Word: hooverness
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Last week Hoover's files were made available to the public-in a highly expurgated version. The Department of Justice agreed to release them as a result of a request submitted under the Freedom of Information Act by Morton Halperin, a former National Security Council aide who now heads a Washington project concerned with civil liberties. The FBI insisted on deleting all names and summarizing the reports, which, after all, may be more fiction than fact. The files perhaps tell more about Hoover than anyone else...
...reputed to be a homosexual and to be also having an affair with a woman. There is a report of a phone conversation between the director and Senator Joe McCarthy, who wondered whether somebody about to get an appointment was a homosexual. The folders even deal with allegations that Hoover himself was a homosexual. One three-page file is devoted to an FBI interview of a man claiming to have heard rumors that Hoover was "queer." A 1941 memo lists at least 23 people engaged in a "continuous whispering campaign" against the director...
Heterosexual escapades also intrigued Hoover. One file requires 50 pages to recount the affairs of a member of Congress-name deleted-between 1960 and 1963. Another report indicates that FBI agents stalked a Congressman one night as he "picked up a Negro female at a low-class night spot and tried to take her to a tourist home." On the way, the report continues, he was "followed by two Negro males who assaulted him." There is no indication that the agents tried to stop the assault...
Convention Services. A 1960 memo describes the arrest of four prostitutes who admitted that a name-deleted official procured their services at the Democratic National Convention that year. Hoover made sure his information about the arrest was passed on to the official. Wrote Hoover tersely: "He appreciated receiving allegations...
...files are to Hoover's discredit. There is documentation that he opposed the Huston plan, hatched in the Nixon White House, to engage in illegal entry and surveillance. Hoover was doubtless proud of a 1940 memo telling how U.S. Communist leaders were urging party members not to vote for Republican Candidate Wendell Willkie since Roosevelt's re-election would make it easier to "keep Hoover's hands tied." He also resisted pressure-from undisclosed sources-to conduct a probe of Willkie because "the FBI would be accused of conducting a political investigation...