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00:08I don't want to have any trouble with you.
00:10Well then you watch yourself.
00:12The story of the FBI hero has endured
00:17for almost a century now.
00:19Hey, Jimmy.
00:21The G-Men are the forces for good,
00:24almost in a Marvel comic book hero-like way.
00:32That was really deliberately created
00:35by a man named J. Edgar Hoover.
00:38But he took it in a direction that nobody could imagine.
00:43As director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover
00:46was the only senior official that served
00:48through eight different administrations.
00:51He became almost synonymous with presidents
00:53in his sense of power.
00:55And the president at all times knew this.
00:57Hoover and Nixon, to most of the world,
01:00seemed very hard to love.
01:04But they really had a friendship.
01:07When Nixon came to the White House,
01:09he assumed that he could count on Hoover.
01:13They knew how to destroy mutual enemies.
01:16Nixon really wanted Hoover to serve as his own
01:20political investigative force.
01:23But the Nixon White House was starting
01:26to act like they owned the FBI.
01:30It was not very long until some cracks appeared
01:34in that relationship.
01:36It really became this dance of favors and threats.
01:40You don't want an FBI to try to destroy a president,
01:44but you also don't want a president
01:46to try to destroy the FBI.
01:50The relationship between the FBI director
01:53and the president has always been complicated.
01:56Sometimes they're in moments of deep collaboration.
02:00At other times, the FBI is investigating the president.
02:04The relationship has to be characterized
02:06by a certain ambiguity and tension.
02:09There are all kinds of things that can happen
02:11when those two entities get together.
02:22To understand the FBI and really to understand
02:25the 20th century American democracy,
02:28you have to understand J. Edgar Hoover.
02:30He was cunning, right, tactical, terrorizing, vindictive,
02:37secretive, closed off.
02:39Yeah, he was a tough customer.
02:41I'm glad I didn't have to work for him.
02:42Hoover is such a villain in our own politics,
02:46but for most of his career,
02:48the FBI was an incredibly popular organization,
02:51and Hoover himself was one of the most popular
02:55public servants in American life.
03:06Heading up this organization is the number one G-Man,
03:09the famed John Edgar Hoover.
03:11I think that J. Edgar Hoover represented
03:13the best and the brightest.
03:15You respected Mr. Hoover.
03:16He never gave you any reason not to respect him.
03:19He was a symbol of the FBI.
03:21The motto of the FBI, fidelity, bravery, integrity.
03:24I always wanted to be an FBI agent
03:27since I was in the eighth grade.
03:28I always thought, wow, why can't they have women FBI agents?
03:32And of course, they'd give you the, no, has to be a male.
03:35My dad was in the FBI for 27 years.
03:39I was 12 or 13 years old when I first met J. Edgar Hoover.
03:44So it was just an honor to be part of that
03:47when I joined the FBI back in 1972.
03:51I came to do agents class November 1964.
03:55I wore a dark blue suit, a white shirt, a subdued tie, hat,
04:00and lace-up shoes because that was Mr. Hoover's uniform.
04:04The first rule of the Bureau was to not embarrass the Bureau in any way.
04:10Mr. Hoover had a lot of rules.
04:12He was a micromanager. There are memos about snacks.
04:16He didn't like to have coffee at the desk.
04:19They were certainly not supposed to drink alcohol.
04:22They were supposed to go to church.
04:24None of the cars had two things.
04:26Air conditioning or standard radios.
04:29Because Mr. Hoover wants you paying attention to work.
04:32Okay.
04:33Just about every aspect of his agent's lives he wanted to control.
04:37But I think it did create this culture of loyalty and of a certain kind of pride.
04:45When you think of J. Edgar Hoover, you have to remember he's a product of Washington, D.C.
04:52We have to remember D.C. in many ways was a southern city.
04:56And so Hoover grows up understanding segregation as not something that was imposed,
05:02but something that was really God-ordained.
05:04He learned law at George Washington University.
05:09But in my view, he also learned how to think about race through a fraternity called Kappa Alpha.
05:17This is an organization that counts Robert E. Lee as its spiritual father.
05:21This is a fraternity that sees itself really as gatekeepers, if you will, or legacy bearers of the South.
