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checkout. Hoover

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created this playbook of how

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you could use an institution

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like the FBI to intimidate

1:00

your enemies, to gather information.

1:02

And then on the other

1:05

hand, he's actually nothing like

1:07

Cash Patel, because Cash Patel

1:09

is so open about being

1:11

loyal to Donald Trump in

1:14

particular. He calls him

1:16

King Donald. And Hoover was

1:18

a very different creature. Hello

1:25

and welcome to Why Is

1:27

This Happening with Me, your

1:29

host, Chris Hayes. You know, I

1:31

spend a lot of time trying

1:33

to figure out what is

1:35

happening, why is this happening

1:38

in the country in terms

1:40

of the sort of ferocity,

1:43

rapidity, recklessness, and chaos

1:45

and destructiveness

1:48

of the

1:50

first. several

1:53

months of

1:55

the second

1:57

Trump bunch of different ways people

1:59

think about that. One of them,

2:02

you know, the most catastrophic, obviously,

2:04

are comparisons with Weimar Germany and,

2:06

you know, the Nazi takeover. The

2:08

Atlantic wrote a piece about how

2:10

Hitler undid the constitutional order. Obviously,

2:12

there's, you know, people are using

2:15

the Nehemreier quote poem about first

2:17

they came for the communists and

2:19

I didn't speak up because I

2:21

wasn't a communist. So that's like,

2:23

I think it's fair to say

2:25

like utter a complete, worst, absolute

2:27

worst case scenario is like the

2:30

sort of... deepest pit of human

2:32

evil, the Nazi takeover. And then

2:34

there's other comparisons. People try to

2:36

use the most common, I think,

2:38

in contemporary life is Hungary, where

2:40

what was a liberal democracy was

2:43

kind of transformed by Victor Orban

2:45

into what scholars of comparative politics

2:47

called competitive authoritarianism. We had Steve

2:49

Levitzki on to talk about, so

2:51

Hungary is one model. There's Vladimir

2:53

Putin's Russia, where a very, very...

2:55

Delicate, weak, and new democracy in

2:58

terms of Russia post the fall

3:00

of the Soviet state gets sort

3:02

of converted into this Putinist autocracy.

3:04

There's Turkey. But one of the

3:06

things I try to think about

3:08

is just looking to American history.

3:11

Because one of the things that

3:13

happens in American history is A,

3:15

we have a story of sort

3:17

of progress that goes forward that

3:19

I think smoothes out a lot

3:21

of back and forth. in the

3:23

degrees of freedom and equality and

3:26

civil rights and civil liberties Americans

3:28

have. There's periods where there are

3:30

quasi-tironical crackdowns, the Alien Sedition Act,

3:32

which happens almost immediately after the

3:34

birth of the New Republic, the

3:36

Red Scare in the 1920s. There's

3:39

periods of tremendous progress on racial

3:41

equality, like the post-reconstruction constitution and

3:43

the post-reconstruction governments, and then retrenchment

3:45

in the violent... quote unquote redemption

3:47

of the old South by white

3:49

supremacist who take power back for

3:52

white supremacist one party rule. And

3:54

the reason I give this preamble

3:56

is one of the things I've

3:58

been thinking about is like abuse

4:00

of executive power and state power.

4:02

and what are the best comparison

4:04

sets, what are the best historical

4:07

precedents, and I've been thinking a

4:09

lot about the FBI in the

4:11

Department of Justice, and specifically about

4:13

the FBI under Cash Patel, a

4:15

man who I think is wildly

4:17

unqualified for the job, also like

4:20

anti-qualified for the job, I would

4:22

say, he should have no business

4:24

running the FBI. And of course,

4:26

the most notorious wielder of the

4:28

power of the FBI was the

4:30

founding director of the FBI, Jierger

4:32

Hoover, served in the government for

4:35

nearly five decades. He basically started

4:37

the Bureau before it was the

4:39

Bureau. And Hoover's an interesting character

4:41

returned to because I think it's

4:43

both terrifying and comforting in these

4:45

ways. Instead of thinking about Nazi

4:48

Germany, if we think about Hoover's

4:50

America, For the purposes of Hoover

4:52

and somehow I weirdly find that

4:54

That kind of tension that middle

4:56

space not like everything's great or

4:58

everything's normal and not Nazi Germany

5:01

and not Hungary But something in

5:03

this complicated middle that we actually

5:05

have reference to in our history

5:07

I Don't know why I find

5:09

it weirdly a little comforting, but

5:11

it's like to me. I keep

5:13

going back to this place. We

5:16

don't have to look to other

5:18

regimes. We can look to our

5:20

own and partly the reason I

5:22

think it's comforting is because the

5:24

end Hoover died and we reformed

5:26

a lot of the things that

5:29

led to the abuses that Hoover

5:31

took advantage of. And so I

5:33

thought today I would speak a

5:35

bit about the FBI and Hoover

5:37

and the uses and abuses of

5:39

state power in our own past

5:41

with one of the foremost experts

5:44

on this topic. Beverly Gage is

5:46

a historian at Yale and she

5:48

wrote this enormous acclaimed celebrated biography

5:50

of Geiger Hoover. G-Man, Geiger Hoover

5:52

in the Making the American Century,

5:54

it won the Pulitzer, it has

5:57

been celebrated, rave reviews, it's an

5:59

incredible piece of work and scholarship.

6:01

And so I thought there's no

6:03

one better to talk to in

6:05

the... moment in Beverly Gage. So

6:07

Beverly, thank you for coming on

6:10

the podcast. Thanks for having me.

6:12

I am sorry for the occasion.

6:14

Yeah, well, it's not great out

6:16

there. I mean, I guess maybe,

6:18

can I just start with how

6:20

you, I mean, this piece of

6:22

work you produced is a monumental.

