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Standoff The FBI Power and Paranoia S01E02
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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 for 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 by 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 was the only senior official
00:48that served through eight different administrations.
00:51He became almost synonymous with presidents in his sense of power.
00:55And the president at all times knew this.
00:57Hoover and Nixon, to most of the world, seemed 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 political investigative force.
01:23But the Nixon White House was starting to act like they owned the FBI.
01:29It was not very long until some cracks appeared in 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 to try to destroy the FBI.
01:50The relationship between the FBI director and 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 by a certain ambiguity and tension.
02:09There are all kinds of things that can happen when those two entities get together.
02:22To understand the FBI, and really to understand the 20th century, American democracy,
02:28you have to understand J. Edgar Hoover.
02:30He was cunning, right?
02:33Tactical.
02:35Terrorizing.
02:36Vindictive.
02:37Secretive.
02:38Closed 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, the FBI was an incredibly popular organization.
02:51And Hoover himself was one of the most popular public servants in American life.
02:57FBI headquarters.
03:00One moment, please.
03:01I'll give you Mr. Hoover.
03:06Heading up this organization is the number one G-man, the famed John Edgar Hoover.
03:11I think that J. Edgar Hoover represented the 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.
03:25I always wanted to be an FBI agent since I was in the eighth grade.
03:29I 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 when I joined the FBI back in 1972.
03:51I came to do agent's class November 1964.
03:55I wore a dark blue suit, a white shirt, a subdued tie, hat, and lace-up shoes because that was
04:02Mr. 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.
04:14There 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.
04:27Air conditioning are standard radios because 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, but 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.
05:16This 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.
05:30And that's the fraternity that helps to shape Hoover's understanding of who he was, and most importantly, really helps to
05:36shape the Bureau.
05:41When Hoover became director of the Bureau, he was actually this pretty good-looking, slim, incredibly energetic young man.
05:52And 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, and yet also there
06:06are 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.
06:18He 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.
06:37He 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 a political
06:52spying
06:52and intimidation organization.
06:55J. Edgar Hoover places a lot of emphasis on independence and the idea of not being controlled or beholden to
07:05presidents
07:07or 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.
07:34And 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, free 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.
08:15I wanted the whole enchilada.
08:16Activism 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.
09:03We want the world, but we want it now!
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.
09:52But it's also people like Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, his wife Yoko Ono, Harry Belafonte, Paul Robeson, Muhammad Ali.
10:02Everyone who has expressed any kind of criticism, even mild critique of the United States, immediately falls under the purview
10:13and the surveillance of J. Edgar Hoover.
10:16Hoover 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.
10:36What kind of dirt do you have on 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 impact on me.
11:01So we were very involved in the anti-war movement.
11:04People who were opposed to the war were getting more and more concerned about whether it would ever end.
11:13The fabric of our society was being pulled apart.
11:17This sparks a level of backlash and conservatism.
11:22I think most notably, it shows up in the 1968 presidential campaign, particularly in the candidacy of Richard Nixon.
11:41The war was the dominant issue in the campaign.
11:45Nixon gave a sort of a comfort to the country.
11:48America will be able to lead the free world along the paths of peace,
11:52and that will convince the communist world that war is not certainly a path that they will choose.
11:57I think it's possible, and that's what I'm dedicating my campaign to and my election to if we win this
12:02election.
12:03So Nixon declared himself a peace candidate, suggesting that the country was out of control with anti-war activists.
12:11He is advocating for what he calls the forgotten American.
12:15It is a quiet voice in the tumult of the shouting.
12:19It is the voice of the great majority of 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.
12:52It 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.
13:18It gives 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.
13:35I turned 21 and I got the right to vote.
13:37I voted for Richard Nixon because I felt that he had 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.
13:52I mean, I was just, I could hardly stand to look at his face on TV.
13:55He basically picked up language that J. Edgar Hoover had been using since the 1930s.
14:01And that, of course, would 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.
14:31He was a young lawyer, and the FBI was this kind of star celebrity agency during those years.
14:39G-man.
14:40It 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.
14:52Don't shoot.
14:52It 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.
15:12This image of the G-man is everything that is right with America.
15:16The fact that Richard Nixon was denied that became really a joke between Hoover and Nixon
15:23as they got to know each other.
15:26I remember very well that in 1937, I submitted an application to become a member of the FBI.
15:33And 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 politics.
15:46And yet, they really liked each other.
15:49Hoover and Nixon met very early in Nixon's career.
15:54When Nixon was a new member of Congress from California.
15:58Hoover was really the elder statesman.
