Archiv: J. Edgar Hoover


20.01.2025 - 17:58 [ Berkeley University ]

‘Discredit, disrupt, and destroy’: FBI records acquired by the Library reveal violent surveillance of Black leaders, civil rights organizations

(January 18, 2021)

One of the biggest lessons contained in the documents is abundantly clear: Whatever you do, don’t let them think you’re a communist.

For Hoover, an Ahab-type character in pursuit of his cursed whale, the mere whiff of such leanings could trigger the dirtiest of tricks in the FBI’s arsenal.

“No holds were barred,” said assistant FBI director William C. Sullivan in his testimony for the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee, as recorded in documents held by the Library and freely available on the digital repository HathiTrust. “We have used (these techniques) against Soviet agents. They have used (them) against us.”

“We did not differentiate,” Sullivan said. “This is a rough, tough business.”

17.12.2019 - 21:16 [ Glenn Greenwald / Intercept ]

The Inspector General’s Report on 2016 FBI Spying Reveals a Scandal of Historic Magnitude: Not Only for the FBI but Also the U.S. Media

If you don’t consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal, what is? But none of this is aberrational: the FBI still has its headquarters in a building named after J. Edgar Hoover – who constantly blackmailed elected officials with dossiers and tried to blackmail Martin Luther King into killing himself – because that’s what these security state agencies are. They are out-of-control, virtually unlimited police state factions that lie, abuse their spying and law enforcement powers, and subvert democracy and civic and political freedoms as a matter of course.

13.04.2018 - 09:53 [ NBC News ]

JFK Files: J. Edgar Hoover Said Public Must Believe Lee Harvey Oswald Acted Alone

(27.10.2017) „There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead.“

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover dictated that line in a memo he issued on Nov. 24, 1963, the day Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald as the gunman was being transported to the Dallas County Jail after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The memo is one of at least 52 records never previously made public that were included in the release Thursday of about 2,800 unredacted government documents related to Kennedy‘s murder in Dallas two days earlier. President Donald Trump approved withholding an undisclosed number of other documents pending a 180-day national security review.

13.04.2018 - 09:01 [ New York Times ]

Hoover‘s F.B.I. and the Mafia: Case of Bad Bedfellows Grows

(25.8.2002) The documents show that officials at F.B.I. headquarters, apparently including Mr. Hoover, knew as long ago as 1965 that Boston agents were employing killers and gang leaders as informers and were protecting them from prosecution.

“J. Edgar Hoover crossed over the line and became a criminal himself,“ said Vincent Garo, Mr. Salvati‘s lawyer.

13.04.2018 - 08:51 [ The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity ]

Yes, the FBI is America‘s Secret Police

(11.12.2017) The FBI has legions of new champions nowadays among liberals and Democrats who hope that its probes will end Donald Trump’s presidency. This is a stunning reversal that may have J. Edgar Hoover spinning in his grave.

In order to boost the credibility of the FBI’s investigations of the Trump team, much of the media is whitewashing the bureau’s entire history. But the FBI has been out of control almost since its birth.

13.04.2018 - 08:49 [ Nashvillescene.com ]

Amid Comey Chaos, Lessons from the History of America’s Secret Police

(10.6.2017) “I was worried very much of being in kind of a — kind of a J. Edgar Hoover-type situation,” Comey said, referring to the legendary director — you might say dictator — of the FBI for half a century.

It was remarkable to hear Comey talk this way about the man more associated with the bureau than anyone else — but he had good reason: It helps us contextualize what is happening now, because things were even more fucked up a century ago, and that should make us feel a little better.