Word: hoovers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...promoting the civil rights movement, there was no pro-gangster lobby to impede new methods of assault on big bad guys. His own experience as the investigator had given him a taste for gangbusting. To carry it out, Kennedy first had to persuade the FBI that organized crime existed (Hoover had been a doubter). The bureau, long a self-governed island within the department, reluctantly agreed to enlist -though on its own terms. The indictment rate soared, and Hoover was more firmly entrenched than ever...
...domestic intelligence agency of the American government, its economic role as an important aid to the corporate structures which control the nation's marketplace, its social role as a compelling role-model for the traditional American boy-have come about as the result of conscious decisions by J. Edgar Hoover and his superiors in government...
...growth of the Bureau's image is a classic example. Hoover did not win the nation's heart by his silent devotion to duty; rather, he consciously carved out his niche by means of a concentrated campaign of public relations. Most observers of the FBI trace the beginning of the campaign to the Kansas City Massacre of 1933--a cold blooded-shoot-out in which Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd and a group of hoolums attempted to free one of their cohorts who was being taken to prison. Although the plan failed. FBI Special Agents and a local police chief died...
...Hoover was shocked by the flagrant lawlessness of the attack. Criminals like John Dillinger, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, Ma Barker, and Alvin "Old Creepy" Karpis had captured the public imagination; movies and newspaper accounts portrayed them as misguided but romantic outlaws fighting the system which had caused the Depression. Hoover must have felt that an entire generation of American children was threatened by the growth of this myth, and he determined to offer an alternative model: the FBI director and his corps of brave Special Agents...
...Hoover hired a famous Washington newsman--Henry Suydam of the old Brooklyn Eagle--to teach him the skills of public relations and image-making. Within a year he had learned them so well that he was able to dismiss his flack, and carry the Bureau's public relations himself. He has done so with great success ever since...