0:25Good evening and welcome to White House History Live.
0:28My name is Dr. Matthew Costello, and I have the privilege of serving as Chief Education Officer and Director of the David and Rubinstein National Center for White House History for the Association.
0:38Before we begin this evening's program, I would like to briefly share more about us and our work.
0:44The White House Historical Association is a non-profit, non-partisan organization with a mission to educate Americans about the history of the Executive Mansion, as well as the people who've lived there and worked there. The Association was founded in 1961, at the request of first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and has worked with every administration since to preserve and protect the White House, its collection, and the history within its walls.
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1:20Tonight's program will feature Dr. Beverly Gage. She is the John Lewis Gaddis Professor of History at Yale University, where she teaches a variety of courses on 20th century America.
1:31Her research focus, more specifically, is on 20th century American politics, government, and social movements.
1:39Tonight we will be discussing her prize-winning book, G-Man, J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.
1:48Welcome, Beverly to White House History Live.
1:51Thanks, it's great to be here.
1:55Now, before we jump in, just a reminder to all watching, if you have any questions for Dr. Gage, please type them in the comment section in the live feed.
2:02We will try to answer as many questions as we can once we finish our conversation.
2:09So, uh, Professor Gage, let's begin with an origins question.
2:14J. Edgar Hoover.
2:16Uh, how did this book come about, uh, what sparked your interest in the man,
2:22and uh, and tell us a little bit about about how this project came together.
2:29The question of why write a biography of J. Edgar Hoover, um, is an excellent one.
2:34and one that I've pondered a great deal.
2:38Sometimes when people ask that question, they mean why would you want to write a biography of this man who kind of has loomed over the 20th century as one of its great villains.
2:46And to me, actually, that was the attraction of writing this. First, I thought that Hoover had become sort of a one-dimensional character in our history.
2:54And I thought that he was actually much more important and interesting than this kind of pure villain narrative might suggest.
3:02Um, he was also there for a really long time, so he was head of the FBI from 1924 to 1972.
3:14So he seemed like a great vehicle to write not only about the FBI, but about these big transformations of American government and politics during those years.
3:22Uh, particularly in in the city of Washington, where he was born and where he died.
3:31Well, and you you touched on this a little bit, uh, this the caricature of Hoover as a villain.
3:40Uh, so I think I'm going to jump ahead a little bit in that question. Um, you made the point that the public, I think generally, uh, regards Hoover as more of a villain.
3:50a bureaucratic tyrant.
3:54However you want to describe him.
3:57But your book provides a much more nuanced portrait of the man.
4:02So where does this popular memory come from and how would you counter that portrayal of Hoover?
4:10Yeah, this is definitely not a redemptive biography of Hoover.
4:14And in fact, I think in some of the worst episodes of his career, the book really goes even even deeper than than we had known.
4:26For instance, um, you know, his uh, attacks on Martin Luther King,
4:32and the FBI's investigation there, some of the details about Cointelpro.
4:39other operations that are really only coming to light now, um, but I did want to do a couple of things.
4:54One of which is make Hoover a an actual human being, which he was, and two was to be fair to him.
5:05Right, and really give a kind of balanced portrait of uh, not only the good and the bad,
5:15but of where he fit into the bigger American political picture.
5:22Um, you asked where our villainous idea of him comes from.
5:27To some degree it was there all along.
5:31There were always Hoover haters.
5:33But, um, it really gained momentum in the 60s and then particularly after his death in the mid-1970s.
5:43Hoover died in May of 1972 and in the years that followed, particularly 1975 and '76,
5:53you have big investigations of the executive branch and of the intelligence community in particular,
6:01uh, through the Church Committee.
6:06And, uh, a lot of what we know about Hoover came out in that moment and of course, you know, for better or worse, he wasn't really there to to defend himself.
6:21Um, so I think he's really been fixed in that moment of the of the 60s and 70s, um, in which he did a lot of truly terrible things.
6:34Mhm.
