Word: hooverness
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...your May 14 story [on Watergate] you stated: "Angered, Hoover telephoned Kleindienst and threatened to reveal these embarrassing taps...
Without qualification of any kind, I categorically state that no such telephone conversation took place between me and Mr. Hoover. I further categorically state that I have no personal knowledge about such taps...
...startling shifts of viewpoint. Conservative Sage Barry Goldwater produced one of the first surprises when he turned against Richard Nixon and declared that the Watergate mess "smells." Goldwater was wryly saluted by Columnist William Safire, a former Nixon speechwriter, as "the liberals' favorite conservative." Not so. J. Edgar Hoover now looks upright and independent by comparison to L. Patrick Gray III. Even Vice President Agnew inspired the Washington Post to contemplate the prospect of a Nixon retirement and observe that his successor might not be so bad: "Many Democrats [might support] him out of resignation or relief...
...years that he spent building the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover skillfully made it a national monument, seemingly as solid as the Great Pyramid. In the year since Hoover's death, the FBI has been so riven by internal weaknesses and strife as a result of Watergate that it more closely resembles a disintegrating piece of the Dakota Badlands. Several of its top officials intend to retire in the next four weeks. The bureau's vaunted esprit de corps is in tatters, and the morale of its 8,700 agents has been shattered...
...faults, Hoover kept the FBI safe from the quadrennial quakes of partisan politics. He played politics impartially with Republicans and Democrats to maintain the independence of his empire. His agents knew this and realized how much they benefited from it. Those who could not stomach some of Hoover's autocratic actions got out of the FBI-but they did not talk. Only in his final years was there a split in the ranks between pro-Hoover and anti-Hoover factions, and this was scarcely visible from the outside...