J. Edgar Hoover
FBI Director

Americanism is on trial. Its real test lies in the ability of red-blooded Americans to meet and to defeat the fifth column of destruction.

On September 23, 1940, in an address to the American Legion, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover warned of the growing threat of subversive forces in the United States. With World War II raging in Europe, Hoover accused the critics of American militarization as acting as a ‘fifth column’ for the totalitarian powers in their quest for world domination. Deeply antiradical in his ideology, Hoover came to the forefront of federal law enforcement during the Red Scare of 1919-20. In 1924, he was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation, a branch of the Justice Department. With congressional approval, he rebuilt the corruption-ridden agency into an efficient crime-fighting machine, and in the 1930s, he launched a dramatic battle against the epidemic of organized crime brought on by Prohibition. With the outbreak of World War II, Hoover expanded his anti-espionage efforts, and domestic wiretaps and other electronic surveillance dramatically increased. After the war, Hoover focused on the threat of radical, especially Communist, subversion. The FBI compiled files on millions of Americans suspected of dissident activity, and Hoover worked closely with the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy. In 1956, Hoover initiated COINTELPRO, a secret counterintelligence program that initially targeted the U.S. Communist Party but later was expanded to infiltrate and disrupt any radical organizations in America. During the 1960s, the immense resources of COINTELPRO were used against violent groups such as the Ku Klux Klan but also against African-American civil rights organizations and liberal antiwar organizations. By the time Hoover entered service under his eighth president in 1969, some in Congress and the media were accusing the FBI of abuse of authority. For the first time in his bureaucratic career, Hoover endured widespread criticism, and Congress passed laws limiting his power. On May 2, 1972, with the Watergate affair about to explode on to the national stage, J. Edgar Hoover died at the age of seventy-seven. The Watergate affair subsequently revealed that the FBI had illegally protected President Richard Nixon from investigation, and the agency was thoroughly investigated by Congress.