6:25

It's one of those just, I

6:27

can't imagine the amount of sheer

6:29

labor hours that went into this

6:31

biography. How did you find your

6:33

way into this topic? What first

6:35

peaked your interest? I wrote an

6:38

earlier book that was about a

6:40

terrorist attack on Wall Street in

6:42

1920. So it was sort of

6:44

this unknown event. It took place

6:46

in the middle of the Palmer

6:48

raids and the first Red Scare,

6:50

which itself has lots of residences

6:53

with what's going on today. But

6:55

in that. Writing, I encountered Hoover

6:57

as a very young man, so

6:59

not yet FBI director, but already

7:01

very involved in the surveillance of

7:03

radical groups. already involved in sort

7:06

of building the federal apparatus that

7:08

was going to do that during

7:10

those years. And so I got

7:12

interested in him as a character

7:14

who was going to go on

7:16

to have all of this influence

7:18

in American history and who was

7:21

in this very interesting process of

7:23

kind of learning how to do

7:25

it during those years. What do

7:27

you mean learning how to do

7:29

it? Hoover grew up in DC,

7:31

and so he grew up in

7:34

an early 20th century world in

7:36

which the federal government was pretty

7:38

small, but was expanding. And there

7:40

was all of this progressive era

7:42

energy around building the administrative state,

7:44

figuring out how to use various

7:47

forms of executive and bureaucratic power.

7:49

And he kind of grew up

7:51

in that world. And then he

7:53

happened to graduate from law school

7:55

in DC in the spring. of

7:57

1917. And so his first job

7:59

was in the justice. Department just

8:02

as the United States was entering

8:04

World War I, and that meant that

8:06

they had to figure out all

8:08

sorts of new things from surveillance

8:11

of dissidents and political radicals

8:13

to draft enforcement to

8:15

what was actually Hoover's

8:18

first job in the Justice

8:20

Department at the age of

8:22

22, which was detaining and

8:24

registering Germans for internment in

8:27

the United States. which are named

8:29

after the Attorney General at the time,

8:31

who sort of undertook this anti-ratical purge,

8:33

essentially. And I talked about the Alien

8:36

Sedition Act in the intro. You just

8:38

said that there's some similarities, I think,

8:40

about the period post 9-11, a little

8:43

bit too. These periods in American

8:45

history where there is kind of this sort

8:47

of authoritarian push or this. this

8:49

sort of dictatorial desire by the

8:52

government to stamp out dissent, to

8:54

go after radicals, to push the

8:56

edges of civilities and protections. Say

8:59

a little bit more about that milieu

9:01

in the 1920s for people that are

9:03

not that familiar with that era.

9:05

World War I and then

9:07

the period right after it,

9:09

which became known as the

9:11

First Red Scare, were incredibly

9:13

repressive periods and years

9:15

of American history. During

9:17

World War I, there was

9:20

an espionage act and then

9:22

a sedition act passed, and

9:24

that gave the federal government

9:26

to do the ability to

9:28

do what it did, which

9:31

was to imprison thousands of

9:33

people who were critics of

9:35

the were critics of the

9:37

draft, many of them incredibly

9:40

famous left-wing radicals, Emma Goldman,

9:42

Alexander Berkman, Eugene

9:44

Debs, Bill Haywood, all of these

9:46

big figures. They all ended up

9:48

in prison during World War I.

9:51

And then when the war ended,

9:53

there was a lot of energy

9:55

to figure out how to do

9:58

something like that using peacetime. powers

10:00

and what Attorney General Mitchell Palmer

10:02

hit upon. along with his young

10:04

assistant Jay Edgar Hoover, was to

10:07

use immigration and deportation law as

10:09

ways to go after people whose

10:11

opinions they didn't like. And that's

10:13

what the Palmer raids were. They

10:16

were deportation raids aimed at anarchists,

10:18

communists, at people that the United

10:20

States just didn't want here anymore,

10:22

but it really was about deporting

10:25

people for their political opinions. I

10:27

mean, as I'm speaking to you

10:29

right now, there's a very famous

10:31

case in front of us, Mahmoud

10:33

Khalil, who is a graduate student

10:36

of Columbia, he was detained by,

10:38

essentially abducted, detained, depending on how

10:40

you want to characterize this, by

10:42

ice agents. He's at a detention

10:45

facility in Louisiana, explicitly for his

10:47

protected speech, basically, that he has

10:49

not been accused of a crime,

10:51

he's not been alleged to have

10:54

committed a crime. In fact, the

10:56

government isn't even saying he did.

10:58

Instead, they're using this fairly obscure

11:00

provision of federal law that allows

11:03

the Secretary of State individually to

11:05

deem someone a threat to U.S.

11:07

foreign policy and thus subject to

11:09

deportation. Civil libertarians argue that there

11:12

is no citizen non-distance citizen distinction

11:14

in the First Amendment. And it

11:16

sounds like there's a lot in

11:18

the pomerates that echoes this. There's

11:21

a reason that the ACLU was

11:23

born out of this period in

11:25

World War I and the Palmer

11:27

raids and thinking about your introduction

11:30

to our conversation and you know

11:32

I think the Palmer raids the

11:34

World War One repression they are

11:36

signs that this kind of repression

11:38

has happened at a pretty mass

11:41

scale in US history before, but

11:43

they are also a story about

11:45

the ways that people organized through

11:47

the law and through protest, creating

11:50

organizations like the ACLU to actually

11:52

push back. against a lot of

11:54

these things and it took a

11:56

while and it was pretty intractable

11:59

and a lot of people got

12:01

deported and a lot of people

12:03

had their lives damaged but in

12:05

the end what came out of

12:08

it was actually you know a

12:10

more expansive civil liberties community and

12:12

I think a greater public awareness

12:14

of these kinds of issues. So

12:17

Hoover sort of present at the

12:19

birth at this point the FBI

12:21

does not exist right? Correct. When

12:23

he entered the Justice Department, there

12:26

was this little thing called the

12:28

Bureau of Investigation that had been

12:30

created in 1908, mostly because the

12:32

DOJ was tired of borrowing Secret

12:34

Service agents from the Treasury Department

12:37

every time they wanted to investigate

12:39

something. You were getting all sorts

12:41

of new federal laws, antitrust laws,

12:43

and a variety of other things.

12:46

So they created their own little

12:48

detective force, and it really was

12:50

in the war. and then the

12:52

years after that, that it began

12:55

to expand into a whole lot

12:57

of different directions, political repression being

12:59

one of them, Hoover went on

13:01

in the aftermath of the Palmer

13:04

raids, though they were very controversial.