05:29And that's the fraternity that helps to shape Hoover's understanding of who he was.
05:34And most importantly, really helps to shape the Bureau.
05:42When Hoover became director of the Bureau, he was actually this pretty good-looking, slim, incredibly energetic young man.
05:53And he was really brought in as a reformer.
05:58The fact that Bureau is in the name has this sort of pencil pusher bureaucratic association.
06:04And yet also, there are these highly technical trained badass operatives and agents.
06:11And he really revolutionized at the time with a scientific investigation that he brought into the Bureau.
06:17So he set up a world-class fingerprint system and an FBI scientific laboratory.
06:23There's no question that Edgar Hoover evolved the FBI from a very small and limited organization
06:30to one of the most dynamic law enforcement and counterintelligence purposes of any in the world.
06:38He understood that he who holds information holds power.
06:43From the moment the FBI was created, there were real concerns that it was going to become basically
06:51a political spying and intimidation organization.
06:54J. Edgar Hoover places a lot of emphasis on independence and the idea of not being controlled
07:03or beholden to presidents or to any really institutional authority.
07:10Hoover served under eight different presidents.
07:13Four of them were Democrats.
07:14Four of them were Republicans.
07:16And he really thought of himself as this kind of great nonpartisan figure.
07:21We were definitely told that in new agents class to be nonpartisan all the time.
07:28We have administrations come and go.
07:33And Hoover remained.
07:36And part of what that produced was a bureau that was off and running Hoover's own politics.
07:44Hoover, he did not like the pop culture as it changed in the 60s.
07:52The 1960s gave rise to the counterculture and rock and roll,
07:58free love, and other new movements.
08:03Early feminism was emerging.
08:05I was in my mid-20s.
08:07I had this notion that I could have a career family and that I could be an activist.
08:14I wanted the whole enchilada.
08:17Activism was actually the religion of my family during that time.
08:22I was born of two activist parents.
08:24I used to like to say that I could march before I could even walk.
08:30To really understand this moment in American life, you know, we have to remember there was a great deal of
08:36turmoil.
08:37We have the assassination, not just of JFK, but also his brother.
08:42And then, of course, Martin Luther King Jr. as well.
08:45We had the civil rights movement and what the FBI literally will call in their internal memos a racial revolution.
08:54America is deeply unequal, volatile, and people are tired.
09:07Hoover sort of lumped all of that in together with the rise in crime.
09:12Four days of rioting, looting, and arson rocked the city of Detroit.
09:16Newark struggles to restore peace and order.
09:18Without law and order, society will destroy itself.
09:24From the vantage point of J. Edgar Hoover, they were all a danger to America.
09:29Hoover felt that he was responsible for every part of American life and for trying to control attitudes.
09:39Hoover started keeping tabs on anyone he didn't like, and he didn't like a lot of people.
09:46Artists, quite diverse people, from, say, Marian Anderson to Lillian Hellman.
09:53But it's also people like Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, his wife Yoko Ono, Harry Belafonte,
09:59Paul Robeson, Muhammad Ali.
10:03Everyone who has expressed any kind of criticism, even mild critique of the United States,
10:10immediately falls under the purview and the surveillance of J. Edgar Hoover.
10:15Hoover was seen as an iron fist.
10:18He had infamous files that even most of the high-ranking officials in Washington feared.
10:24The secrets were always powerful in that they could be given to somebody else to destroy someone.
10:30That's why he so feared Richard Nixon.
10:33He says, you have all this dirt on the people on my list. What kind of dirt do you have
10:37on me?
10:481968, the Vietnam War was heating up enormously.
10:54The civilian casualties just kept mounting and mounting in Vietnam, and that had a huge
11:00impact on me. So we were very involved in the anti-war movement. People who were opposed to the war
11:08were getting more and more concerned about whether it would ever end.
11:12The fabric of our society was being pulled apart.
11:17This sparks a level of backlash and conservatism. I think most notably, it shows up in the 1968
11:26presidential campaign, particularly in the candidacy of Richard Nixon.
11:41The war was the dominant issue in the campaign. Nixon gave a sort of a comfort to the country.
11:48America will be able to lead the free world along the paths of peace, and that will convince
11:53the communist world that war is not certainly a path that they will choose. I think it's possible,
11:58and that's what I'm dedicating my campaign to and my election to if we win this election.
