Hoover, Bush, Cheney: Three Partners In Constitutional Crime

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Staff Writer

Just like a crusty foul cadaver emerging from a cemetery in the movie ” The Night Of The Living Dead,” J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to his death in 1972, came back from the grave last week through the release of a newly declassified document describing his plan to put 12,000 Americans suspected of disloyalty at the start of the Korean War in military prisons. The former FBI director sent his plan to President Harry Truman 12 days after the war began in June of 1950.
According to an article by Tim Weiner in the NY Times, Hoover had been compiling lists of “disloyal” Americans for many years, 97 percent of them being citizens of the United States. It would be fascinating to see the names on Hoover’s secret list. Hoover’s files were filled with lists of his enemies and reports on thousands of citizens who aroused his interest: sexual “deviates” in congress and various administrations, presidents with notorious activities between the sheets or in closets (Nixon’s file was labelled “Obscene Matters”),  the thousand-page reports on celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, the public and private hounding of Albert Einstein (collecting an 1,800-page dossier over 22 years), and the infiltration of women’s organizations to see what foul and subversive deeds they were planning.
Truman knew all about Hoover’s proclivities, writing in a memo in 1946 that Hoover’s FBI “was dabbling in sex life scandals and plain blackmail when they should be catching criminals.” The fact that Hoover virtually ignored the activities of 26 Cosa Nostra crime families terrorizing our major cities while using thousands of agents to keep sex files current became well-known after his death.
Evidently Hoover felt that famed baby expert Dr. Benjamin Spock was much more dangerous to the national security than the Mafia running city after city. He ordered extensive surveillance of Spock who was giving anti-Vietnam War speeches around the country and often spoke of nuclear disarmament and social reforms. Hoover even wrote President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 about Spock’s “traitorous” activities. Hoover was violently opposed to the Freedom Of Information Act because it might open his secret files to the “kooks, jackals, and coyotes” of the press. So much for freedom of the press as outlined in our Constitution.

A Real Nutcase

I have read many books on Hoover and by him, and I can only conclude he was a real nutcase. Here was a man who lived with his mother, kept statues of nude men in the back garden, dressed like a 1929 dandy, never had a date with a female all his life, and kept dresses in his closet. Rumor had it that Hoover was a homosexual because of his relationship with tall, handsome Clyde Tolson. Five years younger than Hoover, he was promoted faster by Hoover than any other person in the FBI, became the second most powerful man in the Bureau. Their relationship in a Hoover biography was described this way: “They rode to and from work together, ate lunches together, and vacationed together…and when Hoover traveled on official business Tolson was always with him.” On the other hand, Hoover acted the strait-laced, religious man in public. In private he looted the FBI for furniture for his mother’s house, often vacationed on the government dime, and even had FBI maintenance crews paint his house periodically.
Whether Hoover was a homosexual or not is not important, except that he went into cold fury whenever the rumors flew. He even hunted down the people who started the rumors and often sicced the IRS on them.
Hoover also had every president from Herbert Hoover to Richard Nixon and hundreds of congressmen frightened by what he might have in his secret files.

The American Fascist

Hoover’s plan for the “permanent detention” of 12,000 people included having Truman proclaim that the mass arrests were necessary “to protect the country against treason, espionage, and sabotage and that the FBI would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous to national security.” The arrests would be carried out under a “master warrant attached to a list of names.” His plan also entailed the suspension of habeus corpus (the release of a person from unlawful restraint), which would allow imprisonment forever without a hearing.
The Constitution states that habeus corpus shall not be suspended “unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” Hoover tried to stretch the Constitution by adding the following clause to include “threatened invasion” or “attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory.”
Hoover had the qualities of a relentless Inspector Javert pursuing Jean Valjean, of a ruthless Mafia consigliere running dope, women, and booze; the human rights values of a Sheriff Bull Connor of Birmingham, Alabama who used water cannons and police batons discriminately on blacks; and the amoral force of a Heinrich Himmler, the poultry farmer who became head of Adolf Hitler’s Gestapo. (Hoover kept the government from charging the perp of the bombing of the Birmingham church that killed four little black girls on a Sunday morning although he had sufficient evidence. The bomber was finally convicted of the act in the 1990’s after Hoover’s death.)

