Based on more than 300 interviews and 100,000 pages of previously
classified documents, this enormous, blistering expose seems
hellbent on proving that the legendary FBI director had not feet of
clay, but cloven hoofs. Gentry, coauthor of Helter-Skelter, depicts
a bureaucrat par excellence who over 48 years maintained an empire
through secret files that one anonymous politician called
"political cancer." Hoover's carefully burnished reputation as the
incorruptible defender of the American way of life was largely a
fraud, Gentry argues. Much of this book provides additional
material on how Hoover sought to undermine his long list of
enemies, which included Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, the
Kennedys Emma Goldman, Martin Luther King, Jr., and his most
enduring nemesis, OSS head "wild Bill" Donovan (whom Hoover foiled
in his ambitions to become attorney-general and CIA director). More
important, many revelations here will further tarnish Hoover's
reputation, including how the director suppressed information
unfavorable to the Bureau during the Warren Commission's
investigation of JFK's murder; how he destroyed congressmen and
even Supreme Court Associate Justice Abe Fortas; and how he became
a "petty thief" by misappropriating government funds and concealing
royalties from bestselling books, movies, and the TV-series The
FBI. Unfortunately, unlike Richard Gid Powers's more balanced and
subtle Secrecy and Power (1987), Gentry scarcely acknowledges
Hoover's organizational genius or the middle-class milieu that as
the source of his political and moral conservatism. A revealing and
grimly fascinating political horror tale - which, however, too
frequently caricatures Hoover as a sinister eminence grise rather
than as a 20th-century power broker shaped (or misshaped) by his
late-Victorian upbringing. (Kirkus Reviews)
Shocking, grim, frightening, Curt Gentry s masterful portrait of
America s top policeman is a unique political biography. From more
than 300 interviews and over 100,000 pages of previously classified
documents, Gentry reveals exactly how a paranoid director created
the fraudulent myth of an invincible, incorruptible FBI. For almost
fifty years, Hoover held virtually unchecked public power,
manipulating every president from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard
Nixon. He kept extensive blackmail files and used illegal wiretaps
and hidden microphones to destroy anyone who opposed him. The book
reveals how Hoover helped create McCarthyism, blackmailed the
Kennedy brothers, and influenced the Supreme Court; how he retarded
the civil rights movement and forged connections with mobsters; and
what part he played in the investigations of President John F.
Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. A New York Times bestseller.
"This massive new study promises to be the most extensive and
controversial yet. . . . A chilling look at the darker side of
American politics." Library Journal"
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