American History Tellers - J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - The Department of Easy Virtues | 1

Episode Date: April 10, 2019

By the turn of the century, radical anarchists were becoming a growing -- and volatile -- political movement. As shifting workplace conditions exploited and endangered American workers, anarchists increasingly turned to violence to spur everyday citizens to upend the capitalist system. The growth of these politically motivated shootings and bombings stoked fear among American citizens — fear of immigrants, outsiders, and anyone else whose ideas might be considered a threat. Soon President Woodrow Wilson was calling on his attorney general A. Mitchell Palmer to investigate, arrest and imprison any noncitizen suspected of spouting “disloyal” or “radical” ideologies.The so-called Palmer Raids would move the little-known, poorly funded and notoriously corrupt Bureau of Investigation into the national spotlight. And it would eventually launch the career of an ambitious young civil servant named Edgar Hoover.Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's September 6th, 1901. It's a hot afternoon, and you're standing in a line that snakes around a glass-domed marble building, the brand-new Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. It was built specifically for today's event, the 1901 Pan-American World Exposition. You're happy to count yourself among the lucky fairgoers waiting to shake the hand of the 25th President of the United States, William McKinley. Everywhere you look, people are dressed

for a Friday afternoon outing. Women in fancy hats and men in their best suits. Finally, it's your turn to step inside a set of gold-trimmed glass doors. The president's personal security details stand inside the door, looking each visitor over carefully. The 58-year-old McKinley exudes vigor, reaching out and grasping each hand, saying hello and guiding each well-wisher along and out of the way for the next. The man in front of you looks eager to meet the president. You lean toward him to speak and notice that his right hand is heavily bandaged. Say, did you read the president's speech in the newspaper yesterday?

No. The man turns away. Clearly, he's not interested in talking. But a man behind you picks up the conversation. I did. What a man behind you picks up the conversation. I did. What a fine speech. Can you imagine a telegraph cable across the whole Pacific Ocean? Such times we live in.

And a canal in Central America to connect the Atlantic and the Pacific. The world is growing smaller, I tell you. You smile, nod, and turn to see that you have nearly reached the president. The quiet man in front of you steps forward. McKinley smiles and reaches to shake the man's unbandaged left hand. Their hands touch. Just then, the injured man jerks his right arm up. The president has been shot, with a gun hidden in the man's bandage.

Instinctively, you lurch forward to push the man away. He fires his gun again before you tackle him to the ground. Others quickly jump on top of both of you. Someone wrestles the gun away. You are pinned down, but not hurt. You look up and see the president, seated in a chair attended to by aides, a bloody stain blooming on his white shirt. The crowd is in a panic, being hustled from the room. Shouts for help and wails of grief and shock reverberate in the hall. It's been 20 years since a president was assassinated. You barely remember Garfield's shooting. But this, this you will remember. The smell of gunpowder,

the look in the man's face, the chaos afterward, the anarchy. from the War of 1812 to Watergate. Available now wherever you get your books. Kill List is a true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. Follow Kill List wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C True Crime shows like Morbid early and ad-free right now

by joining Wondery Plus. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History the events, the times, and the people that shaped America and Americans. Our values, our struggles, and our dreams. We'll put you in the shoes of everyday citizens as history was being made, and we'll show you how the events of the times affected them, their families, and affects you now. This is the first episode in our six-part series on J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. During the middle 50 years of the 20th century, the Federal Bureau of Investigation went from notorious to beloved to notorious again. Hoover built the

Bureau into a law enforcement juggernaut using novel public relations to highlight the agency's innovative work. But the Bureau's image as a heroic agency protecting Americans from public enemies hit a dark side. Even as it pioneered scientific law enforcement, the Bureau also trampled civil liberties by spying on Americans whose only crime was disagreeing with J. Edgar Hoover. This is Episode 1, The Department of Easy Virtues. A metal button on McKinley's shirt deflected one of the bullets, but the other tore through the President's abdomen. The bullet nicked several internal organs and came to rest in a back muscle. Doctors operated on the President within an hour, mending what damage they could see, but they were unable to find the bullet or probe deeply. For a few days, McKinley's condition