12:03So Nixon declared himself a peace candidate, suggesting that the country was out of control
12:09with anti-war activists. He is advocating for what he calls the forgotten American.
12:15It is a quiet voice in the tumult of the shouting. It is the voice of the great majority
12:21of Americans, the forgotten Americans, the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators.
12:26He was trying to talk to people who hated the opposition to the war.
12:30When the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented lawlessness,
12:36then it's time for new leadership for the United States of America.
12:43No question that Nixon did run a law and order campaign.
12:49Law and order was this very useful phrase. It signified partly concerns about the arising rate of urban crime,
12:58but it also signaled challenges to protesters who many people thought were kind of hippie disruptors or urban rioters.
13:08And so almost all of his solutions focus on control and eradicating protests.
13:18Gives speeches that sound a great deal like J. Edgar Hoover.
13:21My friend, we're going to have order. We're going to have law. We're going to have justice.
13:27It's time for a complete house-cleaning, a new attorney general that will restore respect for law and order in
13:32the United States.
13:34I turned 21 and I got the right to vote. I voted for Richard Nixon because I felt that he
13:40had the best platform.
13:42He was conservative.
13:43I had voted for Kennedy, the one before, but I voted for Nixon this time because I thought we needed
13:47to get straightened out.
13:48We called him Tricky Dick.
13:50Oh, I thought he was dreadful. I mean, I was just, I could hardly stand to look at his face
13:54on TV.
13:55He basically picked up language that J. Edgar Hoover had been using since the 1930s.
14:01And that, of course, pleased Hoover.
14:05Perhaps it was natural that they would gravitate to each other.
14:09Hoover and Nixon really had a lot in common.
14:13They were sons of the middle class who had to fight their way into the Washington establishment,
14:20and they both had some resentments about that.
14:23Before he starts his political career, Nixon wants to be a G-Man.
14:28You can see why that would appeal to him. He was a young lawyer,
14:32and the FBI was this kind of star celebrity agency during those years.
14:39G-Man. It stood for being a government man.
14:42They had just vanquished John Dillinger.
14:46And during one of the apprehensions, Machine Gun Kelly yelled out,
14:51Don't shoot, G-Man. Don't shoot.
14:53It was no accident that G-Men were also portrayed in exactly the same way as these superheroes,
15:01in comic books, in bubblegum packs, across the board.
15:07It becomes this dream for many young men to be an FBI agent. This image of the G-Man is
15:14everything that is
15:15right with America. The fact that Richard Nixon was denied that became really a joke between Hoover
15:23and Nixon as they got to know each other. I remember very well that in 1937, I submitted an
15:29application to become a member of the FBI. And I never heard anything from that application.
15:36I think we tend to conceive of them as two of the most friendless, unappealing men ever in American
15:45politics. And yet they really liked each other. Hoover and Nixon met very early in Nixon's career.
15:54When Nixon was a new member of Congress from California. Hoover was really the elder statesman.
16:01He had been at the helm of the FBI for more than two decades at that point. He was one
16:07of the most
16:07powerful men in Washington. And Nixon was just this new congressman that no one had ever heard of.
16:15Nixon was on the House Un-American Activities Committee, and that was right up Hoover's alley.
16:20New evidence of communist activities in government circles is promised by the
16:24House Committee on Un-American Activities.
16:26Hoover and his agents and their informants were deeply involved in trying to root out communists
16:34from government agencies. These documents were fed out of the State Department over 10 years ago
16:41by communists who were employees of that department. The anti-communist attitude and fervent
16:48anti-communist commitment was the real strong thing that drew them together.
16:55In 1968, Richard Nixon finally is headed to the White House. And even yet and still,
17:02as President of the United States, he still realizes that he needs the power,
17:07and he needs the friendship, and the allyship of J. Edgar Hoover.
17:20Mr. Hoover, could you tell me the nature of your visit with the president-elect?
17:25No, just a very pleasant personal visit.
17:27Nine days after winning the election, Nixon and Hoover meet at the Hotel Pierre.
17:33Nixon and Hoover met and forged a pact that they would be united together
17:38and to trade information. Let's collaborate.