The Illegal Acts Of Hoover

Here’s a short list of illegal acts against Americans committed by the FBI under Hoover’s dictatorship:(1) Developed 500,000 domestic intelligence files on citizens, (2) Assisted CIA in opening and photographing at least 250,000 first class letters and producing a computerized index of nearly 1.5 million names, (3) Opened and photographed 130,000 first-class letters in eight cities, (4) Assisted National Security Agency in obtaining millions of private telegrams under a secret arrangement with three telegraph companies, (5) Forced Internal Revenue Service to develop 11,000 files on “political enemies”, (6) Prepared a list of 26,000 people to be rounded up in case of a “national emergency”, (7) Assisted Army in preparing intelligence files on an estimated 100,000 Americans…...and the list goes on.
In the 1950’s The U.S. Communist Party had fewer than 5,000 members, but the hilarious part of all this was that over 1,500 “members” were actually paid FBI informants! Hoover also “authorized” illegal wiretaps and illegal break-ins known in the trade as “black bag jobs.” Hoover broke the laws of the land trying to keep tabs on radical student organizations and anti-war protesters. He organized letter-writing campaigns to Communist officials accusing them of homosexuality and sexual deviancy.  I guess it takes one to know one. Hoover even tried to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. into committing suicide by secretly recording him in bedrooms. Although some people have records indicating that Hoover was at least half-black, he allowed FBI agents to attend a “no niggers” law officers barbecue in Tennessee. If you want to know more about Hoover and his fascist approach to law enforcement, read Curt Gentry’s “J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and His Secrets.”

Tearing Up The Constitution

It’s a good thing Hoover died thirty years before the Lurch administration assumed power. He would fit right in with George Bush and Dick Cheney in tearing up the U.S. Constitution while holding suspects indefinitely without a hearing. What makes career draft-dodgers such as Bush, Cheney, and Hoover (Yes, he ducked military service, too) into torturers? David Addington, John Yoo and other draft-dodgers in Cheney’s office, with the assistance of the toady Alberto Gonzales, came up with the administration’s position on torture that has made us pariahs among civilized nations. Others came up with the interception of domestic phone calls and other methods of messaging that violate various amendments of the Constitution. This crowd wanted us to say goodby to the Geneva Convention rules approved by all civilized nations.  We still have “detainees” who have been locked up in Gitmo for five years—because some Taliban member collected our $5,000 bounty for turning over innocent farmers and taxi drivers to us because they were “terrorists!”
Dick Cheney is the perfect representative of the inquisitorial Torquemadas who have established our “It’s-not-torture-until-we-say-it-is” policy. Cheney went bonkers when opponents suggested that waterboarding and other torture techniques should be actually listed as torture.  Cheney remarked that a “dunk in the water” for terrorists was “a no-brainer” for him. I can see J. Edgar whispering “Duck him!” in Cheney’s ear.

How Many Inspector Clouseaus Are In The FBI?

Perhaps some will remember the movie “The Pink Panther” starring Peter Sellers as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau trying to catch a jewel thief. He reminds me of some FBI agents who have acquired the similar skills. A couple of years ago the FBI put out an urgent memo to 18,000 police organizations to be alert in watching for people who were carrying world or farmer almanacs around with them. It was concerned that the books contain descriptions of tall buildings, weather trends, and profiles of cities. Can you imagine being hauled into an FBI office to explain why you had an almanac under your arm? It’s laughable and tragic at the same time. Is this any way to look for terrorists? Is there something in the water in Washington, D. C.?
There’s been a bill sponsored by Republican Representative Dan Burton which would remove J. Edgar Hoover’s name from the huge FBI building in Washington. After this latest fiasco of the list of 12,000 Korean War “traitors” to be permanently detained in military prisons, it’s time to bury as much of Hoover as possible.
Merle Haggard, the conservative “Okie from Muskogee,” voted for Bush twice, but he recently offered this advice to his fellow Republicans: “This is America. We’re proud. We’re not afraid of a bunch of terrorists. But this government is all about terror alerts and scaring us at airports. We’re changing the Constitution out of fear. We spend all our time looking up each other’s dresses. Fear’s the only issue the Republican Party has.“Well said, Okie.