13:06

He sort of survived as a

13:08

young man, and he became assistant

13:10

director of 29 and then became

13:13

director in 1924 when he was

13:15

all of 29 years old. I

13:17

want to just stay with this

13:19

Pomerase for a second when you

13:22

say they're controversial because I always

13:24

think this is an important thing

13:26

to remember which is take any

13:28

moment in American history where something

13:31

happens that we now look back

13:33

on and say that was bad.

13:35

The Trail of Tears, the Alien

13:37

Sedition Act, Japanese interment, German interment

13:39

in World War I, the Pomerates,

13:42

there were people at the time

13:44

being like this is bad too.

13:46

And in fact the Pomerates were

13:48

quite controversial, like the overstepping the

13:51

balance of civil liberty. popular backlash,

13:53

right, in both politics and the

13:55

media. The Palmer raids were extremely

13:57

popular at first. Their first big

14:00

one, which was aimed at anarchists,

14:02

which was in November of 19.

14:04

got big headlines. It was thrilling

14:06

and exciting. There was a big

14:09

mass deportation ceremony from the bottom

14:11

of Manhattan, piling a whole bunch

14:13

of Russian nationals onto a

14:15

boat to be sent back

14:17

to Soviet Russia, right, including

14:20

Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.

14:22

But the second round of

14:24

raids is exactly what you

14:26

say. Those were aimed at the

14:29

new communist parties in the

14:31

United States. They were bigger,

14:33

they were worse, they were

14:35

more spectacular, and they really

14:37

did produce a pretty serious

14:40

back. And that happened within

14:42

the federal bureaucracy, there's an

14:44

important character, guy named Lewis

14:46

Post, who had a very

14:49

important role in immigration bureau.

14:51

And so he played a role,

14:53

there was mass protest, and there

14:55

was a lot of pushback in

14:57

the newspapers as well. So obviously,

15:00

there's so much to say about

15:02

who Hoover was and why he was

15:04

able to achieve the level of power

15:06

he had. Explain to me

15:08

how it was that this young,

15:10

second generation, civil servant, creature of

15:12

DC in many ways is able

15:15

to basically be named the head

15:17

of the Bureau at the age of

15:19

29. What skills does he show? What

15:21

ability does he display in that early

15:24

period that gets him that level of

15:26

power that young? He was something

15:28

of a go-getter, even as

15:30

a kid, you know, a

15:32

teacher's pet. He was valedictorian

15:34

of his high school. He

15:36

was a champion debater. And

15:38

I think he came to

15:40

government work really as a

15:43

true believer. One of the

15:45

things that was most interesting

15:47

to me about Hoover is

15:49

that I do think he

15:51

came in with this deep

15:53

faith in professional civil service,

15:55

in the world of administration.

15:57

and bureaucracy and he also

15:59

came in. with a set of

16:01

deeply conservative ideas about religion and

16:03

race and anti-communism and law and

16:06

order and he really built the

16:08

FBI sort of at the intersection

16:10

of those two things and they

16:12

aren't traditions that we see going

16:15

together all that often in our

16:17

own politics but they were already

16:19

there for him in the moment

16:21

that he came in and he

16:24

kind of had lots of energy

16:26

to put them into effect. Yeah,

16:28

I mean, my takeaway from your

16:31

book is that he's a rare

16:33

combination of someone who's, I think,

16:35

fundamentally right wing and fundamentally pro-administrative

16:37

state and federal bureaucracy. That is

16:40

exactly right. And it was an

16:42

unusual combination, even at the time.

16:44

It is an even more unusual

16:47

combination now. But I think it

16:49

helps us to understand how the

16:51

federal government grew, particularly the security

16:53

state wing of the federal government

16:56

that grew, of course, alongside the

16:58

social welfare state. And then the

17:00

thing that really interested me about

17:02

that combination, as Hoover put it

17:05

into effect, was that here we

17:07

had this... ideological conservative, even reactionary

17:09

figure, who was really at the

17:12

heart of the project of building

17:14

the American state throughout this whole

17:16

period that we think of as

17:18

kind of the heyday of American

17:21

liberalism. What was, how would you

17:23

describe Hoover's FBI? Like, so the,

17:25

the, the name, when does the

17:28

name change? What does it finally

17:30

get its own sort of federal

17:32

bureau investigations? It was a pretty

17:34

little operation for his first decade

17:37

there in the 20s and then

17:39

into the early 30s. And it

17:41

was really under the new deal

17:43

that it became the FBI that

17:46

we know today. It got its

17:48

name in 1935. It got lots

17:50

of new crime fighting powers. And

17:53

then it also got kind of

17:55

officially authorized to be America. domestic

17:57

intelligence force. And how does he

17:59

start to wield that power in

18:02

the 30s, in the New Deal,

18:04

as it becomes, again, it's part

18:06

of this massive expansion of the

18:09

federal government and federal government's activities.

18:11

It's, you know, how many people

18:13

are, it's hiring in the New

18:15

Deal. How does he begin to

18:18

use that power? What's his vision

18:20

for it? One of the advantages

18:22

that I think that he

18:24

had in that New Deal

18:26

moment when suddenly the size

18:28

and power of the federal

18:30

government expands so

18:33

dramatically is that he had

18:35

had a decade to work out

18:37

his ideas, figure out his bureaucracy,

18:40

get all the policies and hiring

18:42

done that he wanted to get

18:44

done so that when the new

18:46

deal came along he was really

18:48

ready to go. And I'd say

18:50

there are three really important

18:52

things that happen in the

18:55

30s. One is that the

18:57

FBI becomes this swashbuckling federal

18:59

crime fighting force going up

19:02

against the likes of John

19:04

Dillinger. bank robbers, gangsters, pretty

19:06

boy Floyd. This is when Hoover

19:09

becomes famous, when the FBI becomes

19:11

famous. And I think for someone

19:13

like Franklin Roosevelt, he really saw

19:15

the war on crime as, of

19:17

course, part of the New Deal

19:19

state. You were going to use

19:21

the state in all sorts of

19:23

ways, and crime fighting was one

19:25

of them. So that's a big

19:28

piece of what Hoover was up

19:30

to. It's also during the New

19:32

Deal that he enters the world

19:34

of publicity. public relations, which becomes

19:36

a huge part of the FBI's

19:38

public presence. And I think it

19:41

became really absurd under Hoover, and

19:43

a lot of it was about

19:45

glorifying him. But I do think

19:48

there was a fundamental insight there

19:50

that he held on to, which

19:52

is that the work of government

19:55

is not necessarily legible to ordinary

19:57

people, and that if you want.