16:01He had been at the helm of the FBI for more than two decades at that point.
16:06He was one of the most powerful men in Washington.
16:10And 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 House Committee on Un-American Activities.
16:26Hoover and his agents and their informants were deeply involved in trying to root out communists from government agencies.
16:35These documents were fed out of the State Department over 10 years ago by communists who were employees of that
16:43department.
16:45The anti-communist attitude and fervent anti-communist commitment was the real strong thing that drew them together.
16:55In 1968, Richard Nixon finally is headed to the White House.
17:00And even yet still, as President of the United States, he still realizes that he needs the power and he
17:08needs 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 and 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.
17:50There's lots of outward signaling about this relationship.
17:53Nixon is kind of coming back out of that meeting with just this big smile on his face, thinking, you
18:00know, this is going to be fun.
18:04This is a relationship that goes beyond politics.
18:09These two individuals hang out together socially.
18:12They visit one another at their homes.
18:15And Nixon's daughter even performs a water ballet for Hoover.
18:20He and Hoover had been friends for 20 years.
18:23And 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 would continue having
18:36a close relationship with Hoover,
18:38both on a personal level and on a professional level.
18:45Mr. President, I want to take a moment now to express to you the deep appreciation.
18:50Our nation will reach its destiny of peace with law and order, as you have indicated.
18:56And therefore, it's just great pride and pleasure that I present this badge to you.
19:01And with it, you become an official member of the FBI family.
19:06Mr. President.
19:11During my meeting with Mr. Hoover, he spoke very highly of Nixon and felt like that Nixon was going to
19:18be a big plus for the FBI's efforts.
19:21Nixon hired an additional thousand agents.
19:24Nixon empowers Hoover even more than he had been in power in the previous administration.
19:30The FBI's budget explodes.
19:35Nixon's paranoia is one of the great themes of his presidency.
19:40When Nixon first came into office, he asked Hoover to do some pretty sensitive things.
19:46I'll never forget when the Cambodian leak occurred.
19:49And we said, Henry, it's possible it might be somebody on your staff.
19:55Henry said, I will destroy them.
19:57We felt this way because the people on the other side, hypocritical, call it paranoia, but paranoia for peace isn't
20:06that bad.
20:07They were trying to find out who was leaking national security information.
20:11And Hoover did, on Nixon's behalf, put taps on phones of, I think, everybody who worked in Kissinger's office, plus
20:19a few journalists.
20:20It meant that Nixon really wanted Hoover to serve as his own political investigative force.
20:27The dangers of this relationship is that these two individuals are left to their own political desires.
20:35This was, in some sense, the nightmare scenario when the Bureau was created.
20:42Nixon expects him to do it both out of their friendship, but also because the FBI has done this for
20:47decades.
20:49Even from the start, surveillance was a bit of the Wild West during the Hoover days.
20:54The Bureau has the ability to do surreptitious entries, which essentially is getting into someone's house, putting a bug under
21:01a table or inside a lamb.
21:03You knew when your phones were tapped. That was not hard to figure.
21:06You heard little clicking sounds on the phone.
21:09The FBI agents tried to blend in with the protesters.
21:13This is what we see happening throughout the 60s.
21:15We see this in leftist and women's groups, African-American organizations.
21:21All these groups recognize that there is an atmosphere of surveillance and paranoia around them.
21:26And this is exactly what the FBI wants to create.
21:29The FBI wiretapped, surveilled, infiltrated.
21:34They stopped at nothing.
21:36We didn't know who was an agent and who wasn't.
21:38If 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 is because of what
21:55was happening with COINTELPRO.
21:57COINTELPRO was the most notorious program of Hoover's career.
22:02It started out in the 1950s, and it stands for Counterintelligence Program.
22:09What counterintelligence meant at the Bureau was not just surveillance, wiretaps, or bugs.
22:17It meant active, disruptive operations.
22:21The most infamous moment was when the FBI tape-recorded Martin Luther King's sex life and then sent an anonymous
22:31threatening letter to King with these reels of tape that King interpreted as an attempt to get him to commit
22:38suicide.
22:38That's what counterintelligence meant.
22:41That is astonishing that it goes so far beyond the boundaries of not just what is constitutional, but also what
22:49is ethical and what we expect of our most powerful institutions.
22:55The Black Panther Party comes on the radar of the FBI, and it really was an organization that was focused
23:01on self-determination to make sure that African-Americans could live in a place, America, where they could be free
23:07and equal citizens.
23:08The Black Panther Party was a political movement founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, two students at the time
23:16on the Merritt College campus.
