J Edgar Hoover's Gospel: illegal, oppressive

J Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) was born in Washington DC in a religious family. Devout since boyhood, he loved being a Sunday School teacher and prided himself on his Scriptural knowledge. Before his father was ill, and it became necessary for him to choose higher-paying em­pl­oy­ment, young Hoov­er had intended on becoming a Christian min­is­t­er. Instead he studied law and worked in the Dept of Justice.

J Edgar Hoover, 1932

History Today

 

In 1919 young Hoover worked in the Justice Dept's Rad­ical Division, gathering data on radical political organisations. His sur­veil­lance system came by creating a data­base of all American rad­icals. After the 1920 Wall St bomb, anarch­ists and comm­un­ists were located via Hoov­er’s system and questioned, since Hoover believed that the bombing was directed by Russian forces.

The Washington Post (Sept 1920) desc­ribed the Wall St bombing as ex­emplifying the extent to which the alien scum from the sew­ers of the Old World had polluted the clear spring of American demo­c­­racy. The Dept of Justice launched raids, round­ing up thousands of lef­t­ists and deporting many out of the US. The D.O.J charged young Hoo­v­er with investigating the attack, along with the N.Y Police Dep­art­ment. The nasty repress­ion of imm­ig­rants led to the civil libert­ies movement; American Civil Liberties Union was formed in 1920 to add­ress this government crackdown on free speech & political act­ivism

In 1924 at 29, Hoover was appointed as FBI Director. As America’s top cop, he turned the FBI into a blend of a Sunday School, private-members club and white supr­em­acist clique. He demoted all non-white special ag­en­ts, as well as most Jews, and made Christ­ianity part of FBI train­ing and social events. In contrast to the anti-Cath­olic sentim­ent in US society, Hoover resp­ected Cat­hol­icism for its theological rig­our. He welcomed Cathol­ic­ism to the FBI, instig­ating an annual FBI mass.

Hoover believed the U.S was God’s chosen nation. Director from 1924-72, Hoover thought the Bureau’s miss­ion was to defeat the godless forces of liberalism, women’s rights, civil rights, radical cl­ergy, students, anti-war prot­es­tors and particularly gay men. To ov­er­come these foes, America had to yield to his pref­erred Christ­ianity i.e unerr­ingly conservative, patriotic and white.

Dr Lerone Martin is Director of the Martin Luther King Jr Res­earch and Education Institute and Prof of Religious Studies at Stan­ford Uni­versity. Martin’s book Gospel of J Edgar Hoover (2023) sh­owed how the FBI director, infamous for persecuting Martin Luther King, worked system­atically to champion his own religion. Using newly decl­as­s­­ified FBI documents, Martin desc­rib­ed how Hoover bent the cul­t­ure of the FBI, and collaborated with fam­ous evangelicals and Catholics to try to es­tab­lish his Christian Amer­ica. Together they fuelled the polit­ical rise of white Christian nat­ion­alism, with vast consequences for electoral pol­it­ics, views of nat­ional security and role of race and religion in US ident­ity.

Hoover had an fanatic hatred of Albert Einstein because he was Je­w­ish, foreign and left wing. Einstein got to the USA in 1933 and in­volved himself with racial justice, was against lyn­ching and for qu­al­ity black educ­at­ional institutions. Einstein befriended Paul Rob­eson, Hoov­er’s MOST despised human being. Hoover wanted to have Einstein deported!

Einstein and actor Paul Robeson (right) 

Washington Post

After WW2, Hoover launched a public relations campaign outside the Bureau eg his popular essays in the conservative magazine Christian­ity Today dealt with theological and patriotic concerns. Pre-em­inent  Cath­olic ­evang­elists Fulton Sheen and Billy Graham prais­ed FBI!

Martin reported that during 1956-71 Hoover sanctioned 2,000+ ill­eg­al dir­ect actions targ­eting domestic civ­ic organisations he'd hated. Some of his religious operations were both unconst­itutional and biz­arre eg when he investigated one word in a new Bible trans­la­t­ion. This commun­ist plot und­ermined U.S Christ­ianity, Hoover said!

Regarding Hoover’s flagrant ab­use of the Separation of Church and St­ate, the details Martin published were based on the ex­haus­tive use of arch­ives. But the FBI were still unsym­p­athetic to Mart­in’s project in 2020, so he had to sue the Bureau for not resp­ond­ing to a Free­dom of Information request. Even then, Martin wrote, the Bur­eau did not admit to break­ing any law.

Some of Hoover’s later issues
The Nobel Prize Committee cited philosopher Albert Cam­us’ pers­is­tent efforts to illuminate the problem of human consc­ience! It was largely as a champion of philosophical moral truth that Camus was hon­oured in 1957 and is still admired today. Hoov­er was furious that he couldn’t stop Camus receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Re John Lennon, Hoover wrote to HR Halde­mann, Pres Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff indicating the high pr­iority the Lennon case had for Nixon; Lennon had been inter­est­ed in extreme British left-wing act­iv­ities and was a sym­p­ath­is­er of communists there. It’s telling that Hoover died in May 1972 and a memo was sent from the FBI’s Acting Director Patrick Gray say­ing the FBI was ending its surveill­an­ce of Lennon. In any case Nixon was easily re-elected in Nov, and the Imm­ig­­rat­ion Service and FBI succeeded in pressuring Lennon to withdraw from anti-war activ­ity. How strange then that Lennon still received Immigration and Naturalisation Service dep­ort­­ation not­ic­es. So imm­ig­r­at­ion lawyer Leon Wild­es sued Att Gen John Mitchell and ot­h­ers for their cons­piratorial attempts to throw Lenn­on out of the country. Their investigation turned up documents from Hoover to HR Hald­e­man, inform­ing him of the FBI’s progress.

When politicians advocated for stricter gun laws

J Edgar Hoover tests a gun, opposing gun controls

The Nation

In May 1970 chaos at Kent State Ohio shocked Uni off­icials who bel­ieved outside agit­at­ors were responsible. Kent's mayor de­­c­lared a state of emergency, appealing to Ohio Governor James Rhod­es to send in the Ohio National Guard. How was Edgar Hoover involved?

Conclusion
Hoover’s influence on the FBI remained. The Bur­eau had been too slow to combat the security threat posed by white Chr­ist­ian nationalists, a group concerned with violent, terrorist att­acks, incl­uding the 6th Jan 2021 killings. White Christian nat­ion­al­ism and the FBI’s inertia were part of Hoover’s legacy, from a man who bel­ieved he and his religion were above the law. Hoover was work­ing for God, not for the Constitution or Americans.

"Top Cop, Bad Cop" by Daniel Rey, History Today July 2023; "Ringleader" by Adam Hochschild The Nation , March 2023; and "Hoover's War on Gays" by Douglas M. Charles, UP Kansas 2015 are well worth reading.