19:59

them to support you and to

20:02

believe in you, you have to

20:04

be explaining yourself, advertising yourself, selling

20:06

yourself all the time. He believed

20:08

in that. Franklin Roosevelt believed in

20:11

that, and I think it's something

20:13

that you know, we've lost a

20:15

little bit of sight of. And

20:17

then the third big thing that

20:20

he did during those years was

20:22

to begin to go back into

20:24

the kind of political surveillance work

20:26

that he had been doing as

20:28

a young assistant director and DOJ

20:31

operative, but that had really calmed

20:33

down in the 20s and to

20:35

the 30s. And again, it's Franklin

20:37

Roosevelt who really encourages him to

20:40

do that, to start conducting surveillance

20:42

of Nazi groups, of Nazi groups,

20:44

communist groups, and then once the

20:46

war itself begins, that all expands

20:49

dramatically. Let's stay on the public

20:51

relations front for just a second.

20:53

I mean, he has a kind

20:55

of obsession with the press. It's

20:58

very Trump-like in many ways. He

21:00

knows everything that's being written about

21:02

him. He's constantly trying to massage

21:04

his image. Why was this so

21:07

central to him? And how did

21:09

it affect the Bureau and the

21:11

Bureau's operations? think some of it

21:13

was just temperamental in the sense

21:15

that he was always incredibly sensitive

21:18

to criticism very much like Trump

21:20

you were either for him or

21:22

against him and that was from

21:24

very very early on before he

21:27

was famous even as he's just

21:29

this relatively obscure bureaucrat in the

21:31

20s you can see those pieces

21:33

of his personality he very much

21:36

wanted to be in control all

21:38

the time as well and so

21:40

the FBI bureaucracy was built around

21:42

Hoover's desire, need, ambition for control

21:45

and he really didn't like things

21:47

in the world including the press

21:49

that were not under his control.

21:51

And so he had very much

21:53

a carrot and a stick relationship

21:56

with the press and with Hollywood.

21:58

He had his favored people and

22:00

for his favored people. would feed

22:02

them all sorts of information. He

22:05

had a whole staff of people

22:07

writing free columns to be given

22:09

away to newspapers under Jayagor Hoover's

22:11

bylines. He had his favorite directors

22:14

in Hollywood. Ultimately, when TV came

22:16

along, there was a whole ABC

22:18

TV show. Many people still remember

22:20

this today from being little boys

22:23

and watching it from Zimbalist Jr.

22:25

As the crusading FBI agent. But

22:27

that was all a by the

22:29

FBI that came out of the

22:32

Bureau's files. And so he had

22:34

this, if you loved him, he

22:36

treated you really well, and you

22:38

got all sorts of favors. And

22:40

if you criticized him, you were

22:43

going to get agents at your

22:45

door, you were cut off from

22:47

FBI information, you were probably going

22:49

to have a permanent file at

22:52

the FBI that was full of

22:54

gossip and criticism. One of the

22:56

fun things about being a Hoover

22:58

biographer. is that because he thought

23:01

no one would ever see any

23:03

of these files, he used to

23:05

write these incredibly abusive things in

23:07

the margins about, particularly reporters and

23:10

journals. He didn't like one of

23:12

his favorite phrases was that they

23:14

suffered from mental halitosis. And he

23:16

used to write that about journalists

23:18

all the time. So he would,

23:21

I mean, when you say agents

23:23

at the door, I mean, now

23:25

we're sort of getting into the

23:27

territory that I think is, you

23:30

know. Hoover is most infamous for,

23:32

right, which is the use of

23:34

the surveillance capabilities, the state power

23:36

to amass secrets about people, use

23:39

those secrets for blackmail, for building

23:41

political power. Tell us a little

23:43

bit about how this develops and

23:45

how it actually ends up getting

23:48

used. Hoover kept files on almost

23:50

anybody who was anybody in the

23:52

United States. That means all members

23:54

of Congress, certainly presidents, members of

23:57

the press, celebrities, a whole host

23:59

of people. A

24:01

lot of those were passive files

24:03

in the sense that they were

24:05

not the subjects of an investigation,

24:07

but people would write into the

24:09

FBI and say, oh, you know,

24:11

I hear so and so is

24:13

having an affair or I was

24:15

out at a party and I

24:17

saw Congressman X drunk out of

24:19

his mind. And so as the

24:22

FBI got that information, one

24:24

of Hoover's favorite techniques

24:26

was to send an

24:28

agent to the office

24:30

of Senator Whoever and say,

24:32

Senator, we've found out

24:35

this terrible rumor about your

24:37

affair or your alcoholism

24:39

or your delinquent child. And

24:41

we just want you

24:43

to know that your secret is

24:46

safe with us. So it wasn't,

24:48

is that blackmail? I mean, it's certainly

24:50

intimidation and threatening, but it was

24:52

a very careful form of blackmail.

24:54

Hoover would do, of course,

24:56

much more aggressive things than

24:58

that, too, for people that

25:00

he deemed to be the

25:02

FBI's enemy, national security

25:04

threats, very broad category for

25:07

him. He would, of course, conduct

25:09

much more overt investigations that

25:11

involved surveillance, that involved asking around

25:13

town to find out about

25:15

people's personal lives, a whole host

25:17

of techniques that, of course,

25:19

are not very hard to carry

25:22

out and that are not

25:24

things the FBI is supposed to

25:26

be doing, but would be

25:28

pretty easy to do even today. And

25:30

of course, as time goes on

25:33

and we move into the cold

25:35

war, where sort of we come

25:37

back to a kind of moment

25:39

of paranoia about communist infiltration, which

25:41

is what happens in the Pomerades.