seemed to improve. He held meetings and conducted the business of state from his bed. There was hope that he would fully recover, but gangrene was spreading. Eight days after the shooting, President McKinley faded and died, joining Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield among the list of assassinated American presidents. The man who shot President William McKinley was Leon Chilgoss, an unemployed steelworker and anarchist. Chilgoss was quickly tried and found guilty. He was executed 45 days after McKinley's death. For a nation in shock, news that Chilgoss was an anarchist was no surprise. The assassin's defiant last words were, I killed the president because he was an enemy of the good people,

the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime. In the years leading up to the McKinley assassination, an anarchist movement had cropped up in America. It was an extreme reaction to the changing nature of work. For most of the 1800s, the American economy was based on skill and productivity. Skilled workers made and sold quality goods. The better the goods, the higher the price. The more goods workers made, the more they could earn. The arrival of factories upended this order. Workers with less skill could get jobs on an assembly line, making things like cars, clothing, or furniture. And the faster they worked, the more goods were produced. But profits didn't go to the ones doing the work anymore. It went to the

factory owners, owners who rarely raised wages to compensate for doing the work anymore. It went to the factory owners, owners who rarely raised wages to compensate for the harder work. A typical work week at the time averaged to 49 hours, and more than half of Americans lived below the poverty line, while the top 1% held nearly 20% of all the country's wealth. On top of that, there were no worker protections in place. About 20,000 industrial workers died on the job each year. And those who were injured, but didn't die, would likely be fired and replaced. Frustrated and feeling powerless, some American workers turned to labor unions to fight for better conditions.

Others advocated for socialism. And still others turned to a more radical movement, anarchism. A dissident anarchist newspaper, The Alarm, was published in Chicago. In 1884, it printed a piece by anarchist Albert R. Parsons, laying out the movement's philosophy. The anarchist believes in peace, but not at the expense of liberty. He believes that all political laws are enacted only to force men to do those things they would not naturally. Therefore, he considers all political laws as violations of the laws of nature and the rights of men. Though small in number, anarchists were responsible for dozens of shootings and bombings around the country in the two decades following McKinley's death, including a blast on Wall Street that killed 38 people. The most radical anarchists advocated for a full economic revolution. They hoped their acts of violence would light a fire

in the hearts of more American workers, and they had reason to believe it might work, because on the other side of the world, they saw an example. In 1917, the Russian working class overthrew its monarchy and installed a communist regime. The Bolshevik Revolution didn't just inspire hopeful anarchists, it added fuel to a growing concern among the ruling class that the American government would be the next to topple. A paranoid President Woodrow Wilson fanned the nationalist anti-immigrant flames as the U.S. entered World War I. He declared in a speech, Overseas enemies have filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of governments with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel,

our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce. This culture of overblown suspicion came to be known as the first red scare, and it stuck around even after the war ended. In 1919, President Wilson authorized his Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, to investigate, arrest, and imprison any non-citizen found to be disloyal based on even the most tenuous of links to any group or ideology the government decided Wilson originally appointed Palmer to Attorney General to balance out his war cabinet. Palmer was a progressive from rural Pennsylvania. His work as an attorney had earned him the nickname, The Fighting Quaker, and Palmer did have some fight in him.

He started gathering information on alleged radicals, the first step in planning a demonstration of force to crush the anarchist movement, deport its leadership, and demoralize opposition to the government. Gradually, he became more and more powerful. He began pushing other government departments to support his anti-radical crusade. There was even talk of Palmer running for president in the next year's election. But the fighting Quaker didn't have to wait long to encounter his opponents. Within a few months of his mission, anarchists brought their revolution to his doorstep. Imagine it's a warm June night in 1919, around 11 p.m.

You awaken suddenly. On the floor of your bedroom, the wind nearly knocked out of you. You blink and cough. What's happened? There's glass everywhere. Where is your wife? Alice! Alice! Joe?

You've both been thrown from bed. You grasp around in the darkness, hoping to find your eyeglasses. You find them, put them on, and hastily look up. Smoke and the flicker of flames creep into your view through your shattered bedroom window. Your wife is shivering in fear. Joe, what's going on? I don't know. Call the police.

You throw on clothes and head out to the street. Outside, you survey the damage. Across the street, Attorney General Palmer's four-story home is a shambles. All of the windows in front are blown out. Window frames are gone. Shutters hang askew. An iron porch railing leans away from the home. The steps themselves, huge chunks of concrete, are peeled back from the sidewalk.

