J. Edgar Hoover: Still whitewashed after all these years....

Except one one fleeting note that he wiretapped MLK.. CBS's Sunday Morning just did a lapdance for the meanest crossdresser in American History.

with questions regarding his sexuality. He's still seen as a hero to many. The realization of JEH being gay is too much for some to deal with. Or his relationship with John Wayne for that matter.

There have been stories about both sharing a love of cross-dressing and other things.

stop my imagination, in the name of god, stop.

deliberately dominate that part of the cemetery.

I wonder who our modern day J Edgar is at?

Certainly there must be more than one powerful, well informed, spying, over reaching, government official out there gathering up compromising info on all in powerful positions in our government right this very second!

Or are there other reasons our elected representatives legislate against the vast majority of their constituents?

This is the only reasonable explanation I can come up with for the recent behaviors of Nancy and Harry et al.

Not to mention our current BIGGEST BANK HEIST IN AMERICAN HISTORY!

-90% Jimmy

I can't stand the fact buildings and streets are named after him.

I know he was running domestic intel for the military and that's how he bugged Eleanor Roosevelt's hotel room in the Blackstone in Chicago and that they told her what had happened when she checked out and she raised hell when she got back to DC and FDR ordered that division disbanded.

Some things suggest that FDR was going to fire Hoover's ass.

COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert and often illegal projects conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. The FBI used covert operations from its inception, however formal COINTELPRO operations took place between 1956 and 1971.<2> The FBI motivation at the time was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order."

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ccording to FBI records, 85% of COINTELPRO resources were expended on infiltrating, disrupting, marginalizing, and/or subverting groups suspected of being subversive,<3> such as communist and socialist organizations; the women's rights movement; people suspected of building a "coalition of militant black nationalist groups" ranging from the Black Panther Party and Republic of New Afrika to "those in the non-violent civil rights movement" such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, and other civil rights groups; a broad range of organizations labelled "New Left", including Students for a Democratic Society, the National Lawyers Guild, the Weathermen, almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, and even individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation; and nationalist groups such as those "seeking independence for Puerto Rico." The other 15% of COINTELPRO resources were expended to marginalize and subvert "white hate groups," including the Ku Klux Klan and National States' Rights Party. <4>

The directives governing COINTELPRO were issued by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who ordered FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders.<5><6>


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According to the Church Committee:

While the declared purposes of these programs were to protect the "national security" or prevent violence, Bureau witnesses admit that many of the targets were nonviolent and most had no connections with a foreign power. Indeed, nonviolent organizations and individuals were targeted because the Bureau believed they represented a "potential" for violence -- and nonviolent citizens who were against the war in Vietnam were targeted because they gave "aid and comfort" to violent demonstrators by lending respectability to their cause.

The imprecision of the targeting is demonstrated by the inability of the Bureau to define the subjects of the programs. The Black Nationalist program, according to its supervisor, included "a great number of organizations that you might not today characterize as black nationalist but which were in fact primarily black." Thus, the nonviolent Southern Christian Leadership Conference was labeled as a Black Nationalist-"Hate Group."

Furthermore, the actual targets were chosen from a far broader group than the titles of the programs would imply. The CPUSA program targeted not only Communist Party members but also sponsors of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee and civil rights leaders allegedly under Communist influence or deemed to be not sufficiently "anti-Communist". The Socialist Workers Party program included non-SWP sponsors of antiwar demonstrations which were cosponsored by the SWP or the Young Socialist Alliance, its youth group. The Black Nationalist program targeted a range of organizations from the Panthers to SNCC to the peaceful Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and included every Black Student Union and many other black student groups. New Left targets ranged from the SDS to the InterUniversity Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy, from Antioch College ("vanguard of the New Left") to the New Mexico Free University and other "alternate" schools, and from underground newspapers to students' protesting university censorship of a student publication by carrying signs with four-letter words on them.

Examples of illegal surveillance contained in the Church Committee report:<11>

-- President Roosevelt asked the FBI to put in its files the names of citizens sending telegrams to the White House opposing his "national defense" policy and supporting Col. Charles Lindbergh.

-- President Truman received inside information on a former Roosevelt aide's efforts to influence his appointments, labor union negotiating plans, and the publishing plans of journalists.

-- The Kennedy Administration had the FBI wiretap a Congressional staff member , three executive officials, a lobbyist, and a Washington law firm. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy received the fruits of an FBI "tap" on Martin Luther King, Jr. and a "bug" on a Congressman, both of which yielded information of a political nature.

-- President Johnson asked the FBI to conduct "name checks" of his critics and members of the staff of his 1964 opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater. He also requested purely political intelligence on his critics in the Senate, and received extensive intelligence reports on political activity at the 1964 Democratic Convention from FBI electronic surveillance.

The Cointelpro documents disclose numerous cases of the FBI's intentions to stop the mass protest against the Vietnam War. Many techniques were used to accomplish the assignment. "These included promoting splits among antiwar forces, encouraging red-baiting of socialists, and pushing violent confrontations as an alternative to massive, peaceful demonstrations." One 1966 Cointelpro operation attempted to redirect the Socialist Workers Party from their pledge of support for the antiwar movement.<12>

The FBI claims that it no longer undertakes COINTELPRO or COINTELPRO-like operations. However, critics claim that agency programs in the spirit of COINTELPRO targeted groups like the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador,<13> the American Indian Movement,<2><14> Earth First!<15>, the White Separatist Movement<16>, and the Anti-Globalization Movement.

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"Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operating primarily through secret informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone "bugs", surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous -- and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations -- have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity. Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory and vicious tactics have been employed -- including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials. While the agencies often committed excesses in response to pressure from high officials in the Executive branch and Congress, they also occasionally initiated improper activities and then concealed them from officials whom they had a duty to inform.

Governmental officials -- including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law --have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law.

The Constitutional system of checks and balances has not adequately controlled intelligence activities. Until recently the Executive branch has neither delineated the scope of permissible activities nor established procedures for supervising intelligence agencies. Congress has failed to exercise sufficient oversight, seldom questioning the use to which its appropriations were being put. Most domestic intelligence issues have not reached the courts, and in those cases when they have reached the courts, the judiciary has been reluctant to grapple with them."<[br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cointelpro#History

Most of the information I cite is from the 'Church Committee' which wiki descrbes here. A major investigation was launched in 1976 by the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, commonly referred to as the "Church Committee" for its chairman, Senator Frank Church of Idaho

disturbing and particularly American story/phenomenon His carefully constructed and maintained public image of patriotism, puritanism, power and propaganda covering up a vastly different and secret private life, all supported and sustained by vicious blackmail threats and a file on anyone of importance in D.C. and beyond. He maintained power in the inner sanctum of the Beltway for decades and through multiple administrations --- no mean feat.

is how he was able to wield so much power while covering-up the fact that he was a cross-dresser? What could have been more damaging to a political career especially in that time period.