25:43

And now here we are back

25:45

in the 1950s, the era of

25:48

McCarthyism. And I mean, Hoover is

25:50

a very much absolute true believer in

25:53

the evils of communism and

25:55

communist subversion and obsessed at

25:57

a cellular ideological and

25:59

personal with that, right?

26:01

Absolutely. He thought of that

26:04

as the great cause of

26:06

his life from very early

26:08

on and he thought of the

26:10

FBI as what he called

26:12

the one bulwark against the

26:15

tide of communism and

26:17

he defined that really really

26:19

broadly and I think that's

26:22

part of what makes

26:24

him interesting. There was

26:26

Soviet espionage going on

26:29

and you would want and

26:31

expect an FBI director to

26:33

be interested in finding spies

26:35

and doing that sort of

26:37

national security work, but for

26:39

Hoover there were many, many

26:41

other layers beyond that from

26:43

going after the Communist Party

26:45

itself in the United States,

26:47

its members and its leaders,

26:49

to writing about the threat

26:51

of communism, to going after

26:53

anyone on the left who

26:55

seemed to ever have spoken

26:57

with a communist, to watching

26:59

what was really a cultural

27:01

crusade against communism, against the

27:03

left, that was all about

27:05

telling people how to bring

27:07

their kids to church, how

27:09

to raise their children, all

27:11

of these things. And it

27:13

was all one big stew for

27:15

Hoover. Yeah, I mean he hates the

27:18

left. I mean he hates people with

27:20

long hair. He hates people with like

27:22

subversive secular ideas. He hates the civil

27:25

rights movement. I mean he really is

27:27

like he views himself in opposition to

27:29

the left and I guess there's a

27:31

question of like, how did he understand

27:34

whether, did Hoover understand he was abusing

27:36

his own power? Maybe that's a strange

27:38

question, but did he understand that? Did

27:41

the people around him understand it?

27:43

Did people in the culture understand?

27:45

I mean, obviously when the church

27:47

committee happens and all these things

27:49

come out about Cointel Pro and all

27:51

that stuff, but even while it's happening,

27:54

are there people in government, Hoover

27:56

himself were aware that sending a,

27:58

you know, audio recording and a... message

28:00

to kill yourself to Martin

28:02

Luther King Jr. is like

28:04

a wildly unlawful criminal enterprise.

28:06

They were aware of that.

28:08

They in fact in their

28:10

own memos to each other

28:12

During Hoover's day there was

28:14

no freedom of information act

28:16

and so the FBI was

28:18

very confident that whatever they

28:20

wrote down they would have

28:23

control over and they would

28:25

be the only ones that

28:27

would ever see these documents

28:29

and so they wrote down

28:31

all sorts of stuff including

28:33

on many occasions, the idea

28:35

that, well, we're doing this,

28:37

we know it is illegal,

28:39

something like breaking and entering

28:41

the headquarters of the Communist

28:43

Party to photograph membership lists.

28:45

They knew that breaking and

28:47

entering without a warrant was,

28:49

in fact, illegal. They wrote

28:51

it down. They agreed. So

28:53

there was certainly acknowledgement of

28:55

that. Did they think that

28:57

they were therefore in the

28:59

wrong? I don't think so.

29:01

And part of Hoover's story

29:03

is that he was so

29:05

convinced of his own righteousness

29:07

that he believed that whatever

29:09

they did was, you know,

29:11

to protect America and to

29:13

protect the Bureau itself. More

29:15

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30:51

wrote an op-ed around Cash Patel's nomination

30:53

before he was confirmed, and when

30:55

she made this sort of really

30:57

interesting and I thought an important point

31:00

about, you know, Hoover was an

31:02

ideological zealot, he was a sort

31:04

of narcissist in many ways, incredibly

31:06

self-aggrandizing, but he was not a

31:08

partisan figure, and he certainly didn't

31:10

have a kind of slavish loyalty

31:13

to a president or political figure above

31:15

him. In fact, if there was a...

31:17

problem with Hoover is that he was

31:19

totally unaccountable, right? And this is very

31:22

different than what we might think about

31:24

in terms of a bureau under

31:26

say Donald Trump loyalists like Cash

31:28

Patel. That's exactly right. That was

31:30

an essay I wrote in the

31:33

New Yorker and and that was

31:35

the point that I wanted to

31:37

make that on the one hand

31:39

Hoover created this playbook of how

31:42

you could use an institution like

31:44

the FBI to intimidate your enemies,

31:46

to gather information. And then on

31:49

the other hand, he's actually nothing

31:51

like Cash Patel, because Cash Patel

31:53

is so open about being loyal

31:56

to Donald Trump in particular, he

31:58

calls him King Donald. And Hoover

32:00

was a very different creature. He

32:02

was sort of the ultimate autonomous

32:05

bureaucrat. Whatever his flaws, he believed

32:07

in the FBI as an institution,

32:09

and he believed in its independence.

32:12

He served under Republicans. He served

32:14

under Democrats, and he was sort

32:16

of the ultimate unaccountable bureaucrat, which

32:18

is not something that... Cash Patel

32:21

has any respect for or sees

32:23

himself as being any part of.

32:25

Right, it's his nightmare. I mean

32:28

in some ways that that's the

32:30

irony here, right? That the idea

32:32

of like this idea of unaccountably

32:34

bureaucrats, which I think is very

32:37

overstated. But in the case of

32:39

Hoover really was true, like he

32:41

was truly the most powerful unaccountable

32:43

bureaucrat in American history, I don't

32:46

think there's even a very very

32:48

close second, right? Yeah, he's not

32:50

a great argument for the virtues

32:53

of independent government bureaucrats, though even

32:55

Hoover had moments where that in

32:57

fact was a virtue. Well, what

32:59

do you mean? Well, there were

33:02

several moments that I came across

33:04

in my book where... Hoover's sense

33:06

of the FBI's own interests, his

33:08

understanding of the law, and above

33:11

all, his desire to protect his

33:13

own autonomy and the Bureau's autonomy,

33:15

led him to say no to

33:18

some pretty egregious things that presidents

33:20

wanted to do. So one example

33:22

is that he was quite opposed

33:24

to mass Japanese internment in World

33:27

War II. He was one of

33:29

the few high officials who was,

33:31

and that was partly because the

33:33

FBI was conducting its own different

33:36

internment program that he just thought

33:38

was much much better, but it

33:40

wasn't mass internment. It was much

33:43

more individualized. Another is his showdowns

33:45

with Richard Nixon in the 70s.