17:42Do you plan to continue on as director? Would you like to continue on as director?
17:46That's entirely in the hands of the president-elect. What he wants, I'm willing to do.
17:49There's lots of outward signaling about this relationship. Nixon is kind of coming back out
17:55of that meeting with just this big smile on his face, thinking, you know, this is going to be fun.
18:04This is a relationship that goes beyond politics. These two individuals hang out together socially.
18:12They visit one another at their homes. And Nixon's daughter even performs a water ballet for Hoover.
18:20He and Hoover had been friends for 20 years. And they hadn't just been friends. They had been confidants.
18:28When Nixon returned to Washington as president, there was every reason for him to expect that he
18:35would continue having a close relationship with Hoover, both on a personal level and on a professional level.
18:45Mr. President, I want to take a moment now to express to you
18:48the deep appreciation. Our nation will reach its destiny at peace with law and order,
18:55as you have indicated. And therefore, it's with great pride and pleasure that I present this badge
19:00to you. And with it, you become an official member of the FBI family.
19:11During my meeting with Mr. Hoover, he spoke very highly of Nixon and felt like
19:17that Nixon was going to be a big plus for the FBI's efforts. Nixon hired an additional thousand agents.
19:24Nixon empowers Hoover even more than he'd been in power in the previous administration.
19:30The FBI's budget explodes.
19:34Nixon's paranoia is one of the great themes of his presidency. When Nixon first came into office,
19:42he asked Hoover to do some pretty sensitive things. I'll never forget when the Cambodian leak occurred.
19:49And we said, Henry, it's possible it might be somebody on your staff. Henry said, I will destroy them.
19:57We felt this way because the people on the other side, hypocritical, call it paranoia,
20:04but paranoia for peace isn't that bad. They were trying to find out who was leaking national security
20:10information. And Hoover did, on Nixon's behalf, put taps on phones of, I think, everybody who worked
20:18in Kissinger's office, plus a few journalists. It meant that Nixon really wanted Hoover to serve
20:24as his own political investigative force. The dangers of this relationship
20:30is that these two individuals are left to their own political desires. This was, in some sense,
20:37the nightmare scenario when the Bureau was created. Nixon expects him to do it, both out of their
20:44friendship, but also because the FBI has done this for decades. Even from the start, surveillance was a
20:51bit of the Wild West during the Hoover days. The Bureau has the ability to do surreptitious entries,
20:57which essentially is getting into someone's house, putting a bug under a table or inside a lamb.
21:03You knew when your phones were tapped. That was not hard to figure. You heard little clicking sounds
21:08on the phone. The FBI agents tried to blend in with the protesters.
21:13This is what we see happening throughout the 60s. We see this in leftist and women's groups,
21:19African-American organizations. All these groups recognize that there is an atmosphere of
21:24surveillance and paranoia around them. And this is exactly what the FBI wants to create.
21:29The FBI wiretapped, surveilled, infiltrated. They stopped at nothing. We didn't know who was an agent
21:37and who wasn't. If you're being surveilled today, you know, you're at the tail end of an investigation.
21:42Surveillance doesn't happen without a judge or a U.S. attorney, either of those approvals.
21:49We are taught that the reason why there's a lot of these controls in place today
21:53is because of what was happening with COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO was the most notorious program of
22:01Hoover's career. It started out in the 1950s,
22:05and it stands for counterintelligence program. What counterintelligence meant at the bureau was not
22:12just surveillance, wiretaps, or bugs. It meant active, disruptive operations.
22:21The most infamous moment was when the FBI tape recorded Martin Luther King's sex life and then
22:29sent an anonymous threatening letter to King with these reels of tape that King interpreted as an
22:36attempt to get him to commit suicide. That's what counterintelligence meant. That is astonishing,
22:43that it goes so far beyond the boundaries of not just what is constitutional, but also what is
22:49ethical and what we expect of our most powerful institutions. The Black Panther Party comes on the
22:57radar of the FBI, and it really was an organization that was focused on self-determination to make
23:03sure that African Americans could live in a place, America, where they could be free and equal citizens.
