J. Edgar Hoover, Sex, and Crime: An Historical Antidote

Product Description

Was J. Edgar Hoover a homosexual? And did organized-crime leaders, knowing this, blackmail the FBI director into leaving them alone? These charges won almost instant popular acceptance when they were aired in a sensational biography of Hoover in 1993. But Athan Theoharis, the foremost authority on Hoover and the FBI, here shows that the accusations are spurious―and not nearly as intriguing as Hoover’s real attitudes toward sex and organized crime. Theoharis takes apart the argument for Hoover’s homosexuality, then goes on to paint a chilling portrait of a moralistic bureaucrat who would not hesitate to use sex-related information against his political enemies―when it could not be traced to FBI investigations. Theoharis explains why the FBI’s ineffectiveness in pursuing organized-crime leaders stemmed from the same political priorities that gave Hoover broad authority during the cold war years to use illegal investigative techniques and to focus on political activities. Punctuating his narrative with case materials from the FBI’s secret files―on presidential candidates, senators, congressmen, artists and writers, college presidents, and others―Theoharis unravels the brilliantly devious means that Hoover used to accomplish his political ends. And he shows how they contributed to a culture of lawlessness within the FBI itself.

From Publishers Weekly

The author of this freshly informative study addresses the late FBI director’s alleged homosexuality and the rumor that the Mafia, having acquired evidence of it, blackmailed him into leaving them alone. Acknowledging the FBI’s unimpressive record against organized crime and Hoover’s denial that a nationwide criminal conspiracy ever existed, Theoharis establishes convincingly that the investigation of organized crime was of secondary importance to Hoover and that his priority list was dominated by the hunt for “subversives” and collecting information on the illicit sexual activities of public figures to use against them. The author examines the testimony that led to the popularization of Hoover’s “homosexuality,” including Susan Rosenstiel’s questionable report of seeing Hoover in drag at a homosexual orgy hosted by former McCarthy aid Roy Cohn. He concludes that if Hoover was homosexual, which he doubts, he “would never have put himself in a position that publicly compromised his homosexuality.” Theoharis is the author of a highly critical biography of Hoover, The Boss.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Theoharis, a leading authority on Hoover and the FBI, refutes charges in Anthony Summers’s Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (Putnam, 1993) that Hoover was homosexual. The author of the incisive biography The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover & the Great American Inquisition (LJ 6/1/88), Theoharis challenges much of the unsubstantiated evidence put forth by Summers. Like Summers, the author bases much of his case upon disputable facts, commentary, and conjecture. Theoharis questions the reliability of many eyewitness accounts in Summers’s book. Contrary to Summers, he believes that Hoover’s failure to pursue organized crime was not due to gay blackmail but a manifestation of his obsessive interest in political power and the lack of laws to prosecute organized crime. While the jury is still out on Hoover’s homosexuality, libraries should have copies of both books for an impartial presentation of the issue.

Michael A. Lutes, Univ. of Notre Dame Lib., Ind.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

If the late FBI boss was homosexual, he took the secret to his grave, according to researcher Theoharis. But that doesn’t prevent the credulous public and authors unscrupulous about evidentiary weight, such as Anthony Summers (
Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, 1993), from believing allegations that the flagrantly antigay Hoover was himself gay. Theoharis, not a H