Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover.

• Author: Kreyche, Gerald F.

"The evil that men do lives long after them; the good oft is interred with their bones." Shakespeare's remark is apropos. J. Edgar Hoover, who gave the U.S. the best law investigative agency in the world and kept it that way for nearly five decades, now has been given the muckraker treatment by Anthony Summers. The real Hoover appeared too good to be true and, sad to say, was.

The book is a well-written exercise in deconstruction, exploding the mythic morality and foibles of the former head of the FBI. It abounds in facts, rumors, and allegations about Hoover's private life. The general conclusion is that he was a genjus at organization, a meticulous workaholic, a draconian taskmaster who instilled a fanatic sense of loyalty in his agents, and a man who nearly single-handedly produced one of the most incorruptible of governmental organizations. Nevertheless, Hoover was a transvestite and had homosexual relations. His public and private lives were a hypocritical contradiction. He was a revisionist with his own records when they tended to show him in a light less than the best.

Hoover died in 1972 after having served during the terms of eight U.S. presidents, most of whom were in constant fear that he could and would blackmail them. As a Congressman, Richard Nixon admired Hoover, for the latter was of great help in efforts to have Alger Hiss convicted of being a communist traitor. As president, however, he became aware of the FBI director's power and worried that, if Hoover were thrown out of office, "he would, with a blast, pull the temple down with him."

Harry Truman regarded the head of the FBI as little different from the head of the Gestapo or the Russian secret police. He raged at Hoover's attempt to place informers everywhere and "to get the goods" on anyone whom Hoover regarded as a moral or political subversive. Lyndon Johnson called Hoover "a queer...