Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover

by Anthony Summers

Presidents yearned to fire him, but feared his storehouse of damaging secrets. Public officials & private citizens feared his illegal surveillance & harassment tactics. Now, in this ground-breaking, oft shocking biography, J. Edgar Hoover, the man who ruled over the FBI for nearly 50 years, emerges as one of the greatest menaces of our times. Official & Confidential, by award-winning investigative journalist & author Anthony Summers, is the 1st book to expose the public & the private man. Other biographers have hinted at dark secrets in the Director's life, but Summers discloses the truth. After conducting over 800 interviews & accessing previously concealed documents, he's created a chilling portrait of a figure who blatantly abused public trust. Summers establishes Hoover was a closet homosexual & transvestite. Mafia bosses obtained information about his sex life & used it to keep the FBI at bay. Without this, the Mafia might never have gained its hold in America. Hoover shamelessly accepted gifts & free lodging from millionaire oilmen & appropriated FBI facilities for personal use. Hoover influenced the course of WWII by ignoring an early warning about Pearl Harbor. Hoover used his knowledge of JFK's womanizing to ensure that LBJ became Vice President. He relied on dirty tricks to stay in office under JFK & subverted the Warren Commission's probes. Hoover himself was the target of a Watergate-era burglary attempt--perhaps even a murder plot. With these & other disclosures, Summers defines a man & his times. He explores Hoover's troubled youth under a mentally ill father & demanding mother, & the development of the obsessive behavior dominating his life. Summers takes the reader on an extraordinary journey, as a zealous young lawyer rebuilds an ineffectual corps of agents into a massive force capable of police-state tactics. With riveting detail, Summers documents Hoover's behind-the-scenes role in war & peace thru 50 years & 8 presidential administrations. Richly anecdotal, meticulously researched Official & Confidential depicts some of the most controversial & colorful events of our century. Here is a lesson in how one man abused a position of power & changed history.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Politics, True Crime, American History, Crime

528 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Anthony Summers is the bestselling author of eight nonfiction books. His investigative books include Not in Your Lifetime, the critically acclaimed book about the assassination of John F. Kennedy; Official & Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover; and most recently The Eleventh Day, on the 9/11 attacks—a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for History.

Reviews

[KOMET · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading "Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover" was an edifying, revelatory, and startling experience. I place special emphasis on "STARTLING", because though I had some prior knowledge of Hoover's abuses of power and misdeeds as FBI Director, it was not until reading this book that the full magnitude of them became all too clear.

Summers --- who carried out more than a decade of extensive and voluminous research on Hoover's life and career and conducted hundreds of interviews with people from various walks of life who knew Hoover personally, politicians and policymakers, former FBI agents, and retired high-level officials who served under Hoover at FBI Headquarters in Washington ---- has done a fantastic job of bringing to light a man, who, belying the public image he had carefully crafted of himself for close to 50 years as one of the nation's chief law enforcement officers non-pareil, was in truth a hateful, racist, and rigidly dogmatic man. Nor was he above resorting to blackmail to achieve his aims. Yet, Hoover's rise to power was not inevitable. But through his playing upon the sensitivities of Presidents and Members of Congress, he made himself the indispensable civil servant. For instance, it was Franklin Roosevelt, a former President I much admire for the good things he did for this country (and by extension, the world), who gave Hoover in the 1930s wide-ranging authority to wiretap anyone considered as a potential security risk. (Hoover knew of Roosevelt's love for political gossip/intelligence and eagerly shared with him transcripts his agents compiled from wiretaps.) This included politicians, intellectuals, and various social organizations. Indeed, "[t]he FBI's surveillance index, started in 1941, contains 13,500 entries. While the identities of the individuals tapped is withheld on privacy grounds, the index establishes that Edgar's FBI tapped or bugged thirteen labor unions, eighty-five radical political groups and twenty-two civil rights organizations." --- p. 133.


I'd like to cite from this book the following remarks, which, for me, sums up J. Edgar Hoover and his dark legacy:

"Hoover's whole life" (observed Dr. John Money, Professor of Medical Psychology at Johns Hopkins University) "was one of haunting and hounding people over their sexuality, brutalizing them one way or another because of it. He took on the role of being the paragon, keeping the country morally clean, yet hid his own sexual side [i.e. his homosexuality and travestism]. His terrible thing was that he needed constantly to destroy other people in order to maintain himself. Many people like that break down and end up needing medical help. Hoover managed to live with his conflict --- by making others pay the price."


