J. Edgar Hoover took over the FBI, then known as the Bureau of Investigation in 1924 when he was 29 years old. At first, agents couldn't carry weapons and reported suspects to other law officials.

No federal bureaucrat played a bigger role in 20th-century law enforcement than J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), who served as the head of the FBI and its predecessor agency for half a century. Hoover ...

On the limits of executive power. By Jack Goldsmith and Samuel Moyn The move prolongs the dispute over the F.B.I.’s headquarters, an aging colossus veiled in netting to keep concrete from falling on ...

G-Man by Yale historian Beverly Gage examines how Hoover held onto power and describes his complicated legacy on racial justice and surveillance. Biography traces public support for J. Edgar Hoover in ...

If that ideological turnabout seems ironic, Beverly Gage’s magnificent biography of Hoover, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, shows how the institution has always been ...

On May 10, 1924, one of the worst events in history for American civil liberties happened: 29-year-old J. Edgar Hoover assumed the role of director of the then-Bureau of Investigation. Ambitious, ...

You'd be hard-pressed to call an hour spent in the company of Harry Shearer and Tom Leopold work. Not only is each a prolific ...

Anyone in the know when J. Edgar Hoover was FBI director was aware of the rumors that Hoover kept secret files with damaging information that he could unleash to go after his enemies and ensure that ...

During his near-half century leading the FBI, J Edgar Hoover used illegal surveillance techniques on thousands of Americans ...

Many great figures in American history are full of contradictions. Thomas Jefferson wrote stirringly about liberty while owning human beings as property. Woodrow Wilson was both the idealistic author ...