23:19The average age of members of the Black Panther Party was 19 years old.
23:23I was 19 when I joined.
23:25So this was a youth-led movement.
23:28Hoover issues this memo, a COINTELPRO memo, that the FBI is going to work to engage in covert action
23:36to make sure that the Black Panther Party does not gain respectability.
23:43One way you can really see how concerned the FBI was with anything related to the Black Panther Party
23:49is with the case of Frederica Newton.
23:54I've been surveilled most of my life, so I don't really know what it feels like to be free of
24:01that.
24:02Okay, so I want to talk now about your FBI file.
24:05This is what we were able to pull.
24:07Okay.
24:08I'm just going to let you have a moment with that.
24:15I 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.
24:43She was only a rank-and-file member, worked at the breakfast program.
24:48It's pretty close.
24:50And where was I that they were so close that they could take my picture like that?
24:54Or so far away that they would zoom in?
24:56And I don't know, this is crazy.
25:0012.01 a.m., Huey, an unknown woman present and in the bedroom.
25:06No conversation, later identified as Frederica Slaughter.
25:10I'm looking at, wow, a time when Huey and I were,
25:18when I was at his apartment and we were in the bed.
25:22I'm a little dizzy right now, honestly.
25:31Yeah.
25:32I'm, I'm, I'm just kind of blown away.
25:36Very truly yours, J. Edgar Hoover, director.
25:39I had no idea that J. Edgar Hoover signed my personal surveillance.
25:46There's no way in which to quantify how people's lives were completely ruined or altered by these dirty tricks that
25:55the FBI engaged in.
25:56Well, it's clear that they can infiltrate you at any moment.
26:00There's nothing that's sacred that, um, if they can be present in your bedroom, what else is left?
26:19Nixon and Hoover, they were working well together.
26:23And then some cracks began to appear in, in that relationship.
26:27It was known as the Houston Plan.
26:29When I left the White House, one of the things I took with me was the Houston Plan.
26:35The Houston Plan was designed to remove all restraints on intelligence gathering relating to the anti-war movement of the
26:44time.
26:45The chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, called me in and said,
26:48this 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 everyday American citizens and journalists and anybody he deemed
27:10an enemy.
27:12The systematic use of wiretappings, burglaries, or so-called black bag jobs, mail openings, and infiltration against anti-war groups
27:21and others.
27:22Some of these activities, as 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, in
27:52fact, all of them.
27:53So what, in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations, and the Houston plan or that part
28:01of it was one of them,
28:02where the president can decide that it's in 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.
28:23The Houston plan actually incorporated some of the kinds of operations that Hoover had been doing forever.
28:30And Nixon assumed that Hoover would be continuing to do those kinds of illegal activities that he knew Hoover had
28:39done before.
28:40And here, the man who he'd saw as a friend, a man he'd had invited into his home, a man
28:46that he believed they were on the same wavelength.
28:49If anybody understands the necessity of this program, it's J. Edgar Hoover.
28:53And 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.
29:14He's saying, we have to show J. Edgar Hoover who's president.
29:19But they don't show J. Edgar Hoover who's president.
29:22The Houston plan is a moment where Hoover's power and independence as bureau director allowed him to say no to
29:31the president.
29:32Without Hoover's cooperation, the whole house of cards fell.
29:37There couldn't be a Houston plan.
29:38We couldn'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.
29:50That changed everything.
29:52They would never go back to the kind of relationship they had before.
29:57And as things became more complex, people in the White House at senior levels thought Hoover should be replaced.
30:04There was actually a campaign to try to remove him.
30:08And they wrote up talking points for Nixon.
30:10And 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 anyone else in
30:40the 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's all powerful.
30:53J. Edgar Hoover's all powerful.
30:55And this is a problem too big to solve.
30:58And it was a matter of figuring out how to get the 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.
31:42Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.
31:48Everyone who could possibly tune in to that fight would tune into it.
31:54And it would be a cover for us.
31:57This was a very unlikely group to commit such a daring crime.
32:02John and Bonnie Raines, a married couple, they had three young children.
32:06Our house was really the center of a lot of organizing and meetings.
32:09And at one point we had to tell the two older children, just don't talk about the maps that are
32:14on the wall in that 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.
32:35They didn't suspect a thing.
32:38The head of the office was even a little flirty.
32:41So I was to ask if I could have an application for employment, which would mean the agent would go
32:46open one of the file cabinets.
32:49Which he did and I could see that none of the file cabinets were locked.
32:52There were no security measures whatsoever.
32:56Nothing.
32:58This is going to be a spectacular evening.