This book should serve as a cautionary tale for concerned people who believe in democratic government and cherish it to be ever watchful of powerful authority figures (whether elected or appointed) who may be abusing their positions to the detriment of others.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great read from investigative journalist Anthony Summers. Having recently enjoyed his 'The 11th Day' dig into the forces behind the 9/11 attack, I didn't hesitate to pick this one off the shelf. 'Official and Confidential:The Secret Life of J.Edgar Hoover', originally released in 1993, has been published in this second edition in 2011.
For those readers old enough to have lived during the times of Hoover's tenure as Director of the F.B.I., or who can remember the t.v. series with Efrem Zimbalist Jr, then be prepared to have many rose tinted conceptions shattered.
The sleeve quotes a review by Hilary Mantel of the Spectator with adequate summation, "Summers' book is not just a history of a single hero-sized hypocrite, it is a history of a vast national delusion."
The authors rapid fire revelations, covering over five hundred pages, through the offices of more than half a dozen presidents, shows 'the land of the free' to be a gestapo controlled dictatorship. The pursuit of an 'American dream' to be a nightmare. The nation that still proclaims itself to be the democratic leader of the free world remains entangled in corruption, dark secrets and political lies. The myth that was Hoover is comprehensively demolished by a mountain of factual data. A vile freak that psychologists and psychiatrists diagnose as a combination of narcissism and paranoia which produces what is known as an Authoritarian Personality. Hoover would have made a perfect high-level Nazi.
The truth of these times may yet be 'out there'. Evidence to satisfy the jurist has been long since shredded. Yet, epic events of American twentieth century history remain cloaked in darkness and deception. The huge 'Official & Confidential' files of J.Edgar Hoover no doubt contained such damaging evidence of political crime, organised crime and F.B.I. crime that we are still denied the truth today.

[Jeanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

"J. Edgar Hoover was like a sewer that collected dirt. I now believe he was the worst public servant in our history." - Former Acting Attorney General Laurence Silberman, the first person to peruse Hoover's secret files after his death.

After seeing the movie "J. Edgar" I decided I wanted to know more about Hoover. This book had been sitting on my book shelf since 1993 and I thought it was time I finally read it.

Hoover was a force to be reckoned with, a man who shaped history during his almost 50-year tenure at the FBI. The author does an amazing job detailing the life of this powerful man. From Hoover's earliest years, Summers weaves a tale of hypocrisy, increasing paranoia and megalomania. It is a look into the world of dirty politics and flawed leaders. As I read the book, I felt that the author had portrayed facts as fairly as he could considering the circumstances.

I found myself lost in the world of Hoover and that is thanks to the author's writing style. It flowed and kept my interest throughout.

[Marylou · Rating 4 out of 5]

The information in this book is so damaging to our public officials why aren't they in jail! How do our elected politicians continue to escape getting caught for all the unlawful things they do. This book ends stating that Nixon probably in the end had Hoover poisoned because he, Nixon, could never get up the nerve to fire him. Scary, scary Because the Mafia knew that Hoover was a homosexual and a transvestite, he left them alone ... in fact, stayed in their hotel. He accepted gifts from oilmen; he ignored the early warning of an attack on Pearl Harbor; He got Kennedy to make Johnson his VP because of all the stuff he had on Kennedy. Hoover was himself a target of a Watergate type burglary attempt. 50 years and 8 presidents .... unbelievable to me. This author really researched this book.

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grew up with the usual Hoover-mandated FBI propaganda in films and books but began to become disenchanted with the official investigation of the murder of President Kennedy. Then, in the later sixties, the FBI and its director became anathema as their illegal subversion and prosecution of the civil rights and antiwar movements began to be disclosed. It was therefore an embarrassment when, upon Hoover's death, the FBI headquarters was named after him.

This biography may have been the first to tie all the allegations together and to adequately substantiate them. Not only was Hoover an absolute hypocrite, he was in the pocket of elements of organized crime.