The entire front door is missing. A harried Secretary, Franklin Roosevelt, stands outside, speaking to the dazed Attorney General Palmer. Earlier that day, you met with Palmer in his office. He asked you for your help in his fight to stamp out a growing radical movement in America. You pledged your support, but now you're just happy to see him alive. You start to approach Roosevelt and Palmer, but are interrupted by your next-door neighbor, a Norwegian diplomat. He takes a few steps, looking shell-shocked. Are you all right? I'm not sure. Do you know what happened? No, I heard some men talking, just outside before 11. Then a car drove away and boom, boom. You mean a bomb? I don't know, maybe,

maybe. But who would do such a thing? Four squad cars pull up outside the Palmer residence. You and the diplomat continue to hunt around the street for any more clues about what happened. I catch a glimpse of something shiny in the grass nearby, reflecting the moonlight. I think this is, yeah, it's a gun. Don't touch it. And what's this? You see a tattered book lying next to the gun. A loose sheet of paper is tucked within the pages. You pull it out. It's some kind of flyer. What does it say? It is a war. Class war. You look up at the diplomat, alarmed, and turn your eyes back to the paper. We will kill because it is necessary. There will have to be destruction. We will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.

The message is signed, The Anarchist Empire. The bomber was later identified from a tag on his fedora found down the street. His name was Carlo Valdanochi, a professed anarchist. The anarchists had struck at the heart of Washington's power elite, the homes where important public officials lived with their families. Just like with the McKinley assassination nearly two decades before, anarchists were daring the U.S. government to act. The bomb was a provocation, encouraging

the kind of repression they believed would spark a desire for revolution in the hearts of exploited workers. Going after a likely presidential candidate like Palmer raised the stakes even further. And the government did act. Palmer, already planning a strong response before the bombing, was emboldened by the attack. Ten days after the bombing, he requested $2 million from Congress to fight anarchists. In a speech, Palmer declared war on anarchism. The government proposes to protect itself against attacks from within as carefully and forcefully as it has shown itself able to protect itself against attacks from without. Like President Wilson, Palmer scapegoated immigrants as the source of anarchism. Those who cannot or will not live the life of Americans under our

institutions and are unwilling to abide by the methods which we've established for the improvement of those institutions from time to time should go back to the countries from which they came. But to win this war, the fighting Quaker needed an army. Palmer turned to the FBI. At the time, it was just called the Bureau of Investigation, a little-known, poorly-funded, and utterly corrupt organization. A parking lot for political cronies with little or no investigative experience. Bureau agents could not carry weapons, and they couldn't make arrests. They were empowered only to invest a handful of white-collar crimes. But Palmer had nowhere else to turn.

The only other federal agents in the government were the Secret Service and Treasury agents, and they worked for the Secretary of the Treasury. Occasionally, he could poach some of them, but only temporarily. And local police were not obliged to act on the orders of the U.S. Attorney General. So with no other army at hand, Palmer planned to use his bureau in a decisive strike against the radical elements. He resolved to eradicate the Reds using every power at his disposal, and by waging his war, he'd set in motion the creation of the most robust surveillance agency the country had ever seen. I'm Tristan Redman, and as a journalist, I've never believed in ghosts. But when I discovered that my wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door to where I grew up,

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The Bureau of Investigation was controversial from the beginning. In 1908, a predecessor of Palmer, Attorney General Charles Bonaparte, had also wished for a law enforcement agency that reported directly to him. He pushed for the creation of a unit within the Department of Justice, pleading with then-President Theodore Roosevelt that he needed his own investigators. It has become each year more and more imperatively necessary that this department should have some executive force directly subject to its orders. But Congress resisted. They argued that a federal police force could be easily corrupted, and control of such a force would place too much authority in the hands of one or a few men.

A distrust of centralized authority, after all, was encoded in America's DNA. The nation was founded by a revolution against King George III's tyrannical policies. So in 1908, opposition to a federal police bureau was so strong that Congress didn't just refuse it, the legislators made it illegal and banned attorneys general from borrowing investigators from the Department of Treasury. Bonaparte responded by unilaterally creating the Bureau of Investigation anyway, using discretionary funds from his own budget. The organization that became the FBI we know today, an agency of 35,000 employees with a $9 billion budget,

was created against popular will by the stroke of an executive branch pen. But it wasn't much of a law enforcement organization in the beginning, and it didn't take long for critics' predictions of corruption to come true. Powerful people found cushy government jobs for their cronies by placing them in the Bureau. Within just a few years, the press began referring to the Bureau as the Department of Easy Virtues. Nevertheless, by 1919, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer had big plans for the Bureau. President Wilson had given him carte blanche to go after anarchists like the ones who bombed his house. Palmer dubbed them his public enemies.

