J. Edgar Hoover was the nation's response to the bootleggers and itinerant bank robbers of the 20s and 30s. Without their help, there would have been no Federal Bureau of Investigation and no J. Edgar Hoover as its President-For-Life.
Prohibition after World War I created a flourishing bootleg industry ruled by ruthless men like Al Capone. There was blood in the streets. The St. Valentine's Day massacre of seven rival hoodlums By Capone was a sensation at the time, although these days seven is only about average for one of our routine mass murders.
Everyone knew about Al Capone. He was a media star. And so were the outlaw bandits of the Midwest: Dillinger, Bonny and Clyde, Ma Barker, Machine Gun Kelly. There was the sensational murder of the Lindbergh baby. There was the Russian revolution in 1917 and bombs were exploding in front of American offices and homes. Anarchists were everywhere. The government was falling apart. It was "a reign of unspeakable atrocity", said the Senator from New York. Hoover was appointed national savior by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
He cemented his reputation with well-publicized moves against Nazi sympathizers. Then, insensibly, the range of his investigations broadened to include what we would now call intimidation of political figures and outright blackmail. "This has to stop!", wrote Truman, underlining the words. But it didn't stop until Hoover shuffled off this mortal coil. In the 1930s, Hoover mounted a door-to-door campaign to fingerprint everyone in America. It was a patriotic act to be fingerprinted. His agents visited schools and fingerprinted the children "to aid justice." That would have us sizzling with paranoia today.
As director of the F.B.I., Hoover was a stern authoritarian and moralist. "He ran it like a dictator." Agents wore conservative suits and ties, hats, and wingtip shoes. No beards or mustaches. No drinking. Womanizing was outlawed. It was rumored that he preferred agents to be shorter than himself. But he transformed the F.B.I. into an elite anti-crime force -- starring J. Edgar Hoover himself. He made public appearances. He played himself in the movies.
When the Bureau finally managed to corner and kill the heroic bandit John Dillinger, Hoover had the press change the story to make it more dramatic and eliminate figures lesser than himself. He controlled the statistics (the Bureau still does) and painted a picture of America under siege, an "invasion." Hollywood and Hoover established a symbiotic relationship. In "G-Man," the F.B.I.'s failure at Dillinger's Little Bohemia was rewritten into a victory.
The most efficient agent in the Bureau was probably head of the Chicago branch, Melvin Purvis, who became well known in his own right. He'd brought down John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd. Purvis disappeared from the roles of the F.B.I. The F.B.I. story only had room enough for one mythic hero. Much later, Purvis shot himself.
The results of his most controversial investigations went into the "secret files." Hoover by this time could follow, wiretap, or otherwise surveille just about anyone he wanted to, including politicians, civil rights activists, and the like. Eleanor Roosevelt's file was one of the most dense. With this information he could bend any politician to his will. As one former agent describes it, Hoover would approach a legislator, spread out documents on his desk, and say, "Look, we know this isn't true, but we want you to know that some people do." It garnered the official's lasting support. Hoover died in 1972.
The film is critical of Hoover and his methods but it's not a hatchet job. Rather it's a bald description of the F.B.I.'s overreach under his administration. It could have been much worse. He's never called the names that he called his enemies. No mention is made of his sending tape recordings of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, infidelity to King's wife. Nothing about his framing the Mafia as a myth. No speculation about why he never married or about his deep friendship with Clyde Tolson. The program does rather downplay the fact that, whatever else Hoover did, he built the F.B.I. into an effective and generally respected investigatory body.
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