[Sallie Dunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Today was the perfect day to finish this book - the convicted felon was inaugurated today. According to this author (and he has a lot of footnotes and sources cited,) J. Edgar Hoover was corrupt, vile, and contemptible, despite the general public’s high opinion of him. (Sort of like the new commander-in- chief.) Nevertheless, he rose high up in politics and ran the FBI for 50ish years. He had dirt on EVERYONE, both democratic and republican presidents as well as numerous senators, mayors and congressional representatives. He was especially enamored of dirt that had to do with sex. He broke so many laws and invaded so many people’s privacy. Of course, there was dirt to be had. Politics is really dirty business, so it’s no longer any surprise that such a despicable person is now sitting in the Oval Office.

This book was very interesting, but it was long and the same old same old for so many pages I just got tired of it. Plus I’m not in the best frame of mind on what to me should be a national day of mourning.

The ATY Goodreads Challenge - 2025
Prompt #16 - a book that fits a prompt from the 2016 ATY list

[Medhya · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was well written and the information was well researched for the most part.

However, I felt at some points that the writer just seemed desperate to get evidence against Hoover than he took anything (maybe it is because somewhere inside me there is a lawyer hiding) but the evidence he threw sometimes felt like conjectures and speculations: your usual 'he said' 'she said'. Which may not be alright for fiction or newspapers but for a book on which a man's reputation was in line, some form of corroboration would have been appreciated.

Finally, I also didn't appreciate that in order to get Hoover he tarnished every single other important figure that came into his life. It was like the author was firing at anything and hoping something will also hit his target.

But overall it was not a badly written book.

[Keith Gandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well written and documented, but a book that weighed heavily on my soul - too many illustrations of people having given in to personal temptation. Hoover used information as a tool to blackmail others into submission and cover his own frailty. It was a walk through history, but a tiresome walk through sludge. Informative, but somewhat disappointing to have the curtains pulled back in the land of Oz.

[Jane Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

So Hoover was a monster who corrupted US politics for decades. Like most British readers, I knew almost nothing about him, but Summers' book is a riveting account of his ghastly reign.

[Dylan · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a long and inglorious history of strange men becoming very powerful indeed in the world of law enforcement and politics. Maybe it's that weird strangeness that drives them to success, or maybe it's the success that drives the behaviour. In Britain, you can almost set your calendar to throw up a weirdo or two, every few years - some judge or MP or Lord - revealed to enjoy the company of young boys, harsh leather clad mistresses or a strategically placed satsuma.

J Edgar Hoover wasn't British weird: but paranoid American weird. His apparent love of cross dressing is mild, a mere sideshow, compared to his insatiable appetite for control and prurient need for deeply personal information.

That his homosexuality had to be kept secret is a sad indictment of the times he lived in. One working theory in the book is that he was blackmailed by the Mafia about this, and consequently arranged that the FBI left them alone.

Hoover got some lucky breaks (for him) from history to further his control; wiretapping authorised by Roosevelt at the beginning of WW2, the Cold War fetid paranoia allowed him almost unchecked power. The FBI files facilitated the HUAC assault on Hollywood, that most un-American of pursuits. Reagan was an early informer, dropping a dime to federal agents deep in the California night. Writers, artists, Senators, Dr King, future Presidents, were all targets.

And, of course, The Kennedys. Especially JFK. With his not so secret extra curricular activity he was a gift to Hoover. There followed a long, hateful chess game; a war of attrition, with Kennedy looking for every opportunity to exorcise this most persistent of thorns.

The FBI both suited and confounded Nixon, and would ultimately contribute to his downfall. Nixon had once tried to join the Bureau but had been turned down for "lacking in aggressiveness".

This book is not just a biography, but a chronicle of strange days indeed, with a most peculiar cast. If Hollywood had dreamed this up it would probably be seen as too fantastic. Scary that it's true.

[Arminius · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is certainly a “secret life” of the FBI’s longest running Chief. J Edgar Hoover was a very smart man who propelled himself from law school to the head of the FBI. He directed the FBI appointed by FDR and died as the Director during the Nixon presidency. All the time he amassed secrets on many people to use as blackmail against them if need be. He was a right wing zealot who fired FBI agents for cheating on wives, being homosexual, and having drinking problems. He was against civil rights, homosexuals and feminism. Ironically, his big secret was he himself was apparently gay.

