Word: hooverness
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...Defense. Gray left the Navy in 1960 and worked in Nixon's presidential campaign against J.F.K., then joined the Administration in 1969 as an executive assistant in HEW. In 1970 he moved to the Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General. Gray, who bears something of a resemblance to Hoover, insisted that his relationship with Nixon-and his mandate as acting director-is strictly nonpolitical...
...Because Hoover was unique-and because the problem of succession has never arisen before-his death posed the most fundamental questions about the nature of the FBI. What is its role in American society? Who should control it? How should its awesome power be checked and balanced...
...violations of federal laws except those assigned to other federal agencies, such as postal cases and narcotics crimes. The bureau has jurisdiction over some 180 investigative matters, including espionage, sabotage, treason, kidnaping, extortion, bank robbery and civil rights, and of course has powers of arrest for violations. As Hoover saw it, "The FBI is strictly a fact-finding agency, responsible in turn to the Attorney General, the President, the Congress and in the last analysis, the American people...
...Hoover exercised a broad and crucial discretion. It is ironic that contrary to the general impression, he often served as a restraining influence in internal-security cases. One of the Nixon Administration's chief complaints about him was that he was not sufficiently aggressive in the use of wiretaps, electronic eavesdropping and the other "dirty tricks" of the trade in cases involving campus disorders, racial unrest and leftists in the antiwar movement. Hoover's standard in such cases was protective of his institution: he hesitated to undertake any investigation that would not be supported by popular opinion...
...first crucial question is how the bureau should be controlled: by a czar like Hoover running a virtually autonomous agency within the Justice Department? Or by a director under closer supervision of the Attorney General? The question is complicated by the fact that the office of Attorney General has recently become an increasingly political appointment (e.g., Robert Kennedy, John Mitchell...