23:08The Black Panther Party was a political movement founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, two students at
23:16the time on the Merritt College campus. The average age of members of the Black Panther Party was 19 years
23:22old. I was 19 when I joined, so this was a youth-led movement. Hoover issues this memo, a COINTELPRO
23:31memo, that
23:32the FBI is going to work to engage in covert action to make sure that the Black Panther Party does
23:39not gain
23:40respectability. One way you can really see how concerned the FBI was with anything related to the
23:48Black Panther Party is with the case of Frederica Newton. I've been surveilled most of my life, so I don't
23:58really know what it feels like to be free of that. Okay, so I want to talk now about your
24:04FBI file.
24:05This is what we were able to pull. Okay. I'm just gonna let you have a moment with that.
24:14I haven't seen this file in maybe close to 30 years.
24:22I don't, I don't know it.
24:27Wait, what?
24:31That's crazy.
24:35Was, wow, so they were in my mother's office?
24:38The BPP is a violence-prone Black militant organization. She was only a rank-and-file member,
24:44worked at the breakfast program. It's pretty close. Where was I that they were so close that
24:52they could take my picture like that? Or so far away that they would zoom in? I don't know, this
24:57is
24:58crazy.
25:0112.01 a.m., Huey, an unknown woman present and in the bedroom. No conversation, later identified as
25:09Frederica Slaughter. I'm looking at, wow, a time when Huey and I were, when I was at his apartment and
25:20we were in the bed. I'm a little dizzy right now, honestly.
25:27Um, yeah. I'm just kind of blown away. Very truly yours, J. Edgar Hoover, director. I had no idea
25:41that J. Edgar Hoover signed my personal surveillance. There's no way in which to quantify
25:50how people's lives were completely ruined or altered by these dirty tricks that the FBI engaged in.
25:57Well, it's clear that they can infiltrate you at any moment. There's nothing that's sacred that, um,
26:07if they can be present in your bedroom, what else is left?
26:18Nixon and Hoover, they were working well together. And then some cracks began to appear in that
26:26relationship. It was known as the Houston Plan. When I left the White House, one of the things I
26:32took with me was the Houston Plan. The Houston Plan was designed to remove all restraints on
26:40intelligence gathering relating to the anti-war movement of the time. The Chief of Staff, Bob Haldeman,
26:47called me in and said, this is a project that Tom Houston and the President have been working on.
26:52The classification on the project was so high, the classification itself was classified.
26:59The plan essentially proposed that the President could wiretap and surveil
27:05everyday American citizens and journalists and anybody he deemed an enemy.
27:11The systematic use of wiretappings, burglaries or so-called black bag jobs,
27:18mail openings and infiltration against anti-war groups and others. Some of these activities,
27:24as Houston emphasized to Nixon, were clearly illegal.
27:28I wasn't sure anyone would believe anything I had to say because it was so explosive.
27:35Why did you approve a plan that included an element like that that was clearly illegal?
27:42Because as President of the United States, I had to make a decision, as has faced most war presidents,
27:52in fact, all of them. So what, in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations,
27:58and the Houston Plan or that part of it was one of them, where the President can decide that it's
28:05in the best interest of the nation or something and do something illegal?
28:10Well, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.
28:14By definition? Exactly.
28:15The federal government, I knew, had these kinds of powers, but they would just turn it on anybody
28:21to find any information. The Houston Plan actually incorporated some of the kinds of operations that
28:29Hoover had been doing forever. And Nixon assumed that Hoover would be continuing to do those kinds of
28:36illegal activities that he knew Hoover had done before. And here, the man who he saw as a friend,
28:43a man he had invited into his home, a man that he believed they were on the same wavelength.
28:49If anybody understands the necessity of this program, it's J. Edgar Hoover. And yet, Hoover says no.
28:57Hoover wants to ride out on a white horse and is afraid this will somehow blemish him if it ever
29:02comes out.
29:03He thought if it ever got out, it would be bad not only for Nixon, but for the FBI and
29:08its reputation.
29:10Tom Houston, he is enraged by this. He's saying, we have to show J. Edgar Hoover who's president.
29:19But they don't show J. Edgar Hoover who's president. The Houston Plan is a moment where
29:25Hoover's power and independence as bureau director allowed him to say no to the president.
29:32Without Hoover's cooperation, the whole house of cards fell. There couldn't be a Houston Plan. We
29:38couldn't implement it.