He and his deputy, Clyde Tolson were long lasting partners. However he tried to keep this secret. He was soft on the mafia because they had pictures of Hoover in gay acts. Hoover’s greatest fear that he would be outed. When Bobby Kennedy was Attorney General he went after organized crime. Hoover tried the thwart all Kennedy’s efforts. Hoover always stated that America’s largest problem was that we had too many communists among us.
There were many illegal acts committed by him but he would work to destroy the person who went after him in any manner at all, even a seemingly obvious slight on the FBI he would pursue.

The book is full of interesting, if not unbelievable, information. It’s too much to put in this review. I will just say that after he passed away in 1972 some people still feared his impending wrath. However this is a very interesting book.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

J. Edgar Hoover was a CROOK! The more I read this book the more disgusted I became with Hoover. By the end you can't believe that he got away with all that he did. His abuse of power is enough to turn your stomach. Hoover was director of the FBI for 50 years, a span that went through every major event you can imagine from the end of WWI to the threshold of Watergate and he had his dirty hand in just about all of it. Presidents were scared of him, he terrorized the Kennedy's and MLK, refused to admit the existence of the mafia, publically accused people of being gay when they themselves were not but he in fact was and all that is just scratching the surface of his menance, his thoroughly obscene abuse of office.

This was a compelling read for anyone who is curious about the underbelly of the Federal government.

[Charles van Buren · Rating 1 out of 5]

I trusted Mr. Hoover far more than I trust journalists

By Charles van Buren on June 18, 2018

Format: Kindle Edition

I worked for the FBI as a clerk in the Jackson, Ms Field Office from 1968 through 1971. I was there at the end of the FBI's remarkable destruction of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. After graduating from college I worked in various law enforcement positions in Mississippi and again had the opportunity to work with FBI agents. I trusted Mr. Hoover and the FBI then and even now far more than I trust journalists. Particularly this journalist.

[Wanda Ruzanski-Dietrich · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always kind of knew that J. Edgar Hoover was a sketchy sort of person. According to this book, "sketchy" is a gross understatement. Hoover was evidently the sort of man who had no problem abusing his office - in his case by gathering dirt on and blackmailing everybody within our political system. A lot of what I was reading about Hoover resonates with our current age.

My quibble with this book is that the author has never met a conspiracy theory that he is not willing to embrace. Maybe some of his more extravagant claims about the assassinations of the Kennedys have a basis in truth, but somehow that part of the book seemed forced.

My quibbles aside, this is a solid autobiography covering a side of the American experience that many of us prefer not to think about.

The index is a somewhat expanded name index, in that people and institutions can be found in it, but with important issues either not indexed or hidden under the Hoover, J. Edgar heading. On the positive side, the Kindle edition has working links from the topic back to the text.

[Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book took me ages to read, but kept my attention throughout. Full of probable criminal activity, a man of huge ego quite obviously unsurpassed for decades until his death and/or until recent events transpiring in the same United States. To say I was fascinated that these events could and did happen is to put it mildly. How could one man do so much damage in what should be a country of federal dedication to its people? This book is a real eye-opener. A book I will not soon forget, but I do recommend it for a fascinating read of how one man became so powerful and no one did anything about it.

[S'hi · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are fed so much by media as intrigue, both as fictional television serials and as breaking news reports that we fail to recognize how much is really just gossip. The fascinating thing about reading this expose of J Edgar Hoover so many years after its first publication, is that these processes of manipulation and mayhem still go in so many peoples’ lives.
Much of the territory of storytelling about other people rests in the interpretations so many others give to what they hear. It is not so much about truth as it is about the possibility that something may be said. Once something is said about someone else, the potential for it to damage is cast in the minds of those who do not yet know a person. Doubt gets in the way of all subsequent versions of a person’s presence. Stereotypes work more effectively than individual stories. Repetitions are more effective than reputations.

For all that we know of such processes, we still seem to fall victim to the methods by which they are cast before us as decoys and defence mechanisms by those who have most to gain from confusion and deceit. These are the methods of power. In a democracy they are the responsibility of every citizen to become aware of.

Yet we continue to allow ourselves to be duped. We continue to pay for the very agencies and perpetrators of the very methods that keep us in the dark about our own potential for power, and corruption.
What a difference it would make if we were able to learn of such methods without becoming enthralled by them. Imagine learning in school that this is what politics is really about – rather than dates and names of leaders of one party or another, one government or movement or cause.
Imagine realising that the responsibility lies within each and every one of us to understand our own potential to fear difference, then face and overcome it. At the very heart of the story of J Edgar Hoover seems to lie this very process – fear of his own potential ostracism for his own personal preferences and behaviours.

