Word: hoover
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...last week L. Patrick Gray III, the embattled acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was summoned to the White House to discuss the status of President Nixon's controversial move to make him the permanent successor to the late J. Edgar Hoover. After the meeting, Gray returned to FBI headquarters and dispatched a Teletype message to his top officials throughout the nation. Marked "Personal and Confidential," it read in part...
...Senate confirmation hearings for L. Patrick Gray III, President Nixon's choice to succeed J. Edgar Hoover as director of the FBI, assumed new and dark dimensions last week. They not only demonstrated that Gray, the acting director since last May, might well be Nixon's least defensible appointment so far. They also revealed among high officials of the Nixon Administration and the President's re-election committee a disturbing callousness toward the law, toward proper investigative procedure and toward the truth...
Gray defended this practice on the grounds that he was just "part of the chain of command" that leads to the White House. That is an appallingly limited vision of the role of the FBI, which under Hoover had proudly maintained its independence from eight Presidents and served as a nonpartisan investigative agency to aid evenhanded justice. Indeed, the Gray nomination has led some liberals to yearn almost nostalgically for the days of Hoover, despite all their previous complaints about the cantankerous FBI chief...
...certain that if he is approved, any future Democratic Administration would replace him. That would turn the FBI directorship into the kind of political-patronage post that would seriously damage its reputation for impartial law enforcement. The politicization of the FBI is something that J. Edgar Hoover -to his lasting credit-never permitted...
Under questioning, Gray did not convincingly refute the report in TIME a week ago that the FBI, under Hoover and later under himself as acting director, had tapped the phones of six or seven Washington newsmen. He said that he had checked all records of authorized security taps and had found no orders or indications that any such taps had been placed. He also questioned a Justice Department information officer and got a negative response. Asked Senator Edward Kennedy "That is the sole extent of your investigation...