To lead the fight against anarchists, Palmer enlisted a brilliant but inexperienced 24-year-old Justice Department lawyer. The young lawyer got quite a promotion, head of a new domestic spy operation, the General Intelligence Division in the Bureau of Investigation. The man Palmer chose was a Washington, D.C. native, the son of a government bureaucrat. He attended law school at night while working as a clerk in the Library of Congress. His name was Edgar Hoover. Young Edgar Hoover grew up only blocks from the U.S. Capitol. He lived at home with his mother until she died when he was 43 years old. He was not close to his father, who suffered from depression.

The elder Hoover ultimately lost his job as a federal government cartographer and was institutionalized. Young Edgar, though, a stocky bulldog of a man, was known in his neighborhood by the nickname Speed. The story of where he got that nickname varies, depending on who is asked. Hoover's supporters claim Speed referred to the momentum with which he lived his life. His publicists later came up with several other explanations, sometimes saying the nickname referred to the speed with which the industrious young Hoover delivered groceries as a child. Other times, they claimed the nickname was from his remarkable ability on the football field, a sport Hoover never actually played.

In reality, Hoover was born with a speech disorder and had learned to talk very fast and with an odd cadence to avoid stuttering, a fact that never made it to the presses. To build and protect his reputation, small fictions like these would be repeated over and over during Hoover's career. While he wasn't a football star, Hoover was, in fact, a brilliant, ambitious, and dedicated student at Central High School in Washington, D.C. He was among the leaders of the military corps. He participated in debate and sang in choir. Right after high school, he began his

career in the federal government at age 18, taking an entry-level position in 1914 at the Library of Congress to help pay for his college education. While working at the library, he took night classes and earned bachelor's and law degrees from George Washington University. He also mastered the library's complex organizational systems, something that would come in handy later. As a newly minted lawyer, Hoover joined the Department of Justice in 1917. His brilliance and organizational skills landed him in charge of investigating foreign spies. And that's where Attorney General Palmer found him, two years later. Hoover's preparation at the Library of Congress and as a World War I spy catcher was ideal experience for someone in charge of investigating anarchists and other

radicals. Palmer charged the General Intelligence Division with collecting information on anarchists, communists, and other dissenters, and ultimately round up and deport them. Hoover, an extraordinarily ambitious young man who shared his boss's hatred for the radicals, followed orders, and then some. Imagine it's Friday, January 2nd, 1920, and you're a factory worker in New York City. You and your family live with another family in a three-room, fifth-floor tenement on Manhattan's Lower East Side. On floors above and below you,

dozens of other workers and their families are packed into cramped, shabby apartments just like yours. It's not yet 5 a.m. Far too early for the bustle of workers leaving for textile, printing, and other manufacturing jobs. So what is that racket in the stairwell? This is a raid. Open up. Now! Other men are yelling the same around the building. As you start to unlock the door, it crashes open, striking you in the

forehead. Men rush into your home with guns drawn, shouting for everyone to be quiet. You're pushed to the ground, a knee in your back, a set of hands grabbing your arms. You're pulled roughly to your feet, ordered to dress, your nose and forehead bleeding. What's going on? Am I under arrest? What have I done? Shut up, get dressed, and keep quiet. Am I going to jail? Shut up! Out on the street, you stand shivering with the other men from the tenement and see that there are clusters of men outside most of the buildings in the neighborhood.

After a few minutes, you are pushed in the back of a paddy wagon with five of your neighbors, some of them beaten and bloodied, far worse than you were. With each jolt of the wagon, you feel the metal handcuffs cutting into your wrists and you wonder, what has happened? What have I done? Under Palmer's orders, the General Intelligence Division launched a major battle

in his war on anarchists and dissidents. On January 2, 1920, Hoover directed the largest in a series of violent arrests that became known as the Palmer Raids. Government agents in 33 cities broke down doors and detained thousands of poor factory workers. Labor department officials, acting on Bureau of Investigation warrants, filed flimsy charges based on tenuous connections to allegedly radical elements. Some of the detainees were not charged for weeks after the raids. Many were held in abhorrent conditions. In Detroit, 800 detainees shared one drinking fountain and a single toilet for a week. The raids snared citizens and non-citizens alike. In all, 10,000 alleged anarchists, communists, pacifists, socialists, labor activists,

