Secrecy and power: the life of J. Edgar Hoover.

• Author: Branch, Taylor

THE SUNDAY SCHOOL FASCIST

There is perhaps no greater challenge in20th century American political biography than J. Edgar Hoover, whose career atop the FBI stretched from ragtime to rock, from the Wobblies to the Warren Commission and onto the threshhold of Watergate. As the man who transformed Sam Spade into Efrem Zimbalist Jr., created an unlikely "hero-bureaucrat" public persona, and pioneered the art of institutional public relations (inventing for instance, the ten-most-wanted list), Hoover melted himself into the American psyche. Of the nine presidents who retained his services, he worked most harmoniously with Franklin Roosevelt--a fact of enlightening discomfort for liberals and conservatives alike. He enraged Truman, bored Kennedy, and defied Nixon, but no president came close to firing him. For nearly three generations it was impossible to think of the FBI without thinking of Hoover, and some find the task difficult even now, 15 years after his death. The founding G-man played on our need for security. He harvested both the earnest support of millions who idolized him and the sullen acquiescence of critics who feared his ruthless manipulation of secrets.

Attacks on Hoover toward the end of his lifeserved only to enhance his legend, if not his stature. A few rebellious agents wrote books of wild but true stories detailing how Hoover bent the entire culture of the FBI to his Nero-like whims. (My favorite such yarn comes from Robert Kennedy, who said in his official oral history that Florida FBI agents, hearing that Hoover liked to pick fresh grapes each morning of his racetrack vacations, always tied bunches of supermarket grapes to the vines outside Hoover's hotel room. True or not, Kennedy seemed to believe the story while laughing at it.) These comic attacks gave Hoover the aura of a madly despotic father. Posthumous diatribes added the beguiling powers of a devil, portraying "the Director" as a blend of Iago and Himmler. The FBI touched public nerves as a composite of icons: Hoover's Lab, Hoover's Fingerprints, Hoover's Files, the ghost of John Dillinger's penis, forever rumored to be pickled somewhere in the Smithsonian. Above all this was the mystery of Hoover's private life, which was an empty chamber except for the universal rumor that Hoover was a homosexual.

Author Richard Gid Powers wisely approachesHoover as the mythological creature he was. Early in his book, he establishes his originality in Hoover scholarship by...