His means of facing such fear was to divert it onto others who had the very same preferences and behaviours. That he got away with it so successfully and so long, seems to rest in his ability to live with the duality of an inward life and an outward image. That such a way of living is so acceptable to so many people underlines the duplicity we share with those such as Hoover who we both admire and condemn.

Our only differences are the degree to which we practice such behaviours, and the resources we put into such deceptions on a regular basis.

As well as Official and Confidential files, J Edgar Hoover kept Personal and Confidential files. We may surprise ourselves with our own versions of such things now that we maintain social media sites on a regular basis. Whereas we once kept private diaries and scrap books, we now share our stories of our hopes and dreams more publicly. What we may not remember about ourselves someone else may well remind us of at some future point with varying degrees of embarrassment and false self-disclosure. But others’ interpretations of such information is already linked with attitudes based in voting off unwanted house guests in other forms of Big Brother intrusionism that we are expecting ourselves to be part of producing now.

Are we any better for playing such “games” than when such behaviour was considered national security? Or are we merely breeding further deceit and conceit? Perhaps our understanding of the suicide rate, and our understanding of the ease with which it can be reported for the purposes of others, will only shift significantly if we take the time to read a book such as this with all the names changed. When we see the patterns outside of time and place, we might better see the human condition and our place within it.

Perhaps we should also consider whether it is paranoia to pick up on the fears of others as threats to ourselves, even if we cannot specify the details through which either of us is likely to act out such fear. But it takes a mature person to be able to make such progress with their own primitive reflexes as well as their higher capacities. Few of us seem yet developed to such a degree. This may not be the book to help develop such awareness either.

I can only suggest you journal your reactions for yourself as you read, to give yourself some chance for such self-assessment. Good luck.
I read this book while spending a week with an elderly friend in denial of her own Alzhemier’s Disease. A Guardian has been appointed to transition her into care, but in her own mind the motive persists that others are out to get her “out of her home” rather than “into a home” of safety and comfort. It has been a revealing time about my own complicity with such agents of deception on both sides of the situation. It has also opened my perceptions about who is a friend and who an enemy with so many situations I have faced throughout my life where I have not been able to clearly see what steps would produce which outcomes, whether desired or not.

The question of trust is forever present in a shifting mindscape, and our own internal change is the hardest wave of all to ride.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very scary book. It's like a well-researched, well-written horror novel. Except that it's true.

[Stefanie Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hoover was supposedly born in 1895, but his birth certificate was not filed until 1938. The beginning of his life is suspicious! He was in the choir, the debate team, and the ROTC. He was firmly against women getting the right to vote. He had a stutter, and he taught himself to control it for debates by speaking exceptionally fast. He wound up getting a law degree, and was hired by the Justice Department. He was a staunch supporter of the death penalty. He was authorized by President Woodrow Wilson to arrest disloyal foreigners and incarcerate them with no trial. He carried out the Palmer Raids. He read people's mail and participated in illegal wiretapping. He kept secret files on thousands of Americans. It was reported that he had ties to the mob, but in all likelihood, he was probably blackmailed into being lax and denying that there was an organized crime problem. Though, he did create a branch that tracked down the famous gangsters John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, and Al Capone. Apparently, gangsters were gangsters and there was no such thing as the Mafia. He also gambled a lot of money at the horse tracks.

When he took control of the Bureau, he fired all female employees and banned the hiring of females in the future. The only way women could be hired was as a secretary, and they were only allowed to wear skirts or dresses. Women were not allowed to smoke at their desks, but men were allowed to do so. He reassigned agents who displeased him in any way. He fired agents based on how they looked or if they had displeased him in the slightest way. He got rid of people who he was jealous of, especially if they got more press than he did. He planted false evidence to get whatever outcome he wanted if he was against a person or entity of any kind.