33:47

There's a moment where Nixon gathers

33:49

a lot of intelligence officials together

33:52

and says, we really, really have

33:54

to go after the left. We

33:56

really have to crush the anti-war

33:58

movement. I want much more aggressive

34:01

action and it is Hoover who

34:03

says no I'm not going to

34:05

do these things I think they're

34:08

illegal I think they are in

34:10

advisable and I'm not going to

34:12

use the FBI this way now

34:14

he was doing already many terrible

34:17

and scurrilous things but he both

34:19

wanted to keep those secrets and

34:21

he in some ways didn't want

34:23

to go as far as Nixon

34:26

went. It seems to me that

34:28

there's a period of sort of

34:30

federal power. and construction of the

34:33

kind of post-New Deal administrative state

34:35

that culminates in Watergate, essentially,

34:37

where you've built this entire

34:39

apparatus, much of it built

34:41

in the shadow of either

34:43

World War or then the

34:45

Cold War, and Hoover is

34:47

the kind of mascot for

34:49

its abuse, Hoover and Nixon

34:52

in many ways, and... Watergate

34:54

precipitates this kind of national

34:56

reckoning with all of the

34:58

different powers and abuses of

35:00

the secret state. The famous

35:02

co-intel pro stuff comes out,

35:04

the church committee, the CIA

35:06

attempting to assassinate leftist leaders

35:08

around the world, you know,

35:10

the spying on enemies of

35:12

Nixon, the FBI's attempts to

35:15

get Martin Luther King Jr.

35:17

to kill himself and on

35:19

and on and on. And

35:21

there's like a set of

35:23

reforms that happen. How do

35:25

you understand that moment and

35:27

how much that moment represents

35:29

some kind of structural shift

35:31

in the American constitutional republic?

35:33

I think that period in

35:35

the mid-1970s Watergate, the church

35:37

committee, the... Pentagon Papers is

35:40

an incredibly important moment for

35:42

how Americans relate to their

35:44

government. And I think we've

35:46

always had competing narratives about

35:48

what that moment was and

35:50

how we want to understand

35:52

it. There is a kind

35:54

of look. We can reform.

35:56

And in fact, the world.

35:58

lot of really important reforms

36:00

that came out of that

36:03

period, particularly constraints on the

36:05

intelligence agencies that I think

36:07

really did matter if they

36:09

didn't solve every single problem.

36:11

There is also a story

36:13

that says, oh, actually we've

36:15

never recovered from the loss

36:17

of public trust that happened

36:19

in those years, that between

36:21

Watergate, the Vietnam War, the

36:23

things the intelligence agencies were

36:25

doing, you know, from that

36:28

moment on, we've just seen

36:30

this decline in institutional faith

36:32

and faith in government, and

36:34

that that's been a really

36:36

important watershed. And then I

36:38

think we are seeing today

36:40

the outcome of a story

36:42

that remained really popular among

36:44

conservatives, people on the right.

36:46

which was that actually what

36:48

happened in the 70s was

36:50

a tragedy and it was

36:53

unjust and the intelligence agencies

36:55

never should have been constrained

36:57

like that and executive power

36:59

never should have been held

37:01

back like that and in

37:03

fact Nixon never should have

37:05

resigned. He just should have

37:07

touched it out, right? And

37:09

I think we're seeing, you

37:11

know, the consequences of actually

37:13

all three of those stories

37:16

which are shaping politics today.

37:18

Well, how much do you

37:20

think in the year 2025,

37:22

which is what, 50 years

37:24

after Hoover, basically, right, more

37:26

or less? Right. The FBI

37:28

is still shaped at a

37:30

sort of day-to-day level in

37:32

terms of character structurally by

37:34

Hoover. I think it's fundamental

37:36

internal culture is still very

37:38

similar to the culture that

37:41

Hoover put in place. which

37:43

is to say that the

37:45

FBI on the one hand,

37:47

I think is filled with

37:49

people who believe in the

37:51

autonomy of their own agency,

37:53

believe in kind of professional

37:55

career government service. These were

37:57

Hoover's watchwords. He became ultimately

37:59

a pretty bad example of

38:01

that, but he really instilled

38:04

the FBI with a sense

38:06

of its own mission, its

38:08

own independence, its own loyalty

38:10

to the American public and

38:12

not to any particular... politician

38:14

or agenda. And then

38:17

his conservatism, I think, has

38:19

always been a big part of

38:21

the FBI. You know, it's very

38:23

strange to see people like Cash

38:26

Patel or Donald Trump describe the

38:28

FBI as like a viper's nest

38:30

of Marxists and their secret leftist

38:32

because of all the things the

38:35

FBI may be. I'm pretty sure that

38:37

that's not what it is. It has

38:39

always had a pretty conservative internal

38:42

culture. that comes from. Hoover

38:44

too. I do think many

38:46

of the abuses of the

38:48

Hoover era in terms of

38:50

political surveillance have been much

38:52

more curtailed. They haven't disappeared.

38:54

Their potential for coming

38:56

back was always there. But I

38:58

do think that they've been much

39:01

more constrained and much more law-bound

39:03

than they were during the Hoover

39:05

years, partly because we have some

39:08

much better ability to tell at

39:10

least some of what's actually going

39:12

on because of the reform. of

39:15

the 70s. I mean, one of

39:17

the sort of central tensions that

39:19

I think I think about many

39:22

times a day in our current

39:24

situation is that lack of accountability

39:26

is just the other side of

39:29

the coin from independence.