33:00We selected the four people who would go in, the two men and two women.
33:03Muhammad Ali in the ring.
33:05Now here comes Joe Frazier.
33:12Frazier getting closer to the ex-champion.
33:16And another.
33:19The round is almost over.
33:26We did remove about a thousand documents and there was no suspicion that anything had happened in the middle of
33:33that night.
33:35It came off without a hitch.
33:40Hoover was shocked and horrified.
33:44I was in Washington, the FBI headquarters.
33:46One of the guys came back and said, hey, did you hear about media?
33:49I said, what about media?
33:51And he says, well, you'll hear about it.
33:53It didn't take long to realize that we had found incriminating documentation.
33:57This was the first time that an FBI office had been broken into in this way.
34:02First time that these kinds of files had been stolen.
34:06And therefore, the first time that they were potentially going to become public.
34:17Hoover 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.
34:27The FBI flooded Philadelphia with agents looking for us.
34:31And 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.
34:47I went to work that morning.
34:49As usual, I went to the mailroom first.
34:51There 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.
35:09Encourages agents to create paranoia in these circles, referring to the new left.
35:15And then said, get a point across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.
35:21And that's exactly what that climate felt like.
35:24So as I was reading, it was getting more extreme.
35:26This regional office reported that every black student organization on the campus of Swarthmore was under surveillance.
35:34Only about 40% of the documents that we removed were legitimate investigations of crime.
35:40And the other 60% were political surveillance and intimidation.
35:45The media burglary for the Washington Post was a step into a whole new era.
35:52This is before the Pentagon Papers.
35:55The attorney general had been calling, demanding that we could not publish.
36:00They did all of this at tremendous risk and tremendous personal sacrifice.
36:05Hoover wanted to charge us with espionage.
36:08If we had been arrested and convicted, we would have been sent to federal prison for life.
36:13So I decided that this is important enough.
36:17I handed in my story at 6 o'clock that afternoon.
36:20By 10 o'clock that night, we went to press.
36:25Stolen documents describe FBI surveillance activities.
36:30That's my first story.
36:31Two weeks after that, I received my second set of FBI documents.
36:38And one of them was a cover sheet, a mere cover sheet, label at the top, COINTELPRO.
36:45This is the moment that we begin to get the first evidence of the FBI's COINTELPRO operations.
36:52And 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.
37:07The media burglary was one of the most damaging things that ever happened to Hoover's reputation and to the Bureau.
37:16And from there, his world begins to completely unravel.
37:20And he doesn't live actually to see the complete unraveling as he dies a year later.
37:34I remember when Mr. Hoover passed away.
37:38In the morning of May the 2nd, 1972.
37:41A lot of people saw him the day before.
37:43People were just dumbfounded by it.
37:47You have to, when a man might deliver to Hoover does, you have to notify him that's not before you.
37:51I heard it.
37:52I was strongly excited about this morning.
37:56You see, I didn't realize he had no family at all.
37:58None.
37:59I don't think he's got a brother or a sister or a cousin.
38:02He has not.
38:03There's apparently something that he's the FBI.
38:06It's one of those murders that I always give the eulogy to himself and draw, and I don't want you
38:12to do it right.
38:13It's a logical one for you to do the eulogy on it.
38:15He's unique, and his relationship with 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, J. Edgar Hoover has exerted
38:46a 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.
39:17Hoover 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.
39:47I 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.
40:18J. Edgar Hoover was not a perfect individual, but he was the father of law enforcement.
40:31Hoover's death released really a pent-up desire for change.
40:38There was a whole slate of reforms that now needed to happen.
40:42Shortly after Mr. Hoover passed away,
40:44old Patrick Gray, the acting director of the FBI,
40:47said there'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
40:57in July of 1972.
41:00The FBI director became the only political appointee in the FBI,
41:06appointed by the president and ultimately approved by the Senate.
41:10We now have term limits for the director of the FBI
41:14because of J. Edgar Hoover's service.
41:17A 10-year term limit was very carefully orchestrated
41:20to be shorter than 48 years,
41:23but also longer than any one presidential administration.
41:28It was through that process that the FBI became convinced
41:32that there needed to be a respectful distance
41:35between the FBI director and the president.
41:40There should be oversight.
41:42There 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,
41:51but I think at moments of intense political pressure
41:54from the White House,
41:56it means there's not quite the power to resist.
41:59How are we going to make sure we can maintain
42:01this 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.
42:15자기 multitasking needs to be used at stake.
42:15I enemy human men.
42:15I am at stake.
42:15I am at stake.
42:15I am at stake.
42:19I am at stake.
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