This week marks the 40th anniversary of J. Edgar Hoover’s death, and in his honor the FBI website is running a series of tributes to its controversial former director.
Hoover was the only civil servant to lie in state in the U.S. capitol, at the request of Congress in 1972. Then-President Richard Nixon eulogized, “Every American, in my opinion, owes J. Edgar Hoover a great debt for building the FBI into the finest law enforcement organization in the entire world.”
Hoover’s epic 48-year tenure as FBI director earned him glory for busting gangsters of the 1930’s and spies of WWII. But he was villified for increasing surveillance, failing to address civil rights crimes, and fixating on the threat of communism.
The FBI websites’ series has the “goal of shedding light on less well known or even caricatured areas of [Hoover’s] actions and broadening the discussion on his complex and enduring legacy”.
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