39:31

So when you have, you

39:33

want there to be independent

39:35

entities with power. that are

39:37

not dependent on the centralized authority

39:39

or fearful of a centralized authority,

39:42

like the courts, for instance, which

39:44

are independent. But then that independence

39:46

also means that it's hard to hold them

39:48

to account. So if you have a six-three Robert's

39:50

Court and they do a lot of terrible things,

39:52

well, you know, go kick rocks. And this sort

39:55

of trade-off between lack of accountability

39:57

and independence, it's sort of everywhere

39:59

you look. like the New York

40:01

Times is independent and thank goodness

40:03

it is, but sometimes you get

40:05

mad at the New York Times

40:08

and there's not a lot of

40:10

ways to, you know, enforce any

40:12

accountability on it and any mechanism

40:15

you would have to enforce accountability

40:17

on the New York Times or

40:19

the courts would also be a

40:21

mechanism of corruption and dependence. And

40:24

Hoover to me is the basically

40:26

the ultimate apotheosis of this. Like...

40:28

That seems, yeah, you know, if

40:31

you look at the things that...

40:33

reformers tried to do in the

40:35

1970s, they were trying to get

40:37

at exactly this question. So we

40:40

want some independence, but not too

40:42

much independence. We're going to need

40:44

some level of secrecy for certain

40:47

things, but we don't want too

40:49

much secrecy. And it's all this

40:51

kind of elaborate dance. And I

40:53

don't know that we've ever gotten

40:56

the balance exactly right. But I

40:58

think what we're seeing right now

41:00

with Trump and with Cash Patel.

41:02

is a really pernicious combination of

41:05

lack of accountability and abuse of

41:07

power in an incredibly political and

41:09

partisan way, at least potentially. Yeah,

41:12

I mean, we already have some

41:14

examples. We have one today of

41:16

the FBI signing letters to Citibank

41:18

to freeze funds for climate groups

41:21

that had the money distributed, already

41:23

was sitting in their Citibank accounts

41:25

through the inflation reduction act, and

41:28

special agents signing letters saying, we

41:30

suspect there's fraud here. when they

41:32

tried to get a warrant for

41:34

this, it was rejected. The case

41:37

was so terrible that it was

41:39

rejected by a judge to get

41:41

the warrant. There was a frontline

41:44

prosecutor who's ordered to try to

41:46

write up this warrant and they

41:48

resigned rather than do it. So

41:50

it's the flimsiest of evidence. But

41:53

in that respect, I think you're

41:55

starting to see like, you know,

41:57

the worst nightmare, right? The worst

42:00

nightmare is a version of Hoover,

42:02

but instead of them being accountable

42:04

to Hoover, it's the president. and

42:06

it's his agenda and it means

42:09

that if you speak up against

42:11

Donald Trump you get a visit

42:13

from me. of the door. And

42:15

I just wonder how given that

42:18

you've devoted, you know, more than

42:20

a decade your life just to

42:22

studying Hoover, like, how plausible does

42:25

that seem to you? It seems

42:27

pretty plausible and I have stopped

42:29

thinking that things that I thought

42:31

were impossible are in fact impossible.

42:34

I think the example that you

42:36

brought up is really an interesting

42:38

one because during the campaign and

42:41

even since then a lot of

42:43

the talk about concern has been

42:45

they're going to bring criminal cases

42:47

against the Biden's, against their political

42:50

enemies, against a whole host of

42:52

people. I think that the real

42:54

danger is in precisely the kind

42:57

of secret intelligence operations that you

42:59

just mentioned. Not about the courts

43:01

at all, but about forms of

43:03

surveillance and disruption and harassment and

43:06

discrediting that go on entirely outside

43:08

of the courts in the intelligence

43:10

realm. That's what co-intel pro was,

43:13

right? It was a program not

43:15

only of surveillance, but of active

43:17

disruptive measures aimed at a whole

43:19

host of groups and individuals that

43:22

Hoover in particular didn't like. And

43:24

often they were never brought before

43:26

court, but people understood that their

43:28

phones might be tapped, that their

43:31

best friend and comrade might be

43:33

an informant, that their personal lives

43:35

might be under investigation. A lot

43:38

of us know the Martin Luther

43:40

King's story. That's an extreme story

43:42

in some ways, but those kinds

43:44

of techniques were being used against

43:47

lots of people. It doesn't take

43:49

very many people to do that.

43:51

And if you keep it secret

43:54

enough, you're not supposed to do

43:56

it, obviously, but I don't. I

43:58

don't think it would be hard

44:00

to start that kind of campaign

44:03

again. We'll be right back after

44:05

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44:27

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44:29

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44:31

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44:33

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45:41

Listen now. What

45:50

do you think about the culture of

45:52

the Bureau as inoculation against that? I

45:54

mean that's that's one of the questions

45:56

here too that I think is so

45:58

interesting is you know for Hoover the

46:00

Bureau his life's work and he and

46:02

his fiefdom and he had total ownership

46:04

of it. Cash Patel has said he

46:06

wants to get rid of the Hoover

46:08

headquarters, turn it into a museum of

46:10

the deep state, send all the agents

46:12

there out into the field to you

46:14

know stop crime I think is what

46:16

he said. And basically views the Bureau

46:18

that he is now tasked with leading

46:20

as kind of the enemy which is

46:22

180 degrees from Hoover and I wonder

46:24

what you think that does to his

46:27

ability to operate to operate

46:29

it. given how strong the

46:31

institutional culture is there?

46:33

I think it's going to

46:36

be one of the most

46:38

interesting and important issues in

46:40

the days, weeks, months, years

46:42

ahead, because I think that

46:45

you are right that the

46:47

FBI internally has a very

46:49

powerful culture that is about

46:51

its own integrity, its own

46:54

apolitical nonpartisan identity, and You

46:56

can put a couple of

46:58

people at the top who

47:00

don't support that and don't

47:02

want that, but that's pretty

47:05

different from getting the thousands

47:07

and thousands of people who

47:09

work in that bureau to

47:11

do what you want them

47:13

to do. So we saw

47:16

early on, as Cash Patel

47:18

came in, lots of resistance

47:20

within the Bureau, I think

47:22

that the great example that

47:24

I look to. is what happened

47:26

to Richard Nixon when

47:28

he tried to politicize the

47:30

bureaucracy, right? One of the things

47:32

that Jay Ugar Hoover died in

47:35

1972 in May, Nixon put an

47:37

outsider in charge of the Bureau

47:39

in order to make it

47:41

more responsive to his priorities,

47:44

more responsive to the White

47:46

House, and career FBI agents

47:48

got really mad about that.

