Word: hoovers
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...EDGAR HOOVER...
Bill & Phil. Hoover briskly traces the story of Communism from its Utopian-socialist antecedents to the present, via the evil trinity of Marx, Engels and Lenin. Along the way, he makes clear that there is really no such thing as "democratic Marxism," and gives a systematic outline of Communist operations, including infiltration, espionage, front organizations, party discipline, party philosophy-the whole weird mixture of pedantry, conspiratorial byplay, childish incantations and deadly fanaticism...
Unfortunately, the accounts of Communists at work leave them strangely faceless and bearing mostly names like Bill and Phil. Hoover makes it plain that he is sensitive to charges of sensationalism that have been made against the FBI. Perhaps on this ground, he omitted all reference to the Hiss case, on which 263 agents of his bureau were engaged, although the chapter on "Espionage and Sabotage" would seem to call for it (Don Whitehead's The FBI Story, which Hoover underwrote, dealt with the case in some detail). Hoover's conclusion is a convincingly humble plea for Americans...
...book is valuable not only for what it says about Communism but for what it says about J. Edgar Hoover, who, he points out himself, has been pictured by the Communists and others as running a kind of Gestapo. Few Americans love a cop (unless he is a badlands sheriff), but this book should make clear that the top federal cop is calm, intelligent, sane, and genuinely concerned that the duties of the FBI never be abused...
...simple, straightforward way, Hoover perhaps gives more true answers to the "problem of Communism" than many of his more sophisticated critics. His contempt for the addled notion that Communism is essentially a response to economic inequalities is soundly based. As he sees it, there are two faiths at war in the world, and his notion that only a true faith will defeat a false one may be so plain and old-fashioned as to be right...