By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
William Weyand Turner, a former FBI agent who criticized J. Edgar Hoover in several books, died Dec. 26, the Marin Independent Journal reports.
Turner died after complications with Parkinson’s Disease.
He was 88.
Hoover fired Turner in 1962 after he testified before Congress that an investigation was needed into the bureau’s extensive wiretapping.
When Turner was an agent, he testified that he set up hundreds of wiretaps on telephones and even broke into homes and businesses to plant the hidden surveillance.
Turner detailed in his 1970 book, “Hoover’s FBI,” that the bureau’s director placed so much energy on cracking down on communism that he failed to adequately prosecute organized crime.
“For nearly four decades, he (Hoover) stuck his head in the sand while the crime syndicates waxed fat,” he wrote.
