J. Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the fifth and final director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) and the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). President Calvin Coolidge first appointed Hoover as director of the BOI, the predecessor to the FBI, in 1924. After 11 years in the post, Hoover became instrumental in founding the FBI in June 1935, where he remained as director for an additional 37 years – serving a total of 48 years leading both the BOI and the FBI under eight presidents. In the years before his death, he was seventy-six and showing his age, napping for hours in his office in the afternoons. He was also showing increasing levels of vitriol and instability, informing the White House, for instance, that the four student demonstrators shot to death by National Guardsmen at Kent State had “invited and got what they deserved.” Upon his passing only then did it come to light that Hoover was a horrible choice as the nations top law enforcement officer. Under his direction, the FBI relentlessly harassed Martin Luther King Jr., which included wiretapping his hotel rooms and sending him an anonymous letter urging him to commit suicide. Hoover viewed King and the civil rights movement as a communist-inspired threat to the social order. Hoover was also known for his personal bigotry. He actively pushed LGBTQ+ individuals out of government service (despite persistent rumors about his own sexuality and close relationship with Deputy Director Clyde Tolson) and initially refused to hire Black agents. And for decades, Hoover publicly denied the existence of the Mafia, likely to avoid diverting FBI resources from his anti-communist crusades or because he lacked the legal tools to effectively combat them until much later in his career.