J. Edgar Hoover is one of the SHADIEST people I have read about in the government, and that is saying a lot. I picked up this book because I was hoping to learn more about what this creep was up to, and it certainly did not disappoint. I had read in other places that it was suspected that he was gay, because he never married. There were rumors that he liked to cross dress as well. If those were true, that was his business, but it is especially sorry to be in the business of ruining people's lives for that very thing if you are also gay. His coworker that he traveled everywhere with and wore matching suits with inherited Hoover's things when he died, so I don't think it was a stretch. He abused his power, absolutely. I can understand why term limits were implemented after his long tenure and multitude of shenanagins. This was a really, really interesting book. It really helped to solidify my low opinion of Hoover.

[Brittany · Rating 3 out of 5]

After finishing up this biography, I feel conflicted. I don't consider Hoover J Edgar Hoover to be a superb man in any sense but I don't quite think he deserves to be subjected in this matter. Summer's paints a gaudy picture of the late FBI director. One that feels tabloid-ish and in poor taste, especially after reading. While I am not supporter of J Edgar's, he did turn the FBI into a modern organization. I feel that moderation is key when reading this book; there is truth woven into the outlandish accusations and he-said-she-said anecdotes parading as fact. The amount of power that Hoover was capable of amassing is staggering and ready for corruption. J Edgar was a fascinating man with a life story worth telling. But this was not the way to do so. It cheapens his life.

As a side note, I am an avid reader of anything JFK related. And the inaccuracies concerning President Kennedy's life, whereabouts, and assassination are almost laughable. They are easily rebuked and unsubstantiated. This section of book uses every rumor imaginable and string them together as fact. The Kennedy's did not act with the Mob to kill Marilyn Monroe. Hoover did not destroy "key" evidence in JFK's assassination, nor lie to The Warren Commission about said evidence. This alone made me question the author's reliability.

[Monique · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just read the biography of J.Edgar Hoover. The man would have been a perfect candidate as the head of the Gestapo: extreme right political views, no big picture, paranoid, into blackmail on a grand scale, controlling, meting out punishment to anyone who dared contradict him, accepting bribes and rewards from everyone, including doing ilegal things and, seeking the credit and limelight for everything.

A truly unpleasant man who managed to stay in his job because he had so much dirt on everyone. He was a homosexual who went out of his way to diss homosexuality, he was racist, bigoted, misogynistic, need I say more?

How the world continuously manages to produce incompetent, cruel, evil people who find their way to the top is beyond me.

A perfect example of what leadership should not be.

[Robert M. Roth MD · Rating 4 out of 5]

J. Edgar Hoover

The man was far lesser than the myth. In reality, he was a self serving and profit seeking individual driven by the need to maintain his power and position by whatever means necessary. His secret files kept presidents at bay and his personal failures kept him from admitting the existence of organized crime. The chapters on Martin Luther King, the Kennedys, and LBJ reveal how their personal lives made them easy victims of Hoover. The author’s revelations about these men seriously tarnish their image.

While well researched and documented, I found myself skimming many areas of this lengthy book. There are numerous but repetitive examples of Hoover’s misdeeds. Their are only so many ways to sin and Hoover made a career of doing it repeatedly.

[Angel Parrish · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is, I believe, the most biased book I've ever read. While it may be based on fact, while I believe Hoover might have been a first-class manipulator and blackmailer, this information was presented with such prejudice I couldn't read more than a few pages at a time. The info was poorly organized. It was like a guy sitting in a living room gossiping about his high school nemesis.

I finally gave up.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book contains the outdated theory that homosexuality is a disease, uses outdated and racist terms, uses slurs liberally, and is riddled with ungrounded conspiracy theories. Everything is either an FBI hit job, a mafia hit job, or a CIA hit job. The author deliberately lulls you into a false sense of security for the first 1/3 of the book by citing sources, and then they suddenly go away when discussing the Kennedy, MLK assassinations and later the death of Hoover himself

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was an in depth look at J Edgar Hoover and contained some explosive information. The one flaw was that it was incredibly one sided - I'm not saying that Hoover must have had any redeeming qualities, but I'm hard pressed to believe that the FBI did no good in it's first 50 years.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es una revisión bastante completa y detallada sobre la vida de Hoover,muy interessante también,pero saca tantos trapos sucios que puede llegar a ser cansativo y no está muy bien organizado que digamos, a vezes no se sabe bien como el autor organizo los capitulos.

