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G-Men on Trial
| Article
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15236 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1989 |
3,338 Words |
| Author
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Edward S. Shapiro
Edward S. Shapiro is professor of history at Seton Hall
University and author of The Letters of Sidney Hook:
Democracy, Communism, and the Cold War (1995). |
"RACIAL MATTERS"
The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972
Kenneth O'Reilly
New York: Free Press, 1989
443 pp., $24.95
THE LIBERALS AND J. EDGAR HOOVER
Rise and Fall of a Domestic Intelligence State
William W. Keller
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989
215 pp., $25.00
A DEATH IN THE DELTA
The Story of Emmett Till
Stephen J. Whitfield
New York: Free Press, 1988
193 pp., $19.95
WE ARE NOT AFRAID
The Story of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney
and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi
Seth Cagin and Philip Dray
New York: Macmillan, 1988
500 pp., $24.95
For over a half century the American public was subjected to an assiduous and self-serving public relations campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to convince us that it was the world's finest law enforcement agency. Since the 1930s, popular culture pictured the "G-man" as an incorruptible, brave, and infallible soldier in the war against crime and communism. The FBI encouraged the production of radio programs such as The Lucky Strike Hour of the 1930s; television shows such as The FBI Story, which ran for nine years on ABC; books such as Don Whitehead's The FBI Story (1956), which was made into a movie starring Jimmy Stewart; and magazine and newspaper articles presenting a flattering view of the bureau. Conversely, the bureau strenuously discouraged works that conveyed a less sycophantic picture of the agency.
This public relations campaign was led by J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's director for nearly half a century beginning in the 1920s. Sen. George Norris Nebraska described Hoover as "the greatest publicity hound on the American continent," while President Kennedy believed Hoover to be one of
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