29:41Hoover believed that the FBI needed to be protected from overreaching presidents.
29:47This is a big, big, big shock and a big blow to Nixon.
29:51That changed everything. They would never go back to the kind of relationship they had before.
29:56And as things became more complex, people in the White House at senior levels thought Hoover should
30:02be replaced. There was actually a campaign to try to remove him.
30:08And they wrote up talking points for Nixon. And Nixon said, all right, I'm going to go in.
30:13I'm going to say this to Edgar.
30:16Well, none of those words were ever spoken.
30:19Not only had Hoover not retired, but Nixon had actually agreed to expand the FBI's footprint overseas.
30:27I think Nixon knew of the infamous Hoover files and didn't know what was there that could hurt them.
30:34And Hoover insisted that he was the only person who ought to be able to decide if
30:39anyone else in the government or the public saw FBI files.
30:44In addition to the lack of official oversight, there also was very little written by journalists.
30:52The FBI is all powerful. J. Edgar Hoover is all powerful.
30:55And this is a problem too big to solve. And it was a matter of figuring out how to get
31:01the evidence.
31:02March of 1971 was the beginning of a massive fallout for the FBI.
31:09The FBI had a tiny little regional office in Media, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia.
31:17Media was a sleepy little town.
31:20The FBI office was in an apartment building diagonally across the street from the county courthouse.
31:25A group of eight people had decided that they would break in to try to find evidence of whether the
31:32FBI was suppressing dissent.
31:36They planned their heist on the night of the fight of the century. Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.
31:48Everyone who could possibly tune in to that fight would tune into it. And it would be a cover for
31:56us.
31:57This was a very unlikely group to commit such a daring crime. John and Bonnie Raines, a married couple. They
32:04had three young children.
32:05Our house was really the center of a lot of organizing and meetings. And at one point,
32:10we had to tell the two older children, just don't talk about the maps that are on the wall in
32:15that room.
32:15And then we spent a couple months casing the area.
32:18So it's Bonnie Raines who actually glows into the belly of the beast.
32:22She dresses up in a disguise as a Swarthmore student, doing a story on the FBI, then cases the entire
32:29office.
32:30I had this wool hat on and I tucked all of my long hair up inside that. They didn't suspect
32:36a thing.
32:38The head of the office was even a little flirty. So I was to ask if I could have an
32:43application for employment,
32:45which would mean the agent would go open one of the file cabinets, which he did. And I could see
32:50that none of the file cabinets were locked. There were no security measures whatsoever, nothing.
32:58This is going to be a spectacular evening. We selected the four people who would go in,
33:02the two men and two women. Muhammad Ali in the ring. Now here comes Joe Frazier.
33:25We did remove about a thousand documents and there was no suspicion that anything had happened
33:32in the middle of that night. It came off without a hitch.
33:41Hoover was shocked and horrified. I was in Washington, the FBI headquarters.
33:46One of the guys came back and said, hey, did you hear about media? I said, what about media?
33:51And he says, well, you'll hear about it. It didn't take long to realize that we had found incriminating
33:56documentation. This was the first time that an FBI office had been broken into in this way. First
34:03time that these kinds of files had been stolen and therefore the first time that they were
34:07potentially going to become public. Hoover was apoplectic was the word that was used to describe him.
34:22He could not believe that this went on right under the noses of his agents. The FBI flooded Philadelphia
34:29with agents looking for us. And he was just terrified that something might get leaked from these files.
34:36And his fears were quite justified.
34:41It was a Tuesday, March 23rd, three weeks after the burglary. I went to work that morning,
34:48and as usual, I went to the mail room first. There was a big manila envelope addressed to me.
34:55It was a packet from the Citizens Commission to investigate the FBI.
35:02This was the first of the 14 files that I received that first day. Encourages agents to create paranoia
35:12in these circles, referring to the new left, and then said, get a point across that there is an FBI
35:18agent behind every mailbox. And that's exactly what that climate felt like. So as I was reading,
35:25it was getting more extreme. This regional office reported that every black student organization on
35:31the campus of Swarthmore was under surveillance. Only about 40 percent of the documents that we
35:37removed were legitimate investigations of crime. And the other 60 percent were political surveillance
35:44and intimidation. The media burglary for the Washington Post was a step into a whole new era.