and others were jailed. Bureau agents in the field, accompanied by Secret Service and Treasury agents, were told not to notify local law enforcement of the raids, which were conducted in the earliest hours of the mornings. Hoover's goal was to create fear through mass imprisonment of a class of people rather than a precise law enforcement action. And in that sense, the raids were successful. But in terms of due process and

jurisprudence, they were a sham. Authorities released thousands of the detainees within days for lack of any evidence. Others were released because of improperly drafted and even generic arrest warrants that did not identify specific individuals to be arrested. Of the 10,000 people rounded up in the raids, only 3,500 were held for any period of time. Ultimately, only 500 radicals were deported, many of them without a fair hearing. While the raids were initially popular, reality sank in over the following weeks. Federal agents had broken down doors to arrest thousands of innocent citizens and non-citizens, most of whom had not done anything illegal.

As the public learned that most of those dragged from their homes had turned out to be innocent, outrage grew. Palmer and Hoover were about to find out for themselves how it felt to be investigated. This is the emergency broadcast system. A ballistic missile threat has been detected inbound to your area. Your phone buzzes and you look down to find this alert. What do you do next? Maybe you're at the grocery store. Or maybe you're with your secret lover.

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Imagine you're a reporter seated at a U.S. Senate hearing room. It's January 19th, 1921. The room's marble walls and smoke-filled high ceilings make it feel like a massive courtroom. Every seat is filled. The press row is packed with reporters. The provocative title of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing gives a clue why people are so interested. Charges of illegal practices of the Department of Justice. This afternoon, Attorney General Palmer and Edgar Hoover of the Bureau of Investigation will continue their testimony on the Palmer raids. A senator clears his throat and begins a new line of questioning for Palmer.

And how many search warrants were issued? I cannot tell you, Senator, personally. If you would like to ask Mr. Hoover, who was in charge of this matter, he can tell you. Hoover, only 26, and thin with a boyish face, seemed out of place among the white-haired senators. Well, Mr. Senator, the search warrants were entirely a matter which the agents in charge of the local offices handled. So you have no record of them at all? No, sir. Do you know how many searches were made without a search warrant? I do not. Do you know that any were made without a search warrant? No, sir, I do not.

You open up your reporter's notebook, pencil in evasive and illegal. The senator turns his line of questioning to the flimsy justification Hoover and Palmer used for targeting certain people as radicals, the sedition statute. Now, the sedition statute speaks about people conspiring to overthrow the government of the United States by force. Palmer nods. Yes, Senator. Books and papers would not overthrow the government of the United States, of course, General, although there might be evidence that someone wanted to do so.

I can conceive how there might be books and papers that might be a means of committing the offense, particularly under the conspiracy statute. The Senator arches his eyebrow. How could a book or paper accomplish the overthrow of the government of the United States? I can conceive of the use of books and papers as a means of forming a conspiracy for the purpose. They also might be the means by which they are carried out. As the testimony continues, Hoover and Palmer's evasive responses expose the violation of a basic law. Police cannot make lawful arrests using generic warrants and then try to find evidence to justify that arrest.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says there must be probable cause for an arrest. But there was no probable cause in the Palmer raids. That point will lead your story in tomorrow's paper. Palmer's testimony confirmed that the raids were poorly planned and organized. Repeatedly during the hearing, Palmer turned to Hoover for clarification, making it clear who was responsible for the logistics of the debacle. The Senate Judiciary Committee continued calling witnesses for two weeks. Palmer and Hoover returned in the next weeks to answer critics and attempt to address the growing public outrage. The revelations of the hearings were devastating. One innocent man

was held without a warrant for 57 days. Foreign language newspaper offices were ransacked. In Detroit, 13 Russian immigrants were held for two months in a jail cell intended for four. They were fed two slices of bread a day and were not allowed to contact relatives who were frantically searching for them. A man jumped to his death from a 14th story window after three months of detention without a hearing. Following days of hearings, and despite Palmer and Hoover's attempts to justify their conduct in the raids, the Senate committee report described the acts of the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Investigation as the lawless acts of a mob. The New Republic magazine described the raids as

probably the most violent, lawless, and inhumane proceeding which any department of the federal government has committed since the founding of the republic. Palmer's presidential ambitions were derailed. Congressional investigations of the Palmer raids ultimately determined that Hoover's General Intelligence Division had collected and indexed rumors and unverified claims for about 450,000 Americans, including American citizens and legal residents. Among the most outspoken opponents of the Palmer Raids was an eminent attorney and legal scholar, Harlan Fisk Stone. Stone was dean of the Columbia University School of Law in 1919.