[Michele bookloverforever · Rating 3 out of 5]

complicated life of a very complicated and conflicted human being in need of therapy. megalomania, narcissistic, ocd and other mental health problems.

[Nick Handler · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poorly researched hack job by a guy who specializing in them. Not a serious biography

[Deni Finch-frederick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought-provoking history or quasi-history. Repetetive.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover by Anthony Summers (G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1993) (353.0074) (3785).

This is a trashy tell-all biography of the man who created and personified the FBI. Though considered by many (during his lifetime) to be a hard-nosed defender against evil, in practice he was a powerful and cruel despot who rightfully invoked fear among politicians and the elite, and he was a blackmailer-manipulator of the worst ilk.

The principal currency his FBI generated was a vast collection of gossip, rumor, innuendo about the private lives of those in power. He used this information to spark terror into the lives of those whose politics did not align with Hoover’s own ultra-conservative nineteenth-century Southern sensibilities and to control and coerce those around him, up to and including one US president after another. His FBI agents spied upon the private lives of countless public figures and filed the results of this snooping with Hoover. Armed with these secrets, Hoover was able to bend those individuals in power to Hoover’s own will. The fear of those secrets being exposed kept the powerful of the day in line with Hoover’s own moral compass and allowed him to control and manipulate those individuals.

This biography is filled with titillating information, muck, and innuendo. There seems to be little evidence with which to defend Hoover against the rumormongers.

There had always been an undercurrent of snarky muttering about Hoover’s sexuality. A lifelong bachelor, Hoover lived with his widowed mother until she died when Edgar was already a middle-aged man. His one other lasting and important adult relationship was with Clyde Tolefson, who Hoover appointed as the FBI’s second-in-command. Hoover and Tolefson were constant companions and were regarded as a couple. The two men maintained separate residences, but they took their meals together, they socialized together, they spent all of their free time together, and they took all of their vacations together. The body of evidence assembled by author Anthony Summers indicates that Hoover never had an intimate adult relationship with a woman. To the highly-closeted Hoover and Tolefson, any display of mutual affection was anathema, Hoover instead lavished his public displays of affection on a pair of cairn terrier companions.

He was even betrayed at the last by his boon companion Tolefson, who was the major beneficiary of Hoover’s estate. Upon Hoover’s death, Hoover entrusted the care of his precious cairn terrier pups into the hands of Tolefson. Sadly, Tolefson rejected the honor and soon had Hoover’s puppies put to sleep.

Hoover was universally regarded as a fearsome and vengeful bully. He was not widely mourned upon his death.

Following Hoover’s death alone at home, then-President Richard Nixon ordered that Hoover’s remains lie in state in Washington’s Capitol Rotunda - the first civil servant so honored. At Hoover’s funeral, the president himself eulogized the dead director.

I purchased a like-new HB copy of this from Amazon for $1.54 on 12/3/21.

My rating: 7/10, finished 5/11/23 (3785).

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[Sarah Hearn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was interested to read this book because I saw the movie "J. Edgar". Prior to that I knew virtually nothing about Hoover (although Elliott Roosevelt, in his mysteries, spoke slightingly of Hoover, and referred often to Clyde Tolson as his lover). Having finished the book, I am appalled that he was allowed to go on for so long without being challenged. To discover that the man who was meant to be focussing on protecting the US from criminals was himself an extortionist, blackmailer, and inveterate gambler, was a man who had so much contempt for the Presidents and people he was supposed to be serving just made me furious. Sure, he didn't blackmail for money, he blackmailed for power and prestige, which allowed him to continue to receive his salary, to hobnob with the Mob - a questionable benefit - and with shady-but-rich oil men. The reverse side of this is what it says about the men he was blackmailing: womanizers, shady political practices, generally just weak human beings with average foibles. He had so many Congressmen and Senators in his pocket because they were too afraid of him to fight back. At the same while, he himself, as a gay man and transvestite, was viciously persecuting and prosecuting other gay men both in the nation at large and in Congress. His rabid prosecution of mostly spurious Communist infiltrations - I was not surprised to find that he and Senator McCarthy were close - while he ignored the ravages of the various Mafiosi made my jaw drop. Of course, turn-about is fair play; the mob was blackmailing him over his homosexuality and the price they charged was immunity from prosecution.

This book is well written, easy to read, and the footnotes are thorough and add substantially to the bog picture.