J. Edgar Hoover's long, ugly shadow

Trump's nominee to lead the FBI might take the agency back to its worst days

By Mike Sorrell

Who was J. Edgar Hoover?

His name comes up a lot when people talk about Kash Patel, a 40-year-old lawyer and political operative who Donald Trump wants as the next FBI director.

For example, in the December 9 issue of Slate, editor Dahlia Lithwick talks about Patel with University of Alabama law professor Joyce White Vance.

Dahlia Lithwick: “This is like J. Edgar Hoover on steroids.”

Joyce White Vance: “I think it’s like J. Edgar Hoover on steroids and acid at the same time.”

Neither laughed.

The point is, could Patel become a worse FBI director than Hoover?

J. Edgar Hoover was FBI director from 1924 until his death in1972. Yes, 48 years.

He was a white supremacist, Christian nationalist, purveyor of malicious gossip, secret advisor to presidents, and denier of the constitutional rights of civil rights activists and anti-Vietnam War protestors.

Why then was Hoover able to last so long in the job?

Because millions of Americans liked what he was doing, according to historian Beverly Gage.

Perhaps most Americans did.

Hoover’s approach to crime-fighting was fueled by his passionate anti-communism and zealous style of Christianity. He had an ends-justify-the-means attitude as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

Under his direction, FBI agents carried out warrantless break-ins. They maintained secret files on citizens who committed no crimes.

And Hoover ran a tight ship that leaned toward the starboard. Throughout his reign he "helped push American politics toward an authoritarian far right,” writes Stanford University historian Lerone A. Martin. He is the author in his 2023 book The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism.

According to Martin, "Hoover made white Christian nationalism the bedrock of the national security state" because the FBI was the nation's lead intelligence agency until after World War II.

Hoover was FBI director under eight presidents – four Republicans and four Democrats. He was more powerful than all eight in terms of leading a domestic terrorism operation, writes Gage in her Pulitzer Prize-winning 2022 biography, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century.

He was born in 1895 in Washington, D.C. He lived with his strict, pious mother until she died when he was 43. He never married or had children. After his mother's death, Hoover lived with Clyde Tolson, a bureau employee. Martin writes that Hoover and Tolson were “inseparable,” eating breakfast and lunch together every day and vacationing together. Whatever sexual relationship they might have had remains a mystery, Martin writes, but Hoover insisted that only white, heterosexual Protestant or Catholic men work for the FBI.

Growing up, Hoover planned to become a minister, but after going to law school at night he became a lawyer. At 24, he went to work for the Justice Department office that dealt with interstate crimes. Hoover quickly rose to head a unit that investigated alleged “subversives.” He helped deport many. In 1935, the Justice Department unit became the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hoover was named director.

The FBI essentially became the ministry of J. Edgar Hoover, which he shaped according to his own belief system. He told prospective agents the FBI had “a Christian purpose,” and so the agency became “a squadron of white men who viewed themselves as white Christian soldiers and ministers,” writes Martin. Short hair, thin waistlines and dark suits were required. Families were a definite plus.

Hoover, while devout, never identified as a born-again, evangelical Christian. In American society at large, evangelicals were among his strongest supporters, however. One reason for that, Martin writes, is “The association with J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI put white evangelicals on the fast track to significant political standing, a status that’s alive and well today.”

“White evangelicals remain willing to compromise their stated morality and theology in exchange for the maintenance of whiteness and access to power, all to bring America back to their God.”

That in a nutshell explains why evangelicals vote for Donald Trump, who will again become president on January 20.

Not all evangelicals want government stepping over the line into their religion. But many on the extreme right see themselves as Christian nationalists, a term defined by Martin as “the impulse to make whiteness and conservative Christianity the foundation and guidepost of American governance and culture.” They believe Christianity was the founding religion of the United States and that the Bible is more of a ruling document than the Constitution. Some think they are called to take over the government.

Some of the top people in the incoming Trump administration are outspoken adherents of Christian nationalism. Among them is Russell Vought, who Trump appointed as his director of the Office of Management and Budget, where Vought can influence a wide swath of the federal government.

Vought, in a June 27, 2022, interview on The Charlie Kirk Show, said, “The long-term plan is to structurally change” government. “We’ve got to deconstruct the state that is weaponized against the American people.”

Like Hoover, the Trumpers will look for what and who they consider the “enemies within.”

Meanwhile, the Trump agenda is not echoing Hoover’s post-World War II attacks on communism. Trump is impressed by strong men, not by democracy-seeking people around the world.

Hoover, on the other hand, saw a communist behind every bush, so he did his best to quell the power-to-the-people uprisings of the 1960s.

Peaceful civil rights demonstrators, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., were harassed, surveilled and jailed by an FBI led by Hoover, an overt racist. He used similar tactics on people who spoke out against the Vietnam War (many of whom had hair longer than Hoover deemed appropriate for Americans). Also, illegal wiretaps and other surveillance techniques were used against members of the “liberal media.”

All, he thought, were influenced by communism. Now, when Russian influence is obviously a problem, what will the FBI do about it over the next four years?

By the early 1970s, the tide of public opinion had turned against J. Edgar Hoover. He was still FBI director, but he and his agency had a growing number of critics in Washington and around the country. His reputation was on the skids when he suddenly died of a heart attack in May of 1972.

Three years later, the American public got a look at a 20,000-page FBI file on Hoover the FBI kept secret for years. People were shocked by the levels of illegality, the prying into innocent lives and the damage that caused people, the politicization of the nation’s top law enforcement agency, the racism, and more.

Over the past 50 years, the FBI has attempted to get out of the shadow of Hoover. There are now black agents and female agents, although relatively few black female agents. Generally speaking, the FBI is a far better agency than it was under Hoover, not a perfect one. Trump and Patel do not agree with that assessment, of course.

Trump and Patel want the FBI to “come after” people who, in Trump’s mind, have said negative things about him, put him in the defendant’s chair in federal courtrooms, or conducted a Capitol Hill investigation of his role in the attacks on Capitol Hill after he refused to accept that he lost the 2020 presidential election.

J. Edgar Hoover was not a good guy, but he was nobody’s hit man. The director, known among FBI agents as “The Boss,” set his own agenda and led his own army. Presidents came and went.

Kash Patel is a functionary who, if confirmed by the Senate as FBI director, will do whatever Trump wants.

Will Trump and Patel work within the confines of the law and the Constitution? Will morality and ethics guide their actions?

If not, will Americans care?