J. Edgar Hoover was apparently never short of disparaging words when it came to investigative columnist Jack Anderson. Can you say ” lower than the regurgitated filth of vultures?” Hoover apparently could.
By Pete Yost and Lara Jacks Jordan
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — In caustic comments on internal FBI memos, bureau director J. Edgar Hoover referred to prominent columnist Jack Anderson with undisguised contempt, calling him “a jackal” as agents combed his articles for errors and hints about possible sources.
“This fellow Anderson and his ilk have minds that are lower than the regurgitated filth of vultures,” Hoover typed on a memo dated April 30, 1951. It is one of hundreds from FBI files on Anderson.
Anderson was a Hoover critic. He once wrote that the aging director, running the bureau well into his 80s, should have resigned a decade before. Other journalists suggested the same, but Anderson delivered that and a long career’s worth of critical assessments of the bureau in a blunt style that enraged FBI officials.
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