47:50

One of them became deep

47:52

throat and, you know, Yada Yada Yada.

47:54

Nixon resigned two and a half years

47:56

later. So it's not that simple a

47:58

story, but I do think there are

48:00

possibilities for that sort of

48:02

thing. And in fact, both

48:04

Trump and Cash Patel would

48:06

expect that because that's what's

48:09

at the heart of their

48:11

analysis of the deep state

48:13

and why it's so terrible.

48:15

Yes, exactly. There's, I mean,

48:17

that's, the Mark Fell being

48:19

deep-throat and bringing down Nixon

48:21

is right in line with

48:23

basically their theory of the

48:25

case about the deep state.

48:27

And again. They're wrong in

48:29

some ways, but there's a

48:31

kernel of a true story

48:33

here, right? Which goes back

48:36

to this sort of independence

48:38

lack of accountability issue. And

48:40

there's a reason they view

48:42

that they're waging such war

48:44

on in some ways the

48:46

most dangerous parts of the

48:48

state, because those are the

48:50

ones they recognize as the

48:52

most important to bring under

48:54

your total control and dominion.

48:56

Well, they seem to be

48:58

going to war at... almost

49:01

every part of the state.

49:03

So I'm not sure this

49:05

is a super discriminating thing.

49:07

That's true. There is an

49:09

analysis that is about the

49:11

deep state in particular and

49:13

one of the things that

49:15

I think is a little

49:17

bit confusing and maybe interesting

49:19

the law and a whole

49:21

host of of positions that

49:23

he's taking rhetorically, which seem

49:25

to come out of a

49:28

kind of civil libertarian tradition,

49:30

and then on the other

49:32

hand, is saying, hey, we're

49:34

gonna use this thing to

49:36

go after our enemies and

49:38

is being totally unapologetic about

49:40

that. Yeah, I mean, right,

49:42

exactly. It's the enemies list

49:44

and it's, yes, all the

49:46

rhetoric of sort of, yes,

49:48

70s leftist skepticism in the

49:50

FBI married to. a kind

49:53

of authoritarian vision of these

49:55

loyalist henchmen working for King,

49:57

I mean King Trump, this

49:59

is the way that he

50:01

talks about him in his

50:03

children's book. Let's sort of

50:05

end on the note that

50:07

I sort of started on,

50:09

which is, you know, the

50:11

book he wrote is an,

50:13

it really is a masterpiece,

50:15

this incredible work that sort

50:17

of chronicles the construction of

50:20

the administrative state over decades

50:22

and sort of a history

50:24

of the US as much

50:26

as it's about Hoover, but

50:28

Given that and given what

50:30

I was saying before about

50:32

these finding these moments where

50:34

things get bad and American

50:36

liberty really is threatened and

50:38

then they're sort of wrenched

50:40

back like how are you

50:42

seeing this moment on your

50:45

internal You know one to

50:47

ten with one being like

50:49

everything's great and ten is

50:51

like I need to make

50:53

sure my passport is current

50:55

and might have to leave

50:57

the country. Well, everything's great

50:59

obviously. So what is there

51:01

to worry about? I guess

51:03

I am somewhat in the

51:05

vein that was the way

51:07

that you were talking about

51:09

this in your introduction, which

51:12

is to say I think

51:14

there are lots of dangerous

51:16

things going on in this

51:18

moment, and they are in

51:20

many ways worse than one

51:22

might have expected, though I

51:24

think we're still in the

51:26

range of the imaginable, even...

51:28

as of a few months

51:30

ago, but I'm not sure

51:32

that we need examples from

51:34

other parts of the world

51:37

to understand where a lot

51:39

of this is coming from.

51:41

I think there's lots in

51:43

American history that would help

51:45

us to see some of

51:47

these themes and dangers and

51:49

precedents. And I also think

51:51

that the United States is

51:53

an interesting place because it

51:55

does have a very powerful,

51:57

very long-standing tradition of civil

51:59

society. protest of dissent and

52:01

there are scary moments and

52:04

I have been spending a

52:06

lot of time thinking, you

52:08

know, oh, I've been reading

52:10

about this for a long

52:12

time, but oh. This is

52:14

what it felt like, right?

52:16

This is what the red

52:18

scare felt like, or if

52:20

you were a businessman, this

52:22

is what the first hundred

52:24

days of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency

52:26

felt like, right? Just this

52:29

incredibly radical change, the whole

52:31

order being upended, your expectations

52:33

being thrown out the window.

52:35

And I guess looking to

52:37

the red scare example, it

52:39

was really hard for a

52:41

really long time and people's

52:43

lives got damaged. And we

52:45

also came out the other

52:47

side with a new understanding,

52:49

actually, you know, a rejuvenated

52:51

left by the 1960s in

52:54

some way. So as a

52:56

historian, I'm very attuned to

52:58

how quickly things can actually

53:00

change and how powerful these

53:02

long-standing institutions in American life,

53:04

the press, the universities. all

53:06

of these institutions that are

53:08

under incredible stress at the

53:10

moment and are gonna come

53:12

through damaged and changed, but

53:14

have been through these sorts

53:16

of moments before. Beverly Gage

53:18

is a historian at Yale,

53:21

author of G-Man, J. Edgar

53:23

Hoover, and the Making of

53:25

the American Century, it won

53:27

the Pulitzer for Biography. Professor,

53:29

thank you so much. That

53:31

was fantastic. All right, thanks

53:33

so much, Chris. Once

53:40

again, great thanks to Beverly Gage email

53:42

us at whithpot@gmail.com We love to hear

53:44

your feedback Get in touch with us

53:46

using the hashtag with pod you can

53:48

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53:50

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53:52

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53:54

as Twitter at Chris L Hayes Be

53:56

sure to hear new episodes every Tuesday.

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