6:36Well and you mentioned, um, you know, sort of after the fact and learning more about what Hoover did,
6:43uh, his actions, and, you know, you're writing a biography about somebody who served as Director of the FBI for 50 years.
6:52um, almost.
6:5350 years.
6:54So what types of sources did you use and did you encounter any challenges or obstacles?
6:59With using those types of things like government records, government documents.
7:04Yeah, I said the appeal of writing about Hoover.
7:07was that he covers this vast swath of time.
7:12Right, it allows you to get your fingers into a whole range of things from White House history.
7:19Um, on down to, you know, a very intimate kind of grassroots social movement action.
7:25The downside of that is that that's a lot of material.
7:33Um, Hoover, of course, presided over a very big bureaucracy.
7:40He wanted people mostly to write down what they were doing.
7:45And so, you know, in theory, there are millions and millions and millions of pages, um, that one could look at to do a biography like this.
7:57Um, so on the one hand, there's a kind of embarrassment of riches, and you really have to make choices.
8:02I tended to try to find things that were either absolutely essential or really new, um, to build out my portrait.
8:11Um, and then of course, you're dealing with a secretive bureaucracy, so there's a lot of stuff that you want to know that you can't know.
8:25Even in those millions and millions of pages, um, so particularly when it comes to things like informants,
8:35or very sensitive political investigations, um, it's still quite hard to find that information.
8:43Sometimes it's still redacted.
8:46Um, and Hoover was very secretive about his own personal life as well.
8:52Um, and particularly about his sexuality, uh, his relationship with Clyde Tolson,
9:02who was the Associate Director of the FBI, I think like many aspects of Hoover's life.
9:10On the one hand, that was extremely public, and then on the other hand was quite secretive.
9:19So, let's talk a little bit about this portrait and, uh,
9:27the of course, the story begins with Hoover's upbringing.
9:32Uh, you mentioned already, he's born in the nation's capital in Washington, D.C.
9:39Of course, then looks very different from Washington, D.C. today.
9:43Uh, so tell us a little bit about his upbringing and, uh, how does that play a role in shaping who he is and why he decides to go to government service?
9:54This really is a book about Washington.
9:57And it's a book about Washington in two ways, one is the way people often think of Washington, which is as the center of national politics.
10:07Place with their are lots of Presidents and Senators and Congressmen and government officials, etc.
10:13But it's also about Washington as a kind of lived city.
10:18Because Hoover was, um, a Washington native, he came in in uh, he was born in 1895 in Washington.
10:35And was born into a family, which pretty unusually for that time, had already been employed in government service.
10:45In federal service, in particular, for a few generations.
10:48So the Washington of the late 19th century, it's a much smaller city.
10:55The federal government is not anything like the way we think about it today.
11:00But Hoover was born into this tradition of government service and he was kind of raised in it, um, he never lived anywhere else and and he went straight to work for the federal government. So I think that's one aspect of, uh, what's really important about his Washington roots.
11:27And then the other is the fact that Washington.
11:30during these years was essentially, you know, a kind of a small Southern city.
11:33Um, and so Hoover came of age in a Washington that was undergoing racial segregation, um, he went to segregated public schools in Washington.
11:49He went to a segregated, uh, law school at George Washington University.
11:58Um, he joined a fraternity that was very, um, attached to a kind of romantic, lost cause.
12:08Civil war, kind of segregationist, uh, story about itself and about the nation.
12:17And so he's really imbued with that as well, and in a lot of ways that, I think, um, is the political puzzle that the book tries to solve.
12:27How Hoover took kind of this tradition of progressive government service on the one hand and then this kind of deep social conservatism on the other hand.
12:39Really put them together in himself.
12:41But then ultimately, um, in in the FBI.
12:46Yeah, and I also I would just point out the irony of this is that many of these images of J. Edgar Hoover are from the Library of Congress.
12:56Where where he got his start.
12:59So you can find plenty of great images.
13:00on their website.