Before the Palmer Raid hearings, he wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee urging a full investigation. In it, he referred to the to the Senate Judiciary Committee urging a full investigation. In it, he referred to the raids as an abuse of power and as an intolerable injustice and cruelty to individuals. But despite the explosive hearings, Hoover maintained his position in the Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Easy Virtue's corruption continued in the years following the raids. In 1923, the Bureau of Investigation was caught up in the Teapot Dome scandal, where the U.S. Secretary of the Interior was convicted of accepting bribes,

and the Bureau illegally investigated U.S. Senators who wanted to uncover the misdeeds. It was the most outrageous political scandal in American history prior to Watergate. In the wake of Teapot Dome, then-President Calvin Coolidge appointed Harlan Fisk Stone as Attorney General and charged him with cleaning up the Bureau. In 1924, following the discredited Palmer raids and the Teapot Dome political scandal, a meeting took place that would determine the future of the Bureau of Investigation. New Attorney General Stone called Edgar Hoover into his office. Stone was a broad-shouldered man, thick around the middle, and known for his uncompromising and blunt nature. He stared

down Hoover over his desk. Given his role in the Palmer raids, Hoover might have believed he was about to be fired. But instead, the subject of the meeting was the leadership of the Bureau of Investigation. In one of those bizarre, inexplicable twists of history, Stone, apparently unaware of Hoover's role in the Palmer raids, asked the young lawyer to clean up the mess in the Bureau. No one knows what exactly was said in the meeting, but Hoover emerged as interim director of the Bureau of Investigation. As he took office, he made a small change. To avoid confusion with another Edgar Hoover who was sometimes in the news, he began referring to himself as J. Edgar Hoover. But the director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Roger Baldwin,

did know that the Palmer raids were directed by Hoover. And so after Hoover was appointed, Baldwin's ACLU issued a 15-page pamphlet charging that the Bureau of Investigation had become a secret police system of a political character. Baldwin accused the Bureau of everything from burglary to blacklisting. Stone forwarded the pamphlet to Hoover for comment. Hoover denied the charges, told Stone the ACLU was a dangerous, subversive organization, and said the Bureau only investigated a limited slate of crimes. It became a common response to critics throughout Hoover's career.

Deny charges, claim limited jurisdiction, accuse critics of being un-American. In September 1924, Hoover, the Attorney General, and Baldwin met to discuss the pamphlet. Baldwin asked Hoover directly if he was responsible for the Palmer raids. Hoover lied and said he was not. Baldwin asked Hoover directly if he would shut down the General Intelligence Division, and Hoover said he would. The GID was shut down, in name, but Hoover would keep adding to the Bureau's subversives file for years to come. After the meeting, Stone removed Hoover's interim tag. Starting that day, J. Edgar Hoover would lead the Bureau of Investigation, and then the FBI until the day he died in 1972. He would become one of the most controversial figures in American history,

using the FBI to enforce a strict definition of what it meant to be a patriotic American. Hoover would direct his agents to use every means at their disposal, even if illegal. His FBI would protect America from crime, from the enemies within, even from the subversive thoughts of its own citizens. Next on American History Tellers, J. Edgar Hoover transforms the FBI using innovative law enforcement techniques to catch criminals and public relations to hide the Bureau's dark side from the public. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. I hope you enjoyed

this episode. If you're listening on a smartphone, tap Tellers. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you're listening on a smartphone, tap or swipe over the cover art of this podcast. You'll find the episode notes, including some details you may have missed. One of the best ways to show your appreciation is to give us a five-star rating and leave a review. You can also find us and me on Twitter and Facebook. Follow the show at A.H. Tellers, and I'm at Lindsey A. Graham. And thank you. American History Tellers is hosted, edited,

and produced by me, Lindsey Graham, for Airship. Sound design by Derek Behrens. This episode is written by Matthew Cecil, edited by Audrey Dilling, edited and produced by Jenny Lauer Beckman. Our executive producer is Marshall Louis, created by Hernán López for Wondery. For more than two centuries, the White House has been the stage for some of the most dramatic

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