Word: hoovers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Mail Covers. Early last year, the Nixon Administration, too, began to worry that the government was not using its intelligence resources effectively enough. A committee of intelligence experts, assembled by the White House with Hoover as chairman, met for weeks discussing ways of coping with foreign spies, racial unrest, campus disorders and leftists in the antiwar movement. Finally, the committee suggested a sweeping expansion of federal intelligence work. Specifically, the committee urged wider use of wiretapping, inspection of letters-"mail covers" -surreptitious entries and bag jobs. Sullivan sympathized with the committee's objectives. Hoover, although chairman, firmly dissented...
Publicly, the President has had nothing but praise for Hoover; he showed up at an FBI academy graduation last June to say: "The great majority of Americans back Mr. Hoover." Privately, Nixon's men became increasingly critical. In espionage cases, they said, Hoover's FBI, by carrying out fewer bag jobs, failed to supply the raw material that the National Security Agency needed to break codes. "The codes might have been used by the deep-cover 'illegals,' the foreign spies," explained a Justice Department official. "Hoover hasn't caught an illegal in the last...
Correcting the Record. Further, the Administration was irritated by Hoover's attempts to withhold information from the Internal Security Division of the Justice Department. There was also concern that several times his testimony before congressional committees was wrong-although FBI agents were generally allowed to correct the mistakes before they were entered in the record. Mitchell was especially angered by the way in which Hoover endangered the Justice Department's case against the Rev. Philip Berrigan and others charged with conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger, Nixon's foreign-affairs adviser. Hoover insisted on telling a Senate subcommittee...
Last summer, as the Administration's dissatisfaction with Hoover increased, the Justice Department took unprecedented steps to curb the director, who for decades had worked with virtual autonomy. The department's public relations men began editing Hoover-drafted FBI crime reports and news releases. Then Mitchell intervened directly in FBI internal affairs, urging new courses of action and, in some areas, bluntly telling Hoover to change his way of doing things. Hoover accepted the orders, but later fulminated that someone within the FBI was giving the Administration a false picture of his operations. In late July, Hoover dropped...
Blue Gem. A few days later, Hoover ordered Sullivan to take two weeks' leave. Sullivan wrote back that a one-week vacation was all he needed. The memo came back inscribed with what is known in the FBI as a "blue gem"-a handwritten note from the director. (Hoover is the only person in the FBI who uses blue ink, so that his messages are instantly recognizable. Other FBI officials use pencil, in part because if they approve a memo moving up the chain of command and then Hoover inks in his disapproval, they can erase their judgment...