HOOVER, John Edgar (HOO-ver)
Hoover, John Edgar (b. Jan. 1, 1895, Washington, D.C., U.S.—d. May 2, 1972, Washington, D.C., U.S.), first director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, held the post from 1924 until his death, during which time he built and concealed an extensive program of domestic political surveillance later documented as COINTELPRO.
Hoover was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation, the predecessor of the FBI, in 1924, at age 29, and oversaw its reorganization and renaming as the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935. He held the directorship under eight presidents until his death in office in 1972, longer than any director before or since, a tenure long enough that Congress subsequently imposed a ten-year term limit on the position.
Beginning in 1956 and continuing until its official termination in 1971, Hoover directed a set of covert FBI programs collectively codenamed COINTELPRO, targeting domestic political organizations including the Communist Party USA, civil rights organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Black Panther Party, and antiwar groups. Documented tactics included surveillance, infiltration, the planting of false information to discredit targets, and anonymous letters intended to disrupt organizations and personal relationships, most notably a 1964 letter sent to Martin Luther King, Jr., that referenced surveillance recordings and has been read by historians as encouraging King toward suicide.
Hoover additionally maintained confidential files on the private lives of numerous public officials, which have been alleged, though not conclusively documented, to have been used to discourage oversight of the Bureau by successive presidents and members of Congress. The extent of Hoover’s personal life remains a subject of historical claim rather than settled record; assertions regarding it, circulated after his death, have not been substantiated by contemporaneous documentary evidence.
COINTELPRO’s existence and methods were established as a matter of public record following a 1971 burglary of an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, by an activist group that removed and released internal files, and were further detailed by the Senate’s Church Committee investigation in 1975–76. The programs were found by the Church Committee to have violated the constitutional rights of American citizens.
Bibliography:
- United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Final Report. 94th Congress, 2nd session, 1976.
- Gentry, Curt. J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. W.W. Norton, 1991.
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