13:01Um, so
13:02I mean it's
13:03it's
13:03pretty
13:04I mean,
13:04it's
13:04pretty interesting to think about how differently things could have turned out if he had become the head librarian at the Library of Congress.
13:14Uh or maybe he would have continued keeping files, I don't know. But I mean it's it's so different.
13:21Yeah, I mean, but it's very interesting.
13:23that he start, I mean, you know, Library of Congress really is sort of, you know, the keepers of all of our history.
13:30you know, many of our historic documents, artifacts, objects.
13:37So it's very interesting that he starts there.
13:40And then he finds his way to the Department of Justice.
13:46Uh, so Hoover's rise during the 20th century.
13:50coincides with the federal government's expanding powers and we've already kind of alluded to some of this.
13:58The powers to investigate individuals, groups, movements, into the 20th century.
14:04So, uh, talk a little bit about Hoover's transition into the role.
14:11And how he uses that to his advantage and to the FBI's advantage.
14:19Hoover happened to enter the government at this moment of uh, real energy and expansion on the kind of administrative side of things.
14:30Right, in the executive branch, within the bureaucracies and one of the big ideas of of the progressive era.
14:38and the world that he, uh, came of age in was that you were going to have career government servants.
14:47who were professionals, who were experts, uh, who were part of a white collar bureaucracy.
14:54that was going to kind of be there alongside the political and elected officials.
15:01Um, to to keep things running.
15:04and to kind of manage the modern world.
15:07And he himself is very much in that vein.
15:12So when he took over the Bureau in 1924, um, it was a place that was in very bad repute.
15:21Um, it was in bad repute because of the Palmer raids, which he had helped to orchestrate, uh, which were these controversial deportation raids.
15:32aimed at left-wingers, anarchists, communists.
15:36and such. Um, and then when he's 26 years old, he gets promoted to be the assistant director of the Bureau, which is the job he holds for his whole life.
15:49The book is divided really into into three different parts.
15:51during his time as Bureau director.
15:53Um, the first is this period from 1924 to 1945, um, his first two decades.
16:01There when he's really building the Bureau.
16:06Uh, first he goes in, uh, you know, fires a lot of people.
16:11hires men that he thinks embodies his idea of what a bureau man ought to be.
16:17He's often hiring people from GW.
16:20from his own fraternity.
16:22So there's a lot of emphasis on, uh, personnel.
16:26who he's going to bring in.
16:29Uh, and he sets out to find duties that he thinks that his white collar.
16:34FBI agents can do pretty effectively.
16:37So, during that first decade, they require, they acquire, um, responsibility.
16:44for national crime statistics. They open the FBI Lab. Uh, they open FBI training schools and the FBI Academy.
16:54Uh, they set up a national fingerprint, um, service for law enforcement in the country.
17:01All of these things that the FBI still does, um, are kind of created during Hoover's first decade.
17:07So, that's peace one.
17:10Um, peace two in that era is what happens in the 1930s.
17:15Which is Franklin Roosevelt looks around and says, oh my gosh, there's a lot of violent crime in this country.
17:22Particularly kidnapping, gangsters.
17:25bank robbing.
17:28Um, and he turns to the FBI to take care of that.
17:31Uh, so they make a quick switch in the mid-30s to become,
17:35you know, not these kind of white collar scientists and lawyers, um, but to become gun-toting G-men.
17:44That's when I think the FBI really becomes recognizable as a law enforcement agency.
17:49They start to carry weapons, uh, they start to engage in real criminal law enforcement.
17:54Um, and then the final piece that happens during those years,
17:59uh, is that the Second World War comes along.
18:04And as the Second World War comes along, uh, Roosevelt again, as well as Congress, they look to the FBI.
18:13They say, we're going to need an agency that can handle domestic intelligence, espionage, counter-espionage.
18:20All of those duties, um, and those get handed to Hoover as well.
18:23So it's really the twenties, thirties, and into the forties that are his building years, um, and then the other two sections of the book.
18:31trace out what he does with that bureau once it's been essentially built.
