor to FDR and Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles

“Jesus Christ! That old cocksucker!”

—Richard M. Ȉixon upon learning of the death of J. Edgar Hoover

“America is in the grip of two homosexual lovers, and there’s not a god damn thing I can do about it. He’s got us by the cojones, and he’ll never let go until he kicks the bucket. Tolson is his henchman, his Goebbels. He does all the dirty deeds that that faggot doesn’t want to dirty his hands with. They’ve got enough on me to bring down my presidency.”

—Lyndon B. Johnson to Senator George Smathers

“J. Edgar Hoover’s legend—a plausibly gay man who harassed gays, a possible descendant of an African-American who harassed civil rights leaders, a top law enforcement official who placed himself above the law, all making him out as something approaching a monster—a far cry from the young eager beaver who came to work at the Justice Department in 1917, ready to make a good impression and save the country from subversives.”

—Kenneth D. Ackerman

“J. Edgar Hoover was not interested in just the facts: He collected every rumor, not matter how implausible. Even completely innocent people were afraid of what was in their FBI files—and in Washington, not many people were completely innocent.”

—Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler Magazine

“We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. The FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex life scandals and plain blackmail when they should be catching criminals.”

—Harry S Truman

“President Johnson has declared that he does not intend to replace J. Edgar Hoover. However, Hoover has not disclosed whether he intends to replace Johnson.”

—NBC-TV’s That Was the Week That Was, 1964

“J. Edna is the kind of guy who has to squat to pee. I hear Clyde Tolson is in the hospital. What was it, a hysterectomy? Hoover has gone mad. He’s a fucking cocksucker. Any day now, I expect him to show up at work wearing one of Jackie’s Dior creations.”

—Robert F. Kennedy

Kid Napoleon [J. Edgar Hoover] launched a crusade against pornography and created his Obscene File. Agents around the country sent in stag movies, photographs, books, pamphlets, freehand drawings, comic strips, and playing cards decorated with girlie pictures.”

—David Eisenbach

“J. Edgar Hoover passed along gossip to the President. That practice certainly raised questions in the President’s mind. What did Hoover know about him? In theoretical terms, that put Hoover in the position of a veiled blackmailer.”

—Secretary of State Dean Rusk

“J. Edgar Hoover was like a sewer that collected dirt. I now believe he was the worst public servant in our history”

—Acting Attorney General Laurence Silberman

“Hoover endured too long. He ended his life embittered and isolated, his Bureau a monument to his past—and to his memories of an America that hardly existed outside its walls.”

—Richard Gid Powers