Ww norton & co J. edgar hoover (WW Norton & Co)

Drawing from more than 300 interviews and over 100,000 pages of previously classified documents, Curt Gentry reveals how a paranoid director created the fraudulent myth of an invincible, incorruptible FBI. For almost 50 years, Hoover held public power that was virtually unchecked and manipulated every president from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard Nixon. He kept extensive blackmail files and used illegal wiretaps and hidden microphones to destroy anyone who opposed him. The book reveals how Hoover helped create McCarthyism, blackmailed the Kennedy brothers and influenced the Supreme Court; how he retarded the civil rights movement and forged connections with mobsters; and what part he played in the investigations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.