35:52This is before the Pentagon Papers. The Attorney General had been calling, demanding that we
35:59not publish. They did all of this at tremendous risk and tremendous personal sacrifice. Hoover wanted
36:06to charge us with espionage. If we had been arrested and convicted, we would have been sent to federal
36:12prison for life. So I decided that this is important enough. I handed in my story at 6 o'clock
36:19that
36:19afternoon. By 10 o'clock that night, we went to press.
36:25Stolen documents describe FBI surveillance activities. That's my first story. Two weeks after that,
36:33I received my second set of FBI documents. And one of them was a cover sheet, a mere cover sheet,
36:42label at the top, COINTELPRO. This is the moment that we begin to get the first evidence of the FBI's
36:50COINTELPRO operations. And what those files reveal is the existence of a radically different kind of FBI.
37:00It reveals a Machiavelli-like leader in J. Edgar Hoover. The media burglary was one of the most
37:10damaging things that ever happened to Hoover's reputation and to the Bureau.
37:16And from there, his world begins to completely unravel. And he doesn't live, actually, to see
37:22the complete unraveling as he dies a year later.
37:34I remember when Mr. Hoover passed away. In the morning of May the 2nd, 1972. A lot of people saw
37:42him the day before. People were just dumbfounded by it.
37:47I think when a man like you ever to Hoover does, you have to notify him and come before you.
37:51I heard it, too.
37:53I was sure he had his eye glove this morning.
37:56But you see, I didn't realize he had his no penalty at all.
37:58None. I don't think he's got a brother or a sister.
38:01He doesn't know the Lord.
38:02He has signs.
38:03There's apparently signs that he had to go out of his way.
38:12It's a logical one for you to do the eulogy on the easy of me. And his relationship
38:17with you goes so far back.
38:30J. Edgar Hoover was one of the giants.
38:35For nearly half a century, nearly one-fourth of the whole history of this republic,
38:43J. Edgar Hoover has exerted a great influence for good in our national life.
38:52This is an end of an era.
38:57Nixon really mourns the loss of his friend and former political ally.
39:04When Hoover died, an immediate response to Nixon was that old cocksucker.
39:10But he also had admiration for somebody who was just off the charts on the way they operated.
39:17J. Edgar Hoover dies in May.
39:19The Watergate arrests is on June 17th.
39:22I've long thought, what would have happened had Hoover still been there?
39:39J. Edgar Hoover's grave is down in Congressional Cemetery.
39:46I go down there and maintain the grave since 1989, for 35 years now.
40:00I'm the only one who's taken care of Hoover's grave.
40:05I know that the older generation of ex-agents appreciates it.
40:13And it gives me a good feeling to do it.
40:17J. Edgar Hoover was not a perfect individual, but he was the father of law enforcement.
40:31J. Edgar Hoover's death released really a pent-up desire for change.
40:37There was a whole slate of reforms that now needed to happen.
40:42Shortly after Mr. Hoover passed away, old Patrick Gray, the acting director of the FBI, said,
40:47there's no reason why women can't be FBI agents.
40:50So I immediately wrote to him and applied.
40:52I was accepted and appointed as one of the first two women FBI agents in America in July of 1972.
41:00The FBI director became the only political appointee in the FBI, appointed by the president
41:07and ultimately approved by the Senate.
41:10We now have term limits for the director of the FBI because of J. Edgar Hoover's service.
41:17A 10-year term limit was very carefully orchestrated to be shorter than 48 years,
41:23but also longer than any one presidential administration.
41:27It was through that process that the FBI became convinced that there needed to be
41:33a respectful distance between the FBI director and the president.
41:40There should be oversight. There also should be independence,
41:44that the FBI should not be used as a political tool.
41:48We don't want another J. Edgar Hoover, but I think at moments of intense political pressure
41:54from the White House, it means there's not quite the power to resist.
41:59How are we going to make sure we can maintain this tension between the president and the FBI director?
42:04I mean, what's at stake is American democracy.
42:08What's at stake is liberty and freedom and life.
42:12THE END
42:13THE END
42:13So
42:18for better
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